Now You See Her Page 0,55

Marcy out of the room. The remaining necklaces hanging from her wrists tumbled to the floor.

Marcy turned and fled the room.

“Good luck on your test,” her mother called after her.

“You just left her like that?” Judith demanded when they passed each other in the school corridor later that morning.

“What was I supposed to do? I didn’t see you sticking around.”

“Whatever. Did you call Dad?”

“He was in court. I left him a message.”

“She’ll be all right,” Judith said. “She always is.”

“Yeah,” Marcy agreed, thinking that maybe at lunch she’d go home to make sure.

Except that when it came time for lunch, she chose to go out with a bunch of friends to a nearby greasy spoon instead. If the experience of the past fifteen years had taught her anything, she reasoned, it was that nothing she could do would make any difference. Her mother would spend the next few weeks in a progressive downward spiral of crying jags and incoherent babbling, and then she’d likely disappear for a few days, maybe even weeks, living on the streets and sifting through garbage bins until somebody recognized her and brought her home.

And then the cycle would start all over again.

Except it didn’t.

At two o’clock that afternoon she and Judith were summoned into the principal’s office, where two uniformed officers were waiting to inform them that their mother had committed suicide by jumping off the roof of a ten-story office building near the busy intersection of Yonge and St. Clair.

“Don’t feel guilty,” Judith told her as they waited for their father to pick them up from school and take them home.

Marcy nodded. She didn’t feel guilty about her mother’s death. She felt relieved.

And for that, she’d felt guilty ever since.

“MARCY?” VIC CALLED softly from the bed. “What are you doing?”

Good question, Marcy thought, turning from the window where she’d been staring out at the closed curtains of the upstairs window of the bed and breakfast next door, trying to make sense of everything that had happened in the last twenty-four hours. Hell, why stop there? she wondered. How about the last twenty-four years? The last fifty? When had her life ever made any kind of sense? “What time is it?” she asked, wrapping her pink cotton bathrobe tighter around her. What was Vic Sorvino doing in her bed? How the hell had she let this happen? Again. What was the matter with her? Yes, he was an attractive man, and yes, he made her feel wanted and desirable and even beautiful. But she was hardly a teenager, for God’s sake, easily seduced by a few well-chosen words. Had she no self-control whatsoever?

Vic reached for his watch on the tiny nightstand beside the bed. “A little after nine,” he said, laying the watch back down and sitting up, the sheet falling across his naked torso. “You hungry?”

Marcy shook her head no. “You?”

“Not really. How’s the cheek?”

“Okay.”

“Think that eye could use some more ice?”

“No. I hear the raccoon look is very big for fall.”

Vic chuckled, patted the space beside him. “Come back to bed.”

“I don’t think that’s such a good idea.”

“Why not?”

“I don’t know.” Marcy shrugged. “I don’t know what I’m doing anymore.” How did this happen? she wanted to shout. How did you end up in my bed?

Except she already knew the answer. This was all her doing. They’d barely made it up the stairs before her lips were reaching hungrily for his. She was tearing at his shirt before she’d even closed the door to her room. “I don’t know what’s the matter with me.”

“There’s absolutely nothing the matter with you,” Vic said.

“I practically attacked you, for God’s sake.”

“I don’t recall any protests on my part.”

“I normally don’t act that way.” She laughed. “Except, of course, for the last time we were together.”

“And you asked me what I’m doing here?” he said, sardonically.

“What are you doing here, Vic?”

The air turned suddenly serious. “I told you. I was worried about you.”

“Don’t be.”

“Can’t help it. It seems I’ve grown quite attached.”

“That’s probably not a very good idea.”

“On the contrary, I think it’s the best idea I’ve had in years.”

“Why?”

“Why?” he repeated, shaking his head. “I’m not sure I can answer that. I don’t know. Maybe I sense a kindred soul.”

“Or maybe you just feel sorry for me.”

“I feel many things for you,” he shot back quickly. “Sorry isn’t one of them.”

Marcy smiled in spite of her attempt not to.

“Come back to bed,” he said again.

What the hell? Marcy thought. Why not? It wasn’t as if she