Commitments

by Barbara Delinsky

  “Are you really?”

  “Relieved?” She thought for a minute. “Yes, and I don’t think I’m saying that out of pride or defensiveness or anything emotional like that. When Nick walks into a room, he brings with him a certain tension. He’s on all the time, wants things done yesterday and wants them done well. Even before Nicky was born, I used to scurry around trying to please him. Then, after Nicky, when things got so heavy, there was no pleasing Nick.

  “It was a strain knowing that everything I did was open for attack.” Her voice was soft, a little distant. Her fingers whispered, stroked, occasionally combed through Derek’s hair. “I’ve spent the past three years living with fear and tension and worry. Nick wouldn’t accept what had happened to Nicky. He couldn’t understand what it was doing to me. I was awful at times. I admit it. I was short-tempered and demanding.” She paused. “Maybe, subconsciously, I was pushing him toward making a move.”

  Derek registered the words and was vaguely aware of their insightfulness, but he couldn’t focus deeply when one part of him was floating. The best he could do was to ask, “Have things been better since he moved out?”

  “Things have been different.”

  Understandably, Derek was more concerned about her present and future. Opening his eyes, he looked up into her face. “Where do you go from here, Sabrina? Are you staying put in New York?”

  Her thumb had come to rest, ever so lightly, by the cut at his lip. She made no attempt to move it. “For the time being. At least until I know more of what’s what with Nicky.”

  “Do you think he knows what’s happened?”

  “No.”

  “Do you think he misses Nick?”

  “For a while he seemed to recognize him. He’d start breathing a little faster, like he was excited, when Nick started talking to him. Lately—the last six or eight months—there’s been nothing. Maybe it’s just as well. I’d probably be more torn over the divorce if I felt Nicky would be affected.”

  Derek bent up one knee, tipping his body slightly toward hers. He’d been lulled so well that he was taken by surprise when the faint movement made him wince.

  “Is the aspirin helping at all?” she asked worriedly.

  “I think so,” he answered. But her touch was more powerful a balm than aspirin. Closing his eyes, he gave himself up to those wonderfully fluid, ever serene fingers. “Feels like heaven,” he murmured. The fingers were on his scalp, seducing his skull. “You’re good at this. Is it the Nicky treatment?”

  She chuckled softly. “No. He doesn’t appreciate the finer points of massage.”

  “I do.”

  “I’m glad.”

  Derek repeated those last lines to himself. They could have been suggestive or sexy, but they weren’t. Sex was the last thing he wanted; given the pain he felt when he moved, he doubted he could perform if he tried. But Sabrina wasn’t demanding performance. She wasn’t demanding anything. She didn’t ask if she could touch him here or there—and there, now, was the crook of his neck, which she was kneading with soft, easy strokes—but she touched him with the gossamer sureness of a woman whose instincts were his.

  He gave a soft moan of pleasure and rubbed his cheek against her thigh. “Sabrina?”

  “Mmm?”

  “How do you feel when you come here?”

  “I feel … glad to see you.”

  “I mean about the place. Does it depress you?”

  “What’s to depress? We’re nestled in the foothills of the Berkshires, in a yard with trees and grass and benches. The air is fresh. The sun is shining. The birds are singing.”

  “And the guards in the watchtowers shoot real bullets.”

  “Shh. Don’t spoil it. As a matter of fact,” she resumed brightly, “if you squint, the fences disappear.”

  “You’re not squinting. You’re wearing rose-colored glasses.”

  “Maybe so, but I’m tired of being down all the time.” She gave a light snort. “All this is easy for me to say. I’m not the one in prison blues.”

  Derek was, so he found little solace in the fresh air, the shining sun, the singing birds; and when he squinted, his eyes hurt. But that didn’t mean that he couldn’t dream. “If you could choose to be anywhere else right now, where would it be?”

  “Anywhere else? Hmmm.… let’s see … I think maybe Ireland.”

  “Ever been there?”

  “Once, when I was very young. I remember everything being lush and green, cool and moist and clear. It would be nice to be there, sitting just like this.” She wondered if she’d been too revealing, but then she didn’t care. She’d already told him that she was glad to see him, and that was modestly enough put. When she was with him, the prison faded away. She could easily imagine they were in Ireland. “Why do you ask?”

  “It’s a game I play sometimes. Not often; but once in a while at night, when I’m really down, when I think that I’m going mad lying in that damned cell, and nothing else works to take my mind off it, not even the anger, I close my eyes and picture myself in some exotic place.”

  “Like?”

  “Tahiti. I’ve never been there. I’d like to go. Or the rain forest of Brazil. Or New Guinea.”

  “Mmmmm.” She wore a small, dreamy smile as she continued to stroke him. Tahiti. The pad of her thumb moved slowly along his jaw, back and forth, up over his beard-roughened cheek to his sideburns, then, slowly, all the way down to his chin. Peaceful, unspoiled, idyllic. She traced his ear, rubbed its small lobe. From there she followed a tendon down his neck, drew her fingers across his throat, slid them under the tabs of his shirt and began gently, rhythmically to massage his chest.

  She could easily go to Tahiti. She didn’t know if she’d have the nerve to play bare-breasted in the surf, but Derek could do that. His bare skin was a joy. Stretched over well-defined muscle, it was warm, firm, softened by fine swirls of dark, curling hair. As her fingertips played in those swirls, her eye roamed his body. There was the bulk under his shirt that she knew to be the wrapping around his ribs, but his waist and hips were as narrow as ever, his legs exceedingly long. His jeans weren’t tight, but the force of gravity settled the denim against his flesh, outlining lean calves, well sinewed thighs and … and sex that was heavy and full, even at rest.

  Her hands went still and she looked away, embarrassed by what she’d thought. But within the space of several short breaths, she was looking back. Derek’s body fascinated her. She couldn’t remember ever feeling quite the same fascination with a man’s body, though whether that was because Derek’s body was so beautifully made or not, she didn’t know. Nick was good-looking, but she’d never felt this kind of excitement.

  Just then Derek’s cheek touched her arm. Her eyes flew to his face, shadowed now by the folds of her skirt, and she turned crimson with guilt at having been caught with lascivious thoughts. But there was no need. His eyes were closed, more relaxed than they’d been before. In fact, his entire face—what she could see of it—was more relaxed, and it was only a minute, before she realized that his breathing was slow and even.

  A well of emotion surged within her. Tenderness, caring, pleasure—all peaceful, removed from time and place—deeply gratifying and renewing. With one hand cradling his head and the other on his chest, she rested against the tree and watched him while he slept.

  Chapter 8

  DEREK SLEPT for forty minutes and would surely have gone on far longer had Sabrina not awakened him. She called his name softly, lightly shook his shoulder, then held him steady when he came to with a start.

  “You fell asleep,” she whispered, leaning over him. “Visiting hours are over. They’re kicking me out.”

  Disoriented, he stared up at her, then forced his eyes wider and looked around. “I don’t believe it,” he said hoarsely.

  “You were worn out.”

  “God, I’m sorry.”

  “Don’t be. I didn’t mind. How do you feel?”

  “Better, I think.” He hadn’t slept long,
but he’d slept soundly, and he had Sabrina to thank for that. For the first time in eighteen months, he’d felt safe. Struggling to a sitting position, he asked, “It’s four?”

  “Uh-huh.”

  He looked around. The visiting yard had emptied. The prison had swallowed its own, except for him. Knowing that shortly he too would be swallowed and that there was nothing he could do about it, he put on his bravest front. “Where to from here? Are you going on to Vermont?”

  “Not this time.”

  That meant she’d driven the distance solely to see him—and he’d fallen asleep on her. He felt like a heel. “Are you staying overnight somewhere nearby?”

  She shook her head.

  That meant she was doing the round trip in a day. It was a lot of driving, too much, he thought, and she was alone. “Sabrina…”

  “Driving relaxes me. It lets me unwind, lets me think. I hadn’t realized how much I missed doing it until I started coming up here.” She dropped her gaze to his shirtfront. Barely moving her lips, she whispered, “I put the tin of aspirin in your pocket. I don’t think they saw me do it.”

  He found her attempt at subterfuge adorable. Sabrina was that, along with everything else. He hadn’t seen it at the start because it only came out when she was relaxed. It pleased him to think that she was relaxed with him. It astonished him that she could relax at all in a place like this, but that said something about her versatility.

  “I hate to tell you this, sunshine,” he drawled, “but they’ll find it in a minute. As soon as I walk through that door, I’ll be searched.”

  “Is that routine?”

  As he nodded, he felt sadness stalking. As soon as he walked through that door, she’d be gone. She’d be gone. The thought of it was like a tear in the fabric of his heart, and that gave him something else to consider.

  “They’ll let me keep the aspirin,” he said in a more subdued tone.

  “How about Ace bandages? If I pick up a couple in town and drop them at the administration building, will you get them?”

  “Not necessarily.”

  “Should I try anyway?”

  “Nah.”

  “Let’s go, folks,” said a guard sauntering by. “Time’s up.”

  Sabrina scrambled to her feet. It took Derek a minute longer. Tiny beads of sweat had broken out on his forehead when he turned to her, closed a hand around her arm and asked, “Why didn’t you tell me about Nick and you last week?”

  She saw the urgency in his eyes and knew that she couldn’t postpone the answering. She’d been too honest about other things. It was time.

  “I was frightened,” she said in a whisper-soft voice that trembled. Her eyes begged for understanding. “I was using Nick as a buffer because I was frightened. I’m still frightened. You keep asking me what I’m doing here, and I can tell you that I want a friend, someone to talk to, that I want to write a book, but there’s more. You said it. You feel it. I feel it too. And it frightens me, Derek. It’s so”—she caught her breath—“strong.”

  Unable to help himself, Derek took her face in his hands. It didn’t matter that his lip was bruised and swollen, or that his eye was a sight, or that the way his heart was pounding threatened imminent damage to his already damaged ribs. He brushed a light kiss on her forehead, then the bridge of her nose, then her cheek.

  She closed her fingers around bunches of his shirt. “I’m frightened, Derek.”

  “Me too.”

  “So much is happening. I don’t know who I am or where I’m going.”

  His mouth touched hers once, then again in feather-soft touches that sent airy crinkles to the tips of her toes. “Later. Think later,” he whispered and kissed her a third time. Then he tipped his head and tried a new angle.

  It worked magnificently. How something as light could be as powerful was beyond her. She could almost imagine a magnetic pull, a pull that rendered the slightest touch evocative, deep and clinging. “Derek?”

  “I know. It’s happening.” He drew her against him with a low, guttural sound.

  “I’m hurting you!”

  “No, no. Shhh. It’s okay.” He wrapped his arms around her and pressed her body to his, imprinting the feel of it on his mind. He wanted to be able to call it back during the lonely hours, when angry eyes surrounded him and there was little to do but count the holes in the wall. At those times he would remember her shape, her smell, her gentleness. She was his escape. She was a ray of sun in a world that was hostile and gray.

  With a wrenching groan, he set her back. He took her hands from his neck, closed them in his and brought them to his lips. He wanted to know when he’d see her again, but he hated to have to ask. He hated being helpless. He hated being the one visited. He hated having to sit still and wait for her return. So, instead, he said gruffly, “I’d call you sometime, but the phone’s bugged.”

  “I could give letter writing another shot.”

  He received mail. There were typewritten letters from David, from his agent, from one of his ex-producers and a few loyal members of his crew, as well as from a handful of friends who didn’t quite have the courage to visit but wanted to keep in touch.

  But all that was different. He imagined receiving a handwritten letter on jasmine-scented paper, imagined himself lying in his cell at night reading and rereading it, deriving untold pleasures from the words. Then he imagined the guards reading it before him, soiling it with their beefy fingers and their petty minds. Or worse, reporting on its contents to the warden. Or worse, to a faceless agent of Noel Greer.

  Derek knew that Sabrina could never work for Greer. What he didn’t know was whether Greer could somehow, sometime, someplace use Sabrina to get at him. The thought was chilling. He had to see that she was protected.

  “They read my mail,” he said.

  “Then I’ll have to make sure I don’t write anything incriminating.”

  “No, Sabrina. Don’t write. I think it might be better that way.”

  “Are you sure?”

  He nodded.

  She would have argued, except that he was looking pale again. She searched his face, making no effort to hide her concern. “If you don’t feel well, if you start to feel worse, will you tell someone?”

  “I’ll be fine.”

  “Derek…” Her voice trailed off. She was lost in his eyes. They were every bit as magnetic as his mouth. “I have to leave now,” she whispered dumbly. Gray … silver … varying in hue with his emotion … gunmetal now in frustration. “I may not be able to get back for a couple of weeks. The doctor suggested we try Nicky on a new program.”

  “Sabrina…”

  She put her hand up to his face, stopping his words. She bit her lip, studied him for a lingering moment through troubled eyes, reached up and put a light kiss on his cheek, then broke away and headed for the gate.

  * * *

  June passed for Sabrina with the speed of a snail and the sword of Damocles hanging over her head. Not until the start of July did she see her way clear to meeting Maura for lunch.

  “You’re a damn busy lady,” Maura drawled, holding her back after the requisite hug. “Mornings at the museum, afternoons at the polo grounds, evenings in the royal box at the ballet.”

  Sabrina sputtered out a weak laugh. “Sure. Right.”

  “Well,” her friend went on with a magnanimous sigh, “I must say that such frivolity is taking its toll. Your eye is twitching.”

  Not knowing whether to laugh or cry, Sabrina bit hard on her lower lip. She didn’t let up until she and Maura were seated in a plant-infested corner of the trendy restaurant. She took a long drink of ice water, then spread the thick linen napkin on her lap.

  “Sorry I had to cancel on you last week. The doctor forbid me to get out of bed.”

  “What happened?”

  “I passed out wheeling Nicky through the park.”

  “Christ!”

  “It’s been one of those months.”

  “But what was wrong?”
<
br />   Sabrina shrugged. “I’m a little anemic and a lot exhausted. I’m taking vitamins. They should help.”

  “And sleep? Are you getting it?”

  “Some. Soon.”

  Maura studied her friend’s face. It was tired but calm, a calm that was disturbed only by troubled eyes. “Sabrina?”

  “I’m doing it, Maura. I’m placing Nicky at the Greenhouse. I’ve agonized and agonized over it, and if you say that I’m being selfish, I’ll get right up from this table and walk out—”

  “You know I won’t do that.”

  Sabrina paused, slowly nodded, then resumed quietly. “It just hasn’t worked. I’ve given him everything I have, but it isn’t enough. He’s unhappy. I’m unhappy. The program we had him on last month did nothing. Even the doctors agreed.”

  How well she remembered that conversation—every word, every gesture, every feeling. She had gone for a consultation with Howard Frasier, the specialist who had directed her on the new program, and they’d been joined by his associate. Both men had looked grim, but in a different way from that to which she was accustomed. Even before she’d heard the solemnity in Frasier’s voice, she sensed that a bridge had been crossed.

  “Frankly, Mrs. Stone,” he said, “I’m surprised you kept at it as long as you did. I assumed you’d stop when we agreed the program wasn’t working.”

  “I had to be sure,” she explained. “I kept thinking, ‘Today’s the day he’ll respond.’ And when he didn’t, I said, ‘Tomorrow’s the day he’ll respond.’ Even now I’m worried that I’ve given up one day too soon.”

  “You haven’t,” Frasier said. His expression had gentled, and there was a stoic regret in his voice. “I don’t believe you’ll ever see results.”

  Sabrina had been taken off-guard. In her months, years of dealing with medical and social service personnel, none had ever been as blunt. A bit wide-eyed, she switched her gaze to Frasier’s companion, who shook his head and said quietly, “If your son had been stuck in a corner and ignored since birth, I’d have said that maybe this intensive program was too much too fast. But you’ve been stimulating him since birth. You’ve been talking to him, exercising him, working him on various other programs before this one. Theoretically, he’d have been ripe to respond. But he didn’t. If as rigorous a program as this hasn’t produced any results…” He gave a subtle shrug as his voice trailed off.