by LK Rigel
He pushed her against the wall and kissed her. “Oh, Bonnie.” He squeezed her breast and thrust his tongue into her mouth. He tasted of beer.
“Wait a minute,” she said.
“Beautiful, beautiful Bonnie.” He kissed her again. “I’ve never been happy with Sara. I never wanted to marry her.”
“Bram…”
“I didn’t know what love was until I met you.”
This was what she wanted, wasn’t it? Then why did it feel so…so like not what she wanted?
“We’re going to be together, Bon. It was meant to be. And I’m going to get Turtledove Hill for you. I promise.”
“That doesn’t matter, Bram. None of that matters. All I want is you.” But the words sounded wrong before they were out of her mouth.
“Don’t say that.” He looked at her strangely. “Don’t sound like Sara. Don’t settle, Bon. You deserve the world. We can have it all.”
He tugged at her neckline, trying to pull her dress down to get at her breast.
“Don’t, Bram. Not here. Not now.” This was Amelia’s memorial. “All my clients are here.”
“Oh, come on.” Bram pushed her against the wall again and slobbered all over her neck. “I like a little danger.”
“I don’t.” Danger was never neat and tidy, and it was rarely beautiful.
“It doesn’t matter.” He backed off and looked at her. “It doesn’t matter if she catches us. Soon it will all be over. I’ll be free.”
“If you leave her, you won’t get anything,” Bonnie said. “Turtledove Hill is her inheritance. It’s not community property.”
“I’ll get it all,” Bram said. “This is my Hamptons mansion. It even has stairs to the lawn. Can’t you see? It was meant to be. It’s my density.” He laughed.
Bonnie didn’t get the joke. “It’s hers. It’s not subject to a property split.”
“But if she’s dead, there’s nothing to split. The bereaved husband inherits all.”
A chill crawled down Bonnie’s spine, and a dull feeling of disgust. What a bastard. But she already knew that, didn’t she? She’d been ignoring it, hoping she was wrong. Hoping it would go away. And he was a coward too.
“You won’t kill Sara,” she said. He didn’t have the nerve.
He wouldn’t kill her outright. But he might do it indirectly. The coward. Trip her on the stairs. Knock her off a boat at sea. Leave a box of sharp heavy objects at a precarious angle in the barn rafters. I have to get out of here.
“Everyone knows she’s unstable,” Bram said. “Something might happen to her. She swears Turtledove Hill is haunted, for god’s sake. What if the ghost—” he made air quotes “—trips her on the stairs and she breaks her neck? Or she could fall off a cliff while looking for those damn bones.”
This was what fear and loathing felt like, Bonnie thought. Fear of Bram. Loathing for herself. How had she sunk so low?
“I’ll be right back.” She dipped under his arm. “I have to go to the bathroom.”
Should she walk normal or get the hell away from the freak as fast as humanly possible? Somehow she made it into the master bathroom without him. She locked the door.
ON THE ROOF, SARA stayed behind the wisteria and watched the people dancing on the lawn down below. A bouncy tune came to an end, and Spot pulled the guitarrón player aside for a chat. The next song was On the Street Where You Live, in Spanish. The lead singer had a lovely tenor voice, and the band played with slow, muscular sweetness.
Spot crossed the lawn and offered his hand to Peekie. He pulled her into his arms and into the music’s flow. So romantic.
“Your friends look happy together,” Joss said.
He’d met her on the widow's walk outside the aerie and showed her where to squeeze through the wisteria to this side of the house. The walk continued around the roof’s perimeter.
“It seems odd you can see and hear people now,” Sara said, “but they still can’t see you.”
“It’s you,” Joss said. “The world intensifies when you’re near me. You make everything clear and bright.”
And you’ve muddied all my waters.
“I shouldn’t have come up here.” She turned away from him. “I have to go.” She followed the walk back to the other side of the roof. On the ocean side of the house the stars blazed in the clear night sky. She held onto the rail to keep from falling, not because of the dark but because she couldn’t see through her tears.
Joss was waiting for her in the alcove. “Bram will be looking for me,” she said.
“I don’t think he will,” Joss said.
It was the truth, but it hurt to hear it. She had to get back to the reception, to her guests. To her husband. She turned away from Joss, and he followed her as far as the landing.
“Can’t you stay, for just a little while?” There was so much longing in the question she couldn’t bear it.
“I could,” she said. “But if I did, it wouldn’t be for just a little while.”
He smiled. “I wouldn’t mind.”
“I can’t,” she said. He was a ghost. He wasn’t real. “I just wanted to be sure you were all right.”
He reached for her as she stepped onto the stairs. Creeping cold swirled over her shoulder and down her arm. Her foot twisted on the wobbly second tread, and she grabbed the rail.
“Who did you want to be sure was all right?”
Bram was on the stairs, four treads down from her. His blue eyes had a cold, flat look. She didn’t think he was drunk. “Who did you want to be sure was all right, babe?”
“No one.”
“After you made me feel so guilty.” His cold stare stayed fixed as a cruel smile crept over his lips. “You’ve been seeing someone behind my back?” He reached for her. “Now that would be ironic.”
“No, Bram. I…”
“I’ve hated you for so long.” He laced his fingers through her hair. “Never knowing what you want. Always sucking the life out of me. You wanted to be my muse? You’re the anti-muse, you…sponge.” He grabbed her forearm.
“Bram, that hurts.”
“I have to say I’m puzzled.” He pulled her closer, his breath hot on her neck. His lips grazed her jaw, and he kissed her hard on the mouth. He whispered, “How could any man want to stick it in you?” He yanked her arm, and she pitched forward. He was so strong, and the bottom of the stairs was so far away.
Her feet left the stairs, and she clawed at the air. Someone pushed her to the side, close enough to the banister to grab it. She wrenched her arms around the banister spindles and hung on. “Ack!” Her hip banged painfully against a tread’s edge, but she stopped falling.
“What?” A surprised yelp came out of Bram.
He fell backwards down the stairs. It took him forever to reach the floor. Someone screamed. Two people. Sara was one of them.
The other screamer was Bonnie, running toward the foot of the stairs and Bram’s crumpled body.
- 23 -
Intensive Care
“HE LOOKS BETTER,” SARA said. “Peekie, don’t you think he looks better?”
Bram’s hand was cold from the IV fluids, and he was so very pale. Machines monitoring his vital signs made evil arrhythmic music of beeps and clicks and whirs.
Her memories were a jumble. Thank god Dr. Kasaty was at the house when Bram fell. There were people yelling, and Chief Ken directed some men to put Bram on a board and carry him up to the highway when the ambulance couldn’t get through the driveway. Bonnie drove Sara to the hospital, the convertible top down, wind whipping their hair, the ambulance lights flashing ahead. The blare of the siren.
That was seven days ago.
“He looks the same, dear,” Peekie said. “But you look like shite, if you’ll pardon my Scottish. You haven’t slept all week.”
“I’ve slept,” Sara said. “A little. I’ll go home in a while, I promise.” She looked up at the TV bolted to the ceiling in the corner. The English Patient was on. They’d both been half watch
ing it with the sound off. The plane was trying to kill Ralph Fiennes.
“I’m going to get some coffee,” Peekie said. “Believe it or not, they make a decent cup in the cafeteria here. I’ll be back.”
“Bram?” Sara said after Peekie had gone. “You must be in there somewhere. They say talking to you couldn’t hurt.”
She closed her eyes, and thought about what to say. The neurologist didn’t hold out much hope for Bram’s recovery. He was in a coma. The sliver of a chance he’d come out of it dimmed with every day. Maybe he could hear her now in some near-death state of existence. These might be the last words he ever did hear. She had to make them count.
“You ass,” she said. “I didn’t realize how lonely I was. Yes. I was seeing someone. Technically. Kind of. Maybe you were lonely too, but you didn’t have to kill me over it. This isn’t Victorian England.”
He lay on the bed, silent and still but for the monitor sounds. On the TV, Ralph Fiennes was dragging Kirstin Scott Thomas from the wreckage.
“Mom thought that movie was so awful. Immoral. But then, she tried so hard to live up to Dad’s ideals. So harsh. That’s why I hate him, you know. Such a righteous bastard, quoting brimstone at anyone who stood still long enough. Until Mom died. Then suddenly he’s all about love and forgiveness and turn the other cheek. I call bullshit. He just wanted to justify running off with Cindy before Mom was cold in the grave.”
She clicked off the television.
“Mom was wrong. That story is highly moral. The adulterers were punished. Horrifically. The nurse and the Sikh soldier acted honorably, and in the end they lived and loved. Desire isn’t bad. It’s how you act on it that matters. And you acted badly. You’re going to hell, Bram.”
She let go of his hand.
“At least I’d believe that if I still believed in hell.”
“He might live yet.” She heard Joss before she saw him. He came into focus in the other corner, sitting in a molded plastic chair. “He’s weak, but his life force is still strong.”
“You can tell that.”
“I think I can. I don’t know. Maybe I’m full of bull.”
“Thank you for saving my life,” she said. “Again.”
“The best way to fix stairs,” he said, “is to get rid of the guy who wants to throw you down them.”
“You think?” He looked so real. But he couldn’t hold her. He couldn’t grow old with her. He couldn’t love her. And she couldn’t love him. “I know what I have to do now.”
“Stay with him.” Joss sounded bitter. “Make your marriage work.”
“Lord no. I was wrong about that too. Bram never loved me. The shocker is, I never loved him. I thought I did, but it was all just going through the motions, trying to make my marriage work. To make my mom happy, I think. I have to let Bram go. If he wakes up, I’ll divorce him. And then I have to forgive my dad. It’s no more my business where he finds his happiness than where I find mine. If I can stop hating him, maybe I can start loving myself.”
“And after that?” Joss said.
“After that I want to…I hope I can…find the kind of love you wrote about in your journal.”
“Oh, Sara. I wish I could love you. I mean properly. I hate that we were born out of time to each other. But I need to be dead now. Really dead, like Amelia, like Eleanor. I need to be free of these feelings. Of this…love.”
“I understand, Joss.”
“No. I don’t think you do. Sara, I’m not the one who’s keeping me here. You are. Your love won’t let me go.”
A tear rolled down her cheek. “It’s true. I love you.” If only she could breathe. “It sounds silly, but I think I fell in love with you that first night I read your journal. Do you think—do you think I put you in Bram’s body somehow?”
It was crazy, but what about this was sane? At that moment she believed her feelings for Joss were that powerful.
“You have to let me go, Sara, or I’ll never be dead—and you’ll never be fully alive.”
“Joss, I know it. But I’ve never loved anyone before. Now that I do, I’m greedy for more.”
Even as she said the words, she knew she had to let him go. Keeping him here in this nonexistent existence was like a murder. Worse than killing his body. She was killing his soul. She visualized divine light behind him, all around him.
He turned his head, as if listening to something. “Something’s calling me.” He faded a little. “Pulling me away.”
“Wait.” She tried not to blink. “I want to fix you in my memory,” she said. “Can I let you go, but keep the memory?”
“I don’t know,” he said. “I hope so.”
“Oh, Joss. I wish I could kiss you goodbye.”
“I wish I could kiss you hello.”
- 24 -
Some Rest In Peace
THE STARS WERE SCREAMINGLY brilliant against the black night. The full moon hung low over the ocean, as if painted on, flat against the sky. Sara knew where the ocean started because that’s where the stars stopped.
She stood on the widow's walk in a flowing white nightgown, her arms and back bare, the lace bodice clinging to her breasts. A mourning dove cooed and hopped up on the rail, close enough to touch. It looked right at her, as if it knew her. A second dove joined its mate, and the pair flew away.
Her heart ached. Where had her soul mate flown?
Sara! His voice echoed in the night. Sara! The stars burned brighter with the sound. Sara! He was in pain, alone, frightened. He needed her.
She floated off the widow's walk, over the courtyard, toward the eucalyptus grove. To Joss. I’m coming, Joss. I’m coming. Her heart swelled. He was there, standing among the snowdrops, waiting for her.
His eyes were full of sorrow, but also love. He rose up to her and took her into his arms. They floated in the air, on the mist that rolled in and covered the ground below. “This isn’t a dream,” he said. “I’ll be gone tomorrow.”
Without words, they danced on the mist. He was so cold. That’s why they could never be together, because he was cold, and she was warm. She rested her head against his cold chest and listened to his heart beat, beat, beating in rhythm with her own. Buh-bump, buh-bump, buh-bump.
Bam! Bam! Bam! Bam! Bam!
Sara sat up straight in bed. Sunlight streamed through the open window, and someone was at the back porch downstairs, banging on the kitchen door.
“Just a minute!” she called through the window. She shook off her dream and the feeling of wrenching loss. The courtyard was full of pickup trucks. Bram’s over by the barn, one next to her car from Poole Haven Wines, and one she didn’t recognize. “I’ll be right down.”
She tore off her sleep shirt and quickly pulled on a pair of jeans and a t-shirt. When she opened the back door, she felt her face go red. She wished she’d at least brushed her teeth before coming down.
“Good morning.” Rafe Corazon smiled, eyeing her sleep-tousled hair. “We’re here to install the stairs.”
“The stairs?” In the courtyard, men were unloading sections of a staircase from the back of the second truck. “Oh, the stairs!” She’d forgotten all about it. Today they were going to put in the new staircase to the aerie. “That’s great, Rafe. I'm glad the first time didn’t scare you off.”
“Nah, I’m a tough bird,” he said. “I like to keep busy.”
“Thanks for coming out with the crew.”
“No problem.”
She had planned to go to the hospital to sit with Bram, but now she’d have to wait until Rafe and his crew finished. She went upstairs and brushed her teeth and hair and put on some shoes. When she came out, they were already tearing down the old stairs to the aerie.
She went down to the kitchen and popped a pod in the Keurig. The delicious smell of brewing coffee sent a stabbing pain through her heart. Joss would never smell coffee again—or flowers or rain. It wasn’t fair that his life was cut short. Life wasn’t fair. The hole in her heart wasn’t fair.
I ca
n’t stand it. She went out to the barn and opened up the steamer trunk. The bell had no clapper, so there was no danger of it ringing. It was so pretty. She would hang it up, just for show. Harmless.
On the veranda she climbed up on the half wall and took down a potted fern from the beam overhead. As she hung the bell by its leather thong, the mourning doves cooed above the beam.
“I’m glad you approve,” she said. The birds peeked over the edge. They must be getting used to her. They were still watching when she sat down on the half wall and leaned against the stone pillar. The same place where Joss had once sat.
“Ick,” she said. “Cold coffee.” They just stared. “What? Am I wrong to want something to remember him by? I guess you think I should worry about my husband who tried to kill me.”
The lawn was awash in sunshine. Everything was bright and quiet today. No breeze. No morning fog, no clouds. Silence broken by occasional birdsong or the muffled sound of hammering from the house.
Bram. My husband who tried to kill me. He was a stranger to her now. A horrible mistake. She didn’t wish him dead. Just…gone.
“Who is this?” She sat up straight on the wall.
A red and white Mini Cooper turned off Turtledove Hill Road onto the long driveway, beeping its horn as it came. Her dove friends cooed and waddled along the beam. Sara put down her cup and went out to the lawn.
The car pulled over and the driver’s door opened. Peekie’s head popped up. “Halloo!” Her face was flushed as she hurried across the grass toward Sara carrying two large lattes.
“Hey, you!” Sara accepted one of the drinks. “Thanks. This beats my weak stuff. Come on up to the veranda.”
“There’s news,” Peekie said. “Gracien’s surveyors found a body.”
“Oh, god.” Sara’s pulse raced. She didn’t want to know, but she had to know. “Is it…?”
“Montague’s remains. Wedged deep in a crevice near the cliffs.”