Commitments

by Barbara Delinsky

  Unable to listen to his words, yet unable to move on legs that felt rubbery, Sabrina lowered her head and covered her ears with her hands. “I don’t want to hear this,” she mumbled to her chest. “I can’t. I didn’t ask for this situation. I didn’t ask for the anguish a second time through. Damn it, I don’t deserve it—” she cried, dropping her hands and raising her head.

  But all she saw was Derek’s back. Seconds later, the door slammed behind him as he disappeared into the night.

  * * *

  Sabrina waited for two hours. Wandering apprehensively from the kitchen to the living room and back, she waited for Derek to return. With each passing minute of his absence, a hollowness grew inside. An emptiness. An intense feeling of being alone.

  Heedless of the fact that it was nearly midnight, she climbed up the stairs and knocked softly on J. B.’s door. She knew he was there; at the end of his book, now, he’d been catching a few hours’ sleep in the house each night before returning at dawn to work in the barn. As badly as she felt over disturbing him, she needed to talk with someone close. J. B. was her flesh and blood. He’d forgive her the intrusion.

  Quietly, she opened the door and peered into the darkness. “J. B.?” she called softly, unsteadily. “J. B.?”

  But it was Ann who rose silently from bed, a waiflike figure in a long flannel gown. Casting a glance back at J. B.’s inert form, she tiptoed to the door.

  “Oh God,” Sabrina whispered, feeling like an utter fool. “I’m sorry. I hadn’t realized—”

  Ann put a finger to her lips, turned to grab a shawl from the nearby chair and slipped into the hall, closing the door behind her. “He’s really exhausted,” she whispered. Taking Sabrina’s arm, she led her to the stairs and drew her down onto the top step.

  For a minute neither woman spoke as they sat in the half-light from below. Then Ann said, “You didn’t know?”

  Sabrina, who was surprised enough by what she’d just discovered to escape from her own worries, shook her head. “I should have, I suppose. When he’s not working, he’s with you.”

  “I have nightmares, awful nightmares, and when that happens it’s worse if I stay in bed, so I get up and walk around.” She was talking softly, quickly, a little nervously. “That was how J. B. and I got to talking. Out in the barn in the middle of the night. He has nightmares, too.”

  “J. B.?” Sabrina asked, startled.

  “Well, not so much now, but he used to have them, so he knows what it’s like. When he’s working, his mind is always on, so he has trouble sleeping. That was why he was up.”

  “J. B. has nightmares? J. B. always caused nightmares. I never knew he had them.”

  “Terribly, when he was a child.” Ann had her arms wrapped around her knees and the shawl wrapped around her arms. She looked pensively toward the bottom of the stairs, then, as though reaching a decision, began to talk very softly and more slowly. “He never told anyone—I take that back—he told his father once, and his father said that nightmares were in the mind and could be easily controlled and that J. B. could do that if he tried. He did try, but the nightmares kept coming.”

  She smiled sadly, almost apologetically. “They were silly nightmares, one very different from the next. He had an over-fertile imagination with no other outlet. But he was embarrassed. He thought something was wrong with him because he couldn’t make them go away, so he kept them to himself, didn’t tell anyone. And then he found his own way of coping.”

  Sabrina didn’t have to ask what that was.

  “People think him strange,” Ann said, turning to face her, “but they don’t understand that deep down inside one part of him is still that little boy making stories up out of fear. What’s incredible is that he’s managed to turn that fear into fame and fortune. He faced the nightmares and used them to his benefit. I respect him for that.”

  Sabrina hadn’t known that J. B. had nightmares!

  Ann whispered out a nervous laugh. “I also think I love him, but that’s beside the point.”

  “No, it’s not,” Sabrina said, feeling something lovely and warm inside. “It’s because you love him that you understand him. I love him, but in a different way. He never told me about the nightmares. He never explained why he did what he did. I wish I’d known.”

  “Would things have been different if you’d known?”

  Sabrina considered that, then gave a confused shrug. “I don’t know. Maybe I could have helped him somehow. He’s lived through a lot of lonely years. Maybe that wasn’t necessary.”

  “I like to think it was,” Ann said, “and I know that sounds cruel, but it shouldn’t. J. B. has had to fight a lot of private demons. He’s still fighting them, but he’s a strong man in his way. A little boy with nightmares, but a strong man. Self-contained, but still needing someone.” Her voice fell to a shy whisper. “If it hadn’t been for those lonely years, I doubt I’d have climbed from his bed just now.” She slanted a timid glance at Sabrina. “Do you know what I mean?”

  Sabrina thought she did. Ann was bright and energetic, but an introvert to some extent—as was J. B. Given her interest and aptitude in the kitchen, she was also proving to be something of a homebody, which was perhaps just what J. B. needed. He had met Ann at a point in life when he was realizing that. So good had come from the pain … just as Sabrina’s relationship with Derek had been forged when they’d both been in hell.

  Ann was suddenly looking downstairs. Following her gaze, Sabrina watched Derek step through the front door. He looked up, saw the two women, stopped.

  Without a word, Ann stood. She put a hand on Sabrina’s shoulder and gave it a gentle squeeze that revealed far more than Sabrina had, then returned soundlessly to J. B.

  Alone on her step, Sabrina sat for what seemed an eternity. She watched Derek watch her, ached for him, ached for herself. At the height of their argument, he’d said that he loved her. She hadn’t said the words, but she should have, because—looking down at him now, feeling every inch of the distance that separated them—she knew that she loved him and always would. What frightened her most was the knowledge that if it hadn’t been for the pain she’d suffered with Nicky, they’d never have met.

  He was handsome standing there dressed so incongruously in a leather bomber jacket and sweatpants. With his dark hair disheveled, his jaw shadowed, his eye bracketed by the scar, he was formidable. He was also strong, principled, gentle, amusing and vulnerable in turn. She couldn’t conceive of life without him.

  Rising from the step, she started down the stairs at a pace that didn’t falter until she was sliding her arms around his waist, burying her face against his throat. She felt him complete the circle and sagged a little in relief, but his arms tightened in ready support, as she’d known they would. And then he bent his head and began to nuzzle her cheek until, raising her face, she met his mouth.

  His kiss was gentle, but deep and filled with the apology he wasn’t offering aloud. Framing her face with his hands, he drew back, then kissed her from another angle, then another. Each kiss was slow, moist, intimate. He used his tongue to enunciate dozens of silent words, none as meaningful as the look he gave her when he held her back for a minute. I love you, his eyes said, and then he kissed her again. Her mouth, her chin, her nose, eyes, forehead—he took his turn with each, and when he was done, he gently lifted her in his arms and carried her into the bedroom.

  Without a word, he set her down by the side of the bed and tossed the quilt aside. Then he turned to her, caged her face and took her mouth with greater force, greater hunger and need.

  Sabrina thrived on all three. She’d been feeling down well before her argument with Derek, and the argument hadn’t helped. She knew that she was her own worst enemy. Derek hadn’t had to suggest that she was behaving irresponsibly; she’d known it herself, had been feeling guilty about it but helpless to change. Where the baby was concerned, she was ambivalent. She wanted it, she didn’t want it. Ambivalence characterized much of what she’d done lat
ely.

  There was nothing ambivalent, though, in the love Derek offered. Lips clinging to hers, he shrugged out of his jacket, unbuttoned his shirt and cast it aside, then went for the hem of her sweater. They parted for only the few seconds it took to slip the sweater over her head, then came back together, this time with their bodies bare from the waist up and touching. Hands splayed across her back, Derek worked her in a subtly undulating circle that dragged her breasts—fuller now and more sensitive than usual—against his chest. And all the while he kissed her, moist open-mouth kisses that weakened her knees as surely as his raw, masculine scent drugged her.

  She tried to say his name, tried to tell him that she was on fire, that she needed more, but no sound came out. All she could do was tug at the drawstring at his waist with one hand while the other slid down the front of the soft sweatpants to shape his sex.

  He moaned, strained closer, cupped her bottom and increased the pressure that way, but it wasn’t enough. His breath was coming roughly as he backed her down to the bed.

  Sabrina helped him then. Impatient to feel something strong and hard filling the emptiness inside, she untied the drawstring and pushed the sweatpants to his thighs. He did the rest, twisting to free himself without taking his eyes from Sabrina’s. Eyes, mouth, hands—something had to be always connecting to compensate for the few hours, just passed, when they’d been apart.

  Hands around his neck, Sabrina raised her hips to Derek’s tugging at her jeans. She had barely kicked them from her feet when his long frame came down between her legs. Then it was surging up and he was inside. She sighed, arched her back to maximize the sensation of his filling, wrapped her legs around his waist.

  For a long time, Derek’s hips were still. Only his head moved, guided by Sabrina’s hands in his hair. He trailed hot, hungry kisses over her face, down her neck, to her shoulders and upper arms. Then he took her breast into his mouth and drew on it with a firm, strong sucking motion.

  To say that his lovemaking was healing was to tell only half the truth. What he healed with his mouth he then inflamed with his hands, and when the rest of his body joined in, Sabrina sizzled.

  They made love the way they were—Sabrina warm and giving, defiant and fire-filled, Derek with a streak of gentleness, a streak of challenge, a streak of dark passion that stopped just short of danger. They complemented each other, brought out the deepest, the hottest, the best.

  But if there was an added fury to their lovemaking, it was the only sign of where they’d been that night. After they’d erupted in mind-numbing climax, then slowly returned to awareness, they fell asleep in each other’s arms without a word.

  * * *

  The next day, they left for Cleveland, where another of Lloyd Ballantine’s paramours lived. After telephoning two who had unequivocally refused to be interviewed, this one had agreed with caution. Derek hadn’t wanted to give her time to change her mind.

  Derek had a qualm or two, namely the safety factor involved in traveling with Sabrina. If, in fact, a sniper had taken potshots at his car, she was in danger simply by being with him. He was alert. Even at the farmhouse he was alert. But there’d been nothing amiss there, and he saw no sign of a tail on the road. As a precaution, he’d made their travel arrangements under an alias—which bothered him only in that his parole officer wouldn’t approve. But he felt he had just cause.

  More than once he wondered if he was playing his own form of Russian roulette by taking Sabrina along. But time was passing, and he needed those files. Only when he had them in his hand would he be able to tackle the emotional issue of Sabrina’s pregnancy.

  Besides, he wanted Sabrina away from the farmhouse and the many jobs she managed to drum up.

  So they flew to Cleveland, where they quickly learned why Cynthia Conroy had agreed to the meeting. After a few minutes of introductory chitchat during which she apparently deemed them worthy confidants, Cynthia poured out a story that rivaled the one told by Janet LaVine.

  Cynthia had been married to a career army man assigned to the Pentagon when she’d interviewed to clerk for Ballantine. She had her law degree. She was qualified. But something happened during the interview—and it was mutual, she was quick to add. Taking a job elsewhere, she’d begun meeting Ballantine at odd hours in one hotel or another. He’d excited her. And she had the perfect cover. Yes, his sexual tastes were a bit unusual, but she’d been finding her husband boring, so she hadn’t minded. If Ballantine was rough sometimes, that was part of the lure. Knowing who and what he was had always given her a compensatory measure of assurance.

  After four months, he’d moved on to another woman. But she’d been hooked. Three months after that, her husband found her in bed with the house painter he’d hired the week before. They separated soon after, then divorced. Since then, the bulk of the money she earned practicing law went to the therapist she saw twice a week.

  Cynthia was angry. Eight years after the fact, she was still angry at Lloyd Ballantine, angry at the mess he’d stirred up in her life.

  No, she’d never seen nor heard of a set of private files that the man had kept. Nor did she know anything about his having been corrupt. She’d always thought him the epitome of righteousness on the bench. Off the bench, he was something else. The one thing that had amazed her, she said, was that he’d never been exposed as the womanizer he was—pretty remarkable, she claimed, given that he’d fathered an illegitimate daughter.

  * * *

  Like small children hearing the reindeer’s hooves on the roof, Derek and Sabrina had trouble containing their excitement after leaving Cynthia Conroy.

  “Solid,” Derek said as they walked briskly to the car. “It’s solid. What more perfect a lever in Greer’s hand than an illegitimate child. Women, Ballantine could have denied. They came and went in his life. A child—a child stays. It would be the kind of scandal that no man, no married man would want, least of all a justice of the United States Supreme Court. If Greer had somehow learned about the child and threatened to expose her existence—which would have led to exposure of the whole sex thing—I’d bet Ballantine would be more than willing to deal.” He opened the car door for Sabrina.

  “But where are the files?” she asked, slipping into the seat, then looking up at him. “Do you really think the mother would have them?”

  “We have nothing to lose by asking,” he said. Bracing one hand on the roof of the car and the other on the top of the door, he leaned down. “Ballantine’s wife doesn’t have them. His kids don’t. I’ve called his law clerks, his secretaries, his partner during the years he was in private practice, those men who were closest to him in the Justice Department—not a one claims to know of the files’ existence. That could mean either that they don’t exist after all, or that they’re hidden away safe and sound.”

  Straightening, he closed the door, rounded the car and slid behind the wheel. “Think about it. If you’d been Ballantine, if you had a child whose paternity you had to deny, if you felt guilty about that and wanted to do something extra for that child, what better way than to give her a firecracker to beat all firecrackers and let her light it when and if she saw fit? You know what the publishing world is about. Those files would be worth a cool million as the basis for a biography, and what better person to either write or co-write it than one of Ballantine’s blood kin?”

  Sabrina was still reeling from knowledge of the child. “Do you think Cynthia was on the up-and-up?”

  “She knew we’d check things out.”

  “What if Greer paid her to mislead us?”

  “That would mean he’s one step ahead of us, and if that were so, we’d have sensed it from some of the others we’ve spoken with. They’d have been more uneasy. Cynthia would have been more uneasy. But she wasn’t uneasy. Just angry. And she volunteered that information. If Greer had paid her, she would have simply acted dumb. But she gave us a name.” He frowned. “Why she didn’t use it herself to blackmail Ballantine when he dropped her is beyond me.”
>
  Sabrina was perhaps more able to understand the female mind. “There’s a fine line between hatred and love. She may have despised Ballantine—and still despise him—but adore him a little at the same time.”

  Derek was perplexed. “Why Ballantine told her in the first place is beyond me.”

  “She said he was really depressed one night. Crying. Maybe he had to tell someone or he’d burst.”

  Derek sighed. “Certainly does add fuel to the suicide theory—depression, guilt, fear.”

  They sat for a minute in silent contemplation of the emotional low required for that. Needing to think more positively, Sabrina asked, “So we head for Seattle?”

  “We head for Seattle.” He turned his full attention on her. “Are you up to it?”

  They were getting close. She could feel it. And the more involved she was, the better she felt. “I’m up for it,” she said with a smile.

  * * *

  In her mid-forties, attractive, petite and soft-spoken, Gayle Farrell was the least probable-looking candidate for a kinky sex liaison that Sabrina, for one, would ever have expected to find. Derek, too, was slightly unbalanced, for in the well-modulated tone of her voice, the gentleness of her eyes, the features that radiated a quiet inner strength, Gayle reminded him of Sabrina.

  Still, he conducted himself with the same aplomb that never failed to amaze Sabrina. She wasn’t sure if it was the eloquence of his eyes, the temptation of his smile, the deep and flowing timbre of his voice, but something about him inspired people to talk. She half suspected that, despite Derek’s claim to the contrary, it was the fact that, dressed in blazer, tie and slacks, he was once again the Derek McGill of Outside Insight, all dashing good looks and prestige. And talent. As an interviewer, his instincts were faultless. He knew when to talk softly, when to laugh, when to tease or prod or accuse or back off.

  Much later, Derek was to say that the time had been right, that Ballantine’s death was just distant enough, that the Janet LaVines, the Cynthia Conroys, the Gayle Farrells of the world were simply ready to talk and would have done so regardless of who had been at the door. Sabrina chose to credit Derek with the coup.