Page 124 of Homeport

“I was never right for you,” she said in a furious whisper.

“How the hell do you know? We never had a chance to find out. You tell me you’re pregnant, and before I can absorb it, you had an abortion.”

“I never had an abortion.”

“You made a mistake,” he said, tossing the words she’d once heaved at him back in her face. “And you fixed it. I would have taken care of you, both of you.” Pain, long and shallowly buried, cracked through the surface in pummeling fists. “I would have done my best for you.” His fingers tightened on her arms. “But it wasn’t good enough. Okay, it was your decision, your body, your choice. But goddamn it, it was a part of me too.”

She’d lifted her hands to push him away and now curled them into his shirt. His face was sheet-pale under the bruises, his eyes burning dark. The ache around her heart was for both of them now. “Andrew, I didn’t have an abortion. I lost the baby. I told you, I had a miscarriage.”

Something flickered deep in his eyes. His grip relaxed on her shoulders, and he stepped back. “You lost it?”

“I told you, when it happened.”

“I always thought—I assumed you’d. . .” He turned away, walked to the window. Without thinking he yanked it open, and resting his palms on the sill, dragged in air. “I thought you told me that to make it easier on both of us. I figured that you hadn’t trusted me enough to stand by you, to take care of you and the baby.”

“I wouldn’t have done that without telling you.”

“You avoided me for a long time afterward. We never talked about it, never seemed to be able to talk about it. I knew you wanted the baby, and I thought—all this time—I thought that you’d terminated the pregnancy because I hadn’t stood by you the way you needed.”

“You—” She had to swallow the hot ball in her throat. “You wanted the baby?”

“I didn’t know.” Even now he didn’t know. “But I’ve never regretted anything more in my life than not holding on to you that day on the beach. Then everything drifted, almost like it never happened.”

“It hurt me. I had to get over it. Over you.”

Slowly, he pulled the window down again. “Did you?”

“I made a life for myself. A lousy marriage, an ugly divorce.”

“That’s not an answer.”

When he turned back, his eyes very blue and level on hers, she shook her head. “It’s not a fair question just now. I’m not going to start something with you that’s based on what was.”

“Then maybe we’d better take a look at where we are, and start from there.”

twenty-one

Miranda went back to work on the computer, revising charts, making new ones. It kept her mind occupied, except for the times she caught herself looking out the window, willing Andrew’s car to come up the hill.

Ryan had settled in the bedroom with his cell phone. She imagined he didn’t want several of the calls he was making to pop up on her records. That was something she wasn’t going to worry about.

He’d given her a whole new line of worry. If he was right, the quick and rough daylight robbery hadn’t simply been a matter of chance, hadn’t been some itinerant thief looking for fast cash. It had been a well-planned, carefully orchestrated part of the whole. She’d been a specific target, the motive behind it nothing more than delaying her trip to Italy and her work on the bronze.

Whoever had stolen it, copied it, had already decided to discredit her. Had that been personal, or the luck of the draw? she wondered. She believed, as she had few genuine friends, she had few genuine enemies. She’d simply avoided becoming close enough to anyone to create them.

But the messages coming over her fax were very personal.

The attack had been personal, she thought, designed to terrify. The silence, the little nick at the throat with the knife. Had that all been routine for the attacker, or had he been given instructions to leave his victim frozen in shock and fear?

It had cost her a large slice of her confidence, her sense of safety, certainly her dignity. And it had delayed her trip by almost a week. The delay had put her at odds with her mother before the project even began.

Layers, she mused, very cleverly applied layers that coated the core. Yet it hadn’t begun with the attack, but with the forgery and theft of the David.

What had been going on in her life then? What was she missing that tied the one to the other?

She’d been working on her doctorate, she remembered. Splitting her time between the Institute, her studies, her thesis. Her social life, never a glitter ball of events, had been nil.

What had been going on around her? That, she realized, was harder to pin down. Paying attention to the people around her wasn’t her strong suit. That was something she intended to change.

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