The Unforgiven Read online

  Helplessly she walked along the highway’s edge. Occasionally the dark form of a car would hurtle by, but the storm would immediately close up the space where it had been, leaving only the pinkish glow of receding taillights. With a sinking heart Maggie faced the fact that there was nothing ahead but miles of highway. She looked back toward the car, but there was no comfort in sitting there. She thought of driving away, but she couldn’t just leave him there. What if he were lost in the snow? Or had been hit by a car? Desperately she turned toward the wooded hill and plunged into the trees. Perhaps he was on the other side.

  Her eyes stung from the pelting of the snow and the strain of looking into the unnatural whiteness. The dark treetops enshrouded the hill as she stumbled along. The wind howled around her, and the tree branches moaned and creaked from their new weight. She wandered, without apparent direction, up the hill.

  Suddenly her glance was caught by a wide furrow in the snow’s surface, streaked dark and filling rapidly. Shielding her eyes with one hand, she followed the trail that it made. She looked up once as she walked, to get her bearings, and nearly tripped over a dark, inert form sprawled in the space between two trees.

  Fear flooded through her as she bent down and crouched near the form. She reached out a gloved hand and touched it. Roger.

  She grabbed his shoulder and began tugging frantically at him. Then she saw the dark stain beneath him, melting the snow with its pulsing heat.

  Her anguished wail was caught up and exploded by the wind. For a long time she knelt there, staring uncomprehendingly at the body of her lover. No, no, she thought numbly. Her lips kept forming his name. She looked up, but there was no one else on the darkening hillside.

  She had to get him back. She couldn’t leave him there, to be buried in the snow. She began tugging at him with all her strength, trying to drag him down the hill. But the weight, which had rested so comfortably on top of her in bed, was now ponderous, immovable. “Come on,” she cried furiously. Then she heard herself.

  The absurdity of her cry struck her forcibly, and she sat down for a moment in the snow. Then, slowly, she got to her feet and began to make her way back down the hillside toward the car. Help, she whispered feebly. Somebody help.

  Running and stumbling, she finally reached the shoulder. In the distance she could see the outline of Roger’s car. There was something else as well, flashing pale blue and ghostly through the veil of snow. She lurched forward, calling out, but the words were sticking in her throat. Finally she reached the car and fell heavily against the hood.

  The state trooper straightened up and turned the flashlight on her with which he had just been examining the inside of the car. “Having some trouble here, ma’am?” he asked politely.

  The tears stinging her eyes were indistinguishable from the glancing, icy bits of flakes. She struggled to speak, but she was breathless from running and the shock. She had to tell him what happened. He would help her. Maggie reached toward him with one blood-soaked woolen glove. Slowly, the expression on the trooper’s face changed. He ran the flashlight up and down her form, noting the dark stains which covered her coat and skirt.

  “Roger,” she blurted out, pointing to the hill. “He’s bleeding. I think he’s dead.” Haltingly, she began to spill out her story, pleading with him to understand. The trooper watched her guardedly. When she was finished she looked up into the young man’s eyes. She saw there the expression she already knew so well. Suspicion and disbelief. It was not the last time she would see it.

  But I didn’t do it, Maggie said to herself. She opened her eyes and looked at the clock again. It was one o’clock. There was still time, she thought. Willy whined and curled up beside her. She put a protective hand around him and stared out into the darkness.

  Cautiously, Evy raised herself up from the bed and sat on the edge. She patted her upper lip with her fingertips. The warm streams of blood which had poured out of her nostrils this afternoon seemed to have been effectively dammed up. She thought it strange that you could bleed, yet feel no pain. It worried her.

  She stood up and walked to the window. She pushed back the limp dotted swiss curtain and looked out. There was no sign of Jess now. He had gone to her. He shouldn’t have done that, Evy thought. If only he had not done that. Everything could be different.

  A wave of lightheadedness overcame her, and she reached for the back of the rocker by the window. Removing the doll on the seat, Evy sat down and took the doll in her lap. For a while she sat, staring vacantly ahead of her, her mind turning over the events of the day, again and again.

  Finally she looked down at the doll that she held. Its black eyes were empty and shiny in the dim light of the darkened room. Its smooth china arms reached up, extended as if expecting an embrace. Idly, Evy grasped the doll’s head with her right hand and began to twist it. The neck swiveled with some difficulty, but Evy pressed against it firmly, and at last the head was completely turned around. The doll’s head faced her knees, while the torso still faced hers, the arms reaching out helplessly.

  Evy looked at it thoughtfully for a while. Then she got up, tossed the doll onto the chair seat, and walked to the closet.

  Her meager wardrobe hung neatly from the bar. Her two pairs of shoes and her slippers were arranged in a row along the floor of the closet. Across the top shelf were two knitted hats and a row of shoe boxes. On top of the shoe boxes was a large album, bound in a blue plastic cover. Evy wrested it from its berth on the shelf. She carried the album to her bed and sat down with it. She opened the cover and pressed it back. Then she began to examine the contents of the album.

  The ritual was a familiar one, but it never failed to totally engage her. On the first few pages were the yellowed, brittle clippings she had purloined from her grandmother’s dresser after she had the first stroke. The old headlines blared the word “murderess,” and “lovers’ quarrel ends in death.” Some of the articles had pictures of her father smiling pleasantly at the camera. Beside his picture were news photos of the woman who had killed him.

  Evy stared at the pale, frantic face of a much younger Maggie. It pleased Evy to see how scared she looked, beside the calm, unsuspecting face of her father. In one of the clippings there was even a picture of Evy herself, being held by her mother. They were in a police car. Evy noted that she was wearing the green snowsuit that her grandmother had sent her for her birthday. She started to read the stories, but finally she decided to turn to the other pages. She knew all the clippings by heart. Her grandmother had read them all to her when she was younger, after her mother had to go away to the hospital. “This is why,” her grandmother would interrupt her own recitation of the clips. “This is why your mother has to live in that hospital now. Because of all of this that happened.”

  Evy looked up from the clips, a faraway look in her eyes. She remembered that when they first came to live with Grandma, they never seemed to talk about what happened to her father. After a while, though, her grandmother told her about it all the time. And then her mother got sick. After that, Grandma took to reading her the clippings.

  Returning to the album, Evy turned to the next group of clippings. These were more recent, although there were only a few of them. “Murderess receives college diploma,” read one. “Mistress-murderess due for release,” announced another. She had found them in the bundle sent by the clipping service to the paper. Evy smoothed them down tenderly on the page. She was proud of finding them. They had helped her to make her plans. She reread these short clippings carefully, surprised to note that they had a new significance for her now. Now that the phantom who had haunted her dreams had taken flesh. The woman who murdered her father. She turned the page and sighed with pleasure. The letters.

  Each letter was addressed to William Emmett, and each bore the return address of a state penitentiary. She opened one at random and read it. “Dear Mr. Emmett,” it began. “You can’t imagine how much hope and courage I derive from your interest in me, and my accomplishments behind the
se walls. I look forward, more than I can tell you, to the day of our meeting…”

  Evy read through several of the letters, then replaced them in their envelopes. A satisfied smile spread across the girl’s pinched face. It had been easy, she thought. But even as she decided that, she recalled the excuses she had made to stay after work so she could use Emmett’s stationery and typewriter, the furtive interception of his mail, the diligence with which she had composed her replies. And then, of course, she had had to get rid of Mr. Emmett. He was not a mean man, but there was nothing else she could do. It had not been too hard, because he was old, but still.…

  No, she decided. It had not been easy. It had worked out well, though. And it had been worth it. The day the specter had taken human form, walking in the door and announcing herself, it had all seemed worthwhile. Evy frowned. The memory of the triumphant day was beclouded by the recollection of Jess, appreciatively appraising the stranger. Flirting with her. That was the one thing she had not foreseen.

  Well, several things, she reminded herself, remembering the interference of Tom Croddick. He could easily have spoiled her plan by running off to the police chief with that silly shoplifting story. One word from him and the whole town would have known who their new resident was. And that would have been the end of her plan. No, she had worked too hard to let him ruin everything like that. This was her secret. Fortunately, she had talked him out of it. Made him feel foolish.

  Her mind wandered back to Jess. Jess. Why did he have to take her side like that? Now Jess was a problem, too. If she had any regrets about the whole beautiful plan, it was that Jess had inadvertently gotten in the way. It saddened her to realize what that meant now. She had tried to make him see Maggie for what she was. Tried to get him to stop hanging around her. But even today, after she made it look like Maggie put glass in the pie, he still went running back to her.

  Evy flushed, remembering how he had rejected her that afternoon. Rejected her, to run to that murdering whore. The memory of it hardened her heart against him. She could not carry out her plan with him always hovering around Maggie. He was in the way. He would have to suffer the consequences. She had given him every chance to escape. But no one, not even Jess, would stand between her and her plan. Evy turned another page.

  The page she looked at now was empty. There would be a few more clippings to insert, probably from the Cove News, after it was all over, and then that would be it. Everything would be complete. In a way, she hated to see it coming to an end. She had almost enjoyed it, in a funny way, watching her, studying her movements, figuring out the final plans. Except for the part about Jess. In her mind’s eye she saw him again, his naked, muscled back as he bent over Maggie. Evy began to grind her teeth, baring her teeth like fangs.

  A bumping noise from the floor below shook her out of her reverie. “Grandma,” she breathed, suddenly recalling the invalid who waited helplessly for her ministrations. Evy closed the album and hurriedly replaced it on the closet shelf.

  She did not mind having to look after the old woman. After all, it had been Grandma who had told her the story. Grandma who had made her want to do this. Although she could see now that Grandma didn’t like it. Evy could not understand why. It had practically been her idea.

  Tomorrow, then, she would begin to take the final steps. Jess first, and then the woman. Carefully. No mistakes.

  14

  Three sharp raps on the door were followed by a woman’s voice bawling, “It’s for you.”

  Owen Duggan rolled his eyeballs and mouthed the words, “Of course it’s for me,” and then continued to slide his photographic paper through the tray of chemicals. He could envision his housekeeper standing just outside the door, eyes narrowed, ear to the doorframe, holding the receiver in one hand. “Just a minute, Mireille,” he called out.

  “It’s Jess Herlie,” Mireille informed him through the door, having learned not to incur his wrath by opening the door while he was working.

  “Ask him if I can call him back,” yelled Owen, scrutinizing the sheet he had just lifted from the bath.

  “He says not,” Mireille announced with satisfaction. “He says it’s important. Oh!”

  Mireille’s plump figure nearly toppled over as Owen threw open the darkroom door and lifted the receiver from her hand. “Thank you, Mireille,” he said, dismissing her. She smiled and began to dust, with great diligence, the banister next to the telephone table.

  Owen turned his back to her and spoke into the phone, “Yeah, Jess.”

  Owen listened for a moment and then replied, “Yeah, it’s at eight thirty.”

  He listened again, his lips pursing into an expression of mild annoyance. Then he spoke. “Can’t she drive over herself? What kind of trouble? Car trouble?” Owen sighed.

  “I suppose I could. Okay. Tell her I’ll swing by at seven forty-five. That’s all right, Jess.” Owen hung up.

  “What’s going on?” Mireille asked cheerfully.

  “Mireille, I wish I found my life half as interesting as you do,” Owen grumbled.

  “What’d he want?” she persisted. At home, at her dinner table every night, Mireille faithfully reported the activities of her employer to her husband, Frank, who worked at the filling station on the dock, and to her two teen-aged daughters, who were showing less and less interest in Owen’s comings and goings as they moved into the emotionally teeming atmosphere of adolescence. Owen suffered Mireille’s interest with little grace, but he had become, over the years, somewhat resigned to it.

  Owen sighed. “He wants me to pick up someone and take them to the meeting at the school tonight.”

  “That new one at the paper,” said Mireille.

  Owen shook his head in weary amazement. “That’s the one,” he conceded. “How did you know?”

  “I guessed,” she said, scarcely able to conceal her self-satisfaction. “How come you have to pick her up?”

  “I don’t know. She had some trouble with her car. Some such thing.”

  “She had some trouble, all right,” Mireille said suggestively.

  “I see little justification for skepticism in this instance,” Owen replied.

  “I know it,” said Mireille. “But I’m just repeating what I heard.”

  Marveling at the obtuseness of this remark, Owen stared at his housekeeper. “What, may I ask, are you talking about, Mireille?”

  The housekeeper smiled benignly. “I’m talking about what happened at the fair. With that new one that you’re driving tonight. I heard about it at the fish market this morning. Everybody was talking.”

  Owen snorted in exasperation. “Are you going to tell me, or am I going back in there to work?”

  “Usually you say you don’t like my gossip,” said Mireille coyly, unable to resist the unusual position she found herself in.

  “I’ll count to three,” said Owen grimly.

  “Okay,” Mireille said breathlessly. “Well, you know that the fair was yesterday, and the new one was working at the bakery booth…”

  In spite of himself, Owen found himself listening with interest to his housekeeper’s tale.

  “It’s all set,” Jess said, replacing the receiver on the hook and turning to Maggie. “Owen will pick you up in half an hour and take you to the meeting.”

  Maggie was seated at the kitchen table, staring out the window, and absently stroking Willy, who had flopped down quietly in her lap. At Jess’s words she looked up and shook her head. “I can’t go,” she said.

  Jess pulled up another chair and sat down in front of her. “Maggie, you have to go. You can’t just hole up in this house. I let you get away with staying home from work today, but I can’t keep that up. Neither can you. You have to get out there and face people. This meeting tonight will be a good opportunity. You can just go and listen. Write a little story on it. Owen will be with you, taking pictures. It’ll be fine. You’ll see.”

  Maggie looked at him doubtfully. “Will you come?”

  Jess shook his head
. “You don’t need to hide behind me. You didn’t do anything wrong. There’s nothing to be ashamed of.”

  She searched his face. “Do you believe that?”

  Jess nodded solemnly. “Of course.” His eyes held hers and seemed to repeat the apology he had offered her earlier in the day. She accepted it now, as she had then, not because she was convinced of his faith in her, but because she could not bear the rift between them. He wanted to believe in her. That much she was sure of, and it would have to be enough. It was more than she was accustomed to.

  She turned her face away from his and bit her lip. “It’s all those people,” she explained helplessly.

  “That’s exactly why you have to do it,” he insisted.

  “You don’t know how it makes me feel. What terrible feelings it stirs up.”

  “Maybe it’s time you told me,” he said quietly, squeezing her hands.

  Maggie stared into his anxious eyes steadily for a moment, and then she bowed her head. “No. Not now,” she said. “I’ll go to the meeting.”

  “That’s my girl,” he murmured. For a few moments they sat facing each other in silence, hand in hand. Then Maggie sighed. “I guess I’d better get ready,” she said.

  Jess nodded his approval. “You get ready, and I’ll head home.”

  “What are you going to do tonight?” she asked him.

  “Not much,” he said. “Read. Maybe watch a movie. Maybe I’ll go out for a beer if I get lonely,” he said with a grin. He pulled on his jacket and zipped it.

  Maggie stood up, placing Willy on the floor by his bowl. Immediately he began lapping up the milk. She put her arms around Jess, unwilling to let him go. “I’ll miss you,” she said. “I feel so shaky.”