Swim Deep - Page 88

“Clues. I don’t know. Information about Elizabeth’s disappearance. Something about Noah that you could take to the police,” I tried to explain.

“I told you. I don’t care about that anymore,” he said, coming around the desk. “All I’m thinking about right now is you.”

I laughed again. I honestly don’t know why I kept doing it, except to say it seemed to be my body’s natural way of expelling tension and distress. Maybe there was a good reason that crazy people laughed so eerily.

“You can’t honestly expect me to believe that you’re going to abandon this whole… mission you’ve been on,” I said.

“I’ll prove it to you. We’ll leave now. Today. We’ll never speak of Les Jumeaux again, Anna.”

“Never speak of Elizabeth?” I asked softly.

“If that’s what you want.”

I found myself staring out at the sunlit terrace. Was it what I wanted? For some reason, a vision flashed into my mind’s eye of an old, disheveled woman hovering over me.

“You never wear your hat.”

“She thought I was Elizabeth that day. Lorraine Madaster,” I said. “She saw me up at the overlook, and in her confusion, she took me for her daughter.” I met Evan’s stare and saw his discomfort. “You lied to me after that. You made it seem like she was some random crazy lady who wandered around here. One of many lies you told me. When Wes told me she was Lorraine Madaster, I was forced to face the fact that you’d been lying to me about other things, too. That’s what made me want to go to the library, to try and figure out what other lies you were telling me.”

His mouth tightened and then opened.

“Don’t,” I said, stopping him. “I don’t want more apologies right now.”

For a moment, neither of us spoke.

“Did Elizabeth love her? Her mother?” I finally asked.

“Like I said, Noah poisoned that relationship. Lorraine became a shadow… a cutout figure of a wife and mother. She’d served her purpose by giving him Elizabeth. After that, she was something to be tolerated. Elizabeth and Lorraine’s relationship was distant. Cold. But to answer your question: yes,” he added after a pause. “I think down deep, Elizabeth loved Lorraine.”

I thought of the gentleness of Lorraine’s touch on my

cheek, at her impatience and hurt when she thought she was being rebuffed for the simple act of nurturing, for worrying that her daughter was getting a sunburn. No one does what I ask.

She had been eliminated from the basic, biological right of mothering her child.

“What about you?” I asked him. “Did pity for Lorraine ever figure into your need for revenge?”

“Yes.”

I blinked at his quick, concise reply, not expecting it. Maybe I’d been imagining, at least in part, that his vendetta with Noah was purely a testosterone-driven thing, a primitive male right to show who was the alpha of the pack.

“I came to care for Lorraine in the years I was living here. She seemed so alone. Maybe I realized our similarities, given Elizabeth and Noah’s exclusive relationship.” He shrugged. “We never spoke of it directly to each other, but I think we both knew that the other one suffered. Anyone would, being in the vicinity of Noah. And maybe we understood instinctively that we’d both lost Elizabeth. Or that we’d never had her.”

Our gazes locked in the silence.

“Lorraine was a distant Madaster cousin, you know. She married Noah when she was very young, in some medieval-like, dynastic alliance,” he said bitterly. “She had Elizabeth within a year and a half, and then was cast off, for the most part. She lived here but was unacknowledged, except as a nuisance. Like I told you, it’s no wonder she went mad. After Elizabeth disappeared, I asked Lorraine if she wanted me to take her away from here. But her deterioration escalated a lot after Elizabeth went missing. I don’t think she ever really accepted her death. She flatly refused to leave Les Jumeaux. She wasn’t talking all that much, by that time, but I had the impression that she seemed to think it would mean abandoning Elizabeth somehow, if she left.”

I sat down heavily on the couch behind me. My feelings of sadness and pity for Lorraine Madaster went deeper than I realized or understood.

“What is it, Anna? What are you thinking?”

I blinked and glanced up, amazed to see Evan kneeling in front of me.

“She deserves better,” I said honestly. “Lorraine Madaster. I thought it, even that first time I woke up to see her hovering over me. She’s completely alone in the world. No one is taking care of her. It’s not right.”

He nodded. He touched my cheek, very softly. I held my breath.

“Evan… Anna.”

Tags: Beth Kery Romance
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