“Beebo?” Beth said. “Do you know her?” she added inanely, her fear distorting her sense.
“No.” Vega smiled sadly.
“Vega, what are you doing here? How did you find me?” Beth stammered. “How long have you been here?”
“Since yesterday. The whole family knows where you are now, Beth. I only wish I’d known sooner.” There was a flat controlled quality about her, as if she was hanging on tightly to herself, her feelings, that was new and ominous in Vega.
Beth made a move to get up, but Vega motioned her back on the bed with a swift movement of her hand, and Beth saw then for the first time that she held a gun. It was small and black, shiny and almost dainty for the deadly thing it was. It gleamed softly with reflected light in Vega’s hand and for a long time Beth stared at it incredulously. The knowledge that she was in mortal danger gave her a grip on herself, a sort of eerie calm that floated on top of her panic.
“Vega, you aren’t going to use that thing,” she said, her voice low and coaxing. “Whatever I did to you, it wasn’t that bad. I don’t deserve it.”
“It didn’t seem that bad to you because you weren’t the one who was hurt,” Vega said.
“It was a lot of things that hurt you, not just me,” Beth urged.
“You were all that mattered.”
She was so beautiful, so pale, so alarmingly thin, thinner even than Beth had remembered her. Beth felt a start of compassion for her, but the weapon in Vega’s hand restrained her.
“Vega, can’t we talk?” she pleaded. “Can’t we talk about it? Don’t do something you’ll regret for the rest of your life.”
“I wish somebody had been there to tell you the same thing before you left me,” she said.
“I—I’m desperately sorry, Vega,” Beth murmured. “I was a coward. I’m ashamed of it. God knows I’ve suffered too. I’ve thought of you so often, I—”
“I know, I saw your letter to Cleve. You must have asked about me at least once.”
“I was afraid it would upset him to ask more.”
“You just didn’t care.”
“I cared, Vega,” she said urgently. “I loved you once.”
“Is that what you call it?” Vega said and her eyes widened and her hand began to tremble. “Is that what you call the hell you put me through, never knowing if I’d see you or hear from you from one day to the next? Dying of love for you and need of you, and having to beg to see you? You loathed me, Beth, you were just looking for a way to get rid of me.” Her voice rose steadily through her words, though she tried to stop it.
“No, Vega. That’s not why I ran away. That had nothing to do with it.”
“Don’t lie to me, Beth!” Vega cried, and Beth could almost feel, like a tightening wire, her nerves stretching and the electric feeling of hysteria in the air. She mustn’t let Vega get hysterical.
“Vega, whatever happened, it was all a mistake. It was all my fault, too, I should never have done the things I did, but I did them anyway. I did what I felt compelled to do. I wasn’t happy hurting you. I never wanted to see you suffer.”
“You left in time to miss most of it,” Vega told her acidly. “Maybe you know about that part. I was in Camarillo for a while.
Did Cleve tell you?”
“Yes, he told me,” Beth said, humble before this catalog of torments.
“Did he also tell you that he knows everything about us?”
“No!” Beth cried, chagrin plain in her open mouth and startled eyes.
“I told him,” Vega said with quiet desperation. “I was out of my mind. I couldn’t help it, but I think I would have anyway. It couldn’t hurt me anymore and I had to hurt you somehow. It festered in me like a cancer, Beth. It’s been eating me alive all this time.” The feverish flush in her thin cheeks bore out her words.
Beth tried to sit up again but Vega threatened her with a swift movement of the gun and Beth stayed where she was, propped on one elbow. “Vega,” she pleaded, beginning to lose faith in her powers of persuasion. “I know it’s been bad, I know it’s been terrible for you. Do you think that’s the only reason I ran away? Didn’t Cleve tell you anything? I told him to explain about Charlie, and the rest of it. Do you think it was easy for me to leave my children?”
“I don’t know. I only know I’m the one who suffered most from your going. Aside from that I don’t think anything anymore. And I know just one other thing, Beth, I want to see you suffer. I want to see you scared and shaking and miserable the way I’ve been ever since you left.”
She sat down in a chair facing the bed, as though she meant to stay a while.
“Will you—have a drink?” Beth asked. God, if I could just get her drunk! she thought.
“Cleve’s been doing all the family drinking lately,” Vega said. “I dried out in the hospital.” Her voice was so cold, her attitude so rare and strange in one given to hysterics, that Beth shivered involuntarily.
“Cigarette?” Beth said. If only she could get things on a talking basis, instead of this sharp bitter exchange that cut and frightened her; if only Vega would break down and cry and wail and let herself be comforted.
“I don’t feel like it,” Vega said, waving the pack away. Her voice, her eyes, left no doubt that she spoke the truth.
They stayed like that for a little while, neither one speaking or moving. Beth found Vega’s desperate eyes, the only part of her that seemed alive, more than she could bear, and she looked away.
“How long are you going to stay there like that?” she said at last.
“As long as I
