The Sisterhood - Michael Palmer [113]
Talk throughout the morning had been light, with only oblique references to the horrors that had brought them together. When Christine suggested a picnic by the water, David started to object—to insist that they confront the issues facing them. Quickly, though, he acknowledged that he too wanted the respite to continue. There would be time enough to talk after lunch.
The stony dirt track they had chosen wound through a tangled fairy-tale forest of beach plum, wild rose, and scrub pine. After several hundred yards, it deteriorated into a series of partly overgrown hairpin turns.
“Maybe we should back up and try to find another road,” David said.
“Maybe …” She bounced through a vicious loop that he had felt certain would be impassable. “But I’ll bet you a … a Fruit Pie we make it on this one.”
Moments later, the thick brush fell off to either side. A final hairpin and the road spilled onto a sandy oval scarcely thirty yards long, a perfect white-gold medallion resting on the breast of the Atlantic. Christine skidded to a dusty stop. The engine noise faded. They sat, feeling the silence and the colors.
“A penny …?” David asked finally.
“For my thoughts?”
“Uh-huh.”
“You’ll want change.”
“Try me.”
“Well, I was just deciding which spot would be best to spread the blanket and set our lunch.”
“That’s it?”
“That’s it.” She took the bag of food and the blanket, then kicked off her shoes and hopped onto the sand. “After we eat, we can talk, okay?” He nodded. “Well, are you coming?”
“In a minute. You go ahead.”
Concern darkened her face, then vanished. With a delighted whoop, she raced across the beach.
David sank back in his seat, aware of a heavy, husky discomfort across his upper chest. In the minutes that followed the feeling intensified. He struggled to pin it down, to label it. Gradually he understood. He was being drawn into her world, her life. He was caring more almost every minute. Caring for the woman whose actions, whose hubris, had triggered his nightmare and had somehow led to the death of his friend. Caring for a woman who had confessed to murder, for a woman whose situation was … hopeless.
This is crazy, he thought. Absolutely insane. This woman is headed nowhere—except possibly to jail. She has no career now. No future beyond the turmoil of an arrest and trial. Lauren had so much—talent, beauty, direction, self-assuredness. What has Christine Beall got?
“David?” Christine’s voice startled him, and for a moment he couldn’t locate her. Then, through the windshield, he saw her, elbows resting on the hood of the jeep, studying him. “Are you all right?”
“Huh? Oh, sure, I’m fine,” he lied.
“Good. I couldn’t tell if you were in a trance or just in a snit because I forgot to let you put lunch together. It’s ready whenever you are.”
David smiled thinly, lowered himself from the jeep, and limped across the sand to the partly shaded niche where she had spread their blanket.
Silence settled in as they picked at the mélange of foods Christine had found—sardines, marinated artichoke hearts, Wheat Thins, boiled eggs, black olives, string cheese, and Portuguese sweet bread.
“That was delicious,” David said finally. “Want to flip for rights to that last artichoke?”
“No, thanks, I’m full. You go ahead.” She paused, then continued with almost no change in her tone. “Charlotte wasn’t dying of cancer, was she?” It was a statement more than a question.
So much for Camelot, David thought. With a deliberateness that he hoped would help him form a response, he set his fork in an empty jar, then swung around to face her.
“You mean the autopsy findings,” he said. She swallowed hard and nodded. “Well, then, the simple answer to your question is probably not. On autopsy there was no obvious cancer. For sure it could have popped up again in six months or a year, or even two. But for now that’s your answer.”
Christine started to reply, then bit at her lip and turned away. Without the slightest warning, even to himself, David snapped at her. “Damn it, Christine, don’t do this to yourself. If you’re going to work this