Shiver

She wasn’t buying it. She’d known him too long. “You called to make me feel better?”

  “Yeah.”

  “I’m fine.” She said it with complete conviction.

  “Oh. Well. That’s good,” he said, surprised, as if he believed she might still be an emotional mess, falling into a bajillion pieces. “Real good.”

  “Thanks. Bye.”

  “Wait! Don’t hang up.”

  She heard the urgency in his voice, imagined his free hand shooting out as if to physically stop her from dropping the receiver into its cradle. He’d made the same gesture every time he wanted something and thought she wasn’t listening. “What, Luke?” She was standing in the living room now, the room where they’d once watched television, eaten popcorn, and discussed current events.

  Or fought. They’d had more than their share of rip-roarers.

  “Look, do you still have that stuff I left?” he finally asked, getting to the real point of his call.

  “What stuff?”

  “Oh, you know,” he said casually, as if the items were just coming to mind. “My fishing poles and tackle box. An old set of golf clubs. Scuba gear.”

  “No.”

  “What?”

  “It’s gone. All of it.”

  She glanced to the bookcase where their wedding pictures were still tucked away with the rest of the photo albums.

  There was a short pause and she knew she’d taken all the wind out of his sails.

  “What do you mean ‘gone’?” he asked and she imagined his blue eyes narrowing. “You didn’t give my things away, did you?” His voice was suddenly cold. Suspicious. Accusing.

  “Of course I gave them away,” she responded without a shred of guilt. “I gave you six months to pick up your stuff, Luke. And that was way longer than I wanted to. Way longer. When you didn’t show, I called the Salvation Army. They took everything, including the rest of your clothes and all that junk that was in the garage and the attic and the closets.”

  “Jesus, Abby! Some of that stuff was valuable! None of it’s ‘junk.’”

  “Then you should have come for it.”

  There was a pause, just long enough for a heartbeat and she braced herself. “Wait a minute. You didn’t get rid of my skis. You wouldn’t do that. The Rossignols are still in the attic, right?” She heard the disbelief in his voice. Walking back to the kitchen, she threw open the refrigerator door and hauled out the wine bottle again. “Jesus, Abby, those things cost me an arm and a leg. I can’t believe that you…oh, Christ, tell me that my board is in the garage. My surf board.”

  “I don’t think so,” she said, shaking her head. “I’m pretty sure that went, too.”

  “I bought it in Hawaii! And the canoe?”

  “Actually I think that went to Our Lady of Virtues, a fund-raiser.”

  “Our Lady of Virtues? The hospital where your mother—”

  “It was for the church,” she cut in. “The hospital’s been closed for years.”

  “You’ve completely flipped out, Abby,” he accused. “You’re as nuts as she was!”

  Abby’s stomach clenched, but she waited. Didn’t respond. Wouldn’t rise to the bait. Pulling out the cork while cradling the phone between her shoulder and ear, she felt her injured thumb throb. She wasn’t crazy. No way. The only time she’d been close to mental illness was when she’d agreed to marry Luke. Those “I do’s” were major points in the off-your-rocker column. But otherwise, knock wood, she was sane. Right? Despite the sense of creeping paranoia that lurked around her at times.

  “This is a nightmare! A fuckin’ nightmare. I suppose you even tossed my dad’s thirty-eight?” When she didn’t reply, he clarified,

  “You know, Abby, the gun?”

  “I know what it is.” She didn’t bother with another wineglass, just pulled her favorite cracked coffee mug from the open shelf.

  “That gun was my Dad’s! He—he had it for years. He was a cop, damn it, and…and it’s got sentimental value. You wouldn’t give it away!”

  “Hmm.” She poured the wine, didn’t care that some splashed onto the counter. “Kinda makes you wonder what the Salvation Army would want with it.”

  “They don’t take firearms.”

  “Is that so?” She took a long swallow of the wine. “Then maybe it was the nuns at Our Lady. I can’t really remember.”

  “You don’t even know?” He was aghast. “You gave my gun away and you don’t know who has it! Jesus H. Christ, Abby, that pistol is registered to me! If it’s used in a crime—”

  “Now, I’m not sure about this, so don’t quote me, but I don’t think the Mother Superior is running a smuggling ring on the side.”

  “This isn’t funny!”

  “Sure it is, Luke. It’s damned funny.”

  “I’m talking about my possessions. Mine!” She pictured him hooking a thumb at his chest and jabbing frantically, angrily. “You had no right to get rid of anything!”

  “So sue me, Luke.”

  “I will,” he said hotly.

  “Look, my name isn’t U-Store-It, okay? I’m not a holding tank for your things. If they were so valuable, you should have picked them up around the time we were splitting up, or, you know, in the next six or seven months, maybe?”

  “I can’t believe this!”

  “Then don’t, Luke. Don’t believe it.”

  “Getting rid of my things is low, Abby. And you’re going to hear about it. I think the topic of the next Gierman’s Groaners is going to be about vindictive exes and how they should be handled.”

  “Do whatever you want. I won’t be listening or calling in.” She hung up, teeth clenched. She kicked herself for not checking caller ID before picking up the phone. “Never again,” she promised herself, taking another sip of Chardonnay, wishing the wine would hurry up and dull the rage she felt boiling through her blood. Luke had the uncanny ability to make her see red when no one else could. She’d half expected to feel some sort of satisfaction when he finally learned that she’d tossed out his treasures; instead she felt empty. Hollow. How could two people who had sworn to love each other come down to this? “Don’t let him get to you,” she warned herself, walking into the living room, where, despite the heat, she grabbed a long-handled barbecue lighter and started the fire.

  Flames immediately crackled and rose, consuming the newspaper and kindling she’d stacked earlier. She’d always kept logs in the grate, ready to light in case there was a sudden power loss, but tonight was different. She had a ritual she’d planned long before Luke’s unexpected call. Though it was still sweltering outside, she had some trash to burn.

  From the shelf near the stone fireplace, she pulled out her wedding album. Upon her friend Alicia’s advice, she’d kept the photographic record of her big day for a year after the divorce, but now it was time to do the nasty and final deed. Luke’s call had only reinforced her original plan.

  She opened the leather-bound cover and her heart nose-dived as she stared at the first picture.

  There they were, the newly wedded couple, preserved for all eternity under slick plastic. The bride and groom. Luke with his athletic good looks, twinkling blue eyes, and near-brilliant smile, one arm looped around Abby, who was nearly a foot shorter than he, her untamed red-blond hair framing a small heart-shaped face, her smile genuine, her eyes shining with hope for the future.

  “Save me,” Abby muttered, yanking the picture from its encasement and tossing it into the fire. As she slowly sipped wine from her cup, her thumb ached, its throbbing measuring out her heartbeats. She watched the edges of the paper bake and turn brown before curling and snapping into flame. The smiling, happy couple was quickly consumed by fire, literally going up in smoke. “Until death do us part,” she mocked. “Yeah, right.”

  She glanced down at the album again. The next picture was of the family. A group shot. She with her father and sister; he with both proud parents and his two, shorter, not-as-successful, nor-as-handsome, brothers, Adam and Lex. His sister,
Anna, and her husband were also in the picture.

  “No time for nostalgia,” she said as Ansel trotted into the room and hopped onto the sofa. She tossed the picture onto the logs. Eager flames found the new dry fuel and the page quickly curled and burned.

  Another sip of wine and the next picture, this one of Luke alone, standing tall and proud in his black tuxedo. He was good-looking; she’d give him that. Frowning, she realized she’d loved him once, but it seemed a lifetime ago. He’d been a newscaster in Seattle, his popularity on the rise. He’d come into her little studio for a new head shot.

  The attraction had been immediate. He’d joked and she’d been irreverent, not impressed that he was somewhat of a local celebrity. It had been her feigned disinterest that had intrigued him.

  Only later, six months after their initial meeting, after he’d proposed and she’d accepted, did she learn the reason he’d shown up at her photography studio. He’d gotten her name from a coworker, an assistant producer, her sister, Zoey. No one had mentioned that they’d been lovers. Oh no. That had slipped out later, nearly a month after the nuptials—the nuptials where Zoey had caught Abby’s bouquet. Abby had first learned of their affair in the bedroom no less, when Luke had uttered the wrong name. Though both Luke and Zoey had sworn the affair was over long before the wedding, Abby had never trusted either of them about that particular bit of shared history.

  “Isn’t that just perfect,” she said now to Ansel. He climbed onto the back of the little couch and settled onto the afghan her grandmother had made. Yawning, he showed his thin teeth, and Abby quickly stripped the rest of the photographs from their jackets. One by one, she tossed the pictures into the fire, watched them curl, smoke, and burn.

  “Ashes to ashes, dust to dust,” she muttered as the fire began to die. Finishing her wine, she silently vowed that tonight her life was going to change forever.

  Little did she know how right-on her words would be.

  He slipped between the boards of the broken fence and stared up at the edifice where it had all happened so long ago. A surge of power sizzled through his bloodstream as he stepped through the overgrown bushes. Moist spiderwebs pressed against his face. He inhaled the humid, dank scent of earth and decay.

  Insects thrummed and chirped, causing the night to feel alive. The wan light from a descending moon washed over the landscape of broken bricks, dry, chipped fountains, and overgrown lawns.

  Where once there had been lush, clipped hedges and clear ponds covered with water lilies, there now was only ruin and disrepair. The ornate red brick building with its gargoyles on the downspouts and windows was now crumbling and dark, a desiccated skeleton of a once great lady.

  He closed his eyes for a second, remembering the sights and smells of the hospital with its grand facade and filthy, wicked secrets. Prayers had been whispered, screams stifled, a place where God and Satan met.

  Home.

  Opening his eyes, he walked swiftly along a weed-choked path that was, no doubt, long forgotten.

  But not by him.

  Twenty years was a generation.

  Twenty years was a lifetime.

  Twenty years was a sentence.

  And twenty years was long enough to forget.

  Now, it was time to remember.

  From his pocket he withdrew a ring of keys and quickly walked to a back service door. One key slid into the rusted old lock and turned. Easily. He stepped inside and, using a small penlight, illuminated his way. He was getting used to it again, had returned nearly two months earlier. It had taken that long to establish himself, to prepare.

  Silently he crept through a hallway to a locked door leading to the basement, but he passed it and turned right, walking two steps up to the old kitchen with its rusting industrial sinks and massive, blackened and ruined stove. Over the cracked tiles, he made his way through a large dining hall and then into the old foyer at the base of the stairs where a grandfather’s clock had once ticked off the seconds of his life.

  It was dark inside, his penlight giving off poor illumination, but in the past few weeks he’d reacquainted himself with the dark, musty corridors, the warped wooden floors, the cracked and boarded-over windows. Quickly he hurried up the stairs, his footsteps light, his breathing quick as he reached the landing where the old stained glass window was miraculously still intact. Shining his light on the colored glass for just a second, he felt a quiver of memory, and for the briefest of seconds imagined her dark silhouette backlit by the stained glass Madonna.

  He couldn’t linger. Had to keep moving. Swiftly, he turned and hurried up the final flight of stairs to the third floor.

  To her room.

  His throat closed and he felt a zing sizzle through his blood as quick shards of memory pierced his brain. He bit his lip as he remembered her lush auburn hair, those luminous golden eyes that would round so seductively when he surprised her, the slope of her cheeks and the curve of her neck that he so longed to kiss and bite.

  He remembered her breasts, large and firm, as they stretched the blouses she wore, straining the buttons, offering glimpses of rapturous cleavage. She wore slacks sometimes, but she had a skirt, in a color that reminded him of ripe peaches. Even now he recalled how the hem danced around her taut, muscular calves, hitting just below her knees, as she climbed the stairs.

  He felt himself harden at the thought of the curve of her legs, the sway of that gauzy fabric, the way she would look over her shoulder to see him watching her as she ascended the old staircase, the fingers of one hand trailing along the polished banister as the old clock tick, tick, ticked away his life.

  His lust had been powerful then.

  Pounding through his blood.

  Thundering in his brain.

  He’d never wanted any one thing the way he’d wanted Faith.

  He felt it again, that powerful ache that started between his legs and crawled steadily up his body. Beads of sweat emerged on his forehead and shoulders. The crotch of his pants was suddenly uncomfortable and tight.

  He pressed on, to the upper level, his heart racing.

  Room 307 was in the middle of the hallway, poised high over the turn of the circular drive, an intimate little space where his life had changed forever.

  Carefully and quietly, he unlocked the door. He slipped inside to stand in the very room where it had all happened.

  Starlight filtered through the window, adding an eerie cast to the familiar room. The heat of the day settled deep into the old crumbling bricks of a building that, in its century-long lifetime, had been the stage for many uses. Some had been good, others had been inherently and undeniably evil.

  Not that long ago…

  Closing his eyes and concentrating, he conjured up the sounds that had echoed through the corridors, the rattle of carts, scrape of slippers, the desperate moans and cries of the tormented souls who had unwillingly inhabited Our Lady of Virtues Hospital. Those noises had been muted by the chant of prayers and echoing chimes of the clock.

  But Faith had been here. Beautiful Faith. Frightened Faith. Trembling Faith.

  Again his memories assailed him.

  Sharp.

  Precise.

  Not dulled by the passage of two decades.

  In intricate detail, he recalled the scent of her skin, the naughty playfulness of her smile, the sweet, dark rumble of her voice, and the sexy way she walked, her buttocks shifting beneath her clothes.

  His jaw tightened. The ache within him heated his blood, stirring old desires, pounding at his temples.

  He shouldn’t have wanted her.

  It had been a sin.

  He shouldn’t have kissed her.

  It had been a sin.

  He shouldn’t have pulled her shirt down to expose her bare breasts.

  It had been a sin.

  He shouldn’t have lain with her, his muscles soaked in sweat, her hands gripping his shoulders as she’d cried out in pleasure and pain.

  It had been heaven.

  A
nd hell.

  Now, his fists balled at the agony of it all. To have wanted her so badly, so achingly, to have tasted the salt upon her skin, to have buried himself deep into the moist heat of her and then to have all that sweet, sweet paradise wrenched away so violently, had been excruciating. His teeth gnashed to the point his jaw ached.

  He walked across the room, his hands at his sides, the tips of his gloved fingers rubbing anxiously together. Faith. Oh, Faith. You shall be avenged.

  Carefully, almost reverently, he ran his fingers along the swollen wood casing of the window and looked at the spot where her bed had been. He remembered how this small room had smelled faintly of lilacs and roses, how sunshine had streamed through the tall, arched window where gauzy curtains often fluttered in the warm Louisiana breeze.

  Now, the small space was bare.

  He ran his penlight over the rusted grooves where the metal castings of the bed had dug into the floor. Tiny brittle carcasses and droppings of dead insects littered the floor or were caught in ancient webs. Dust covered every surface and the paint around the windows and baseboards had peeled. The floral wallpaper had faded and begun to curl away from the walls, deep brown stains running from the ceiling and down the separating seams.

  So much pain. So much fear. Still lingering. His lip curled as he sensed silent recriminations where vile acts had occurred between these four walls. So many wrongs had taken place here, so many evil deeds.

  Anger, deep and dark, stole through his veins.

  Finally, he could right all the wrongs.

  Take his own revenge.

  And it would happen.

  Starting tonight.

  CHAPTER 2

  Abby pushed the speed limit. She was running late and trying to make up time as she drove into the city.

  When the going gets tough, the tough get going.

  Jacques Chastain’s personal credo ran through her head as the windshield wipers scraped rain from the windshield of her Honda. She turned on her headlights to cut through the sheets of water and the darkness of the storm.

  She had tried to adopt her father’s attitude, just as Zoey had, but the truth of the matter was she’d just never been as strong as her father or older sister…Again, she was more like her mother, not only in looks but in temperament.