Belinda by Anne Rice

Author:Anne Rice [Anne Rice]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Publisher: Jove
Published: 1986-01-02T08:00:00+00:00

[30]

Five days after she left, the notebook came in the mail.

I had tried to talk to her after the fight. But it had been ghastly, going into that room, trying to tell her I was sorry, so sorry, and the words sticking in my throat. There had been bruises on her face, on her shoulders, and her tender naked arms. I had said: "We'll work it out somehow, we'll talk about it. This can not be the end of it, not for us." And from her nothing but the silence. The same old silence and her eyes like the eyes of a dead person staring past me, at the leaves of the trees against the glass.

In the middle of the night she had left. I had stayed awake as long as I could, pacing back and forth, with only Miss Annie now and then coming to say, yes, she was all right. The truth was, I'd been afraid that if she started to leave, I wouldn't be able to stop her, that I would watch her go, unable to bring myself to say or do anything at all.

But I had stayed awake as long as I could.

I did not even remember lying down on the bed, only that when I awoke at three, it was no nightmare that woke me. And she was gone. The closets were empty, all of her things gone. The rain was coming in the open windows onto the floor of her room.

Through the entire house I searched for some note from her, but there was nothing. And only later that morning did I find the tape of Final Score on the marble top bedside table in my room.

She must have come in while I was sleeping and put it right beside me. If only I had awakened then.

Then five days later, after I had called Bonnie and called that damned son of a bitch Moreschi and called Alex and called George Gallagher in New York, the notebook came in the mail.

I was sitting on the settee in Mother's room and I was thinking how hideously old everything was, how beyond restoration. The rain was blowing right into the room through the French doors to the porch. Bonnie's private number was now disconnected. What the hell did I want of him? Moreschi had said, she was on her own, she'd always been. No, no detectives anymore. George had promised to call me if he heard from her. Alex kept begging me to tell him where I was and I wouldn't. Didn't want anyone to come now. Just wanted to sit here in the ruined room in the ruined house and listen to the rain fall.

Cold the breeze already in late September. And why had she left me Final Score? What had been the meaning? How had she looked at me when she laid the tape on the bedside table? Had there been hatred in her eyes then, too?

Three dozen times I'd watched the tape. I knew every movement, every word of dialogue, every angle of her face.

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