They had a fancy dinner that night and drove around Lenox, following the moon. On a whim, since they were dressed nicely, they indurated a wedding reception of people they had never met. Maggie laughed when Jamie had a ten-minute conversation with the father of the bride. They danced a jitterbug they'd learned one summer at a community dance class Maggie had signed them up for, spinning and twisting until a line of sweat made a T down the back of Maggie's dress, and only then did they notice that everyone was clapping.
They drove the car to one of the Berkshire passes and slept there, waking when the sun poured itself into the valley like a rich blush wine. Still dressed in a suit and a silk dress, they took off their shoes and socks and stockings and walked through the crab-grass at the base of the hills, looking for four-leaf clovers and winking primroses and flat, smooth stones for skipping. They drove home, faces flushed with color, and showered together. Then they sat in the middle of the bed and watched the stars come out.
On Monday, they were nearly out the front door when Maggie pulled Jamie's arm and dragged him back to the bedroom and ripped at his clothes until he fell back on the bed with her and loved her with a fury that at any other time might have promised more.
He drove her to Wheelock, stopping in front of his cousin's address, which he'd picked out from the phone book and located on a map he bought at the local gas station. "He'll take care of me," he said to Maggie, as they sat parked across the street. "He's family."
For the first time, Maggie seemed to consider that Jamie would be left to face the consequences. "What's going to happen?" she asked.
Jamie smiled at her. "Who cares? I don't have any immediate plans without you."
Maggie was tired. All the activity, in spite of her Percoset, was taking its toll. They spent most of the day in their room at the Inn. That night, while they drank champagne from a bottle and Maggie picked pieces of pepperoni from the pizza, she told him what she wanted of him. "You ought to get married," she said. "You'd be a terrific father."
The thought of anyone other than Maggie was ridiculous, but he did not tell her this.
"I want you to get married again," she pressed. Jamie glanced at her. "I think you've asked me to do enough." "You'll fall in love again," Maggie said smugly. "And you'll be happy we had this conversation."
Jamie stood up and walked to the window, where Wheelock was shutting down for the night. "There won't be anyone like you." "I should hope not," Maggie laughed. "I was one of a kind." "You were," Jamie said, turning around and looking at her. He realized they were already speaking in the past tense. "You are."
They made love again, so slowly that Maggie cried. Jamie woke in the night when her legs twitched against his. "Do you want to know when?" he whispered in her hair. "Should it be while you're asleep?"
"Oh, no," Maggie murmured, her lips against the pulse at the bottom of his throat. "I have to say goodbye."
In the moments before, she had kissed him. She wove her fingers into his hair and pulled so hard it brought tears to his eyes. I would do it for you, Maggie said fiercely, and Jamie nodded. But he knew he never would have asked. He never would have been able to leave her.
She lay on the pillow she'd slept on the night before. He placed the pillow he'd used over her face at 7:32 a.m. She put a hand on his wrist and lifted the corner of the cotton pillowcase from her mouth. "It smells like you," she said, and she smiled. It was over at 7:38 a.m.
Jamie stopped speaking. The air in the courtroom seemed dry and stiff, and he was afraid to shift his position for fear the atmosphere would actually shatter. Graham had his hand on Jamie's arm. "You okay?" he whispered. Jamie nodded.
"Did she try to fight you?" Graham asked. "Yes," Jamie said. "She tried once." "Why didn't you stop?"
No matter what, she had said. "She told me not to," Jamie answered. "We had talked about it."
"You say you killed her at about seven-thirty in the morning. Why didn't you go to the police until the early afternoon?"
Jamie thought of Maggie, lying still on the bed, and the way he had pulled the covers to her chin. He remembered watching her from a chair across the room, bent over, his elbows on his knees, waiting. "She looked like she was sleeping." He raised his eyes to Graham. "I kept thinking that maybe, if I gave her a little more time, she might wake up."
That night Allie dreamed of the day she'd lost her virginity. But because it was a dream, she let herself rewrite it, until her own history played the way she had wanted it to in the first place. In this recollection, Cam had realized before the fact, and left the decision up to her. It was almost as treasured a commodity--that rough rasp, Are you sure?--as the heat of his hands and the whisper of his mouth. With the power of one word, she had made time stop for both of them, something she had never been able to quite do again. Yes, she had said, when Cam touched her. She said it over and over. Yes.
Allie woke up hugging her arms to herself and shivering. She did not want to be dreaming of Cam; she did not want to think about him at all. Although she had hoped it might have gone away by now, she could not forget the image of him in another woman's arms.
She wondered if forgiving was any easier than forgetting.
She sat up in bed, letting the covers fall away. Then she got up and went down the stairs.
Cam, startled, felt her presence before he saw her standing in the dark; a few steps up from the bottom, her white nightgown gleaming with the moon.
"You can come upstairs," she said. She began to walk back. "If you want," she added over her shoulder.
She did not think she had ever heard anything quite as lovely as the groan of the mattress when Cam eased into his side of the bed. She sagged toward him a little, her arms still folded across her chest. They stared at the ceiling, as if they could see through it to the cold, constricting night.
He could not read the signs. She had invited him back upstairs but he didn't know if he was supposed to touch her or to beg forgiveness or to simply accept this small concession and lie in the dark, the heat from her body snaking across the extra foot of space to warm his side.
"Couldn't you sleep?" he asked.
"No. Could you?"
"I was asleep when you came downstairs." He heard Allie shift a little. "I didn't know. I wouldn't have gotten you up."
Cam felt his erection tenting the material of his boxer shorts, a natural consequence of being this close and able to smell her skin and her shampoo, and he smiled at her choice of words. "It's okay," he said. "I'd rather be here."
She rolled to her side. In the faint light, Cam could make out the tight lines of her mouth, the unsettled flicker of her eyes. "I have to know. Was she here? In this bed?"
Cam thought of the weekend they had spent together when Allie was in Cummington. He had a flash of Mia, a towel wrapped around her wet hair, sitting on Allies side of the bed. And he realized that in this one instance honesty was not going to serve any purpose. "No," he lied.
Allie flopped onto her back again. She crept to the edge of the bed, crowded out by Mia, who seemed to have taken up all the room between herself and Cam. He was thinking of her; she knew this as well as she knew her own name; and she had been stupid enough to plant the idea in his head. Mia's laugh, Mia's bright blue eyes, Mia's skilled and shaping hands. Allie clutched the mattress so that she would not fall off. She could not breathe for the lack of space.
She thought of her buffalo cowboy. It was right there on the tip of her tongue. She would look at Cam and say, Guess what? 1 fucked someone else too. She would watch his features freeze in shock and she would say, How does that make you feel? . . . Oh, really? Now you know.
He would not be able to tell what had happened, unless she let him know. And she realized she would not speak of it just to hurt Cam. This was something she would keep hidden within herself, maybe in place of the knot of pain and anger she had been carrying under her breastbone for more than a week. A security blanket, an ace up her sleeve. She might never use it, but she would always fe
el its presence like a swelling, secret stone, and that way when she let go of the rage, she would not feel nearly as empty.
A heady rush of power coursed through her as she realized that she was not giving in. She had watched Cam taking unsteady steps to come halfway for the first time, and she was simply allowing herself to meet him.
She moved a fraction closer to her husband and slipped her hand beneath his T-shirt.
He was leaning over her in a minute, pressing her against her pillow with his hands bracketing her head, strands of hair caught between his fingers. He kissed her on the lips, on the throat, on her closed eyes. He felt as if he'd been granted an audience with a king, as if he'd been welcomed to a sanctioned inner circle.
His body could think only of sinking into Allie, but for the first time in months his mind was in control. He could feel his desire physically being pushed to the background, and he slid down Allies body to tuck his head against her chest. Instinctively, she cradled him, running her fingers through his hair and rocking him as the fear of what had almost happened to his life struck him full force. He did not want to lose her. If he did, he would no longer know who he was.
"I'm sorry," he whispered, his nose running and his tears scalding Allies skin like individual brands. "I'm so sorry."
Audra Campbell had been waiting for days. She looked bright and refreshed first thing in the morning. Jamie followed her warily with his eyes as she crossed the width of the courtroom. "If I asked you, Mr. MacDonald, would you kill me now?" Jamie glanced at Graham, who nodded imperceptibly, as if to remind him he had to answer the question, no matter how ridiculous it seemed, no matter what fantasies it created in his mind. "Of course not," he said. "Why not?"
He spread his hands, a gesture of concession. "I don't know you." "Ah," Audra said. "You only kill people you know?" Jamie frowned at her. "There was a whole situation attached to Maggie's death. I did it because I loved her."
"Oh." Audra drew out the syllable, a discovery. "You only kill people you love." She stopped pacing and faced him. "Let's go back to the doctor's visit on January fifteenth. When Maggie came home, that's when you first decided to kill her?"
"No."
"Isn't it true you were planning to kill her six months ago?"
"No," Jamie repeated.
"Had your wife's condition deteriorated?"
Jamie blinked at the abrupt change of subject. Graham had warned him about this. Campbell would try to get him flustered, confused, so that he'd say something she could use against him. "Yes," he said. "Maggie's condition had deteriorated very much."
"How?"
"She was having bouts of temporary blindness, and there was the mastectomy, of course. She was in a great deal of pain-- headaches and hip problems and things like that. She got winded very easily. She'd lost about twenty-five pounds since the beginning of the illness."
"Isn't it a fact that your medical bills had increased astronomically?"
"Of course," Jamie said. "Treatment doesn't come free. But we had insurance."
"Speaking of insurance, Mr. MacDonald, did your wife have life insurance?"
"Yes," Jamie said, quietly. "For how much?"
"It was a sixry-thousand-dollar policy."
"And who was the primary beneficiary of her life insurance?"
Jamie looked up at the prosecutor. He would not let himself seem guilty. "I was."
Audra started to move in for the kill. "Isn't it true that the woman your wife had become when she was ill wasn't the same woman you fell in love with--not someone you wanted to be around anymore?"
Jamie's mouth dropped open. He was stunned; he wondered if this was something everyone could see when they shook his hand or met him on the street, or if Audra Campbell had the power to read a sinner's mind. "No," he said, a little too late. "Of course not."
"You took your wife out to dinner two nights before the murder. Is that when you decided to kill her?" "No," Jamie said firmly.
"Was it when you were picking flowers in the park?" "No."
"It was before you got to Wheelock, though, right?"
"No!" Jamie thundered. He was still sitting in his chair, but his hands were gripping the railing of the witness box with the last shred of his self-control. He gritted out the rest of his response through his teeth. "I did not decide to kill her. Not before we got to Wheelock, not after. Never. She made the decision."
He did not want to look at Graham. The one thing his attorney had coached him about was keeping his cool. She wants to make you look violent, he had said. She wants the jury to think you lost it that night. Jamie peered up at Graham. He was sitting at the defense table, his head bowed to a blank pad, his forehead braced by his hand as if he was very tired.
Audra smiled condescendingly at Jamie. "Assuming the deceased was going along with this, isn't it true that she changed her mind in the moments before she died?"
"I don't know what you mean."
"Didn't she scratch you repeatedly on the face?"
"Yes, but--"
"Surely that was a clear enough sign for someone who couldn't speak at the moment," Audra smoothly interrupted. "Why didn't you stop, Mr. MacDonald?"
Jamie looked at the bobbing faces of the jury, as if he might be able to locate a friend. "She asked me not to. She didn't trust herself, but she trusted me. And I'd made a promise to her."
"A promise," Audra said slowly, rolling the word in her mouth like an all-day candy. "And didn't you promise in your wedding vows to care for her in sickness and in health?" She stalked back to the prosecutor's table as Graham was coming to his feet to object. "Nothing further."
TWENTY-TWO
hen Cam woke up in the morning he felt across the bed for Allie, but found only smooth sheets. He sat up and rubbed his hands through his hair, making it stand on end. She was probably downstairs making him breakfast. He sniffed at the air, but caught only the traces of the rose oil Allie used on the sheets.
He went to the bathroom and brushed his teeth. She'd hear the pipes run, and know that he was up. He stared at himself in the mirror.
He had slept with his wife last night. An act that was sanctioned by God and by law, an act that should have put things to rights. But he had not awakened relieved. He had a stunning headache, created by the two opposing thoughts he could not reconcile: he knew that he would love Mia a little for the rest of his life; he knew that he would live with Allie forever. The two ideas seemed to overlap, jagged edges he was forcing that would never fit in the way of a puzzle.
He had committed himself to saving his marriage because he knew he would never have Mia, and because--truth be told--he had never stopped loving Allie. In a way, he even looked forward to putting the whole thing behind him, and going back to the way his life had been. But as he'd touched Allie last night, Cam had realized that his wife was now a stranger. She'd looked the same and felt the same but gave off a heady wave of confidence and competence that made Cam unsure of his footing.
It floored him. Allie had always been the constant in his life. And although he was in no position to make demands, he wanted the old Allie back. He wanted to see her look up at him as if he'd created the sun, so he could watch her for clues and see what she still found within him of value.
He pulled on a pair of sweatpants and went downstairs. He would shower after breakfast. Maybe he could convince Allie to join him, but he had a feeling it would be more difficult to create a peace in the light of day than at night, when it was easier to forget that you were still hurting. "Allie," he called. He looked in the living room and the kitchen. Her pocketbook was gone; so were the keys to her car.
She hadn't left him a note.
He remembered that when they were first married, she would scribble down wherever she was, however ridiculous, just in case he needed to find her. "This is stupid," he had said. "When I come home, if you're not in the house, of course I'll look for you in the backyard. You don't have to bother to tell me." But Allie had done it anyway. It's what I would want
of you, she told him.
He had never, to his knowledge, left a note about where he was going or when he would be back. He was a policeman, invincible, so nothing bad could happen to him. There were times Allie had called the dispatcher to ask if she knew where he was; times he'd been off-duty at four and had decided to walk the perimeter of the lake to take the edge off a harrowing day, or to drive through the pass of the mountains toward New York. Allie had been concerned for his safety; he'd sniped that she worried too much.
He wished she had left him a note.
Cam walked upstairs and turned on the shower. He let the steam fill the bathroom until he could not see even his own hand in front of him.
While Harrison Harding was waiting outside the courtroom that afternoon to be called, he scribbled down a thumbnail sketch of the jury for Graham. He passed this to him minutes before he was called to take the stand as a psychiatric expert for the defense.
Graham stared at it as the doctor was being sworn in. Juror #2, staid, a problem. Juror #3, nervous tic in left eye, conservative, guarded. Juror #5, tie-dyed blouse, possibly the best. Juror #7, dreadlocks, fair and very involved. Juror #11, red dye job, grossly neurotic, unpredictable.
Graham patiently walked Dr. Harding through the pedantic exercise of stating his credentials, done only to impress upon the jury that this in fact was someone who was an expert in his field. "How many years have you been in practice, Doctor?" he asked, his first real question since Jamie had left the stand.
"Seventeen years."
Graham let the jury file the information away. They were a bit off-kilter today. From time to time, one member or another would glance at Jamie, either in accusation or to see how he was standing up after yesterday's cross.
"Have you ever testified in court, Doctor?"
"Many times," Harding said. He folded his hands neatly in his
lap.
"Can you describe your meetings with Jamie?"
Harding looked directly at Jamie, as if he needed to see into his head to remember what had passed between them. "Jamie is a reserved man, not one who opens up easily. He spent most of the time during our sessions speaking of his wife Maggie. It is clear from the depth of his detail and his affect when discussing her that their relationship was a powerful one, one that helped to establish his own sense of self. I believe that Jamie was suffering from a twofold psychological problem. One involved a building fusion fantasy, in which a person's personality is so fragile that he physically connects himself to someone else. In Jamie's case, this would have been Maggie. Seeing Maggie in pain would have brought pain to Jamie himself, not sympathy as you or I might feel, but a true physical empathy. Likewise, ending Maggie's suffering would have ended his suffering as well.