The Stable Affair

by Jessica Andersen

  “Uncle Danny? What did Sarah mean about Mommy?” Ellie was too confused to cry and looked to her uncle for an explanation.

  As he watched Almost Noble disappear in the distance, Dante searched for the words to make Ellie understand part of what had happened without her hating Sarah.

  “Do you remember what I told you about how your Mom died?”

  Ellie nodded and Tilda shifted a step closer to hear the story. “You said somebody at the hospital made a mistake and she died.” The child pouted. “I hate that hospital.”

  “I do too, Sweetie.”

  Ellie wasn’t ready to be distracted. “So?”

  “Well, Sarah used to work at that hospital and she knew your mother there.”

  “Did they like each other?”

  That wasn’t the question Dante had expected, but he’d learned over the last few months that kids don’t always follow predictable patterns. “Yes Ellie, they liked each other a lot.” The child smiled. “But when your Mommy died, some of the people at the hospital said it was Sarah’s fault.”

  Ellie’s sweet grin turned to a scowl. “They must’ve been lying.”

  How clear the truth was to a six year old. “Yeah. They were. But I didn’t know that at first, so I made friends with Sarah and she told me about the bad men who lied.”

  “So why is Sarah mad at you if you’re friends?” Susan’s death was far enough in the past for Ellie to focus on her immediate worry: whether her uncle and Sarah were going to make up.

  “Because I didn’t tell her that was why I wanted to be her friend. I pretended that I just needed her help learning about the horses and didn’t tell her who your mom was. She found out today when she saw that picture and she’s pretty mad.”

  “You lied to Sarah?” Ellie was horrified. “Mommy always said that lying is the worst thing you can do.”

  “I had to, honey. I didn’t know who the bad people were at first. I couldn’t tell Sarah until I knew.”

  “Did you tell her right away once you found out?”

  “No honey, I didn’t.” Dante could see the distrust building in Ellie’s eyes and hoped that the child wasn’t coming to realize that Sarah had a hand in taking her Mommy away. If, God willing, he managed to win Sarah back, he wanted the three of them to become a family. “You like Sarah, don’t you sweetie?”

  “Yes I do, and my mommy did, too. Don’t you?”

  Dante noticed that Bob and Tilda still stood at his side, awaiting his answer. “I love her as much as I love you, Ellie.”

  “Then why did you lie to her?”

  Dante began to understand that the distrust in Ellie’s eyes wasn’t aimed at Sarah, it was directed at him. “I did it for your mommy, Ellie. I miss her so much.”

  Ellie nodded. “I miss her too, Uncle Danny, but she’s my guardian angel now. She tells me what’s right and what’s wrong and what you did was wrong.” She paused. “Mommy would not be happy with you.”

  There was a pile of printouts stacked neatly on The Doctor’s desk when he arrived in the morning, just as there was every day. He thrived on routine. Since there had been no phone calls from his staff the previous night to indicate a problem, his thumbing through the pages was only habit really—until he reached the access log.

  “Fontaine!” The foot that had been casually crossed over his knee came to the ground with a jarring thud. “Impossible!”

  He jabbed a button on the phone and bellowed into the handset. “Get Rumney in here right now… I don’t care, just get him!” While he waited for his employee, Seville prowled around his office trying to figure out what had happened.

  “Yes, sir?” A squat, bald man let himself through the heavy door and closed it for privacy. His thick neck was partially disguised by the loose polo shirt he wore, and his small ears were pressed against his skull like those of a sea lion.

  The Doctor stopped pacing and glared at Rumney. “They were in here last night! You people are so stupid you can’t even keep a horse trainer, a broken-down cop and a butterfly photographer under control. Christ, I’m not even sure why I pay you, I could do a better job myself with only my ninety-year old grandmother for help.”

  Rumney was deliberate but not slow. “Sarah Taylor and the men were here last night? How’d they get in?”

  Seville gestured angrily at the stack of printouts. “She must’ve had a duplicate card from Fontaine from when they were going together. Either that or Jay’s risen from the dead to take his revenge on me.”

  “Why didn’t the computer guys on the night shift catch the access? That’s one of the red-flagged accounts, isn’t it?”

  Seville’s stomach turned as he realized why the computer people hadn’t caught the access. He’d fired them. “That’s not important right now. What’s important is that Sarah and her little friends were in this office last night.”

  Rumney shrugged. “Everything in here’s clean. You’ve got all the other stuff in the back, right? They didn’t get in there, did they?”

  “I can’t see how they could have. Sarah has no idea the back room exists. Fontaine didn’t even know about it, so how could she?” Seville’s eyes went to the bookcase next to the wet bar and he froze. “Oh, Christ.”

  “What?”

  The Doctor walked to the bookcase, his eyes locked on a volume that lay on its side. Its cloth cover was frayed with time and use. “Darwin’s Origin of Species,” he said reverently. “A first edition.” He picked the book up and stared at it.

  “So?”

  Seville turned back to the bald man, a glimmer of fear and anger kindling in the back of his eyes. “It always falls over when the wall slides. It was in its proper place when I left last night. At least I think it was.” He walked to his desk and tripped the mechanism. The bookcase slid into the wet bar to reveal the hidden room beyond. All appeared as it should.

  The men moved into the little space and looked but could find nothing out of place. “Are you sure that book wasn’t there last night? It’s hard to believe Sarah Taylor or her little pretty boy just stumbled on the button for the trick door. Maybe it really was Fontaine’s ghost come back to get you. Come to think of it, a ghost wouldn’t have needed the door, would it?”

  “Perhaps the book was here from yesterday after all.” The Doctor was preparing to close the door again when a sliver of paper under one filing cabinet caught his attention. “What’s that under there?”

  Obediently, Rumney crouched and pried the paper out from under the furniture. It proved to be a photograph, and the bald man froze when he turned it over and looked at the picture. “Uh-oh. You’re not going to like this one bit, Doctor.”

  “What is it?” Seville’s voice was icy calm suddenly, as if he had already reached a decision.

  Rumney turned the photo to face his employer. It was an autopsy photograph of a young woman with dark hair. “St. Pierre. They must’ve been in her file. We’re in trouble now, Doctor.”

  “No. Not necessarily. We simply have to minimize our risks and do some damage control. I will destroy the contents of this room and shut down the second lab for right now. They’ve been making such progress that I hesitate to do so, but they can ramp their field testing back up once you’ve done your part.”

  Rumney nodded, knowing well what his task would be. “The photographer too or just the woman?”

  The doctor thought a moment, tapered fingers pressed against his thin lips. “Both I think, and the ex-cop too if possible. It’s time for Sarah Taylor and her little friends to disappear.”

  The rattling stock trailer pulled into Pruitt Farm after dark and the driver shook her head in distrust. “There he is, Sarah, just like you said he’d be. Want me to run him over for you?”

  Sarah laughed dutifully. “No thanks, Joan. I may as well talk to him now while I’m too tired to be polite.”

  “Men are pigs.” Joan took another look at the specimen standing in the driveway and in fairness had to add, “Damn sexy pigs sometimes, but pigs nonetheless.�
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  The truck pulled to a halt outside the shed row and before Sarah jumped down, she turned to Joan. “Thank you for helping me today. I know we’ve never been that close, but if you ever need anything…”

  Joan shook her head again. “Think nothing of it, I was glad to help.” Actually, she’d been terrified to find her half-naked neighbor standing at the top of a ragged waterfall looking down at the jutting black rocks while her horse grazed nearby. It had taken Joan nearly an hour to talk the shivering girl down off the precipice and into her little house where she gave Sarah a shower, clothes, and a sympathetic ear. The horse had been the easier of the two—he’d been pathetically grateful for a stall and a mash. “But I’ll still be happy to hit him with the trailer for you. We could say it was an accident.”

  Sarah laughed again and this time she sounded more like she meant it. “Maybe some other time.”

  They unloaded the tired gray horse and Dante melted into the shadows as Sarah thanked Joan again and the rig pulled away. Joan beeped at the house on her way out, a prearranged signal that let Tilda know the prodigal daughter had returned.

  Sarah put Noble in his stall, checked that he had water and hay, and left the shipping bandages on his legs to support tendons that had worked hard in her mad flight from the farm.

  “Where the hell have you been? I’ve been worried sick over you all day.”

  She hadn’t heard Dante come up behind her as usual, but was too tired to be startled. Somehow of all the things she expected to hear when she saw him, concern had been last on the list and it almost undid her. She kept her back to him and pretended to adjust Noble’s bandages. “It’s none of your business where I was and Tilda knew I was fine. You could’ve asked her.”

  Dante ground his teeth. Sarah’s aunt must’ve let him wander around the farm all day in an agony of worry as punishment for hurting her beloved niece. “I was very worried,” he repeated.

  Sarah shrugged. “Well, I’m fine. You don’t have to be concerned that I jumped to my death over you, although that might be what you wanted. An eye for an eye, is that it? My death for Susan’s? I’m sorry I didn’t oblige you.” But it had been close. When Noble had been unable to rouse Sarah from her grim fascination with the swirling eddies at the bottom of the waterfall he had gone to the farmhouse and whinnied until Joan had come.

  “No, that’s not what I wanted.” But Dante had promised himself that he would be completely honest with her from now on. “Well, maybe it was at first.” Her back was still turned and he was having trouble speaking to the overlarge T-shirt that she’d obviously borrowed from someone. “Sarah?”

  The sound of her name spoken in that honey-rough voice almost brought Sarah to her knees in shame and sorrow. “Yes?”

  “We need to talk. Actually I need to talk and you need to listen. I know you’ve had a terrible day and I can wait until tomorrow if you promise that you’ll see me then.”

  Sarah shook her head. “I won’t see you tomorrow. Say what you have to say.”

  Dante had hoped for a more congenial environment, one where she’d have to listen rather than finding another small chore to do while he followed her and talked. “Let’s go down by that willow tree and sit.”

  The late summer night was still and humid and Sarah brought a bottle of fly spray with them to combat the vigorous mosquitoes down by the pond. She and Dante sat on an old horse blanket amongst the roots of the weeping willow and she leaned back against the familiar trunk and waited for him to speak.

  When he didn’t, she shifted restlessly. “Well? Say what you’ve got to say and let’s be done with it. If you brought me down here thinking the atmosphere would be conducive to necking, think again. That boat sailed without you.”

  “Let’s just sit for a moment. I brought you down here to talk, but you don’t seem inclined to listen yet.” Dante folded his arms as well and leaned back against the tree, hoping that the quiet creak of the frogs and the occasional snort from the horses on night turnout would calm her.

  “I’m here, aren’t I?”

  He remained silent and she did as well and after a few minutes passed, Dante could sense her relaxing. She uncrossed her arms and took a deep breath as if letting go some of the tension she’d carried all day.

  “I almost jumped today, Dante. I rode Noble all the way to Mill Falls and when I looked down at the rocks at the bottom, it seemed such a small thing to do after all that I’ve been through.”

  Dante felt his heart constrict in his chest. “Why didn’t you jump?”

  “I’m too much of a coward, I guess.”

  “Nope. You’re the bravest person I know. If you can gallop a half-broke horse over a huge vertical then you could’ve made yourself jump off a cliff. Why didn’t you do it?”

  Sarah shrugged. “It sounds silly, but I couldn’t do it in front of Noble. I know he’s just a horse and all, but we’ve been through a lot together and it seemed disloyal.” And she’d been a little afraid he’d follow her. “I couldn’t do that to Tilda and Bob, they’d be crushed. And Ellie might blame herself for finding that picture—I couldn’t have that.” She paused. “And no matter how much I might’ve hated you right then, I couldn’t do that to you.”

  Did that mean she didn’t hate him now? “Did you think about how you felt when you found out that Susan had committed suicide?”

  Sarah nodded. “Yeah. I thought about it. And I thought about how you must’ve felt and how you would’ve wanted to blame somebody, anybody. But that didn’t give you the right to do what you did. You used me.”

  “Yes I did, but…”

  “It was pretty easy, wasn’t it?” Somewhere between the waterfall and the farm she had started to see all the compliments and all the little funny exchanges as one big plot to woo her. She had been pathetically grateful that such an attractive man had been interested in her. Who had she been kidding? “Flash a couple of dimples in my direction and I’m yours. You even used Ellie, didn’t you? You brought her here and played the pitiful single father so I’d fall right in line and play mommy, didn’t you? That’s disgusting.”

  Dante stayed silent until she ran down again and all they heard was the sounds of the night: the chirp of crickets, an occasional whinny, and the splash of creatures in the dark. “Are you ready to listen to me now?”

  “Yes, but…”

  “No buts. Just listen. Do you remember how you felt when Susan died? How about when Jay was killed? Well, add those together and maybe you’re approaching how I felt. My baby sister got a botched test result and killed herself. How do you think that felt?”

  Sarah remained silent and they both stared out across the dark water while the moon came back out from behind a small cloud. Dante spoke reflectively, “You know about Huntington’s in an abstract way, the way you can read about a glacier and know that it must be cold. Susan and I know it the way the natives know that glacier. We know what it’s like when your father is violent one day and weepily disorganized the next. We remember watching him crumble and die, knowing we couldn’t do anything to stop it. I can’t imagine what it must have been like for her to hear that she was going to relive that herself. I couldn’t see Susan killing herself, but I thought maybe she’d seen that as the better of two bad options. Maybe she thought this way would be easier for Ellie, easier for me.”

  Sarah felt the need to defend her friend. “But she might not have killed herself. We don’t know that yet, do we?”

  Dante smiled into the darkness. He liked the word ‘we’ in that context. “No, we don’t. But don’t you see that we wouldn’t have gotten this far if I hadn’t done what I did? If I hadn’t forced myself into your life and made you look back at Susan’s death?”

  “Maybe. But why didn’t you just tell me who you were once we started to see that there was something more going on than just one woman’s suicide? Did you still think I was a part of it?”

  “No, I was pretty sure you were innocent after my room was searched in Newcastle.”r />
  His room, too? He hadn’t told her that before. “But that was in May. In case you hadn’t noticed, it’s August. Are you trying to tell me that there was no opportunity this whole summer to tell me? Or were you too busy trying to get me into bed to be truthful?”

  That hit close enough to make him squirm. “I tried to tell you, many times. Over and over again I opened my mouth to say, ‘I’m Susan’s brother. Ellie is her child. We need your help,’ but I always found an excuse not to.”

  “Why?” Sarah folded her arms again as if warding off an inner chill. The crickets and the frogs had fallen silent.

  “Because I was terrified of what you would do.”

  Sarah laughed shortly. “What did you think I was going to do, ride you down with a horse?” She sobered, thinking she had almost done so that morning.

  “No. I was afraid you’d break my heart. I love you, Sarah Taylor. I’ve loved you so much I can barely breathe, and I was afraid that you’d take that away from me when you found out I’d lied. Please don’t do that.”

  Sarah stared at her hands. They were furred with silver blue moonlight and looked as if they might belong to somebody else. “What else can I do? You lied to me. It might have started out for a good reason, but in the end you just didn’t tell me.” She rose to her feet, leaving the bug spray and blanket behind. “I can forgive you for lying because I loved Susan, too, and I can understand part of what you did.”

  Dante felt that he wasn’t truly forgiven yet. “But…”

  “But I can’t forgive you for letting me love you knowing that it was based on a lie. I want you off this property and I don’t want to see you hanging around here any more. You can drop Ellie off to ride her pony unless you think it would be easier to move them to another farm, but I don’t want you here. I’m sorry.”

  She left him there and walked to the dark farmhouse, knowing that Tilda and Bob were probably watching from one of the windows.

  She couldn’t break yet; she had to tell her aunt about the problems at the lab so they could find a way to protect themselves from The Doctor’s men. Maybe she should move away for good and tell Gordon she was out of it, that she would never bother him again. He’d leave her alone then, wouldn’t he?