The Escape Artist

  "That was half your life ago," he said quietly. "This is totally different." He leaned back against the headboard. "I know I'm being selfish," he said. "My motivation's simple: I want you home with me again. Grace keeps talking about fixing me up with other women. I'm not interested. I want my buddy back."

  She forgave him for suggesting she might not be doing a good job with Cody. She knew he didn't mean it. "I want you back too," she said, "but I'm not willing to give up my son, not even for you."

  "All right." Linc shook his head as if clearing it of the conversation. "Let's not talk about it anymore tonight. We don't have that much time together. I don't want it to spend it arguing with you."

  "Me neither."

  "Come here, then." He reached his hand toward her as he stretched out on the bed, and she lay down next to him.

  She rested her hand lightly on his side, and for a moment, neither of them said a word.

  "I'm afraid to kiss you or touch you," she said finally.

  "Why is that?" He was on his side, facing her, stroking her cheek.

  "Because I'm afraid if I do, I won't be able to leave you again. Deprive myself of you again."

  "That's what I'm counting on."

  She drew away from him. "Don't," she said.

  "Don't what?"

  "Count on that."

  "All right. I'm sorry." He leaned forward to kiss her. His lips were so warm, so familiar. She drew out the kiss, making it last. She wanted this entire night to last. She would not let herself think about tomorrow, or the day after that.

  Linc sat up. He straddled her, then leaned forward to kiss her again and she felt her hunger for him mounting. It had been too long. She reached for his belt buckle, but he gently moved her hands to the bed and began undoing the buttons on her shirt.

  She rested her hands on his denim-covered thighs, her eyes closed, as he slipped her shirt off her shoulders. He unfastened her bra and lowered his head to her breasts, and when he slipped his legs between hers, she felt the heat of his erection pressing against her through their jeans. She arched her back as he caressed her breasts with his lips, as he drew her nipple into his mouth. A moan escaped her own lips, and she had to fight the urge to rip his clothes from his back.

  Slow down, she told herself.

  The memory of tonight might have to last her an eternity. Linc seemed to feel the same way, because he lingered over every inch of her body, touching her softly with his hands and his mouth, and it was a long time before she finally gained permission to undress him, and longer still until he was inside her. Even then, his movements were slow and measured, as they'd always been. He knew how to bring her to the brink and hold her there until she begged him for release.

  She succeeded in blocking thoughts of the future from her mind until that instant, when all the longing she'd felt for him this past month and a half exploded inside her. Despite the exquisite pleasure of that moment, she found herself sobbing as the sensations faded.

  "Don't think," he said, holding her tightly. "Don't think about anything."

  But she couldn't put an end to her heaving sobs. She held on to him, her fingers clutching his skin, and he rolled onto his side and pulled her into his arms, kissing her eyes, her cheeks, as he waited for her tears to stop. For a while, it seemed as though they never would.

  She must have tired herself out, though, because when next she opened her eyes, the room felt different, and she knew there'd been a shift in time. She must have fallen asleep.

  "Are you awake?" Linc asked.

  "Yes. How long was I out?"

  "Half an hour or so. You okay?"

  "Yes." She rolled onto her back and looked at the dimly lit ceiling, trying to sort reality from her dreams.

  "I took your photo albums from your apartment," Linc said. "I didn't want Jim to have them."

  "Thank you." She'd thought about those albums, about how carelessly they would have been treated in Jim's hands.

  "I loved seeing the few remaining sketches you did of my old band," Linc said. "Haven't seen them in a while."

  She remembered the summer nights she'd spent in his garage, sitting on the lumpy old sofa, sketching the band while Linc and his friends played music and joked with one another. She'd treasured the warmth and security she felt in his house, and she'd hated going home, never knowing if her father would be a mean drunk or a weepy drunk that night.

  "Your house was my oasis," she said.

  "I know."

  Unbidden, the memory of the night her father was killed slipped into her head. Linc was quiet, and she wondered if his thoughts were on that grisly night as well.

  "Sometimes I think about what happened that night," she said,

  "and I realize I've told the story the way you said it happened for so long that I've almost come to believe it's the truth." It wasn't that far from the truth, anyway. Just a little twisting, a little distortion of the facts. She had even managed to pass a lie detector test corroborating Linc's account of her father's death.

  "Well, it's all behind us."

  "I just regret that you had to do time."

  "Shh. Water under the bridge."

  She pulled closer to him. She didn't want to fall asleep again and waste this time with him, but she was sinking down. Dreamlike images floated in and out of her head, and she comforted herself with the fact that, at least for tonight, she would be sleeping with the man she loved.

  –28–

  Linc woke up to find her still asleep. She looked very young, like the delicate little girl he'd loved as a sister before he'd loved her as anything else. The reddish-brown hair didn't fit her, and he wondered how anyone could look at her and not realize she had made herself into someone different. He brushed the hair back from her forehead, searching for the pale roots, but she had taken care not to let them show. Leaning forward, he pressed his lips to her hairline. She didn't wake up, and he liked to think that she was sleeping happily and securely in his company, just as Cody was sleeping soundly in his crib.

  He got out of bed, used the bathroom, then opened the drapes and looked out at a still quiet, still dark Philadelphia.

  She'd brought up the night her father was killed, opening a whole world of memories for him. And they all began with him posing for her in her bedroom.

  "Fully clothed," she'd assured him. Right, Susanna. That had lasted about a week. Then she'd upped the ante. She'd gotten those books on figure drawing from the library, and she wanted to draw "more of him," she said. Would he please take off his clothes?

  "You wouldn't have to be totally nude," she assured him. "You could leave on your…you know." She glanced at his crotch, giving him an instant erection.

  He posed as she wanted him to, although he knew he was asking for trouble. He could still picture her bedroom clearly. It was quite small, a bed in one corner, a desk against the wall next to it. She'd lock the bedroom door with the big key that hung from the doorknob, then he'd sit or lie on the bed, while she'd sit in the desk chair, her feet propped up on the bed, the sketchbook on her lap. Carefully taped to the walls were her dozens of sketches of his band. Some were of the instruments, some of the guys themselves. Most of the drawings were in black and white, but some were in colored pencil. She was very proud of all of them. He didn't blame her. They were excellent, and she was about to enter them in a statewide competition, along with the work in one of several sketch books resting on her desk. She'd already won the local competition with what she called "The Garage Band Series." Winning the state would guarantee her scholarships for college. It was almost all she talked about.

  She wore a serious look on her face as she sketched him, and he felt guilty for the prurient thoughts running through his twenty-two-year-old male mind. But sitting there would have been intolerably boring if it were not for those fantasies; they kept him returning to her bedroom time and time again.

  One evening, she set down her sketch pad with a sigh and stepped over to the bed. Linc was sitting up, his back agains
t the wall. Susanna sat down and leaned forward, slipping the tips of her fingers under the waistband of his boxers, tugging them gently. He grabbed her hands in surprise.

  "Don't freak out," she said. "I just want to draw all of you. Let me, please?"

  He was uncertain how to react. "Not a good idea," he said.

  She looked disappointed. "I'm so frustrated," she said. "I mean, when have you ever seen figure drawings of people wearing boxer shorts?"

  She had a point. He stood up and dropped his shorts before he had a chance to change his mind. If she wondered why his penis didn't look like those flaccid organs in her figure drawing book, she didn't say.

  She returned to her seat and started drawing again, a small crease of concentration between her eyebrows, and he wondered how any living, breathing man could tolerate being scrutinized that way without going out of his mind.

  She had not been drawing long when she looked up from her pad. There was a small smile on her lips, and she seemed to be struggling to keep it in check.

  "I think I want you to make love to me," she said, and he knew her serious artist routine was not all it was cracked up to be. He could see his own longing mirrored in the pale blue of her eyes.

  But he shook his head. "You're too young," he said. "I could get arrested for statutory rape."

  She set the sketch pad on her desk and moved over to the bed. She kept her eyes on his as she pulled her T-shirt over her head, and without a moment's hesitation, she unfastened her bra. Her breasts were small, high, and pink nippled, and her long hair brushed over them, caught on them, hid them and exposed them and drove him crazy as she leaned toward him.

  He remembered the conversation he'd had with her a few short weeks earlier about birth control. All those paternal-type warnings he'd issued. And now he was going to make love to her without any protection at all. There was no way he could stop himself. Her lips were on his; she lifted his hands to her breasts. He'd never before thought of her as aggressive, yet there was no other word to describe her behavior. He guessed she'd seen the uncertainty in his eyes and wasn't about to let it get in her way.

  She was a virgin. She had not been lying about that. She was so tight and small around his fingers that he couldn't imagine how he would get inside her. He could tell that it hurt her when he tried, but still she drew him in.

  "I love you," she said, and he offered the words back to her without hesitation, and with all his heart.

  Linc rested his hands on Cody's crib as he stared out the window. Dawn light was beginning to filter into the room, and he turned to look at Susanna, still asleep beneath the multicolored bedspread. He would not remind her of that long ago night. He knew she still held the memory inside her, and yet they never spoke of it, never even acknowledged that it had happened. When he told Peggy that he and Susanna hadn't been lovers until after Tyler was born, he nearly believed it. He and Susanna had turned their backs on that memory because of what happened afterward. They could not recall one incident without the other.

  They were so lost in each other that night that they didn't hear Susanna's father come home. Not until he began pounding on her bedroom door did they realize he was there. Linc and Susanna flew out of the bed and began pulling on their clothes.

  Susanna was reaching for one of her shoes when she suddenly froze.

  "Oh my God," she said. She was staring at the keyhole and she quickly leaped out of its range. "He saw us!" she whispered, and Linc felt as though he had rocks where his stomach should have been.

  "Open this damn door!" her father snarled.

  White-faced, Susanna began trying to open the window, but it was stubborn and she could only lift it two or three inches.

  "What are you doing?" Linc asked her.

  "We've got to get out of here," she said. "He'll kill us."

  For a moment, he thought she was right. Escape seemed like the only solution. But he knew better. Maybe they could escape for a few hours or a day, but eventually they would have to face Susanna's father and his wrath.

  Linc grabbed her hands. "You can't always run away from your problems, Susanna," he said. He had to speak loudly so she could hear him over the racket her father was making at the door. "You'll only be putting off the inevitable. We have to face him. I'll tell him it was my fault, that I coerced you. You're only sixteen. I should have known better."

  She looked unconvinced. There was terror in her eyes. She looked like a trapped animal, frightened for her life.

  "I won't let him hurt you," he promised.

  He stepped away from her and put his head close to the door. "I'm opening the door, Mr. Wood," he said. "Stop pounding."

  There was sudden silence from the other side of the door, giving Linc a false sense of safety. He reached for the key and slipped it into the lock, thinking about what he would say when he was face to face with Paul Wood. He could hardly deny what had occurred. But he didn't have a chance to speak before Susanna's father burst into the room. He grabbed his daughter by the hair, and yanked her back and forth like a rag doll, cursing at her, spitting his foul, whiskey breath into the air. Susanna screamed with pain.

  "Who brought you up to be a whore?" her father boomed at her. "Who raised you to be a slut?"

  "Leave her alone!" Linc lunged at him, and Susanna's father let go of her to take a punch at him. Paul Wood was very drunk though, and his fists were easy to dodge.

  "You fucking son of a bitch!" Susanna's father managed to land a punch on Linc's shoulder. "How long you been screwing my daughter? I'm going to break your skull!" He raised his fist to strike again, but then suddenly spotted the open sketchbook on Susanna's desk. "What the hell's this?"

  Susanna tried to grab the sketchbook, but her father was too fast for her.

  "Is this the kind of drawing you've been doing?" He pulled out the top sketch of Linc and tore it in half. But there were plenty more below that one, and he started shredding them in a fury. "Sixteen years old and a whore already." He poked one finger in the air toward Linc. "You're going to jail, boy," he said. "And your girlfriend there's going to reform school, if I decide to let her live."

  Linc spotted the other sketch books on Susanna's desk. Her Garage Band series was in them, and he didn't know whether to try to grab them or not. Maybe it would be better not to draw attention to them. Just then, he heard footsteps in the hall.

  "What the hell's going on in here?" Susanna's mother appeared at the door to the bedroom. She was every bit as drunk as her husband, if not more so. "Paul! What are you doing to her pictures?" She reached for the sketchbook in his hands. "You shouldn't—"

  Paul Wood knocked his wife off her feet with one sweep of his arm and she landed like an old, limp washrag against the radiator. Her eyes were closed, her head on the floor, and Linc was not certain she was still alive. Nor did he care.

  He pulled Susanna behind him, trying to get her out of harm's way. She was trembling with fear, but when her father reached for one of the band pictures on the wall, she darted out from Linc's protection.

  "Please, Daddy, please not those!"

  Her father yanked her away from the wall with another jerk of her hair. In an instant the picture was down and torn, and he was on to the next.

  "They're for her competition!" Linc grabbed the much bigger man by the shoulder, but although he was drunk and his aim was lousy, Paul Wood was strong as an ox and numbed by booze. He seemed to feel no pain.

  Susanna frantically tried to pull the other drawings from the wall in an effort to save them, but her father tore them from her arms and held them in front of her eyes as he shredded them. Helpless tears ran down Susanna's cheeks. She looked as if she were watching her children drown. She clawed at her father's hands, but nothing could stop the big man's destruction. When he'd finished with the drawings on the wall, he reached for her other sketch books, and that's when Susanna ducked beneath his arm and ran out of the room.

  Linc was glad to see her go. He almost called after her, "Run! You were right.
Just run!" But he was too busy dodging her father's wild punches to say a word.

  In a few seconds, though, Susanna was back. She stood in the doorway to her bedroom, red-faced.

  "Dad!" she called out. "Get away from Linc or I'll shoot!"

  Only then did Linc see the gun she had in her hands. She held it out in front of her, and it bounced and shivered in her trembling grasp.

  Paul Wood looked surprised for only a second before lunging at his daughter.

  "Gimme that!" He plowed into her, catching her in the rib cage with his shoulder, and the gun flew from her hands across the room. In an instant, Linc had grabbed it. Before he had a moment to think, he aimed it at her father's back and pulled the trigger.

  The next few minutes seemed to happen in slow motion. Paul Wood flung his arms out to his sides. His blood sprayed across his daughter's white T-shirt, and as he started to fall toward her, Susanna took one small, calculated step to the side to let him land hard on the floor, face first.

  Susanna stared at Linc across the broad expanse of her father's body. Blood was pooling on the floor around her bare feet, and with his stomach churning, Linc realized the bullet must have pierced the man's heart. He felt his own blood drain from his face, and he sat down on the edge of Susanna's bed, the gun lying flat on his palms.

  He looked at Susanna, and when he spoke, he was surprised by the calmness in his voice. "It happened like this," he said. "Your father came home drunk. He started beating you and your mother up, for no good reason. I knew where he kept his gun…in his night table, right?" He remembered her telling him about the time she saw her father kill the squirrel.

  Susanna nodded.

  "I got the gun. He threw your mother down and then went for you, and that's when I killed him. I killed him to stop him from hurting you and your mother."

  "Yes," Susanna agreed. "That's what happened." She glanced at the shreds of paper at Linc's bare feet. There was no expression whatsoever on her face. "What about the drawings?" she asked.