He set down her case next to one of the couches. "Give me a minute to take a shower and then we'll talk. There's a pot of fresh coffee in the kitchen."
She stopped him before he could leave the room. "You should have told me what Sam was doing when you came to Naxos." She hadn't intended to sound so condemning, but there still seemed to be some mysterious strain between them and she couldn't help it.
"You had plenty of chances to ask questions," he replied. "I don't remember hearing any."
"Don't you play games with me, Mitch. I expect better of you."
He picked up a wadded T-shirt from one of the end tables and began to rub his damp chest with it. "Is that an official reprimand, Madame President?"
A month ago she couldn't have imagined being intimidated by him, but now there was something so forbidding about the way he was looking at her that she had to force herself to hold her ground. "You can take it any way you want."
He yanked his T-shirt on, then pulled it down over his chest. "I tried every way I knew to talk you into coming back, Susannah, but I wasn't going to force you if you weren't ready. We've got a big fight ahead of us, and your personal problems are going to make it more complicated. If Yank and I couldn't have one hundred percent from you, I wanted you out of our way."
He was acting like she was an encumbrance. "That wasn't your decision to make," she snapped. "What's wrong with you, Mitch? When did you turn into the enemy?"
Some of his stiffness faded. "I'm not your enemy, Susannah. I don't mean to be abrupt. Sam's called an informal meeting of the board tomorrow at three o'clock. My guess is that he intends to tighten the screws."
"Forget it," she said fiercely. "He can call any meeting he wants, but his partners aren't going to be there to see the show. I'm not going to meet with anybody on the board-formally or otherwise-until I've had a few days to ask some questions. Without us, they can't have much of a meeting."
"We have to confront the board sooner or later."
"I know that. But I'm taking the ball into my court for a while. Make sure that you're unreachable tomorrow afternoon at meeting time. I'll take care of Yank."
Mitch seemed to be thinking over what she'd said. "I'll give you a couple of weeks, Susannah, but no more. I don't want anyone to think we're running. That'll hurt us nearly as badly as what Sam is doing."
She didn't like the fact that he was questioning her judgment, but at least some of his stiffness had dissipated. What was happening to the two of them? She'd grown to take Mitch's friendship for granted, and she couldn't imagine losing it, especially now when she felt so fragile. The burst of adrenaline that had kept her going had begun to fade, and she sat down on the couch.
He saw that she was exhausted, and went to get her a cup of coffee. As she sipped it, he told her he had reserved the town house SysVal owned for its traveling executives so she had a place to stay until she got resettled. He had also reclaimed her car from the airport and stored it in his garage. His thoughtfulness made her feel better.
Forty-five minutes later, she climbed the stairs to the town house's second floor, slipped into the freshly made bed and fell into a troubled, dream-ridden sleep. She awoke around noon and telephoned home to make certain Sam wasn't there. When she received no answer, she dressed and drove over.
She half expected to find the locks had been changed, but her key worked without any difficulty. The house looked the same-cold and uninviting. She went into the bedroom with its steel-framed furniture and gray suede walls. Everything was exactly as she had left it. Everything except-
Her eyes widened as she saw a small oil painting hanging on the wall between their matching bureaus. It was a seascape in soft feminine pastels that were at odds with the room's cold gray interior. She had found the painting a year ago in a gallery in Mill Valley and immediately fallen in love with it. But Sam had hated it and refused to let her hang it. This was the first time she had seen it since she had come home from a business trip and discovered that he had sent it back.
She sagged down on the side of the bed and stared at the painting. Tears welled in her eyes. How could he be taking the company away from her on one hand and, at the same time, giving her this painting? The pastels blurred through her tears, swimming together so that the painting seemed to be in motion. The waves of the seascape heaved toward the shore in watery blue and green swells.
She thought of Sam's wave-the wave of the future he had told her about all those years ago. That wave had swept over them just as he had promised, and just as he had promised, they had been changed forever. She stared at the painting, and the great vat of grief that had been sealed shut inside her opened up, sending dark eddies through every part of her. She hugged herself and stared at the painting and rocked back and forth on the edge of the bed while she truly mourned the death of her marriage.
And with the death of her marriage, she mourned the death of the child she had hoped to bear, that dark-haired, olive-skinned child of feisty spirit and soaring imagination who would never be born. She hugged that child to her breast and loved it with all her might, pouring years of maternal care into a few brief moments. She cried it a bleak lullaby, that unconceived child of her imagination, and let her heart tear apart as she laid it in its grave.
When she left the house, she felt as old and empty as a hollowed-out stone.
Chapter 26
Walking into SysVal that same afternoon was one of the hardest things Susannah had ever done. She wore an unadorned black knit, garbing herself in its severe lines as if it were a suit of armor. As she flashed her pass at the front desk, the security guard wouldn't quite meet her eyes. A group of jeans-clad workers conversing in the lobby stopped talking as she came toward them. They looked down at the floor; they looked at the walls. The company grapevine was powerful, and Mindy Bradshaw obviously hadn't kept her mouth shut. By now every SysVal employee must know that Susannah had walked in on Sam and Mindy making love.
As she moved through the halls, several of the men called out cautious greetings, as if she were a terminal cancer patient and they didn't know what to say. She nodded graciously and kept walking-spine straight as a ramrod, posture so perfect she would die before she bent. She had been San Francisco's Deb of the Year in 1965. She had been trained in the old ways to retain her dignity regardless of provocation and to hide her emotions behind a mask of serenity.
As she neared her office, her palms began to perspire, but she didn't lower her head by so much as a fraction of an inch. Ahead of her a technician ducked into an office so he could avoid the embarrassment of having to greet her. The corners of her mouth began to quiver, and she realized then that she couldn't carry it off. She was no longer San Francisco's perfect socialite or SysVal's efficient president. She was a woman who had learned to feel and bleed and care. Her steps faltered. She couldn't do it. She simply couldn't go through with this.
Her muscles were so tightly wound that she jumped when a voice sounded over the loudspeaker. It was a voice that had never before been heard over the SysVal system because it belonged to the man who had been trying for several years to have that same system disconnected. It was Mitch, clearing his throat and speaking in the dry, businesslike fashion of someone whose idea of fun was spending an evening reading sales forecasts.
"Ladies and gentlemen, the security desk has informed me that our president and chief operating officer, Susannah Faulconer, has just arrived back in the building. I feel compelled to address all of you today and set the record straight. The rumors that Ms. Faulconer has been hiding out in Las Vegas and dancing in a nude review are absolutely untrue, and anyone repeating such rumors will be dismissed at once. We have it on good authority that Miss Faulconer was not nude. She was respectably clad in a leopardskin G-string." And then the music of "The Stripper" blared out.