The Truth Hurts

  “What’s the matter, Daddy? Is it a whale, like Arthur said?”

  “No, honey, it’s a boat.”

  Between us, the children relax. It’s just a boat. A boat is no big deal to them. They’re children of south Florida, as accustomed to seeing boats as other children are to seeing cars and trucks.

  The sound seems to be coming straight at us.

  In the northern sky, a thunderstorm is moving into the Miami area north and east of us. The storm’s too far away for us to hear thunder, but we can see lightning illuminating clouds in a spectacular light show that sets the children to oohing and aahing. Their father remains standing, continuing to keep a lookout over the water, listening to the approaching motor.

  As the boat nears us, I stand up, too.

  “Let’s go in, Franklin.”

  Both children object with loud no’s.

  “Shh!” Their father puts out a hand toward them to quiet them, and then to me, as if to say, Not yet. Wait.

  “Franklin, I really think we need to go in.”

  And still he stands there, staring into the distance, listening.

  “Come on, kids.” I hold down my hands to them, wanting to grab them and run to safety with them. Wild images race through my mind: bombs thrown, explosions, shots fired, bodies falling, children crying, blood flowing. Arthur obediently places one of his small hands into mine, but Diana looks up at her father and sees that he isn’t going anywhere. She mulishly refuses my hand. “Come on, Diana!”

  She folds her little arms across her chest, hiding her hands.

  “Franklin, please!”

  And then, just a moment before I detect it, Franklin hears the boat engine turn away from our direction. I see the change, in a relaxation of his shoulders. Only then do I actually hear the shift of sound.

  “They’ve turned north,” he observes.

  We form a tableau for a moment, all four of us quite still, even the children, waiting to be sure that what he said is true.

  “Yes,” I agree, but I continue to help Arthur get to his bare feet anyway.

  “Why are your hands all shaky, M’re?”

  “The better to tickle you with.” I make good on the fib. When he squeals as loud as a piglet at play, his sister hisses at Arthur and me, “Shh! Dad said to be quiet!”

  Meanwhile, the sound of the boat engine vanishes into the distance. It wasn’t anything to do with us. I feel as relieved as if a hurricane had veered off course and passed us by. But now I also have to admit something to myself: after this, I won’t be able to pretend, not even to myself, that I’m not frightened.

  “Why is Marie afraid of boats, Daddy?”

  “She’s not, Pumpkin.” Franklin reaches down a hand to Diana, and she lets him pull her up to her feet. “It’s just time for all of us to go to bed, that’s all.” With his free hand, he briefly spans the back of my neck, touching me reassuringly.

  Franklin carries his tired boy and Diana hangs on to his waistband, sleepily trailing behind. Having refused my offer of a hand to hold, she now clings closer and closer to her daddy’s legs, until he reaches around and scoots her forward so that he can guide her back home without tripping on her, or making her stumble.

  I trail behind, carrying the empty popcorn bowl, eating the old maids, and feeling plenty sorry for myself.

  As we walk back “home,” I admire the picture they form together. I feel terrible for bringing a snake into their precious lives. And I’m determined not to be a jerk about Diana’s rejection of me. The child is naturally and admirably loyal to her mother, and she’s scared of losing her daddy to a woman she hardly knows and doesn’t even like. God knows I don’t blame her—I lost my daddy, too—but it still hurts a little, every time she does it.

  Whenever Franklin brings the children and me together, he gives Diana a little private talking-to beforehand, coaching her to give me a chance, asking her—telling her—to be polite, at least. It hasn’t worked yet, although I shudder to think how much more rude the child might be if he didn’t do that much. I have asked Franklin not to apologize for his daughter’s behavior and not to punish her for disliking me. “Patience,” I throw back at him, when he’s embarrassed or worried about his daughter’s bad manners. “Time.”

  “Why do you think Arthur has accepted me so quickly?” I asked Franklin one time. He grinned a little shamefacedly and admitted, “Arthur’s a guy. He likes pretty women and cool cars.”

  I had to laugh at that. “Like father, like son?”

  “And,” Franklin had added, “Arthur’s got an easygoing nature. Diana’s more high-strung. She gets mad and then she wants to get even, just like her mother.”

  Like her mother, my eye.

  The child’s a born prosecutor.

  Like father, like daughter, too.

  • • •

  When Franklin hoists the kids to his shoulders to carry them upstairs to bed, he mouths at me, “I’ll be back.”

  After half an hour goes by, I realize that I’m not hearing any more noise from upstairs. I climb up to investigate and find them all asleep together in a pile on the master bed. The book that Franklin was reading to them— Goodnight Moon —lays open in his relaxed right hand.

  I tiptoe out of the room, feeling oddly reassured.

  If he can fall asleep like that, maybe the situation’s not so scary after all.

  13

  Marie

  I take a shower and wash my hair. With the taste of spearmint toothpaste in my mouth, and with my hair still wet and fragrant from a balsam shampoo I found in the bathroom, I crawl into one of the twin beds in the room assigned to me. But after a few minutes of staring like an insomniac at the ceiling, while listening to the crash of surf on rocks, I get out of bed again and turn on my computer, connecting the modem to a phone plug in the wall. Within seconds I have an E-mail connection.

  Surprise.

  There it is: another E-mail from him.

  Dear Marie,

  I don’t have to ask what you’re doing, do I?

  You’re in Key Largo with Franklin, Diana, and Arthur.

  Reading that, I literally gasp. He knows.

  They’re sweet children, aren’t they, even if the little girl can’t adjust to your presence in their lives. Don’t worry, she’ll probably come around. If she lives long enough to do it. But then, that’s in your control. Her safety, Imean. Of more immediate concern to youis whether or not you’lllive long enough for it to make any difference.

  That doesn’t concern me.

  I have read the assignment you sent to me.

  Bravo! Good for you for following my instructions by dismissing your assistant. That was fast, appropriate, work. I also like the honest way in which you depict your terror. And hers. I can tell you’re very realistic, far more so than Ms. Dancer is, apparently, but then you have the advantage of more maturity and a more difficult life from which to draw strength to face hard choices directly. You don’t hide from the truth or from what is difficult, do you, Marie? That’s excellent. You will need that courage as we work together.

  Not that your writing in this draft is perfect; it’s sloppy in places.

  I understand you had to hurry, however, so I’ll make allowances for first-draft mistakes. Don’t worry about your professional reputation. You may be assured that I’ll edit and rewrite everything later—afterward—when I have the luxury of time that you no longer have. But, really, apart from those quibbles, and for the purposes of a first draft, your work is remarkably adequate. You’re a consummate professional, aren’t you? Quite the little pro.

  But our relationship is not all-business, Marie.

  Not at all. It’s personal, too.

  For heaven’s sake, what could possibly be any more intimate than the relationship between a murder victim and the one who kills her? So why do you say nothing directly to me? No greeting? No fond message for your writing partner? No comments, no questions?

  We can’t have that! No, that won’t do.
br />   So, don’t be shy. Talk to me, Marie!

  In addition, here’s your next official assignment, due by noon tomorrow.

  Chapter 2: How was your drive down to the Keys? Did anything unusual happen to you? If so, write about it. Also, write an account of telling your lover about me. Where were you when you told Franklin? What was his reaction when you informed him that his children are at risk from me? Don’t leave them out! I’ll be displeased if you leave them out. Let us get to know them, Marie! Don’t waste toomany pages on them, butdo tell us enough to give our readers a chill at the thought of any harm befalling little Diana or Arthur. You might mention their soft skin, their wide and innocent eyes, their touching trust in their father. Of course, that’s just a suggestion. You know how to do it better than I. You’re so good at putting halos over victims, so adept at making them seem all-good and the killers seem all-bad. We want ourpotential victims to appear sympathetic to our readers, too, just as you’ve done in your other books. And don’t hesitate to make me seem as villainous as possible! What a terrible person I must be, to even think of hurting a single hair of their adorable heads, yes?

  Blah, blah, blah, you know how to do it, you’ve done it often enough.

  Finish this second assignment, dear, and submit it to me at the new E-mail address above. You didn’t think I’d keep using the same one, did you? There are a million different places to send E-mail these days, my darling, and even more ways to do it anonymously, so don’t even try to predict where your next E-mail is coming from. It could be Alaska, it might be Bucharest, it could be the E-mail café on Bahia Boulevard, or even your neighborhood library, the little one on S. E. Twenty-first Street.

  I would taunt you to “catch me if you can,” but you can’t. I won’t waste our time—your very limited time—with such childishness. It will be so much better for you if you simply relax and do as you’re told. Some things get easier with practice, Marie.

  Are we having fun yet?

  I am, how about you?

  No? Well, perhaps you’ll have fun with the little surprises I have arranged for you this weekend, Marie. You may have already enjoyed one in your car. Don’t worry, they’re nonlethal. For now. You have followed my instructions thus far, so there is no reason for me to harm Deborah or any of the DeWeeses. Or you. But I believe you will find my little surprises convincing, anyway.

  I can’t wait to hear what you think of them.

  Yours truly,

  Paulie Barnes

  “Hi, Marie.”

  I nearly jump out of my skin at the sound of a man’s voice, whispering near my face, and the whisper of a man’s cologne filling the air around me. I whirl around, expecting I don’t know what, but what I find there is Franklin, bending down to read the E-mail over my shoulder.

  “I didn’t mean to startle you.”

  “Jesus! You scared me to death!” I fling my arms around his neck and hang on to him, pressing my head against his. He puts his arms around me, pulls me down off the chair and onto my knees so that we’re kneeling nose to nose, pelvis to pelvis.

  “I’m sorry,” he whispers between kisses.

  He tastes deliciously, mysteriously like strawberries.

  When we pull apart enough to speak, he says, “I can’t believe I fell asleep. Goodnight, Moon does that to me every time. Are you all right?”

  “Oh, sure. No problem.”

  He laughs a little, quietly. “You’re saying that was a dumb question?”

  “Prosecutors,” I remind him, “never ask questions to which they don’t already know the answers.”

  “That’s only in court.”

  I rub my forehead against his, like a cat. “I wanted to scream at you when you wouldn’t leave the dock.”

  “I figured. But I didn’t want us to panic.”

  “Yeah, well, we could all have been calm and dead.”

  He puts one hand on the back of my head and pushes my face toward his and kisses me again, and this time it’s long enough and hard enough to make me forget I was ever annoyed at him for any reason whatsoever. Oh, I do adore the taste of strawberries. When we part this time, I sigh. “Are you trying to suck the tension right out of me?”

  “Is it working?”

  I see deep concern in his eyes, which are a lovely light brown. He can communicate all sorts of things to juries with those eyes, and he’s certainly expressing some of them to me now.

  “I’ll say. I’m a deflated balloon. But we really need to talk, Franklin.”

  “I know.” He tugs at a lock of my hair, points silently toward the first floor, and starts to pull me to my feet along with him. “Let’s go downstairs so we don’t wake the kids. I’m sorry about Dia—”

  I place my fingers over his mouth. “Shh. It’s okay.”

  “No, it’s not, but I don’t know what else to do about it. I just don’t know what her mother filled her head with before this weekend.”

  I feel a little sick at the thought. “What do you think she said about me?”

  He shakes his head, either because he doesn’t know, or because he doesn’t want to tell me. “Probably nothing worse than what she says about me.”

  What Truly DeWeese says is that their father abandoned them in order to have an affair with me. No part of that sentence is true. He initiated the divorce, but only after three years of failed marital counseling, and even then only with Truly’s consent, and he didn’t even meet me until after it was final. But they are both lawyers, and so the money and custody battles were meaner than they might have been between normal people. I try to remember that this can’t possibly be the only story in the world with only one side to it. Truly’s got her side, too, and maybe it’s more understandable than her ex-husband makes it sound when he complains so bitterly to me.

  “I’ll be down in a minute,” I tell him.

  After he leaves my bedroom, I grab my canvas briefcase.

  Thank God. Now he’ll take over.

  I leave the computer on, but switch off the room lights, so the entire second floor is dark except for the “night-light” of my screen. Then I make my way down the carpeted steps in the dark, holding on to the briefcase with one hand, feeling my way down the wall with the tips of my fingers with the other, testing my way with my toes before committing my feet to the descent. From the steps, I can see out through the windows that wrap around the living room—out to the water gleaming darkly under that amazing moon. There’s one wide band of light, like a spotlight on the water, waiting for someone to walk on it.

  When I step onto the first floor carpet, he is there in the dark, startling me again, making me cry, “Oh!” on a soft, involuntary breath. Franklin takes my briefcase, lays it on a nearby chair. Then he takes my hand, now free, and tugs at me to follow him.

  “I think you enjoy scaring me,” I accuse him in a whisper.

  He doesn’t defend himself but, instead, leads me silently into an empty bedroom on the first floor.

  I see a queen-size bed, made up, empty, waiting.

  Without speaking, as if we are one body with one mind, we turn down the quilt, the blanket, the sheet. With eager fingers we undress each other, letting our clothes fall into a pile on the floor. My palms slide around his waist to his back as his hands cup my hips. His skin is smooth and cool to my touch, his lips are warm.

  He lays me down on my back on the bed.

  “The children?” I whisper as he lowers himself toward me.

  “They won’t wake up until morning.”

  “Such good children,” I murmur, reaching for him.

  Afterward, Franklin pulls me close so that we are pressed together again, skin to skin, heart to heart.

  “Don’t you dare go back to sleep,” I warn him.

  “Not a chance,” he says, managing to sound relaxed, amused, and determined all at once. “Let’s put on some coffee. And I’m hungry as hell, are you?”

  “God, yes.”

  “Then we’ll figure out what to do about the son of a bit
ch.”

  “Ah. I do love the sound of the word we.”

  I reach for one of his hands. “Listen. I’m incredibly sorry to bring this down on your family. I can’t even begin to tell you how sorry I am.”

  “It’s not your fault, Marie.”

  “Thanks. In spite of everything, I have to tell you that I’m really glad that I’m not alone tonight.”

  Franklin strokes the side of my face.

  “You’re not alone.”

  “Not even in the shower?”

  “Especially not in the shower.”

  14

  Marie

  Some time later, I’m propped against the kitchen counter, dressed in the same clothes I shed a little while earlier in the bedroom. Franklin has slipped back into his shorts and a T-shirt. We’re barefoot and slightly damp. I watch as he measures grounds into an automatic drip coffeemaker that the condo management has supplied, and I can almost smell the finished brew. We’ve already started on cheese and crackers. This is a pretty nice place, I realize with a feeling of some surprise as I come awake to my surroundings at last. There’s nothing like a little hot sex followed by a hot shower to relax a girl.

  “Do you take the threats seriously, Franklin?”

  “Are you kidding?” He gives me an incredulous look. “You and my kids have been threatened—of course, I take it seriously.” Then he feigns a tone of nonchalance. “Somebody wants to kill you, Marie? He wants to hurt my kids? No shit, what’s for dinner?”

  The pretense vanishes and I see in his eyes how he really feels.

  “I’m taking it seriously, too,” I tell him, “partly because Erin McDermit and Aileen Rasmussen seem to think I should.”

  “You talked to them already?” His tone is sharp.