Chapter XII. 1953
CHAPTER XII
“We’ve been gone too long,” Mary said. They were still tangled together, and she buried her face in Sharon’s hair and wished, as she always did, that any construct of time would fall away and grant them an infinity of moments like this.
She wanted to go into death with the taste of Sharon’s sweat on her tongue.
“Mmm,” Sharon mumbled. “What if I want to stay here?”
Mary tugged at her. “Come on you. Up, up, up. The reception is probably winding down. They’ll be starting the ceremony soon, and Robert will be looking for me.
Only leadership stays for the actual ceremony.
” She brushed off the bits of bark that clung to Sharon’s skirt and pushed the tendrils of hair that had escaped back into place. “There. Pretty as a picture.”
“You’ll want to fix your lipstick. It’s all smeared. I wonder how that happened.” Sharon smirked—the cat who ate the canary—and Mary swatted at her.
“I should have worn something less bright,” she said, pulling her compact from her handbag and reapplying another layer of Helena Rubinstein’s Dark Red.
“The better to see you with, my dear,” Sharon said, and gave her shoulder a gentle nip.
“You said see, not eat.”
“Why not both?”
Mary snapped the compact closed. The glow she felt after their coupling was rapidly fading.
Neither of them wore a watch, and the twilight they set off in had grown to full dark.
If they hurried, they might make it back just as the ceremony was starting, and Robert would not have started to wonder where she had disappeared to.
She could wander in, cool as a cucumber, and ask if he’d had quite enough talk of business and golf, and was he ready to go home?
“Be careful,” Mary said as they began to make their way back the way they came. “High heels and the outdoors don’t play well together.”
She kept her tone light. Playful. It would do no good to worry Sharon unnecessarily. She came to Hawthorne Springs because Mary asked her to. She didn’t want to soil the memory before it was complete.
Still, she found herself wanting to run. The dark at her back pressed in, lapping at her with a hungry mouth, and she wanted to go faster and faster. Anything to get them back more quickly, but her dress was too tight. Her heels too high.
When they finally came through the trees, the lights from the church and the parking lot casting an amber glow, the sight didn’t calm her in the way she hoped.
“We’re back. See? It’s okay,” Sharon said, but Mary did not respond. They weren’t close enough yet. She couldn’t see the parking lot and if it was still full, the drivers still at the reception, distracted with the champagne and the anticipation of the start of the Purity Ball.
The path bent, the church vanishing behind yet another line of trees, and then they emerged on the other side, the parking lot in full view.
Other than a handful of cars, it was empty.
“Oh,” Sharon said, and Mary’s mouth went dry.
The ceremony had already begun. The cars left in the lot belonged to leadership and the fathers participating in the ceremony.
Two figures stood in the lot, illuminated by the lights. Mary registered each of their faces, one with a quiet acceptance, and the other with shock.
Robert and Vera.
Mary spoke quietly, hoping Sharon could hear without her needing to turn around.
“We’ll say you needed some air. That the champagne got to you, and I went along to make sure you were all right.
We’ll say goodbye, and you’ll tell Robert you’re so sorry for stealing me away, but champagne has always gone right to your head, and you’ll get in your car and go. ”
“Mary—”
“Tell me you’ll do it. Exactly as I said.”
Silence stretched between them, and still, Mary did not let herself turn back to look.
Instead, she looked only at Robert, a smile painted on her face because he would expect it.
His expression was impassive as he watched her.
Beside him, Vera fidgeted, her gaze fixed on her feet.
She didn’t know why Vera would be there, alone with Robert after everyone else had gone home.
Maybe she’d come late, and Robert asked to help him look for her, and they’d come out of the woods right as they were about to start their search.
“I’ll do it,” Sharon replied.
She could feel the flutter of her pulse at her throat as they stepped into full view, their heels clicking against the parking lot’s asphalt as they made their way toward Robert and Vera. She opened her mouth, the lie ready on her tongue, but Robert spoke before she could.
“Well look what the cat dragged in. Thought I’d lost you. Thank goodness Vera saw you two, otherwise, I wouldn’t have known where to even start looking.”
For so many years, Mary had thought she’d known terror.
Living under her mother’s rule, always at fault for some indiscretion and terrified someone might finally see who she really was, she’d grown intimately acquainted with it.
But as Robert watched her, the realization Vera saw her and Sharon in the woods sank in, and she knew then she had never understood true terror.
She wanted to bolt or to curl into the soft parts of herself and wish for death.
Even as her body trembled, adrenaline she would not use spiking in her bloodstream, she kept the emotion from her face and hoped it was dark enough to hide her reddened cheeks.
There was no way to know what Vera saw and what she’d told Robert, but she felt the weight of Robert’s scrutiny. His eyes crawled over her body as he waited for her to speak. It felt like a trap.
Beside him, Vera had gone completely still. Her own animal instinct left her frozen in place. Mary wanted to look at her, to see in her eyes the extent of what Robert knew, but she couldn’t. If she did, Robert would know.
“The champagne,” she began. Already the words began to dissolve, soft as snow on her tongue. Her panic and fear like a bridle between her teeth. She waved her hand at Sharon, who still stood behind her, and forced herself to speak. “Poor Sharon. It went right to her head.”
Robert stepped forward and caught Mary’s hand. “Well, look at that.” He held her hand up to the light as she tried to keep herself from gasping. Her head swam, tiny pinpricks of stars crowding the edge of her vision as Robert examined the ring Sharon gave her. “Where’d you get this little thing?”
Was it possible that even as Judas betrayed Christ he understood the gravity of that moment? There would be years to come, his body crumbling into dust, and there would be no undoing it. Or had he only seen himself? His immediate need for silver. For the semblance of safety it could provide.
“I bought it last week. I thought it would work with the dress.”
Behind her Sharon drew in a breath. If devastation had a sound, it was this. A drawing in of air to keep the heart from withering. Mary had denied her. She had denied the intimacy of everything between them. Denied that union made symbolic, made magical, by the gold band on her finger.
“Hmm.” Robert glanced up from the ring with a smirk, his eyes flashing. He didn’t believe her.
She waited for him to say what he knew. For him to tell it all. That Vera had seen them together, and he was going to burn every part of her carefully constructed little world and leave her behind to molder in the ashes.
He would take their daughter. He would take her because he could. And she would die. She loved Sharon, but without her daughter, she would die.
Instead, he clasped her hand, tender as the first day he came courting, and extended his other hand to Sharon.
“I’m Robert Shephard,” he said.
Blinking in confusion, Sharon allowed Robert to shake her hand. “Sharon Hutchins.”
“You know what’s funny, Sharon?”
He tipped his head to the side, the boyish grin Mary once found so attractive plastered over his face. She saw it now for what it was. Condescension.
“That somehow, you and my wife seem to be thick as thieves, and I’ve never even heard your name before today. Isn’t that something?” He barked out a laugh. “About the only friend’s name I ever hear is Vera here, and even she doesn’t seem to know you very well. Isn’t that right, Vera?”
Vera darted a glance at Robert and let out a wavery “No.”
“In fact, I’m starting to wonder if maybe you aren’t a very good influence on my Mary.
” He took a step toward Sharon, Mary’s hand still tight inside his as he looked down on them.
His body so much larger than theirs. His power on display and meant to shrink them down, make them less than.
A reminder of his ownership over her. A reminder of their place.
But Sharon lifted her chin and held his gaze. Self-possessed. Defiant. “I suppose that would depend on your definition of a good influence.”
Robert’s grip tightened, and Mary felt the weak give of her bones. A bit more pressure, and they would snap. “Everyone was asking where you’d disappeared, Mary. Imagine my surprise when I found out you went for a walk in the woods with a woman I’ve never met.”
She’d never known Vera to seek vengeance.
Had only ever known her as kind. Compassionate.
If she was making use of that vengeance now, she was justified in it, but it hurt all the same.
Still she held to the dim hope that Vera had not told Robert.
That he saw her and asked if she’d seen Mary, and she’d lied for them.
Lied for Mary. If only Vera would look at her, she might be able to understand what she told him.
“The champagne. We needed some air.” She shifted her hand beneath his and tried, ineffectually, to flex her fingers. “Robert, you’re hurting me.”