Unravel Me Page 13

  Nikki put her hand on his arm as he started to turn.

  “I’ve only known her a short while . . .” she started.

  He could read her concern, and because he cared for Juliet, too, he was grateful for it. His biological family had given him nothing, but he’d found brothers in the Army and he knew how valuable those bonds could be.

  “I’m not going to hurt her,” he told Nikki. Juliet only wanted a simple, single night, and he could do that, without jeopardizing hearts or secrets.

  Is it too much to ask that I could find some way to prove that I didn’t die, too?

  He had to do that for her.

  It took him moments to get back to the spot where he’d left her. She wasn’t there.

  The soap bubble had already burst.

  But no—no, there. There she was, in the restaurant foyer. He hurried through the archway and took her hand. “I thought I’d lost you.”

  He registered the frozen look on her face and her odd, stiff posture, and wondered if he just might be right after all. She glanced at him, her expression that careful blank, then slipped her fingers from his as she directed her attention back to an older woman standing nearby.

  “Noah, you remember Helen, don’t you? Wayne’s—our—old friend?”

  Helen. Helen Novack. In her early sixties, the woman had the chic but no-care haircut of a woman who spent her days on tennis courts and golf courses. Her face was tanned but relatively unlined and her eyes were a shrewd brown. Noah had grown up without learning shit about high society, and if he’d thought about it at all, he’d have figured that the southern end of wet-behind-the-ears California would be without such pretensions anyway. But then he’d met the general and the old-moneyed families like the Westons who called places such as San Marino, Bel Air, and Pacific Palisades home.

  There was the new-ink reek of the money made by studio heads, movie producers, and the DUIs-by-the-dozen actors, and then there was Helen Novack’s money that smelled like century-old bricks of cool adobe and acres of orange blossoms.

  Juliet was still speaking. “And, Helen? I’m sure you recognize Noah Smith, my . . . um . . . Wayne’s assistant?”

  “That’s right,” the older woman said, acknowledging Noah with a flick of her eyelashes. “He’s working for you now.”

  Noah didn’t give Juliet a chance to reply. “Correct, ma’am.”

  “Only until I’m settled in the new house,” Juliet added, her lips curving in a pale imitation of her usual smile. “Noah just passed the California Bar exam.”

  Helen Novack’s brows rose a fraction. “But for now he’s your—what exactly? Driver?”

  “Um, well . . .” A flush rose up Juliet’s neck.

  “Driver, gardener, house painter, whatever’s required,” Noah injected himself into the conversation again, not that he thought for a moment that Juliet would confess she wanted him to be more. And not that he considered for a moment that Helen Novack herself would ever dream that the general’s beautiful wife would go slumming with the likes of an enlisted soldier who hailed from some scrub-and-sand desert hamlet—law degree or not.

  Staring him down, Helen’s eyebrows rose a half-inch more, but he’d never withered under the disdain of his drill sergeants and he didn’t twitch now. After a moment, she transferred her gaze back to Juliet. “Well, it’s convenient we ran into each other.”

  “You said your niece persuaded you to join her tonight.”

  “A charity event, she told me.” Helen frowned as the band took up an old party song and the crowd shouted for Tequila! “I didn’t expect it to be quite so raucous, though I should have known. Malibu.”

  It was said in the same tone as Noah imagined she’d use when uttering, “Drugs.” “Rock ‘n’ roll.” “Sex.”

  The crowd yelled again—Tequila!—and Juliet glanced over her shoulder then sent Helen another one of those half-hearted smiles. “I was just leaving myself.”

  “I must say I’m surprised to see you out partying.” The older woman’s obvious disapproval made Noah’s hackles rise. The general had been gone for nearly a year and Juliet had devoted herself to him during his long illness before that. Wasn’t she entitled to experience a little music, a little laughter, a little—

  Tequila! the crowd shouted.

  —even a little of that, too, if she liked?

  “I’m sorry, Helen,” Juliet said, her voice low.

  Noah stared. Sorry? Sorry about what? Why was she apologizing?

  “Never mind,” the other woman replied. “But as I said, it’s convenient I ran into you. I want you to know that I’m planning a party—a party to launch Wayne’s book.”

  Juliet brightened. “Oh, how fabulous. When?”

  “The twenty-first of next month. Invitations have already gone out and I’ve been promised press coverage as well.”

  “Really fabulous.” Juliet’s smile was genuine this time and he saw her shoulders relax. “But my mail’s been spotty catching up with me at the new house. Where and what time is your party? I’ll put it on my calendar.”

  Helen didn’t bat an eyelash. “Juliet, I didn’t invite you.”

  “Oh.” A single syllable, that’s it. Besides the death of her smile, she showed no other reaction to the verbal slap.

  “Surely you understand,” Helen continued. “I didn’t think it was a good idea, when the focus should be on Wayne and all that he accomplished.”

  “Surely,” Juliet echoed, giving a jerky nod. “I’ve had similar thoughts myself.”

  “But don’t worry.” Helen was tucking her handbag beneath her arm and seemed prepared to move on. “The rest of our group will be there, all Wayne’s friends, Marlys, of course, and everyone else who knew and loved him.”

  Except Juliet. Except the general’s wife.

  As she took a step past them, Helen’s head whipped toward Noah, and he realized he’d said the words out loud.

  “As his wife,” the older woman responded, quiet, yet oh-so-cold, “don’t you think she’s done enough?”

  Ten

  In war, there are no unwounded soldiers.

  —JOSÉ NAROSKY

  Juliet’s defensive shell was back in place, the same shell that she’d thought had shattered for good the night she found Noah in her pool. She tried welcoming its return, because it was better to feel nothing than to feel the pain of Helen’s cuts, wasn’t it? Juliet, I didn’t invite you.

  An event to celebrate and honor Wayne’s life and his accomplishments, and everyone who loved him would be there, except Juliet. Surely you understand.

  No, no she didn’t. But she’d lost the opportunity to say it a moment ago and she didn’t have the energy to track down Helen and say it now. Why? she thought, suddenly so weary. Why bother?

  “Choose your poison,” a male voice said.

  She looked over. Noah. Noah was gazing down at her with a look on his face she couldn’t read. “What?”

  “Choose your poison.”

  “You mean arsenic or cyanide?”

  “No.” He rubbed the edge of his thumb against her cheek. She didn’t feel one millimeter of the short stroke. “I’m thinking either a shot of booze in the bar over there, or maybe we get out of this place and find ourselves a cup of hot coffee. Black with sugar.”

  Both beverages for a person in shock, Juliet thought. She tried drumming up some concern about her looks—obviously pale—but couldn’t bring herself to care. “I’m okay.”

  On second thought, though, getting out of the restaurant was a definite priority. “I take that back . . . I could use the coffee.”

  The Coffee Bean & Tea Leaf was just down the highway, and even on Halloween night it was busy with customers, some in their everyday Malibu casual—those tight dark jeans and expensive boots—while others were costumed for the holiday, including one Jacques Cousteau wannabe in a neoprene dive suit, complete with black booties, black hood, and an underwater camera.

  She found them seats at a table hardly bigger
than the lid of one of their cups while Noah stood in line. When he came back with their beverages on a tray, she immediately grabbed hers to bring the paper cup to her lips.

  “Whoa, whoa, whoa,” Noah said, snatching it from her and dropping it to the tray again. “They’re out of those wrappers that keep you from burning your hand and the coffee’s hot.”

  As he sat down across from her, so close their knees bumped, he took up her right hand and inspected her fingertips. “Scorched?” He pressed a light kiss to them.

  She hadn’t sensed the heat. The light caress didn’t register either. She didn’t feel a thing, when not an hour ago she’d been baring her soul and baring her breasts to this man.

  Maybe he was remembering their interlude on the path to the beach, too, because he dropped her hand and sat back.

  “So, what’s this about you in high school?” he asked, his voice light. “I never pegged you for a Dateless Debbie. Not with your looks.”

  Juliet shrugged. “I didn’t fit in.”

  “It was high school. Who really thought they did?”

  There was that, so she had to nod. “Still, on top of the usual teenage angst, when I was thirteen I developed a huge schoolgirl crush on Wayne.”

  He straightened in his chair. “What?”

  “It was all on my side. I told you I was a romantic book-worm and when I met him . . . it was like meeting a movie star or royalty, you know? He fueled enough innocent day-dreams to get me through high school without dates or boyfriends.”

  “What did your parents think about your feelings for him?”

  She ventured for her coffee again, and because Noah didn’t protest, figured it was safe to cradle in her palms. “If they’d known about it, I suppose they would have figured I’d grow out of it. Which I did. He wasn’t the only man I ever went to bed with. He was the man I fell in love with, though, really in love, when I was twenty-three.”

  Noah busied himself collecting his own cup from the tray. He took a sip, then stared down at it. “What would your parents have thought about that?”

  “Hmm.” Juliet tasted her drink. Black, with lots of sugar, just as Noah had promised. “That’s tougher to answer. They were older, quiet, very conservative.”

  “And they never told you about the circumstances of your conception?”

  “Not a peep.” A movement behind Noah caught her attention, but it was only Jacques Cousteau changing seats. Now he was across the room from them and fiddling idly with his big camera. “It’s hard to say if they would have told me at some later date. I’ve actually been thinking a lot about that.”

  Noah took another swallow from his cup. “Are you angry they kept the truth from you?”

  Even for those few days when she’d been capable of emotional highs and lows, she’d not been angry. Not exactly. But . . . “I hate secrets,” she said. There was that nagging sense that Wayne had held something back from her, and now there was this. “It bothers me more, I think, because of what happened to them.”

  “What was that?”

  “My parents got this big idea of crossing the country in an RV. They weren’t experienced, and during their first cold night, they were having trouble keeping warm. Someone lent them a portable gas heater and it didn’t work properly. The carbon monoxide poisoned Mom and Dad in their sleep.”

  “Sudden and shocking, then.”

  “Yes.” Looking down, she saw her fingers tighten around the coffee cup. “They were in good health and in good spirits. So I was unprepared . . . and devastated to find myself without family. We were close, I was an only child, my college friends were far away. But if I’d known the circumstances of my conception, I would have known I still had sisters.”

  She watched, surprised, as liquid plopped onto the back of her hands. When she touched her fingertips to her face, she came away with more wetness.

  Tears. She was crying and yet she still felt nothing.

  Jacques Cousteau was on the move again, choosing another table, and she grabbed up a napkin to blot her cheeks. Nevertheless, the tears continued.

  “Juliet?”

  She saw Noah’s arm reach across the table and his hand find hers. Then she watched his fingers flex, tightening around her own, but she could only see the action, not feel it, not with that brittle barrier between her and the world re-established. When Wayne had died, she’d appreciated the protection.

  But now it worried her that though Noah was just inches away and leaning across the table with a look of concern in his eyes, he seemed as far from Juliet as the creepy guy in neoprene across the room. And if she couldn’t change this, she knew with sudden certainty, then she would never achieve closeness with anyone.

  Even her newfound sisters wouldn’t be able to reach her—or she them. If nothing else, if no one else, she needed to be able to connect to Nikki and Cassandra, to reach out to them so that she wouldn’t be alone in her empty rooms with her cold heart forever.

  There had to be some way to break free again . . . and she thought she knew what that way was.

  Afraid to leave time for second thoughts, she pushed back her chair. It screeched against the floor, but even the sound seemed muted. “I need to do something,” she told Noah. “I need to do something right now.”

  He set his cup on the table. “Tonight?”

  “Yes.” It had to be tonight. Immediately. “Will you come with me?”

  It never occurred to her that Noah would refuse to comply. He’d been her ally, her companion so often on this journey that she couldn’t imagine taking these particular steps without him.

  He did all that she asked. He drove her home. He waited outside her house in his truck while she changed into sweats and flip-flops and gathered everything she needed, including a beach blanket, into a large tote bag.

  He kept his thoughts to himself, even after she gave him their destination. Just like a man, she thought, a little burst of amusement catching her by surprise. Their lack of curiosity about people and their motivations could sometimes astound her.

  But she didn’t want to answer questions anyway. And so she kept quiet, too, as she led them down the beach at Zuma, past a couple of concrete circles roaring with bonfires and ringed by revelers. When the flickers of the flames were far away, when the only light came from the big, fat harvest moon overhead, she reached into her bag for the blanket and spread it on the sand. Then she reached in again and brought out the container of Wayne’s ashes. Hand-crafted from recycled paper, it was shaped like a clamshell and colored the same blue-green as the Pacific waters. With careful hands, she set it on the olive-drab wool of Wayne’s old Army blanket, the one that had accompanied them on dozens of beach trips and just as many forest picnics.

  “Oh, Juliet.” From the mix of resignation and concern in Noah’s voice, she realized he’d guessed why she’d wanted to come here from the instant she’d mentioned the place. Likely he’d been silent on the trip over because he’d been wishing so hard he was wrong.

  But this was right.

  The time was right.

  The place was right.

  And this was the way she’d achieve what she needed.

  She kicked off her sandals and then pushed the elastic hems of her sweatpants up past her knees. Now in knickers, she stepped onto the cool, silky sand.

  Already she was feeling something.

  Noah was nothing more than a dark statue as she bent to retrieve the ashes. “Juliet . . .” He whispered her name into the darkness.

  She crossed her arms to hold the container against her chest, close to her heart. It was beating . . . beating . . . beating, yet it felt more like a death knell than a sign of life.

  And she wanted to live again.

  She couldn’t do that with this task still left unfinished. Wayne had never wanted to be her burden, and now she had to set them both free.

  “Juliet . . .” Noah whispered again.

  But she couldn’t let the ache in his voice stop her. With that moon shining overhea
d, its color the orange marmalade shade of the cat that had adopted her and Wayne in the first year of their marriage, she took resolute steps toward the surf. The water washed over her ankles, her shins, tickled her knees, and then wet the cotton of her pants as she waded farther out.

  She hesitated a moment. She listened hard for Wayne’s voice and she breathed deep, hoping to catch the scent of his presence one last time. But the shush of the waves was the single sound she heard and the sole scent was the salty wet that smelled only of eternity.

  Now.

  Now.

  Obeying her instincts, Juliet lifted the clamshell away from the cradle of her body and flung it from her and into the cradle of the sea. The shell settled with a gentle splash, and rocked there on the surface of the water.

  Snippets of images flipped across the movie screen inside her head: the shiny button of a dress uniform, the cover of the original diary, navy blue pajamas hanging without a slouch from a hook in the closet.

  For another five minutes, more images joined that inner slideshow as she watched the shell float on the surface of the Pacific. Then, as it was designed, as Wayne had wanted, it slowly sank, where over time it would become part of the ocean and part of some child’s sandcastle and—most important of all—part of the whole.

  She focused on the last place she’d seen the shell, not blinking for fear she’d lose it. Five minutes more passed or fifty minutes, she didn’t know.

  “Juliet,” a voice called from behind her. Called her back to shore.

  She turned. Noah was wading out to her, his rolled-up pants already trailing in the water.

  “I’m coming,” she called. “I’ll be right there.”

  Her hot, salty tears found their own eternal home as she made her way back to the beach. The breeze was brisk, the ocean arctic, her hair whipped across her eyes and caused more tears. By leaving the shell of Wayne’s ashes in the water, she knew that just as she’d hoped, she’d left her own shell behind, too. It was gone for good this time.