“Stop it. I doubt one night at a party caused this.”
“I’m being punished. It’s my punishment, and I deserve it.”
“What’re you babbling on about? Nobody deserves it. Tragic things happen, and that’s the way it goes. It’s all part of life. The baby’ll be okay.”
“God’s punishing me.”
“He’s punishing all of us. Look at Ethiopia. You think they deserve what’s happening over there? He gets off on these little power trips, reminding us who’s in charge.”
Kara was shaking her head. “I don’t believe that. He’s not that way.”
“Oh, yeah? But he can punish you personally. He’s that way, huh?”
“Darling, we’re not even married yet.”
“Testing the waters first. Nothing wrong with that. Isn’t God into love?”
“But we’re engaged.”
“Exactly. Practically the same thing. Not like a signature on a piece of paper proves anything. If the Big Guy’s all-knowing, then he knows we’re about to be hitched. He’s cool with that. Shoot, he made us this way. What does he expect?”
“He expects us to be faithful.”
Marsh watched the flicker of the television. “Listen, I know I can be a flirt—a big flirt, I guess—but that’s just my style, the way I am. Doesn’t mean that I’m going to—”
“It was me.”
Marsh’s hair-stroking hand stopped.
Kara pressed her head into his chest as though hoping for absolution from the guilt that weighed upon her. “At the party …” She paused, seeming to brace for a reaction. Her words continued, hot and moist against his shirt. “You were out back, you might remember, on that porch swing with that old girlfriend of yours.”
“Cynthia?”
“What were you two doing? Sharing a joint? I could see you through that round window over the sink, and I was getting jealous. Furious, actually, wondering why my fiancé would be getting so cozy with her while engaged to me. I grabbed a beer and guzzled it down. Found another one and another one. Hoped you’d come looking for me and take me home, but the next thing I knew there was this guy talking to me, an old friend—well, not really a friend but a friend of my parents—and he was trying to kiss me, and he was nudging me toward the bedroom, and I could hardly even comprehend what was going on, and I felt as though I was making you pay for your escapades on the swing and … Darling, please, I’m so sorry. I never meant for it to happen. I wasn’t thinking clearly, and now our baby’s being punished for it.”
“Our baby? How do you know it’s not his?”
“No, Marsh.” She peered up through hair wet with tears. “It’s ours.”
Marsh’s heart felt sucked dry from his chest. He mouthed, “How do you know?”
“I … I know. He didn’t … well, we didn’t—”
“This is so much bull! You can’t know.”
Her body was tense, holding back her sobs. He still had one arm around her waist, but the other had slipped to the sofa. Deadened. Like a severed appendage. He stared at it in shock, his vision moving down his bulging veins and curled forearm hair to the sofa’s fabric pattern. Orange and brown stripes and frazzled beige knots swam into focus, then every thread, every popcorn seed and potato chip crumb, every pen cap and copper penny. He was holding his breath.
Be prepared. His father’s motto. Somehow he managed to ask, “Who was it?”
Her crying came to a stop.
“Who? Do I know him?”
“Darling, I don’t think it—”
“Tell me!” He gripped her shoulders and forced her to face him.
“That hurts. You have to promise you won’t go after him. You can’t tell anyone.”
“Now you’re protecting him.”
“No. I simply can’t go through this, darling. Please,” she said. “Promise me.”
“Fine, I promise. There, is that what you want to hear? Now tell me who it is!” The very thought ate at him, and although he feared the answer, he thought it would be better to know than to wonder and suspect.
She said, “John.”
“John? My running buddy, John Garvey?”
“No. Goodness, no. He’d never take advantage of me like that.”
“John who?”
“Braddock.”
Marsh tried to keep his voice from shaking. “The cop.”
“He was off-duty, said he didn’t mean for it to turn into anything, that he really needed to talk to me, to keep an eye on things—”
“On my fiancée?”
“He’d also had a few drinks. Wasn’t quite himself.”
“And now you’re defending him? Defending the father of your—”
“He’s not the father!” Kara stood to face the couch; tears rolled from the corner of her eyes. She looked very small and fragile with her arms limp at her sides and the left collar of her blouse folded underneath.
“I’m not raising someone else’s kid,” Marsh informed her.
“Marsh, please. How can you be so cold?”
“You can go see the doctor, right? I’m sure he’ll support any decision you make. Especially in light of the baby’s blood problems.”
“That is not an option I’ll consider. This is my baby … our baby.”
“Hmm. Wish I could believe that.”
Kara, grabbing her purse and stomping out the door, left Marsh’s ears ringing with a list of epithets that he had never heard her use before.
During the following week, Marsh held the magnifying glass to her guilt in hopes of diverting the focus from himself; instead, the glass became a mirror, reflecting back his own litany of improprieties. Rather than face his faults, he dug his inner well a bit deeper and tossed down the shaft her sins and his own.
So long—kersplassh—farewell.
They loved each other, didn’t they? They’d move on. And after a small ceremony in the shadow of Addison Ridge, they stepped into the future determined to make this marriage work. Following his parents’ example after losing their firstborn son, Marsh Addison buried himself in the work of the vineyard and squeezed solace from the grapes of success. Hour upon hour. His father’s legacy.
Until recent years this remedy had served its purpose.
“Marshall, I’m so sorry. You didn’t need to share all that. I’ll keep it to myself. You know I will. Attorney-client confidentiality. Not to pour salt on old wounds, but do you think she could be … that she’s with someone else? We can’t ignore that possibility. It’s happened before, as you’ve just shared. Have there been suspicious signs?”
Marsh pushed himself from the dresser. “No, Casey. Definitely not.”
“How can you be certain?”
“Neither one of us has done anything like that since college. It was different then, I guess. Plus, she was drinking socially quite a bit, part of what got her in trouble. Until recently she’d hardly even touch our own wine. That’s how much she distrusts alcohol.”
“Until recently?”
“Hey, it’s all behind us. I’ve let it go.”
“Have you?” Casey let her purse slip to the floor. “I’m sure you know that I find you attractive. You’re a handsome man, confident, and you know what you want.”
“The only way to be.”
“And I like it. Quite a turnon. There’re a lot of men out there who’ll barely look me in the eye. Friends tell me it’s my attitude, that I should back off a little, let the men take the lead. Well, that’d be fine—if they’d take it. No más, señor. I’m tired of that game. Most men act like they’ve never before seen a woman with legs.”
“Standard equipment, from what I hear.”
“Standard?” Casey slid one thigh over the other. “Or above average?”
Marsh let his eyes slide up her satiny calves. His throat turned dry, but he told himself he was within bounds. You can look. You just can’t touch. Wasn’t that the going code of morality? Married but not dead yet. Conscious of his limited apparel, he let his towel sli
p into his hand and drape over the front of his boxers.
“What’re you trying to say, Casey?”
“Do I need to spell it out?”
He said, “I’ve got things on my mind, all the stuff that’s gone on today. Can’t be staying up too late, not if I’m going to be mentally sharp.”
“That gives us a good hour or two.”
He glanced at his Bulgari on the nightstand.
“Marshall, I’m a working woman. If you think I have time for the emotional roller coaster of a relationship, you’re wrong. Two ex-husbands are baggage enough, capice? But I know the male routine, and I can live by those rules. No guilt, no commitment, no expectations. Fair enough?”
“What’s in it for me?”
“Wouldn’t you like to know.” Casey stretched out on the bed, arched her back. Her mascara accentuated her luminous green eyes. Outside the suite, wind and rain were punishing the building in frequent gusts.
He gripped the towel. “Let me think this through. I’m taking my shower first.”
“Don’t forget to splash on some of your cologne.”
“Hugo?”
“Smells so good. I’ll be putty in your hands.” As Casey rolled onto her stomach and propped elbows, her black heels fell to the carpet.
There was no emotion left. Numbness. Nothing more.
Kara drifted in and out of sleep, a rag doll tied to a chair. On occasion, stinging nettles would run down her legs and across her feet as blood circulated again. She’d stamp her feet with the inch or so provided by the rope strapped around her thighs and shins. Scuttling sounds moved in the blackness, and she knew that she would be terrified under normal circumstances. These were anything but.
Numb. Impervious. Damp and dirty and hollow.
She tried to ignore the cold. What if she froze to death down here? How long till someone found her? Entombed in her own beach house. In her husband’s wine cellar.
Marsh!
He might very well be blamed, she realized. The evidence would not look good.
Wherever he is, Lord, give him wisdom, give him strength. Don’t hold my mistakes against me. For my husband’s sake, answer my prayers.
Marsh locked the bathroom door behind him. Turned on the fan, the shower.
What was he thinking? A fling with his defense attorney? This would only complicate matters, providing a possible motive to go along with the existing questions. She was a good-looking woman, no doubt about it. She knew how he ticked, respected his work ethic. Sure, she’d hinted at things before, feeding a thought or two in his mind.
No more hints though. This was an in-your-face offer.
In the shower, he watched the steam billow. His face hovered in the hot cloud, removed from his body, cradled by the mist as though in a crystal ball. He ran a finger over a childhood scar on his chest where phantom pains still poked at him on occasion. His eyes stared, dead and unfeeling. He closed them, let water and shampoo run down his face as he ducked beneath the showerhead. What were emotions anyway?
Chemicals, plain and simple. Mixing, reacting. No harm in that.
Yet something restrained him from responding to the woman who was waiting.
Done rinsing, he found the soap on the ledge and fumbled with the hotel wrapper. He was scrubbing his arms when he saw—no, he felt the mist swirl in a black-and-white checkered vortex that began to suck him in.
He gasped as a specter in a low-cut dress joined him. Casey?
Confident face, green eyes, sly smile.
What the heck? I thought I locked that door.
“Hold on,” he said. “Be right out.”
“You want me to wait? Oh, but I want you now.”
“Don’t push me, okay? I don’t like this. This isn’t a good idea.”
Despite his protest, the face pressed through the mist, and its skin peeled away to reveal a cage of bone with gleaming emerald eyes. Hair, once a stylish brown, turned pale and dry as cut grass. Fingers, skeletal probes, linked around him and pulled him into an unearthly embrace.
“Come on,” said the specter. “It’ll be even better than you imagined.”
“No. I can’t do this.”
“Really now, Marshall”—the voice was scotch over ice, golden and potent and cold—”why resist the irresistible?”
Marsh met the hollow stare and, despite the malevolence, despite the skin-stripped skull, felt his temperature rise. The pearl necklace glowed. A slave to the prospect of pleasure, his body responded against his will.
“Don’t fight what you know you deserve,” the voice teased.
The promises of tanned curves and smooth skin danced in silhouette behind luminescent eyes. Raw arousal reared its head; the water played on his back, churning the steam and pressing him deeper into the hellish embrace. This creature was a representation of his own lurking lust. The battle of the flesh. Black-and-white swirls, writhing shapes … Illusion.
Stumbling from the shower, Marsh almost brought down the vinyl curtain. As he landed on the faux marble floor in a crouch, the fan overhead sucked tendrils of vapor from his skin, sapped composure from his thoughts.
Splash! Splash!
In the corner he saw Kara. She was huddled, tears falling from her cheeks and striking the marble with echoing force.
Splash! Splash!
“Kara? You’re alive.” Another illusion. He wouldn’t be fooled, not again.
“I tried to warn you, Marsh.”
“For heaven’s sake, not now, okay? Where have you been?”
“Marssshall.” The specter’s voice was a sedative, a siren song. “Why’d you let her in?”
Splash! Splash!
“Who in? Who’re you talking about?” Maybe Kara wasn’t an illusion.
“Her! Kara!” The specter jabbed an accusatory finger toward the corner, then stepped between husband and wife, long bones in nylons straddling Marsh, fingers beckoning. Avoiding the gem-cut eyes, Marsh set his jaw and took the offered hand so that the creature smiled with pleasure.
“Not so fast!” Marsh growled, grasping the necklace and wrenching it into a noose around the ghastly neck.
The creature froze. Hacked. Choked.
“Not this time.” Marsh spoke through gritted teeth. “Score one for me.”
The eyes burst into emerald flame, and the voice burned like alcohol in his face. “You’ll never win. You logical ones—ha!—you’re the easiest to fool. How can you defeat something that you don’t even believe exists?”
“Like this!”
With a yank on the noose of pearls, he tried to bring the creature down. His shoulders and chest strained until sweat broke through his pores, yet to no avail. The eyes taunted him; the hands pried him loose with supernatural strength.
“No!”
Kara was astride the bony back, tears streaking her cheeks. Her hands clawed at the dry hair, came away with clumps of dead grass. The specter collapsed to its knees and fell back onto Kara so that, in Marsh’s grasp, the twisted necklace ground into bone. He heard a snap. It wasn’t, however, the sound of victory; it was the sound of jewelry splitting apart at the clasp. Pearls slithered down the broken strand, rolled off bony shoulders, and dissolved into drops of sizzling acid.
Landing one by one on Kara’s chest.
“Aarhh! My … heart,” she groaned. She was pinned beneath the cadaverous being. “Marsh, why did you … Aarhh!”
He stretched out his hand to intercept the burning pearls and caught two in his palm. On his own skin, they had a numbing effect. His hand became a nerveless slab, an ice sculpture attached to an arm. The pearls ran in beads off the specter’s shoulders, and from the milky white curvature of each one, coy faces winked in Marsh’s direction. Faces from a pool of cyberimagery, harmless visual stimuli.
Hey, it wasn’t cheating to browse around on the computer. He was a man. Only natural.
But why the faces? Why now?
As the single remaining pearl landed on Kara’s heaving ribs, the specter cackled.
Then, in an instant, the being crumbled into a powdery silt, lingering midair before rotating up into the suction of the fan blades. The blades screeched, the motor seized, and the bathroom lights sparked in a meteoric shower of orange that faded into black.
“Kara?”
On hands and knees, Marsh searched the floor. Where was she? She was gone. He was alone in the darkness with the hiss of the shower, the screech of the fan, and the sounds of his wife’s pain still ringing in his ears.
God, forgive me. What’ve I done?
29
Hate Letters
The light went off. Josee’s eyes analyzed the darkness. The lamp was still at her back, the digital clock read a quarter to eleven, and the music had played itself out, leaving her with the sounds of fading thunder and the swoosh of cloth behind her.
“Who is that?” She whiplashed in the bed to face the intruder. “What’re you doing? Why’d you turn that off?”
“Shhh, it’s all right. Just me, babe.”
“Scooter, that’s not even funny. What’re you doing sneaking in here?” She reached for the switch, but a hand clamped over hers.
“Don’t do it,” he said. “It’s their fault. I don’t want you to see me.”
Josee wrested her hand from his and turned on the lamp despite his warning. Scooter’s face floated near hers, a visage of fear and conflicting emotion. “You scared the heck outta me,” she told him. She stood and wrapped the bedspread over her shoulders. Waiting by the door, with her back to the wall, she said, “Go back to bed, okay?”
“I’m afraid of what they’ll make me do.”
“They? What do they want you to do? Scoot, who’re you talking about?”
He lowered his eyes, took a step toward the hallway. His shoulders were quivering with immense struggle; his breath, cold and dank, lifted the tiny hairs on her arm. “They want to control me. Not just me. They also want—”
With a movement too quick to counter, Scooter pinned her arm to the wall and tugged at the lamp cord. The blackness left her momentarily blinded. Josee shoved back against him, but he evaded her, and without warning his mouth was pressed against hers, grinding, teeth colliding, freezing cold, before she wrenched her face from his and thrust a knee up between his legs.