Freedom's Price (14 page)

He’d come home from Rico’s group session exhausted, even though he hadn’t said a single word all night long. Despite his smiling exterior, she knew this was so hard for him, she was starting to wonder if it was, in fact, worth it.

“Have you bought a dress for your wedding?” Inez asked.

A wedding dress. God. That was the last thing on her mind.

“I can picture you in one of those long gowns.” Inez smiled dreamily. “With a long train trailing after you. You’ll look so beautiful—Liam will think he’s marrying a princess.”

Marisala turned away, struck by Inez’s innocent words. Liam already thought he was marrying some kind of princess. She’d fooled him into thinking she was something more than what she really was that night of the charity ball.

Ever since then, she’d been working to maintain the masquerade, but every day she could feel herself slipping.

Marisala poured hot water over her tea bag, fighting back her tears. She had been crazy to agree to marry Liam. Had she honestly expected to be able to spend the entire rest of her life pretending to be someone she was not?

And she was not this person that Liam wanted to marry. She was not refined and elegant and calm and cool. She was no longer able to stand back and wait for him to take the lead in their conversations, in their life, in their
lovemaking
.

Mother of God, she sometimes thought she’d go mad if she had to wait, passively, for him to touch her one more time. Sometimes she thought she’d go mad if she had to keep herself from talking to him—
really
talking to him. Do you love me? She wanted to ask him, but she didn’t dare.

Because a quiet, humble,
civilized
woman was the kind of woman Liam wanted. Marisala was afraid if she acted otherwise, if she spoke out whenever she wanted, then he wouldn’t want her anymore.

So he wanted her. Maybe he even loved her. But even if he did, it wasn’t really her that he loved.

Marisala was as unhappy as she’d ever been. And the guilt of what she’d done, of how she had tricked him—was still tricking him—churned in her stomach, making her feel queasy and ill.

And Liam was unhappy too. She’d seen him watching her intently, frowning slightly when he thought she wasn’t looking. Clearly, he saw through her facade, and he was wondering where that woman who had come to the ball in the black dress had gone.

She loved him more than she’d ever dreamed possible. She loved him enough to know that she couldn’t keep lying to him.

She turned and smiled at Inez, trying to hide all of her pain and sorrow, just the way Liam always did. “I’ll be upstairs if you need me.”

Inez blinked. “But your tea…”

Marisala was already out the door. “Good night.”

She went up the stairs, moving quickly past the temptation of Liam’s bedroom. She went into the room where she still kept her clothes, and in a deceptively calm voice—Liam and Santiago both would have been very proud—she called for a taxi to come and pick her up.

And then she began to pack her clothes.

Her
clothes only.

If she never saw those dresses Liam had bought for her again, it wouldn’t be soon enough.

Liam, however, would be much, much harder to forget.

ELEVEN

T
HE LIGHT WAS
on downstairs.

Liam had awoken from a nightmare to find himself alone in his bed, and his first thought had been that Marisala was finally gone.

He’d known something big was coming for at least a week now. Marisala had been acting so oddly. And now he knew the reason why. She hadn’t been happy. She’d wanted to leave.

But then he saw the light and he heard voices, and he realized he was mistaken. It was barely even midnight, and Marisala was in the kitchen, talking as Inez fed the baby.

Liam pulled on his robe and went down the stairs, trying to calm his pounding heart. Everything was fine. Marisala was fine. It was simply his overactive imagination going paranoid on him. It was merely an extension of his bad dreams and…

Marisala stood in the entryway. She was dressed for going out into the cool autumn night, her suitcase at her side.

Liam froze halfway down the stairs, his worst fears realized as he stared at that suitcase. She was leaving.

From the corner of his eye he saw Inez fade back into the kitchen. He looked up from that suitcase and saw the truth echoed in Marisala’s eyes. She
was
leaving.

Somehow, Liam managed to remain standing. Somehow he remained alive, and astonishingly able to function. He forced his voice to sound light. “What, no farewell note?”

Her voice shook. “I was going to call you in the morning. To explain.”

“I guess this means you don’t want to marry me.”

She shook her head, fighting her tears. “No.”

Liam nodded. He didn’t blame her. He’d failed her, and himself as well, and now she was going to leave. This was his fault. He’d seen it coming, and yet he’d done nothing to prevent it. He hadn’t even had the courage to confront her, to talk about it. “I’m sorry,” he said, but his voice sounded empty and emotionless—as if he were commenting on the weather.

“I can’t do this anymore,” she told him, emotion making her voice tremble. “I can’t wear the clothes you want me to wear. I can’t pretend to be someone I’m not for the entire rest of my life!”

Her words didn’t make sense. “Clothes?”

“I feel like such a liar!” With a sob, Marisala yanked open the door. Grabbing her suitcase, she headed for the elevators.

Liam followed, bare feet, bathrobe, and all. “Mara, what are you talking about?”

She savagely punched the elevator’s call button. The doors slid open almost immediately.

“I was a fool,” she told him as she stepped into the elevator. “I knew from the start that I wouldn’t be a good wife for you, still I tried to pretend it would work. But I can’t bear to wear those clothes anymore, or to act as if I don’t have any kind of opinion. I know you liked me that way, and I tried, I
really
tried to be the woman you wanted. But I can’t do it anymore.”

Liam followed her. “Mara—”

She pressed the button that held the doors open. “Get out, Liam. You don’t ride in elevators, remember?”

“I’ll learn to handle it,” he told her. He pulled her hand away from the controls and the doors slid shut. “See, I’m learning already.”

She wrenched herself from his grasp and opened the door again. “I don’t want you to learn to
handle
anything! I don’t want you to hide what you feel! I want you to stop fighting your memories. God, we are
both
such liars.” She grabbed her suitcase and got off the elevator, heading instead for the stairs.

Liam chased her. “Mara, don’t leave—I don’t understand. Talk to me!”

She whirled to face him. “I don’t want to talk to you. I don’t want
you
to talk to
me
. I want you to stand up on a table and scream. If I were you, I’d kick over chairs and stop people on the street to shout about the horrible things human beings can do to one another in the name of politics. But you have taught yourself so carefully to let nothing escape! No feelings, no emotions. You hold yourself in such careful control—is it any wonder you can’t write?

“What a pair we are. You go to your meetings and you sit there, pretending to listen. But I know what you’re doing. You’re still fighting the memories. On the surface, you’re so calm and in control, but I know you, remember? I know that you have all those nightmares inside of you, fighting to break free.”

What could he say? Her accusations were all right on the money.

She started down the stairs again. “Of course, I’m no better than you. I’m as big a liar as you are. You’re the one man I’d trade my future for.” Her words came out in sobs, and she could no longer hold back her tears. “You’re the one man I’d sacrifice
everything
for, just to be with. I might even be able to live with the lies I’ve told myself, but I can’t handle the lies I’ve told to you. Mother of God, between the two of us, Liam, I feel as if I’m drowning in an ocean of deceit!”

She pushed open the door that led out onto the sidewalk, and Liam saw there was a cab waiting there for her.

“I’m not that woman in the black dress you met at the charity ball,” she told him tearfully. “And I’ll never be.”

Suddenly everything she was saying clicked. And just like that, it all made sense. The clothes, the hair, the careful way she’d been acting over the past few weeks. Marisala had actually thought Liam had wanted her to be someone other than herself.

“Mara, God, you are
so
wrong about—”

She opened the door to the cab. “And you know what hurts the most? It’s stupid, really, but you never bothered to tell me that you love me. You kept that hidden inside too.”

She climbed into the cab, locking the door behind her, shutting him out.

“Wait,” he said. “Wait!”

But she motioned for the driver to leave.

“I love you,” he told her, banging on the window as the cab pulled away. But she didn’t turn around, didn’t even glance in his direction.

Liam’s car was on the street—he’d gotten another great parking spot last night. He ran toward it, thinking he could follow, but his keys were up on the top of his dresser. Without them, he was going nowhere.

All he could do was stand in the street in his bathrobe and watch the cab’s taillights disappear.

The real irony was that she had been trying so hard to be like him.

He should have been taking lessons from her instead.

“I love you!” he shouted, but it was far too late.

Marisala was gone.

“Sorry, man, I can’t help you. She’s not here.”

Liam looked directly into Dan’s eyes. “Would you tell me if she was?”

“No. Probably not. But she’s
not
here.”

“I just want to know that she’s safe. Can you tell me if you know that she’s safe?”

“I haven’t seen her,” Dan said, opening the screen door and stepping out onto the porch. “I wish she
had
come to me, but she didn’t. Saturday mornings, she usually goes to the library—did you look there?”

“She didn’t show. She didn’t go to any of her classes yesterday, either.” Liam sat down on the steps, the fatigue from almost forty-eight hours without any sleep catching up to him in an overpowering wave. “I don’t know where to look. She could be
anywhere
.”

Dan sat down next to him, lit a cigarette, and took a deep drag. He turned his head away as he blew out a long stream of smoke. “Did you try that guy from the Refugee Center? Ricardo something? She introduced me to him a few weeks ago at an Amnesty International meeting. They seemed pretty tight.”

“I don’t know where he lives. His home phone’s unlisted—I have the number but I have no way of getting his address. And his answering machine says he’s away for the weekend. I left about twelve messages, I even called the Refugee Center, but…” He ran his hands down his face in frustration.

“So why did she leave? Whad’ya do?” Dan asked bluntly, squinting through his cigarette smoke. “Get medieval on her, try to order her around, tell her what to do?”

“No,” Liam said. “I asked her to marry me.”

Dan tried to hide a laugh and failed. “Sorry,” he apologized. “I don’t get it,” he added. “She’s crazy about you. I should know—I tried to get her out of your evil clutches more times than you probably want to hear about, but she let me know, no doubt about it, that she was doing fine right where she was.”

“I think she only agreed to marry me to make me happy,” Liam said. “In San Salustiano, marriage isn’t an equal partnership. Women don’t have many choices to start with, and after they marry, their husbands make all the decisions. I think she thought we would have that kind of relationship, because when I went through her desk and the notebooks that she left behind, I found a copy of a letter she sent to the university about her admission to medical school. She told them she wouldn’t be applying because she was getting married. I think she thought I would want her to leave school.”

“Would you?”

“No!”

Dan took one last drag on his cigarette then crushed the butt beneath his boot. “Obviously you and she have had some kind of communication breakdown.”

Liam shot the other man a look. “No kidding, Dr. Freud.”

“And as long as I’m pointing fingers, might I mention the total un-coolness of you going through her desk and notebooks?”

“I was looking for some kind of clue for where she went. I wasn’t just randomly snooping.”

A trolley car went past, rattling noisily on the tracks that ran in the middle of Commonwealth Avenue. Dan watched as it stopped, let several passengers off, then continued on its way. “I don’t know Marisala that well, but something tells me if she doesn’t want you to find her, she’s not going to be easy to find.”

“So what are you suggesting? That I just sit around and wait for her to come back?”

“I’m suggesting that you’ve got your job cut out for you.” Dan appraised him coolly. “But you’re some kind of crack investigative reporter, right? This should be right up your alley.”

“I
was
an investigative reporter,” Liam told him. “But for the past few years I’ve written nothing but Sunday columns.” He snorted, disgusted with himself. “And for the past few months I’ve written nothing new at all.”

Liam froze. Wait a minute. What had he just said? Nothing but…

Sunday columns.

“My God.” He turned to Dan. “I need to use your phone.”

Dan stood up. “Why? You figure out where Marisala is?”

“No.” Liam stood up too. “But I’ve figured out how to find her.”

“Let’s see if I’ve got this straight.” On the other end of the telephone wire, Lauren Stuart was coming the closest Liam had ever heard to losing her cool. “You want me to stop the presses for a column you
haven’t even written yet
?”

“Two hours,” Liam said. “Come on, Stuart. How often have I asked you for a favor like this?”

“Never—obviously this is the first time you’ve ever gone
clear out of your mind
!”

“Please, Lauren, this is life-and-death. I’m not sure I’ll be able to live until next Sunday. Damn, I’m not sure I’m going to make it to tomorrow.”

Silence. Liam closed his eyes and prayed.

His editor sighed and swore. “You know I can’t give you two hours, but if you can get me the column in one hour—”

“An
hour!
God, I’m fifteen minutes away from the office as it is!”

“That’s the best I can do for you, Lee. Take it or leave it.”

Liam looked up at Dan. “You got a pen and some kind of paper—a legal pad or something that I can borrow?”

“Yeah.” Dan disappeared into the other room.

Liam took a deep breath. “I’ll have it for you in an hour.”

“I can’t wait even a minute longer,” Lauren told him. “If you’re not here, if it’s not in my hand, you’re out of luck.”

“I’m on my way.” Liam nodded his thanks to Dan, who’d returned with a yellow pad and a cheap blue pen.

“Lee, wait—keep the word count down to around seven hundred. Oh, and can you at least give me a hint as to the topic?”

Liam told her.

Lauren cut off her own surprised silence. “Forget what I said about word count. Make it as long as you want. But I need it on my desk in an hour!”

Marisala looked up as Ricardo’s wife, Linda, cautiously knocked on the open door.

She didn’t try to smile. There was no need to hide the fact that she was miserable. She’d sat up talking with both Linda and Ricardo until late the previous night. She’d told them everything.

Almost everything.

She
hadn’t
told them how, without Liam by her side, she felt as if her heart had been torn from her chest. She hadn’t told them how desolately her life stretched out in front of her. She hadn’t told them that she would have liked—at least once—to have made love to Liam with all of the passion she carried inside of her.

“I brought you some coffee and a bagel. I hope you like cream cheese.” Linda carried a tray heavily weighed down by a plastic-wrapped bundle. “And Rico thought you might want to see the Sunday paper?”

The
Globe
. Liam’s paper.

“No,” Marisala said. “I don’t want to see it.”

Linda set the tray down on the guest room’s bedside table and hefted the heavy newspaper. “As you wish.”

“Wait.” Marisala closed her eyes. “Yes. I
do
want to see it. Please.”

Linda handed her the plastic-wrapped paper with a smile.

“Maybe there’s something in here about San Salustiano,” Marisala continued, opening the bundle and searching for the editorial pages. “But of course you know that’s not really why I want to look at the paper. We
both
know I can’t bear not to search for Liam’s column and the little stupid picture they have of him in the corner, even though both the picture
and
the column are three years old and—”

SOME THINGS ARE WORTH SHOUTING ABOUT
. The headline next to Liam’s little picture was not one she had ever seen before.

At first she didn’t believe it. It was only a headline. So they rewrote the headline of an article that had run before. Big deal.

Five years ago, I spent eighteen months of my life locked in the dark.