by Nora Roberts
Wade tossed the mail and the apple aside. “Why don’t I?”
5
It was a pitiful thing, Wade supposed, for a man to be hung up on one woman all of his life. More than pitiful when that woman insisted on flitting in and out of that life like a careless butterfly. And the man let her.
Each time she came back, he told himself he wouldn’t play the game. And each time she hooked him in until he was too deep into the pot to fold his hand and walk away.
He’d been the first man to have her. He had no hope of being the last.
He was no more able to resist her now than he’d been over ten years before. That bright summer night she’d climbed in his window, and into his bed while he slept. He could still remember what it had been like, to wake with that sleek, hot body sliding over his, that hungry mouth smothering him, devouring him, clamping over him until he was rock hard and randy.
She was fifteen years old, he thought now, and she’d taken him with the quick, heartless efficiency of a fifty-dollar whore. And she’d been a virgin.
That, she’d told him, had been the point. She didn’t want to be a virgin, and she’d decided to get rid of the burden with as little fuss as possible, and with someone she knew, liked, and trusted.
Simple as that.
For Faith it had always been simple. But for Wade, that summer night, weeks before he’d gone back to college, had layered on the first of many complicated tiers that made up his relationship with Faith Lavelle.
They’d had sex as often as they could manage that summer. In the backseat of his car, late at night when his parents slept down the hall, in the middle of the day when his mother sat on the veranda gossiping with friends. Faith was always willing, eager, ready. She’d been a young man’s wet dream sprung to life.
And had become Wade’s obsession.
He’d been sure she’d wait for him.
In less than two years, while he’d been studying fiercely and planning for the future, their future, she’d run off with Bobby Lee. Wade had gotten drunk and stayed drunk for a week.
She’d come back, of course. To Progress, and eventually to him. With no apology, no tearful plea for forgiveness.
That was the pattern of their relationship. He detested her for it, nearly as much as he detested himself.
“So …” Faith climbed over him, tugged a cigarette from the pack on the nightstand, and straddling him, lighted it. “Tell me about Tory.”
“When did you start smoking again?”
“Today.” She smiled, leaning down to give him a little nip on the chin. “Don’t give me grief on it, Wade. Everyone’s entitled to a vice.”
“Which one have you missed?”
She laughed, but there was an edge to it, an edge in her eyes. “If you don’t try them out, how do you know which ones fit? Now, come on, baby, tell me about Tory. I’m just dying to know everything.”
“There’s nothing to know. She’s back.”
Faith let out a huge sigh. “Men are such irritating creatures. What does she look like? How does she act? What’s she up to?”
“She looks grown-up, and acts very much the same. She’s up to opening a gift shop on Market Street.” At Faith’s cool stare, he shrugged. “Tired. She looks tired, maybe a little too thin, like someone who hasn’t been altogether well just lately. But there’s a sheen on her, the kind you get from city living. As for what she’s up to, I can’t say. Why don’t you ask her?”
She trailed her hand over his shoulder. He had such wonderful shoulders. “She’s not likely to tell me. Never liked me.”
“That’s not true, Faith.”
“I oughta know.” Impatient, she rolled off him, off the bed, graceful and contrary as a cat, drawing deep on her cigarette while she paced. The moonlight shimmered over her white skin, lending it a faint and exotic blue cast. He could see fading smudges on her, the shadows of bruises.
She’d wanted it rough.
“Always staring at me with those spooky eyes, hardly saying boo, except to Hope. She always had plenty to say to Hope. The two of them were all the time whispering together. What’s she want to move back into the old Marsh House for? What’s she thinking?”
“I imagine she’s thinking it’d be nice to have a familiar roof over her head.” He rose, quietly closing the curtains before one of the neighbors saw her.
“You know what went on under that roof as well as I do.” Faith turned back, her eyes glittering when Wade switched the bedside light on low. “What kind of person goes back to a place where they were trapped? Maybe she’s as crazy as people used to say.”
“She’s not crazy.” Weary now, Wade tugged on his jeans. “She’s lonely. Sometimes lonely people come back home, because there’s no place else.”
That hit a little too close to the heart. She turned her eyes away from his, tapped out her cigarette. “Sometimes home’s the loneliest place of all.”
He touched her hair, just a light stroke. It made her yearn to burrow in, cling tight. Deliberately she lifted her head, smiled brilliantly. “Why are we talking about Tory Bodeen, anyway? Let’s fix ourselves some supper, and eat in bed.” Slowly, her eyes on his, she drew down the zipper of his jeans. “I always have such an appetite when I’m with you.”
Later, he woke in the dark. She was gone. She never stayed, never slept with him in the most simple way. There were times Wade wondered if she slept at all, or if that internal engine of hers forever ran, fueled on nerves, and on needs that were never quite met.
It was his curse, he supposed, to love a woman who seemed incapable of returning genuine feelings. He should cut her out of his life. It was the sane thing to do. She’d only slice him open again, and every time she did, it took longer to heal. Sooner or later there’d be nothing left of his heart but scar tissue, and he’d have no one but himself to blame.
He felt the anger building, a black heat that bubbled in the blood. Leaving the lights off, he dressed in the dark. His fury needed a target before it turned inward and imploded.
It would have been smarter, more comfortable, God knew more sensible, to have booked a room in a hotel for the night. It would have been a simple matter to have accepted her uncle’s hospitality and slept in one of the overly fussy, decorated-to-death bedrooms Boots kept ready in the big house.
As a child she’d often dreamed of sleeping in that perfect house on that perfect street where she’d imagined everything smelled of perfume and polish.
Instead, Tory spread a blanket on the bare floor and lay awake in the dark.
Pride, stubbornness, a need to prove herself? She wasn’t sure of her own motives for spending her first night in Progress in the empty house of her childhood. But she’d made her bed, so to speak, and was determined to lie in it.
In the morning there would be a great deal to do. Already that evening she’d gone over her lists and made a dozen more. She needed to buy a bed, and a phone. New towels, a shower curtain. She needed a lamp and a table to put it on.
Camping out wasn’t quite the adventure it used to be, and having simple tastes and needs didn’t mean she didn’t require basic comforts.
Lying there in the dark she used her lists, in much the same way she had used the sheer white wall. Each item mentally ticked off was another brick set in place to block out images and keep herself centered in the now.
She’d go to the market and stock the kitchen. If she let that go too long she’d fall back into the habit of skipping meals again. When she neglected her body, it was more difficult to control her mind.
She’d go to the bank, open accounts, personal and business. A trip to the Progress Weekly was in order. She’d already designed her ad.
Most of all, while she set up the store in the next weeks, she needed to be visible. She’d work on being friendly, personable. Normal.
It would take time to weather the expected whispers, the questions, the stares. She was prepared for it. By the time she opened for business, people would be used to seeing he
r again. More, much more important, they would become used to seeing her as she wanted to be seen.
Gradually, she’d become a fixture in town. And then she would begin to explore. She would ask questions. She’d begin to look for the answers.
When she had them, she could say good-bye to Hope.
Closing her eyes, she listened to the night sounds, the chorus of peepers, so cheerfully monotonous, the sharp and jarring screech of an owl on the hunt, the soft groans of old wood settling, the occasional sly riveting of mice making themselves at home behind the wall.
She’d have to set traps, she thought sleepily. She was sorry for it, but she didn’t care to share her space with rodents. She’d put mothballs under the porches to discourage snakes.
It was mothballs, wasn’t it? It had been so long since she’d lived in the country. You put out mothballs for snakes and hung soap for deer and protected what was yours, even though it had been theirs first.
And if the rabbits came to nibble at the kitchen garden, you laid out pieces of hose so they thought it was the snakes you shooed away with the mothballs. Else Daddy’d come home and shoot them with his .22. You’d have to eat them for supper, even though you got sick after because you could see how cute they were twitching their long ears. You had to eat what God provided or pay the price. Getting sick was better than getting a beating.
No, don’t think about that, she ordered herself, and shifted on the hard floor. No one was going to make her eat what she didn’t want to eat, not ever again. No one was going to raise a strap to her or a fist.
She was in charge now.
She dreamed of sitting on the soft ground by a fire that snapped and smoked and burned the marshmallow she held into the flame on a stick. She liked it burnt so that the outside was black and crackled over the gooey white center. Lifting it out, she blew on the fire that came with it.
She singed the roof of her mouth, but that was all part of the ritual. The quick pain, then the contrast of crisp and sweet sugar.
“Might as well eat charcoal,” Hope said, turning her own candy so that it bubbled gold. “Now, this is a perfectly toasted marshmallow.”
“I like them my way.” To prove it, Tory got another from the bag and stabbed it onto the pointy end of her stick.
“Like Lilah says, ‘To each his own, said the lady as she kissed the cow.’” Grinning, Hope nibbled delicately on her marshmallow. “I’m glad you came back, Tory.”
“I always wanted to. I guess maybe I was afraid. I guess I still am.”
“But you’re here. You came, just like you were supposed to.”
“I didn’t come that night.” Tory looked away from the fire, into the eyes of childhood.
“I guess you weren’t supposed to.”
“I promised I would. Ten thirty-five. Then I didn’t. I didn’t even try.”
“You have to try now, ‘cause there were more. And there’ll still be more until you stop it.”
The weight was lowering again so that her eight-year-old chest strained under it. “What do you mean, more?”
“More like me. Just like me.” Solemn blue eyes, deep as pools, looked through the smoke and into Tory’s. “You have to do what you’re supposed to do, Tory. You have to be careful and you have to be smart. Victoria Bodeen, girl spy.”
“Hope, I’m not a girl anymore.”
“That’s why it’s time.” The fire climbed higher, grew brighter. The deep blue eyes captured glints of it, specks of wild light. “You have to stop it.”
“How?”
But Hope shook her head and whispered, “Something’s in the dark.”
Tory’s eyes shot open. Her heart was thundering in her chest, and in her mouth was the taste of fear and burnt candy.
Something’s in the dark. She heard it, the echo of Hope’s voice, and the rustle, like a tail of the wind through the leaves, just outside her window.
She saw it, the faint shifting of the light as someone stepped into the path of the moon.
The child inside her wanted to curl up, to cover her face with her hands, to will herself invisible. She was alone. Defenseless.
Whoever was outside was watching, waiting. Even through the fear she could feel that. She struggled to blank her mind, to bring the face, the form, the name into it. But there was only the sheer glass wall of terror.
Not all the terror was hers.
They’re afraid, too, she realized. Afraid of me. Why?
Her hand trembled as she slowly reached out for the flashlight beside the blanket. The solid weight of it helped her beat back the worst of the fear. She would not lie helpless. She would defend herself, she would confront, she would take charge.
The child had been a victim. The woman wouldn’t be.
She swung up to her knees, flicked at the switch, fumbled, nearly screamed when the beam flashed on. She aimed it at the window like a weapon.
And there was nothing there but shadows and moon.
Her breath came in pants, but she got to her feet. She rushed to the door, slapped on the overhead lights. Whoever was outside could see her now. Let them look, she thought. Let them see she wouldn’t cower in the dark.
The beam of light bobbed as she hurried from the bedroom into the kitchen. Again, she switched on the overheads. Let them look, she thought again, and grabbed a carving knife out of the wooden block she’d unpacked. Let them look and see I’m not defenseless.
She’d locked the doors, a habit she’d developed in the city. But she was well aware how useless such a precaution was here. One good kick would spring the locks.
She stepped out of the light, into the shadows of the living room. With her back to the wall, she willed herself to regulate her breathing, until it began to come slow and quiet. She couldn’t see if her thoughts were tumbling, couldn’t concentrate if her blood was screaming.
For the first time in over four years she prepared to open herself to the gift she’d been cursed with at birth.
But lights stabbed through the front window and washed across the room. Her thoughts scattered wild as blown petals at the sound of a car driving fast up her lane.
Tires sent the thin layer of gravel spitting, an impatient, demanding sound. Her breath came harsh again as she forced herself to the door. She jabbed the flashlight in the pocket of the sweats she’d slept in, gripped the knife firmly in one hand and turned the lock.
The car lights clicked off as the driver yanked open the door. “What do you want?” Snatching the flashlight again, Tory shoved at the switch. “What are you doing here?”
“Just visiting an old friend.”
Tory aimed the beam at the figure that stepped out of the car. Her knees went weak, her skin clammy. “Hope.” She choked out the name as the knife slipped from her fingers and clattered to the floor. “Oh God.”
Another dream. Another episode. Or maybe it was just madness. Maybe it always had been.
She stepped up to the porch. Moonlight shimmered onto her hair, into her eyes. The screen door creaked as she opened it. “You look like you’ve seen a ghost, or were expecting one.” She bent down, picked up the knife. With one elegant finger she tapped the tip of the blade.
“But I’m real enough.” So saying she held up the finger, and the tiny drop of blood gleamed. “It’s Faith,” she added, and simply walked in. “I saw your light as I was driving by.”
“Faith?” There was a rush like the sea in her head. The joy in it, that frantic leap of it, ebbed as she said the name again. “Faith.”
“That’s right. Got anything to drink around here?” She wandered into the kitchen.
As if she owned the place, Tory thought, then reminded herself that the Lavelles did indeed own the place. She ran a hand over her face, into her hair. Then bracing herself, followed Faith into the kitchen.
“I have some iced tea.”
“I meant something with a little more punch.”
“No, I’m sorry. I don’t. I’m not exactly set up for company as yet.”
“So I see.” Intrigued, Faith did a turn around the kitchen, laying the knife on the counter as she passed. “A little more spartan than I expected. Even for you.”
This was how Hope would have looked if she’d lived. Tory couldn’t get the thought out of her head. She would have looked just like this, deep blue eyes against clear white skin, hair the color of corn silk. Slim and beautiful. And alive.
“I don’t need much.”
“That was always the difference, one of them, anyway, between us. You didn’t need much. I needed everything.”
“Did you ever get it?”
Faith arched a brow, then only smiled and leaned back on the counter. “Oh, I’m still collecting. How does it feel to be back?”
“I haven’t been back long enough to know.”
“Long enough to come to the door with a kitchen knife in your hand when someone pays a call.”
“I’m not used to calls at three in the morning.”
“I had a late date. I’m between husbands at the moment. You never did marry, did you?”
“No.”
“I swear I heard something about you being engaged at one time. I guess it didn’t work out.”
The sense of failure, despair, betrayal wanted to come. “No, it didn’t work out. I take it your marriages—two of them, weren’t there?—didn’t work out, either.”
Faith smiled, and this time meant it. She preferred an even match. “Grew into your teeth, I see.”
“I don’t want to take a bite out of you, Faith. And it seems pointless for you to take one out of me after all this time. I lost her, too.”
“She was my sister. You never could remember that.”
“She was your sister. She was my only friend.”
Something tried to stir inside her, but Faith blocked it off. “You could have made new friends.”
“You’re right. There’s nothing I can say to make up for it, to change things, to bring her back. Nothing I can say, nothing I can do.”
“Then why come back?”
“They never let me say good-bye.”