“Don’t!” she cried in anguish. “Don’t tell me unless you want to kill me.”
“I want you to know what I’ve been through!” he said fiercely.
“Charlie, I’m telling you now and forever, once and for all, I can’t come home with you. I can’t go back to you. I—”
“You said you loved me.” He had turned quite pale and was staring at her.
“I want a divorce,” she said, and crumbled into a chair at the foot of the bed.
They sat in utter silence then for ten minutes, neither of them moving, neither speaking. At last he said, “I could have killed you when you left. I felt that way for a long time. But when I heard about Vega, all the mess in the papers, everything changed. I was so worried about you. I knew you couldn’t have done it and I wanted to forgive you. I don’t know why, I guess I’m just a glutton for punishment. I just wanted you back, no questions asked.”
“You didn’t need to ask. Mr. Heinrich had all the answers,” she said sharply.
“I came here to forgive you, to rescue you and start over.”
“I can’t be rescued,” she said firmly.
“You’re not worth it,” he said grimly. “I didn’t know that till now. Or rather, I couldn’t face it. I guess because I loved you so much.”
She covered her face with her hands, refusing to look at him or answer. At last he rose.
“I’ll take another room,” he said. “I’ll be leaving tomorrow, I guess. There isn’t much point in staying on.”
She listened to him moving about the room, taking his things from the drawers where he had put them the night before, and her heart contracted. But still she didn’t move, didn’t try to stop him. It was better that he go off mad. It would give him strength and reassure him in the future that he had done the right thing. It would help him give her up.
He stopped at the door and she looked up then, aware that he was leaving. His chin was set and his eyes were hard. He was very handsome and straight.
“Charlie, I wish—with all my heart, I wish—”
“I know. So do I,” he said.
“I’ll never know, all the rest of my life, if what I’m doing is a brave thing or a cowardly thing, Charlie. A right thing or a wrong one. I only know I have to do it.”
He listened, quiet and uncomprehending, and then he said, almost gently, “Goodbye, Beth.”
“Goodbye,” she whispered.
He shut the door softly after him.
Chapter Twenty-two
THERE WAS ONLY ONE THING LEFT THAT SHE KNEW SHE HAD TO do, and that was see Laura and tell her the truths she had withheld before. She wrote to her aunt and uncle first and explained why she could not, and never would, come home, and thanked them for the hospitality. She was honest, although she was brief.
If she had to start a new life, and there was no question anymore about that, she was going to start it without the lies and self-deceptions that had marred the other. She was going to pare away the fibs and selfish miseries, as many of them as she could, even if it meant hurting herself, hurting others. It would be a clean, honest pain and it would heal.
She hadn’t the guts to face Laura that day; to face anyone, for that matter. She waited until the next morning and then slipped out early, afraid of running into Charlie in the hotel lobby. But she was spared that.
She took a cab over to Laura’s apartment. It was only eight-thirty. It seemed like an odd hour for confession and atonement, an odd time of day to be making your apologies and refashioning your life. But we don’t pick our own times for these things; they happen when they are ready. The tangled strands of Beth’s life were smoothing out a little. This was the last task. Until it was done she was not free. The rest would have to wait. When Laura herself knew the whole truth, Beth would be liberated at last from her self-contempt, from her obsessive need for Laura.
She rang the elevator buzzer after the clerk had phoned the Manns and told her she could see them. She rode up with her spine tingling and all the delicate nerves of her face taut. It wouldn’t be so bad; it couldn’t be worse than what she had been through with Charlie or with Vega, she told herself. It had to be done. And still she trembled.
She tried to think of herself riding back down in that same elevator in half an hour with her lies behind her, her selfishness exposed and, in part, atoned for, and her heart lighter. Even if Laura was angry and disillusioned with her, even if her idealization of Beth was rudely shattered, even if there was no friendship left to salvage. It was Laura she had come to find and Laura was her last bridge to cross before she could begin her life over again somewhere and try to do better with it this time.
She knocked quickly on Laura’s front door, as if by hesitating she would squander her courage. Jack opened it for her. She stared at him.
“Good morning,” he said. “It’s all right, I live here,” he added, seeing the look of faint dismay on her face.
“I thought you’d be at work,” she said clumsily.
“I’m on my way, sweetheart,” he said, smiling. “She’s all yours.” He thumbed over his shoulder and Beth saw Laura behind him in the living room, tying Betsy’s hair ribbons. “Come on in,” he said and Beth walked in behind him. “We’re relieved to see you,” he told her seriously.
Laura stood up, her face a picture of pale consternation. “Beth,” she said. The name was almost a question. “Are you all right?”
“Yes,” Beth said, and the relief Laura showed touched her.
“We saw in the
