He sized her up like a seasoned journalist. “Come in, Mrs. Ayers,” he said, and showed her into a comfortable den stacked high with books and papers. It was apparently his study, the workroom where he wrote his daily editorials, read his books, did his dreaming, perhaps. Beth sat in a large ox-blood leather chair. She was afraid to lean back in it for fear of getting lost, of making herself look small and shy to this man she wanted so much to impress with her social ease. It would have helped immeasurably if she could have guessed by looking at him how much he knew of her love for Laura.
Landon mixed her a drink. “What are you doing in Chicago, Beth?” he asked with his back to her, and the sound of her proper name startled her.
Now he thinks he’s got me, she thought. I’m here in his house and he thinks he’s going to find out about Laura and me once and for all. I’m not even Mrs. Ayers anymore, I’m just Beth. Just a schoolgirl.
She told him she was visiting her uncle, she was living in California, she had two children. That was all. His questions were brief, as though she were a socialite he had to interview for the next day’s paper, and she tailored her answers the same way. But Beth wanted to ask her own questions. She was the one who urgently needed to know, who had left her home and kids and husband and come all this way to find this man’s daughter—and perhaps, at the same time, herself. She gazed around the room, taking in the working disorder, the handsome, slightly worn furniture. Laura knew all this, Beth thought; it was as familiar to her as her own room, and the thought made Beth ache for her.
She interrupted Landon to ask him, “Where is she, Mr. Landon? Maybe there’s still time for me to see her tonight.” He smiled at her over-bright eyes and somehow she expected his answer.
“I doubt it. She’s not living in Chicago anymore.”
Of course not. Goddamn! That would have been too easy. I should have known. “Where is she?” she demanded, and again he smiled at the pink flush in her cheeks, the line between her eyes.
“I’d like to know myself,” he said. He was almost teasing her.
“You must have some idea,” she cried, desperately afraid that Laura would slip out of her fingers before she ever touched her again. If she had been more observant she would have seen the understanding that began to show in his smile. He was needling her for a purpose.
“I do have some idea,” he said calmly, sitting down behind his desk. “I’ll gladly share it with you. If you’ll do something for me, Beth.”
“If I can.”
“You can.” She watched him while he listened to his memories. He could hear Laura’s voice in his inner ear crying, “And that’s not all! Remember Beth Cullison? Remember my roommate at school? Her too, Father! She was the first! I loved her! Do you understand what I’m telling you?” That voice, sharp with the saved-up sorrows and frustrations of a young lifetime, crying at him through tears and fury of what she had become, what her true nature was! And he had understood her, at last. His perverted love for her had twisted her whole personality. He had controlled his terrible desire for years, but it had cost Laura a normal childhood.
“When you find Laura,” he said, “I want you to tell me where she is. That’s all. Will you do that?”
Beth stared at him. “When I find her?” she said. “Where do I have to go?”
“Tell me her address, that’s all,” he bargained.
And she knew then that he could see plainly how badly she wanted Laura. She struggled to keep her face smooth, her passion under wraps. “Yes,” she said. It was a whole confession of love, that word. It said, Yes, I’ll find her, I’ll go to the ends of the earth, I’ll do any favor for you if you’ll tell me where to start, where to look.
He smiled. He had her. “She’s in New York,” he said.
Beth’s mouth fell open. “New York!” She was dismayed. She had only been there once, when she was a little girl of ten. She didn’t know the city at all. And the size of it! “But, good God, Mr. Landon, there are millions of people in New York!” she exclaimed.
“There’s only one Laura. She’s been there a while, she knows people.”
“What people?” Her discouragement showed now, too. She couldn’t have hidden it from her extraordinary host.
“If I were you I’d start in the Village,” he said. “She lived down there a while.”
“I don’t know the Village,” she protested. “I don’t know New York at all. I can’t fly to New York just to scare up an old roommate of mine.” It was supposed to throw him off the track, demonstrate her normalcy. But Merrill Landon was too far ahead of her. He knew too much that she didn’t know. He saw the strength and determination in her chin, the trembling of her sensual mouth, and he smiled once again.
“You can’t, but you will,” he said. “Isn’t that why you’re here?” There was an embarrassed silence. She didn’t know how to answer without exposing herself to him. “Beth,” he said, and the gruff voice softened slightly, “I know you were in love with my daughter.”
She gasped, and as he went on she gulped the rest of her drink.
“She told me so. You have a right to know that I know. She—well, she had to tell me; she didn’t do it to hurt you. I’ve kept it to myself. I knew
