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She gaped at him. Words failed her.
“I never submit a partial manuscript, Maris. No one sees my book until it’s finished. I wouldn’t have sent a prologue unless I had a book behind it.”
“Why, Parker? Why?”
Deliberately mistaking her meaning, he shrugged. “Personal policy. That’s just the way I work.”
Maris felt as though the spot on which she stood were eroding rapidly and that at any second it would disappear out from under her altogether. But she wasn’t going to sink without a fight.
“That’s just the way you work?” she repeated, raising her voice to a shout. “What the hell was all this for, Parker? Or is that even your name? How many do you have? What in hell has this been about? Why the lies, the games?”
“They seemed like fun at the time. We both got laid. Several times last night you moaned, ‘Yes, yes, harder, faster, Parker.’ X-rated things, too. Sounded to me like you were having fun.”
For several beats, she just stared at him, wondering at what point he had become this sarcastic stranger. Then she hurled the box as far as she could throw it. It upended in midair, the lid came off, and some four hundred manuscript pages scattered in that many directions across the polished hardwood floor and Aubusson rug.
Maris stalked to the door and jerked it open.
Mike was standing on the other side of it, one hand raised, about to knock. The other was holding a cordless telephone. “Maris.” There was no surprise in his voice. He had expected her to be with Parker. Her emotional state, however, seemed to alarm him.
Looking beyond her shoulder, he took in the situation at a glance. The look he gave Parker went beyond reproof; it was that of a hanging judge about to hand down the sentence. Stiffly, he extended the telephone toward Maris. “For you. I hated to disturb you, but the gentleman said it was an emergency.”
She took the telephone from him with a shaking hand and stepped out into the hallway. Mike went into the bedroom and closed the door behind him. Maris leaned against the wall and took several seconds to compose herself. She breathed deeply, sniffed her nose hard, blinked away tears.
Then, clearing her throat, she said, “Hello?”
“Maris?”
“Noah?” His voice was strangely muffled and subdued. She barely recognized it.
“It’s imperative that you return to New York immediately. I took the liberty of making your travel arrangements. A ticket is waiting for you at the Savannah airport. Your flight departs at eleven-ten, so you haven’t got much time.”
Her dread was so absolute, it felt as though her heart had been replaced with an anvil. She was suddenly very cold. She closed her eyes, but tears leaked through. It would have been useless to try and hold them back. “It’s Dad, isn’t it?”
“I’m afraid so, yes.”
“Is it bad? A stroke?”
“He… God, this is tough. Telling you like this. You shouldn’t have to hear this news over the telephone, Maris, but… he’s dead.”
She cried out. Her knees buckled and she sank to the floor.
* * *
Parker was at his worktable in the solarium, but he wasn’t working. Instead he was staring out at the ocean. He broke his stare only occasionally, and that was when he compressed his bowed head between his hands in abject despair and self-loathing.
He’d heard Mike when he returned from the mainland, but he didn’t seek him out, and Mike didn’t come to him. He’d gone straight upstairs and had been moving around in his room ever since. It sounded as though he were pacing.
Parker had been replaying in his head his last conversation with Maris. If you could call it a conversation. His stomach knotted when he recalled the horrible things he’d said to her. Her stricken expression haunted him.
She might be consoled to know that he was as miserable as she, but he doubted it. The only way she might be consoled was if he were drawn and quartered and the pieces thrown to a herd of ravenous wild pigs. Starting with his mouth. His foul, abusive, nasty mouth.
The afternoon dragged on interminably. It was hot and muggy outside and that oppression had eked into the house to contribute to his feelings of suffocation. Or was the weather to blame? Maybe he was being smothered by remorse.
“I stayed with Maris until they boarded her flight.”
Parker hadn’t heard Mike come into the solarium. He sat bolt upright a
nd glanced over his shoulder toward the door. Mike was standing as stiff as a girder in his seersucker suit.
