With Every Breath

by Beverly Bird

  "Josh, get back!" he roared. But he had no idea where he was supposed to send him. Not to the house, not alone. "Go wait at my truck! Get in and lock the doors!" He heard a little click as Gina cocked the revolver, and he looked back at her.

  "Put it down, Gina."

  She laughed wildly. "No. No! I tried everything. I couldn’t think of anything else. Except to make you." "Make me what?" he asked carefully.

  "Leave her alone. I’ll kill you."

  Jesus, he thought. Oh, sweet Jesus Christ. Then he knew a moment of knee-buckling gratitude that it was him she had found and not Maddie.

  Thank God she hadn’t gone to the house.

  "I couldn’t think of anything else," Gina moaned, and started to cry again.

  "There isn’t anything else," he said slowly. "There’s nothing else you can do. Let it go, Gina. You’ve got to just let it go now. Give me the gun."

  "You’ve been with her! I saw you!"

  His blood rushed. It left him feeling hot, then cold. Christ, he thought, had she been watching them, spying on them?

  "You didn’t pay any attention to me!" she shrieked. "I told you no!"

  He’d been trying to be logical, and he knew in that moment that it wouldn’t do a bit of good. He heard something behind him and knew, too, that Josh hadn’t left him, hadn’t gone to the truck, and he couldn’t look.

  "No what, Gina?" he said levelly. He’d keep her talking, he thought. She’d be so absorbed in herself that she wouldn’t notice him inching closer. Maybe.

  "What?" he repeated almost gently, shifting his weight rather than actually stepping toward her. "What did you tell me no about?"

  "Don’t talk to me that way!" she screamed. "Don’t talk to me like that shrink. Like I’m stupid! Like I’m a kid!" "Well, you’re acting like a kid. Like a spoiled brat." Her face contorted. "You’re better than that, Gina. A much better person." Her expression turned to confusion.

  Then she brought the gun up with both hands, the way he had taught her, holding it out, bracing one wrist with her other hand. His heart thudded. Everything else seemed slow, even his breath.

  "I told you," she went on plaintively. "I love you. I told you then. But you tried to leave and I gave you time, time to get it straight. You were supposed to come back!" "Gina." He paused. He wasn’t sure which way to go. Placate her, as he had always done? Go easy on her because she might go off the deep end, get drunk, hurt somebody else? Going easy on her had never worked before. It had brought them to this.

  "Listen to me," he said cautiously. "I was never coming back."

  "Noooo!"

  "Gina! Stop it! We are divorced," he said slowly. "It’s over. Oh, Christ, it’s been over for so long, even before Lucy died. There was nothing left!"

  "Lucy, Lucy." Gina sneered, her face twisting.

  Joe flinched. "What?"

  "She was all you ever cared about. What about me?" He felt himself going cold inside. "I didn’t love you." "You said you did!"

  "I was wrong. Very wrong. I’m sorry."

  She was shaking. He watched the gun. It bobbled. But it stayed reasonably aimed at his chest.

  "For once in your life," he went on hoarsely, "think about somebody other than yourself. Josh doesn’t need to see this, Gina."

  "He’s her kid!" she screamed.

  Think on her terms, Joe warned himself. "That’s not his fault. He’s just a kid. Let me send him up to the house, and I’ll come back."

  "Up to her house."

  "Yeah." He made a careful motion over his shoulder toward it. He knew immediately that it had been the wrong thing to do. Gina pulled the trigger.

  He made an aborted sound, half a roar, more of a choking reflex, and he turned away from her. Josh had scooted a few more feet away, terrified. His feet were sort of splayed, and his eyes roved wildly. He was dusted with sand. The bullet had kicked it up. It had been that close.

  "You’ll never go near her again!" Gina cried. "I won’t let you, Joe! If you do, I’ll... I’ll hurt you!"

  "No. You won’t," Joe spat, turning back to her. "And if you shoot again, I’ll kill you."

  "I'll kill her!"

  "No. And you’re not going to kill yourself, either, or you would have done it the other night. So there’s no one else to hurt, Gina. Come on, give it up. No matter what you do, or how you do it, I’m not coming back." And he knew, in that moment, that he wasn’t going to torture himself over it anymore, either. He wasn’t going to cut himself off through misguided guilt and pain and regret. He wouldn’t take the easy way out and destroy the relationship with Maddie himself, the way he had with the woman on the mainland, because he felt too damned guilty over his own culpability to fight back against what Gina was doing to him.

  He hadn’t loved those women. And that made all the difference in the world.

  He turned away from her, suddenly caring about nothing more than getting Josh out of there, getting him safe, because he loved the kid, too, because Maddie had entrusted him to him. Gina wouldn’t shoot him, he thought. That one shot had been wild, a warning. Hating him, wanting him, was what had kept her going for too, too long.

  "Stop!" she shrieked. "Come back here!"

  He kept walking. He reached Josh. "Come on, sport," he said in an undertone. "Just walk in front of me here, slow and steady, and head for the house. Got that?"

  "Joe, I mean it!"

  Josh looked up at him mutely.

  "Keep going," Joe urged him quietly. "Right in front of me." Just in case.

  "You stupid asshole! You don’t know what I’m capable of! You never figured it out, did you? Did you? I got rid of your precious fucking Lucy because I was sick to death of you fawning over her! I was sick of sharing you!" Joe realized, almost dispassionately, that he had stopped walking.

  "You were always cuddling her, carrying her around, playing with her. And then you thought you could leave me and just come around once in a while to see her!" She laughed shrilly. "I showed you, Joe. I showed you good. Now do you get it? I mean what I say, Joe! I mean it! You won’t get away with this either!"

  Josh tugged on his hand. Joe didn’t feel it.

  Black ice.

  He thought, with that odd sense of detachment again, that that was what it was like. The sensation blacked everything out for a moment, all his senses, so that he could barely see, couldn’t think.

  Couldn’t feel.

  But it wasn’t enough.

  Anguish roared in and hit his knees first, like a chopping block when he’d been playing the game, trying to take his legs out from under him. He dropped Josh’s hand and turned back to her clumsily.

  "I got drunk so I could do it!" she shrieked. "I got drunk on purpose! But then it was easy. I just pushed the pillow down on her." Her face changed. It got eerily wistful. Even in the middle of Joe’s grief and disbelief, it dragged chills down his spine.

  "But then we were supposed to be the same afterward, once I got rid of her," she went on plaintively. "You and me, we were supposed to go back to how we used to be, without her. If she hadn’t come, you wouldn’t have wanted to leave me, Joe. You wouldn’t. You used to want to be with me, but then she made me fat, and you’d get up nights with her, and you were tired, and you didn’t want me anymore."

  He knew then that he was going to kill her.

  And he would have, maybe he would have. For Lucy, for his poor, quiet, still, cold baby. For all the useless, senseless anguish over the years, all the guilt, when it should have been hatred that he felt, and fury.

  He was nearly close enough to grab her. He didn’t care about the gun. Then he remembered Josh again.

  He looked back at him. "Go back to the truck!" he shouted angrily. "Now!"

  "Joe?" Gina’s voice was shrill, nervous. She took one

  look at his face when he turned around again and backed up. "I was kidding. I was ... you won’t hit me. You never hit me."

  And he didn’t then. He caught her by the throat, a handful of her jacket in one hand,
his other fist wrapped in her hair, and he was shaking—shaking as he never had—and he wanted to squeeze the breath right out of her. His knuckles were white.

  She veered again, triumphant that she had his full attention at last. "You won’t ever love anybody else, Joe! I told you! I won’t let you!"

  Not even Lucy. The words were there, hanging between them, as loud as a scream.

  He picked her up off the sand. Her feet dangled. She craned her head back, and found the breath to scream. He hurled her away from him before he could break her, before he could let himself destroy her with his bare hands.

  She landed in a crumpled heap in the sand. "Don’t you do it!" she howled. "I won’t let you love her!" "Watch carefully, Gina. That’s exactly what I’m going to do."

  He actually took four steps before she shot him.

  The bullet hit him below his right shoulder. It exploded into his flesh, and he knew it was bad. It flung him face forward into the sand.

  He made himself roll over. It was bad, very bad.

  Josh’s face swam into his line of vision, blotting out the sky. The boy’s skin was bleached of color, and his eyes swam with tears. His small fingers plucked at Joe’s shirt.

  "You were ... supposed ... to go," Joe managed. But he hadn’t. Joe thanked God that he hadn’t.

  "Where ... is she?" he went on. But the kid couldn’t talk. He’d forgotten that the kid couldn’t talk.

  "Point," he tried again. "Point ... for me. Where did she go?"

  Josh pointed. Joe turned his neck, carefully and painfully. Don’t move too much, more bleeding that way. He angled his eyes as much as anything else, and saw Gina staggering back toward the promontory again, making wild zigzags on the beach, waving the gun.

  His gun. A .38. Large caliber. A big hole.

  "Go ... to my ... truck." He brought his face around again with excruciating care. He looked at Josh. Maybe he should just send him to get Maddie. Less chance for error that way.

  No. By the time Maddie could get back, then go to the Pathfinder herself, he would probably be dead. And he had heard her scream. Sending Josh to her could be sending him headlong into danger.

  Had to save one of them.

  The pain ebbed. Strange. He was aware of something hot and wet underneath him. His blood. But beyond that, there was only an airy, tingling, almost gently cold feeling in his chest.

  "Truck," he managed again. "Radio. Two buttons. Josh. Take ... the handset ... push the black ... button. Say ‘Joe’s down.' You’ve got ... to say ... ‘Joe’s down.’ Got to, sport. I’m ... dying."

  He thought of how long it would take medevac to get there, even if everything with Josh worked out okay. He closed his eyes, feeling hopeless.

  Goddamnit, he said to himself. He had only just started figuring out what he wanted.

  His vision was black around the edges. It was a slow, creeping thing, a vile, insidious darkness moving in on him.

  Joe groaned. He couldn’t fight it.

  Chapter 34

  Joe wasn’t coming.

  Maddie knew it with some sixth sense, even before it became obvious. Maybe he had gone too far to hear her scream. Whatever, he wasn’t coming.

  She was on her own.

  "I d-d-don’t know you," she said to the woman, her voice a croak, still trying to back up even though there were the shelves behind her. The woman had a gun.

  "I d-d-don’t even know you," she managed again. "Why? Why are you d-d-doing this?"

  That seemed to shake the woman even more, but then she recovered. "You know me."

  Her voice was rich, with that edge that came from money and good breeding. It reminded her of Tony Macari’s tone.

  "No," Maddie whispered. "I c-can’t hurt you."

  The gun was in the woman’s lap, resting there almost idly, but her finger was through the trigger guard. Maddie stared at it, feeling cold, even as her heart hammered. Then she heard another voice, and she

  screamed again and jerked to look toward the diningroom door.

  The man in the picture.

  "Not this time, Dierdre," he said. "I won’t protect you again. I won’t do it. This is senseless."

  Maddie looked blankly at the face that she had almost recognized a few moments before. Then everything crashed in on her, and she understood. She began shaking.

  "You k-k-killed her," she said to him, forgetting the woman, forgetting the gun for a moment. "You k-k-killed my m-mother."

  Harry Reiter ignored that. "You don’t need to stutter now, Madeline. Everything’s fine. It’s all past. It’s over." If his voice wasn’t kind, then neither was it cold. It was as it had always been on the few brief occasions when she had spoken to him. Blunt ... but without that faint, almost-imperceptible accent that so many of the people on the island spoke with. It was missing from Tony’s voice, too, because Tony, too, was actually from the mainland.

  It was as though Harry read her mind.

  "I’m not really an islander. I just have a small place here, where I stay when I need peace. No phone, no way anyone can intrude upon me. It’s quiet there."

  "Your love nest," the woman hissed.

  "Shut up, Dierdre," he said, with an odd, weary kindness. His eyes stayed on Maddie. "For the most part, we live on the mainland," he explained. "Dierdre lives on the mainland. But I prefer it here. A few days a week I discard the trappings and demands of the city and come back here. It’s always been kind to me."

  "It gave you—" the woman began, her voice cracking. "Right now, right at this moment," he interrupted her, "you have done nothing wrong, Dierdre. You have

  committed no crime here. If you’ll just give me the gun, we can forget about this."

  "No!" Maddie protested. She felt herself swaying. "We c-c-an’t f-forget!"

  Again, Harry ignored her. "Give me the gun, Dierdre. She doesn’t remember. She never knew. Annabel told her nothing."

  "She knows." The woman’s voice became thinner, panicked. "She’ll talk about it."

  "No. I’ve taken great pains. So did Annabel."

  "For my money. Because you would lose my money." "For you, Dierdre. I stopped needing your money a very long time ago. You might think mine is vulgar, but it’s hard-earned and it’s green and it spends. Think about it. When was the last time I ever touched yours?" "She'll speak of it, and I won’t have it get out, Harry. I will not have it be known what you did to me."

  Maddie’s eyes whipped back and forth between them. And then her gaze skimmed over the back door.

  She wondered what would happen if she simply ran, if the woman would pull the trigger.

  She wondered if her legs would carry her. She felt sick, sluggish, feverish, as though in the grip of the flu.

  And then Harry Reiter reached down and took the gun. It was as simple as that.

  Maddie stared at him disbelievingly. The woman— Dierdre—was weeping with wrenching gasps. Maddie’s legs wobbled and seemed to melt out from beneath her. One moment she was standing, then she felt herself losing her balance. She stumbled backward, against the shelves again, and Harry caught her.

  "Don’t touch me!" she screamed. And she didn’t stutter.

  "It’s all right now," Harry said again. "You just need to leave here. That’s all I ever wanted you to do. Not for

  me. For yourself. That’s all that’s important, all these many years later."

  She realized, as she stared at him, that she had absolutely no idea what he was talking about.

  But she remembered. Finally, she remembered.

  She had come in the back door that afternoon. Happy. Maybe hungry. There had been a screen door then, in front of the old wooden one—aluminum, she remembered wildly, and it had rattled when she had wrenched it open. She’d come inside, stared, not understanding at first...

  Blood. On the refrigerator and on the walls, but mostly on the floor. And her mother, crumpled, with both legs bent backward, like a cheerleader in midleap, her back arched, her arms flung up ... only she was lying
down.

  And this man. Harry Reiter. Standing there, over her—crying, had he been crying?—with a gun. He’d seen Maddie and had stared at her for a moment, and what she had seen in his eyes had scared her most of all because that kind of anguish shouldn’t have been there, not in the eyes of a man she’d thought they barely knew.

  She had run, screaming. She had not gone into the pantry.

  She pressed her hands to her temples. "I d-d-don’t remember the rest."

  She saw Harry look triumphantly at the woman. "There, I told you. All this, all your fear, has been for nothing."

  The woman’s face twisted. "I can’t bear it again. I can’t go through it all over again. The talk."

  "People didn’t even talk that time, Dierdre. The only voices you ever heard were the ones you dreaded, in your own mind."

  She drew herself up, her spine straightening, and

  Maddie saw something of the woman she must have been a long time ago. Her face sagged a little, but her eyes remained alert and hot.

  Dierdre wheeled herself outside to compose herself, her chin high. Maddie took a shaky step toward the door herself.

  "You must go, Maddie. You must leave the island." She looked back at Harry. And she knew then that she wasn’t going anywhere. If she hadn’t remembered this place, then at least it felt vaguely like home, in a way no place else had ever felt for her before.

  "No," she whispered. "I c-c-can’t."

  "You’re in danger."

  Fury screamed through her like a firecracker. "Then just shoot me, damn you! Don’t play games with me! Do it!"

  He looked honestly startled. "I’d never hurt you."

  "The kitten—"

  "Was to warn you off. To scare you."

  "You butchered it!" she screamed.

  "No. It was already dead. Someone had broken its neck. All I did was hang it up, cut it a little, to scare you."

  A real case of overkill, Joe had said. Maddie swayed. "The flowers—"