In Death - 24.50 - Dead of Night

by J. D. Robb

  “Nothing. That’s the point. There was nothing wrong with my body back then. I was a little taller than everyone else for a while, including most of the boys, and I had breasts…not even large breasts, just normal, really, a respectable C cup…but I thought I stood out like a giant pink cow in a flock of white sheep. I was always trying to hide and blend in and cover myself up. I was twenty-five before I knew how beautiful I was in high school and thirty-eight, with two boys in college, before I realized how great I looked at thirty.”

  “And that’s my fault?”

  “No. Did I say it was your fault?”

  “No, but you sound angry. Like you were the only teenager in the world who ever felt weird and ugly. You weren’t. While you were busy being tall and voluptuous, oh poor you, I was dealing with Dad’s hawk nose and I was smart, so I was essentially invisible to everyone but the teachers and the geekiest nerds until some moron in a football jersey came to me looking for a miracle one short week before he’s due to flunk out of geometry and then, of course, it’s my fault he doesn’t get to play in a tie-breaker game where college scouts might have picked him up so he could play and party for another four years before he had to come back to Leesburg to sell cars at his father’s dealership where, thirty years later, they can actually—did you know?—refuse to let you test drive the most beautiful moss-green Lexus that you want your husband to buy you for your anniversary and then have to wait three months for after special-ordering it from a different dealership and…” She glanced away like she’d lost her next thought and let her body sag against the doorjamb. “I always padded my bras…so that in the event that someone actually did see me, they wouldn’t try to run a flag up my leg.”

  She appeared so sad and sounded so dejected that when she finally looked up Bonnie burst into snorting laughter. It was the first heartfelt laugh she’d had in weeks.

  “Oh sure.” Janice tried to look outraged, then shrugged and gave a grudging chuckle.

  As far as Bonnie knew, there was nothing in her sister’s life that wasn’t bigger or better, sadder or worse, more or less than what she had—and that wasn’t always as annoying as it sounded.

  “Actually, it’s Susan’s hair that concerns me most,” Bonnie said. It was a relief to finally admit it out loud. “It’s like one of those mood rings we used to have when we were kids, remember? In the four weeks since her dad left it’s gone from Cool Angry Blue to Royally Mad Magenta to Truly Pissed Pink. When she goes for Furious Flame Red I’m afraid her head’ll explode.”

  Neither sister laughed. They both knew the frustrated, explosive feeling she was talking about and it wasn’t funny.

  “Then you have to do something.” Janice made it sound so easy.

  “Like what?”

  “Beg Joe to move back in.”

  “No.”

  “Just until the two of you can work things out. See a marriage therapist or something. But stay together.”

  “He chose to leave, Jan. I didn’t kick him out. And he’s welcome to come back if he wants to, but I’m certainly not going to beg him for anything.”

  “Is this a menopausal thing? They say menopausal women have renewed urges for autonomy.”

  “Autonomy?” She chuckled in disbelief. “No. I’m not menopausal.”

  “And you’re sure there isn’t another woman?”

  Joe Sanderson with another woman. This would have made everything less complicated for Janice—a lying, cheating, no-good womanizer like her first husband was something she had experience with and knew how to handle. But a smart, charming, handsome, hard-working, and faithful man who wasn’t feeling content in his life—and therefore with his wife—was a puzzle to her. And the fact that her sister felt pretty much the same way about the good, honest man made it a real conundrum.

  “I’m sure. There is no other woman.”

  There wasn’t even a good fight to clear the air…much less one to stir up any dust…

  Bonnie could still hear the wind tapping rain against the window that Sunday morning four months earlier—clearly not when their problems began but when they started to surface, like dead bodies from the bottom of a dark lagoon.

  It was cold and dreary and too early to get up. She cuddled into Joe’s warmth beside her in bed as if he were a pot-bellied stove in winter. He was always so warm. Even his toes were a comfort as they automatically reached for hers, rubbed, and then held them between his feet to heat them like slices of bread in a toaster. She knew he wasn’t fully awake when he rolled more completely toward her, lifting his leg so she could slide one of hers between his, or when he drew the covers more tightly around her shoulders as his arms came about her, because they’d cuddled like this hundreds and hundreds of times before and he rarely remembered the next day.

  She knew, too, that he would hold her like that, safe and protected, forever…if she didn’t screw up and give him the signal—or what he always seemed to think was a signal.

  In truth it was just a reflex she’d tried to harness for years. It was that pleasured moan when skin meets skin or cold meets warmth or lonely meets companion; that uncontainable hum from the back of the throat at the sudden, sharp awareness of the senses; that instinctive noise; that…signal that inevitably turned a perfectly glorious Sunday morning cuddle into full-blown sex—which, admittedly, could go either way, depending on her mood.

  As it happened, her mood was favorable that morning…well, not at first, but Joe was nothing if not persuasive. His lips and hands knew all the right places to go and which buttons to push. He can’t remember to hang the toilet paper with the loose end on top or to readjust the driver’s seat after he drives my car or wait for the commercials to talk to me during Grey’s Anatomy, but Joe Sanderson can make love to his wife in his sleep, she thought, heavy-lidded and drowsy.

  In fact, the more she thought about it and the more predictable his moves became, the more she began to suspect that he was…making love to her in his sleep. As his mouth kissed and nibbled its way down her neck, her mind fought the euphoria in her sex-drugged brain to listen to his breathing. Panting…he could be dreaming of sex. And if he was dreaming, well, how did she know if he knew he was making love to her? I could be anyone!

  He pushed at her nightgown and his warm, wet mouth covered the tip of her breast. She sobbed in a breath of excitement as she started to wonder if she ought to speak—ask him if he knew who he was having sex with, ask him to say her name. But they always advised against waking sleepwalkers, not because of that old heart attack hooey, but because they wake up confused and disoriented and sometimes swinging their fists. This might be true of sleeping…sex participants as well, and she was in a precarious position here.

  Moments after he entered her, Joe’s skin grew warmer and moist against the palms of her hands as he increased his efforts for an orgasm. She stroked him and kissed him and wondered how he could have been so angry with her just last night when he discovered—at the hardware store while buying a small replacement part for her broken garbage disposal—that she’d maxed out the Visa card again, and still want to make love with her this morning. That is, if he’s aware it’s me…For all she knew a hole in the mattress or a knothole in a tree would have been just as convenient for his dreams of…oh say, Nicole Kidman.

  But Joe didn’t hold grudges. He was a blow-up-and-it’s-over kind of guy. She was the grudge holder. That’s true, she admitted to herself with a large sigh. But she wasn’t irresponsible with the money. We have children, children want stuff and stuff costs money. Yes, she was a little overindulgent with them but she didn’t mean to be and if she was spoiling them and ruining their character—not that he ever actually accused her of it—it was a little late to change things now. To suddenly cut the children off for no particular—

  “What the hell are you doing?” Bonnie’s eyes snapped open to see Joe staring down at her, his strong, angular face flushed with exertion, his breath coming in short, desperate gasps. He looked ready to explode. “Baby, yo
u’re killing me!”

  “Oh! You’re awake.” Did she say that out loud?

  In the dim light he looked surprised, then incredulous—so she must have—and then almost amused before he closed his sleepy hazel eyes, gave a soft chuckle, and lowered his forehead to hers. “This does feel familiar, sweetheart…” He took two more gulps of air. “…but not so much that I can do it in my sleep.”

  “No, of course not. That was a stupid thing to say. I don’t know why I said—”

  “You’re not into it, are you?”

  “No. I am into it. I am. It’s great. Wonderful. I just…I was…I got…sidetracked.”

  “Sidetracked.” His expression as he studied her was curious. After a moment, he sighed and rolled off her, asking, “Sidetracked where? To what? Problems at work? Here?”

  “Nowhere. I was here. With you.” This wasn’t a conversation she wanted to have this early in the morning, under these particular circumstances, so she turned her back to him, bunched up her pillow, and tried to settle in again. “I was cold. I wanted to cuddle.”

  “Okay. Good. Then why’d you give me the signal for sex?”

  She pulled the covers up close to her face and mumbled into the pillow. “I didn’t.”

  “What?”

  “Nothing,” she said through her breathing space in the sheets. “I’m sorry, honey. Go back to sleep.”

  “I’m awake now and don’t be sorry. Talk to me. What did you say just then?”

  Oh, Christ! Well, fine. Maybe twenty years was long enough not to mention that an instinctive hum was not a fucking signal!

  So to speak.

  “I said…” She flipped the bedding back and half-turned toward him. “I didn’t.”

  “You didn’t what?”

  “I didn’t give you a signal. I gave a loud sigh, a purr. I was cold, you were warm, it felt good, I hummed. It’s an instinctive noise. I do it when I eat ice cream. I do it when I take a bubble bath and when I hug Susan or the boys and after my first sip of a really cold beer. It doesn’t mean I want to have sex. It’s just something that happens when something feels good or tastes good or…or is good, like sex. But it doesn’t mean I want it.”

  She watched as his eyes scanned the ceiling, waited while he came to the inevitable conclusion.

  “Are you telling me that all these years I’ve been thinking you wanted sex with me and you didn’t?”

  “No. I love making love with you. You know I do. And when I’m not in the mood I tell you I’m tired or mad or whatever. Don’t I tell you?” He nodded. “All I’m saying is that most of the time when I make that noise, that nice moan, I’m just…making that noise. I can’t help it.”

  “Why haven’t you ever said anything?”

  She shrugged. “At first because I thought it was you wanting sex and that was fine with me—great in fact—but then after a few years I discovered I could get just the cuddle I wanted without all the bother of sex if I didn’t make that noise. And by then it was too late to tell—”

  “The bother of sex?”

  “You know what I mean.”

  “I think I’m beginning to.”

  “Stop it. We have a great sex life and you know it or you wouldn’t have stopped just now. You could tell I wasn’t really into it and you stopped. How many times has that happened?”

  “How do I know you weren’t just too sleepy to do a better job of pretending this time?”

  Proof of orgasm. Even having children wasn’t corroborating evidence.

  “Have I ever lied to you?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “No. I haven’t. I make tiny omissions…for your own good, but I have never lied straight to your face.” She finished rolling over to face him more directly. “Do you believe me?”

  “Maybe.”

  “Then I am telling you straight to your face that I’ve only had to fake an orgasm maybe…eight times the whole time we’ve been married. You’re that good,” she added as a sugar coating.

  His sweet tooth was still asleep. He came up on his elbow, more curious than wounded. “Which eight times?”

  “Oh.” She groaned. “Give me a break. I don’t remember. I—Yes, I do. Both times you went out fishing with Greg Morris and came back sunburned and drunk and, unfortunately, amorous. You were done before my head hit the pillow, so I had to pretend I was done too so you’d roll over, pass out, and leave me alone.”

  His keen green eyes narrowed as he tried to remember. “And the other six times?”

  “I don’t know. And…and that’s not the point anyway. Actually, I’ve forgotten the point. What is it?”

  “That what I always thought I knew about you might not be true. Maybe I don’t know you as well as I thought I did.”

  “Oh, yeah. Well…” What could she say? She was a bride a month after she graduated from RFK High School in May. He was the ripe old age of nineteen when they married. How well could two people know each other after living side by side for twenty years? Did other couples discuss every little opinion or thought that passed through their minds? And how often were they allowed to change their minds? How could something not bother her too much the first dozen times it happened early in her marriage but drive her completely insane the last six dozen times in the last eight years? At what point in a marriage did it become okay for one to assume they knew the other so well that they could presume to know how the other would respond or react? And, come to think of it, she wasn’t the only one who didn’t always speak her mind. “Well, what about my mushroom soup meatloaf that you ate and hated for years before you said anything?”

  “You can’t compare meatloaf to sex.”

  “Yes, I can. It’s the same thing. I go to all the trouble of making what I think is a perfectly good dinner for you and you eat it and you say it’s fine and years go by before you mention to Susan that you used to luuuv your mother’s meatloaf and that she used the recipe off the oatmeal box.”

  “Mushrooms have no taste.”

  “Why didn’t you just say so? Why say it’s fine and choke it down if you hate it?”

  “Because you hate to cook and you went to all the trouble of cooking the meatloaf for me, so I ate it.”

  She sighed, loud and short-tempered. “Did you ever think that if I’m going to the trouble of cooking at all that I’d rather go to the trouble of making something you like than the trouble of making something you can barely tolerate? At least I usually enjoyed the sex I didn’t ask for.”

  They studied one another in the weak morning light until Joe finally leaned over and dropped a kiss between her eyebrows, fell back onto his pillow, and closed his eyes. But he didn’t go back to sleep. She could hear the rumble of the gears grinding in his brain, even over the constant stream of questions in her head. What did this mean? Was their marriage in trouble? Were his feelings hurt? Was it better to get these things out in the open or, if they didn’t make you nuts, just let them go? Why’d she have to finally explain about the hum? And what were they going to use for a signal now?

  Two

  That was just the beginning. In the weeks that followed, more minor irritations and misunderstandings came to light, and after those a few more. Nothing worth fighting about, nothing that changed the fundamental love they had for one another, but certainly enough to make them question, even more, how well they really knew each other…or if over the years they’d grown apart, become different people and if deep fondness and friendship—and kids and bills and habit—rather than true love, held them together.

  “Maybe a few weeks apart,” Joe suggested after a vigorous bickering about who put what clutter in the basement and whose priceless possessions needed to be disposed of first.

  “You’re leaving me?” Stunned, she stopped stacking boxes and turned to face him. “I want to keep seventeen boxes of Vogue magazines that I’ve been collecting since I was sixteen years old and you’re leaving me?”

  “No. Of course not. It’s just something I’ve been thinki
ng about lately.”

  “Leaving me?” She glanced at the ceiling-high pile of boxes. “Look, I can probably whittle these down to…say, thirteen boxes, less maybe. And I don’t really care if you want to keep all the old fishing and camping stuff. None of the new stuff is broken or has any holes in it, but if you want to keep the old stuff, too, that’s okay. None of this junk is worth breaking up our marriage for.”

  “Someday I’m going to wish I got all that in writing.” He chuckled and stepped forward to wrap his arms around her. “And you’re right. None of this is worth breaking up our marriage. Nothing is. I just think that…” He grasped her shoulders and held her at arm’s length. “God, Bonnie, do you realize how long we’ve known each other? We met at Chicky Davis’s birthday party when you were this…God, this luscious, funny, smart, completely unself-absorbed junior and I was a…just the opposite senior and…and aside from our daughter and my mother you’re the only woman I’ve ever loved. We fell in love young, we got married young, had kids young. We both gave up dreams to be together and I wouldn’t have it any other way but…”

  “But what?” She braced herself.

  “But maybe we need to step back a little, take a look at who we are…now. Who we are alone, who we are together. We’re not teenagers anymore; we’ve changed. A lot. Hell, we have a son who’s older than we were when we got married. Maybe it’s time to get reacquainted with ourselves…and then with each other again.”

  She once heard or read somewhere that if the word divorce was never brought up during a fight or in a discussion with your spouse then it could never be an option in your marriage—and was acutely aware that Joe hadn’t gone anywhere near the word…yet.

  And he was right about them changing over the years. Sometimes, she didn’t know where he stopped and she began. Other times, she felt a distinct division between him and a self she kept quiet and hidden away like an undesirable relative. As if that part of her was someone she didn’t think he’d understand, someone she wasn’t sure he’d even like…and yet it was still her, acting out from time to time, pushing to the foreground when she least expected it, surprising everyone—including herself.