“A woman?” Gemma’s eyebrow twitched upward. “Oh, that’s too bad.”
“Why?”
“Men are so easily distracted by a pretty face.”
“If Detective Rizzoli keeps digging, she’s eventually going to end up here. Talking to you.”
“So let them come. What are they going to find out?” Gemma waved at her kitchen. “Look around! They’ll walk in here, get a look at all my herbal teas, and dismiss me as some harmless old hippie who couldn’t possibly tell them anything useful. When you’re a fifty-year-old woman, no one really bothers to look at you anymore, much less value your opinion. It’s hard on the old ego. But damn, it does make it easy to get away with a lot.”
Josephine laughed. “So all I have to do is wait till I’m fifty and I’m home free?”
“You may be home free already, as far as the police are concerned.”
Josephine said softly: “It’s not just the police who scare me. Not after those notes. Not after what was left in my car.”
“No,” Gemma agreed. “There are worse things to be afraid of.” She paused, then looked across the table at Josephine. “So why are you still alive?”
The question startled Josephine. “You think I should be dead.”
“Why would some weirdo waste time scaring you with creepy little notes? With grotesque gifts in your car? Why not just kill you?”
“Maybe because the police are involved? Ever since the scan of Madam X, they’ve been hovering around the museum.”
“Another thing puzzles me. Putting a body in your car seems designed to draw attention to you. The police are watching you now. It’s a strange move if someone really wants you dead.”
The statement was typical for Gemma: factual and brutally blunt. Someone wants you dead. But I am dead, she thought. Twelve years ago, the girl I used to be dropped off the face of the earth. And Josephine Pulcillo was born.
“She wouldn’t want you dealing with this all alone, Josie. Let’s make that phone call.”
“No. It’s safer for everyone if we don’t. If they’re watching me, that’s just what they’re waiting for.” She took a breath. “I’ve managed on my own since college and I can deal with this, too. I just need some time to catch my breath. Throw a dart at the map and decide where to go next.” She paused. “And I think I’ll need some cash.”
“There’s still about twenty-five thousand dollars left in the account. It’s been sitting there for you. Waiting for a rainy day.”
“I think this qualifies.” Josephine stood to leave the room. In the kitchen doorway she stopped and looked back. “Thank you for everything you’ve done. For me. And for my mother.”
“I owe it to her, Josie.” Gemma looked down at her burn-scarred arms. “It’s only because of Medea that I’m still alive.”
FOURTEEN
On Saturday night, Daniel finally came to her.
At the last minute, before he arrived, Maura rushed out to the local market where she bought kalamata olives and French cheeses and a far-too-extravagant bottle of wine. This is the way I’ll woo a lover, she thought as she handed over her credit card. With smiles and kisses and glasses of Pinot Noir. I will win him over with perfect evenings that he’ll never forget, never stop craving. And someday, maybe, he’ll make his choice. He’ll choose me.
When she got home, he was already waiting for her in her house.
As the garage door rolled open, she saw his car parked inside where the neighbors wouldn’t see it, where it would cause no raised eyebrows, no lascivious gossip. She pulled in beside it and quickly closed the garage door again, shutting off any view of the blatant evidence that she was not alone tonight. Keeping secrets so easily becomes second nature, and it was automatic for her now to close the garage door, to draw the curtains and smoothly fend off the innocent queries from colleagues and neighbors. Are you seeing someone? Would you like to come to dinner? Would you like to meet this nice man I know? Over the months, she’d declined so many such invitations that few were now offered. Had everyone simply given up on her, or had they guessed the reason for her disinterest, for her unsociability?
That reason was standing in the doorway, waiting for her.
She stepped into the house, into Daniel Brophy’s arms. It had been ten days since they’d last been together, ten days of ever-deepening longing that was now so gnawing she could not wait to satisfy it. The groceries were still in the car, and she had dinner to cook, but food was the last thing on her mind as their lips met. Daniel was all she wanted to devour, and she feasted on him as they kissed their way into her bedroom, guilty kisses made all the more delicious because they were illicit. How many new sins will we commit this evening, she wondered as she watched him unbutton his shirt. Tonight he did not wear his clerical collar; tonight he came to her as a lover, not a man of God.
Months ago he had broken the vows that bound him to his church. She was the one responsible; she had caused his fall from grace, a fall that once again brought him into her bed, into her arms. It was a destination so familiar to him now that he knew exactly what she wanted, what would make her clutch him and cry out.
When at last she fell back with a satisfied shudder, they lay together as they always did, with arms and legs wrapped around each other, two lovers who knew each other’s bodies well.
“It feels like it’s been forever since you were here,” she whispered.
“I would have come Thursday, but that workshop went on forever.”
“Which workshop?”
“Couples counseling.” He gave a sad, ironic laugh. “As if I’m the person who can tell them how to heal their marriages. There’s so much anger and pain, Maura. It was an ordeal just sitting in the same room with those people. I wanted to tell them, It will never work, you’ll never be happy with each other. You married the wrong person! ”
“That might be the best advice you could have given them.”
“It would have been an act of mercy.” Gently he brushed the hair from her face, and his hand lingered on her cheek. “It would have been so much kinder to give them permission to leave. To find someone who would make them happy. The way you make me happy.”
She smiled. “And you make me hungry.” She sat up, and the scent of their lovemaking wafted up from the rumpled sheets. The animal smells of warm bodies and desire. “I promised you dinner.”
“I feel guilty that you’re always feeding me.” He, too, sat up and reached for his clothes. “Tell me what I can do.”
“I left the wine in the car. Why don’t you get the bottle and open it? I’ll put the chicken in the oven.”
In her kitchen they sipped wine as the chicken roasted, as she sliced the potatoes and he made the salad. Like any married couple, they cooked and they touched and they kissed. But we’re not married, she thought, glancing sideways at his striking profile, his graying temples. Every moment together was a stolen one, a furtive one, and although they laughed together, sometimes she heard a desperate note in that laughter, as though they were trying to convince themselves that they were happy, damn it, yes they were, despite the guilt and the deceptions and the many nights apart. But she was beginning to see the emotional toll in his face. In just the past few months, his hair had gone noticeably grayer. When it’s completely white, she thought, will we still be meeting with the curtains closed?
And what changes does he see in my face?
It was after midnight when he left her house. She had fallen asleep in his arms and did not hear him rise from the bed. When she awakened he was gone, and the sheet beside her was already cold.
That morning she drank her coffee alone, cooked pancakes alone. Her best memories of her otherwise disastrous and brief marriage to Victor were of Sunday mornings together, rising late from bed to lounge on the couch, where they’d spend half the day reading the newspaper. She would never enjoy such a Sunday with Daniel. While she dozed in her bathrobe with the pages of The Boston Globe spread out all around her, Father Daniel Brophy would be ministering to his flock in the church of Our Lady of Divine Light, a flock whose shepherd had himself gone terribly astray.