Halt at X: A North of Boston Novel

by Sally Ann Sims

  “Ah, that,” said Harris dismissively, shoving the notepad into his right rear pocket. “I had that eight years ago in Chicago. Wife left me, lost my job, car stolen. All in two months.” He scratched the side of his neck. “Anything else missing?”

  Aden shook his head, smiling in disbelief at Harris. “No kidding?”

  “Other than my sense of humor? At least my trials are more psychological than Job’s.”

  “Yeah, now,” said Aden. His voice had switched from banter to fret. “But what are they planning?”

  Harris frowned, looking between the two of them. “Anything missing?”

  Lucinda unlocked and opened her desk drawers and checked her filing cabinets.

  “I don’t see anything, but let me look around a bit more. Looks like they were trying to be neat about this till Beverly barged in.”

  “Ok. I’m off. I’ll send Mitchell over for fingerprints,” Harris said, touching his visor. He left, shutting her heavy oak door with care.

  “Aden?” Lucinda said.

  “Yes?”

  “The bastards have really pissed me off this time. Pushing me off the road, calling me at home, rifling my office! What next?”

  She turned to face him squarely. He was wearing a crisp dove gray suit and a navy tie. His skin gleamed pink, his hair shone caramel blond, and his blue-gray eyes had a secret warm depth to them. He looked good. He usually did, but she hardly ever allowed herself to register that fact. Today she was noticing everything good that crossed her path.

  “I’m not giving up, you know.” She leaned against the window sill and appreciated the lush bank of purple and white fringed tulips by the stairway to Rantoul.

  “Who said you would? I see that new maniacal gleam in your eye, and I’m betting it’s not caffeine induced.”

  “You with me?”

  “To the end. Till you halt at X,” he said.

  She turned to face him again with a questioning expression.

  “And beyond,” he added, more softly, looking at the tulips before meeting her gaze. “Thea showed me the dressage tests you guys are working on at The Puffy Muffin yesterday. You’ve got your work cut out for you. Frank, Warren, the future of P-H, raising almost half a zillion dollars, Dressage Training Level Tests 1 and 2.”

  “I like a good challenge,” said Lucinda. They stood together at the window presiding over students walking to their second class of the day. “I’d prefer not to have quite so many at once, but sometimes we don’t get to choose.”

  The sidewalks emptied as the clock tower rang the hour.

  “You know,” she said quietly. “You could go for my job and I could consult once we… .” Her voice trailed off. She thought of Bart. Of Aden. She was his boss. Of how impossible everything was. While underneath she burned to see Frank and Warren gone from P-H as soon as she could engineer it. Could she engineer it? It was going to take everything she had, plus nerves of titanium.

  “What did you just say?” Aden tried to rein in an irrepressible smile and failed.

  “Nothing,” she said. “I was kind of talking to myself.”

  Hot Equine Accessory

  Thea led Pogo to the near pasture for turnout. As Thea passed the lesson ring fence near the gate, Vanessa leaned her hip against Jay’s thigh.

  “Softer,” Jay said to Margo, as Bally cantered close by at the rail. “If you go soft, he’ll go soft.” He turned to Vanessa, and she straightened up, stretching her back. “You should definitely enroll, love. I’ll be faculty by next fall, to be sure.”

  Vanessa smiled at him as if he were the hottest equine accessory out of Europe that she’d just snapped up. She’d moved both of her horses from Thelbank Stables to Salt Marsh for Jay to help her with training. Unbeknownst to Vanessa, Jay had been banned from Thelbank, adding to the growing list of barns at which he was not welcome. Ever again.

  “What’s the point of taking classes, Jay? Real horse people don’t have degrees. I certainly don’t need one.” In one fluid motion, she shook her deep brown hair back over her shoulders, gathered it in a neat mass, and stabbed a lacquer comb in it to keep it off her neck.

  Jay smiled at her as if indulging a favored student, then turned his attention briefly to Bally.

  “Pop him over a couple of rails, Margo! Then I’m off,” Jay said, inching closer to Vanessa’s left side. He was enjoying her increasing attention, and the fact that she was the daughter of the richest man on Cape Tilton didn’t hurt. And one of the most attractive daughters of anyone.

  Except for Lucinda, he thought. Lucinda had her own unselfconscious beauty that reminded him of something, something that kept drawing him back despite her feigned lack of interest. When he saw her, he remembered his first love back in Galway. Minna. Was it the way they both walked, stood? The scrappy attitude they shared? He wasn’t sure. It wasn’t as simple as eye color and hair. Something he couldn’t find words for attracted him to both of them as if they were two halves of a perfect whole.

  Minna broke her neck and died instantly after falling onto a stone wall while out with the hunt. Serving as whipper-in that day, Jay had caught her runaway mare and raced back to the dismounted crowd assembled around the wall demarking where the brook bordered the hayfield on his grandfather’s property. Minna’s broken form lay awkwardly on moss-covered stones. Her riding helmet, a simple hunt cap covered in black velveteen, the elastic chin strap not used, had popped off and filled with stream water. As he looked away upstream to blunt the rage bursting inside him, he noticed the fox leave the brook a hundred yards up, sending the hounds in various directions off the scent. She would have turned seventeen the next Saturday. He never hunted that ground again.

  * * * * *

  They did look a sight together, both tall and lean with slack-muscled confidence, Lucinda thought, approaching the outdoor ring at a walk on Lady Grey. She was not at all surprised by the tableau. Jay’s back was to Thea, who was adjusting the flow in a watering trough. Jay was oblivious not only to Thea’s disapproving face but to the fact that she was in the vicinity. Thea reminded Lucinda of a seismically active fault line. The discomfort reflected in Thea’s slitted eyes and tight mouth was nothing, Lucinda imagined, compared to the white-hot rage roiling underneath.

  Yes, Jay and Vanessa looked the perfect couple, Lucinda mused. Neither gave a damn about anyone but themselves. Lucinda stroked the mare’s neck, noticing it was beginning to darken and dapple. She’d just finished a half-hour session in the indoor with Holly and was planning a short hack to relax. Holly encouraged her to get out and expose Lady Grey to life as a regular horse, and it was becoming the thing Lucinda looked forward to most during the week, now that work and love and home were in a state of constant turbulence.

  As the mare’s hooves settled and lifted behind him on the packed sand lane, Jay turned suddenly and pulled away from Vanessa, watching Lucinda pass.

  “Nice mare,” he said. “You have quite an eye for horseflesh, Cinda.” He touched the calf of her riding boot as she passed. “Heading up the loop trail?”

  Lucinda ignored him. How had she ever been fooled by him? Pulled in by him? It was so obvious to her now that the energy he had sent her way had nothing to do with her and everything to do with him. His need. His… ? She didn’t know. Was he trying to make up for something with her? Someone? She shook her head to stop the thoughts.

  After she passed Vanessa and the end of the ring, Lucinda asked Lady Grey to trot toward the woods along the near pasture to the top of a gentle hill. Pogo followed along at the pasture rail also at a trot, flipping his head at the fun. She let the mare canter up the hill — good for muscle building. Pogo broke into a gallop, and the two horses raced up the hill. Lucinda pulled the mare up at the top.

  “Sorry, girl,” she said. “But you know how competitive guys are.”

  Lady Grey had taken the short sprint without fuss and came back immediately to a walk. Lucinda turned her right, entering the woods, and they ambled along a trail cushioned in bu
rnt orange pine needles. Back down the hill, she saw Jay’s car leaving the Salt Marsh parking lot.

  Halfway along the mile loop trail, at the highest point near a dirt road, wound a low stone wall that had long since fallen apart. She dismounted and loosened the girth and sat on the remains of the wall, her back against a forked pine, letting the sun warm her face, holding the reins loosely. She would just sit here a minute and enjoy the peace.

  She heard a car door shut by the road but ignored it since people often parked along the Salt Marsh Road spur to take in the ocean view. Overhead, in the direction of Pogo’s pasture, six crows mobbed a sharp-shinned hawk, and suddenly someone slid in next to her on the wall. Her nose registered suede mixed with sweat. That musky cologne.

  “I miss this, you and me,” Jay said. He turned her face and kissed her in one motion. Pulling back, she pushed him off of her and stood up.

  “Hey! It’s me. Remember what it’s like?”

  “I remember. Unfortunately.”

  While she tightened the girth, Jay grabbed her arm with his right hand and the reins under the mare’s throat with his left.

  “Hey, Cinda. You know there’s something still there with us. You’ve been pushing it away, but you don’t have to now.” His tone mingled steeliness with supplication, and his eyes shone eager in the dappled shade of the pine trees. His grip tightened on her upper arm.

  “Jay. Back off,” she said firmly, jerking her arm out of his grasp.

  They stared into each other’s eyes. Lucinda did not look away.

  “I do not want you anymore. Get it?”

  Jay smiled at her rejection as if it were just words she didn’t mean.

  “Remember, Cinda, you said it was ok that I went away, we could pick it up when I got back.” He ran his hand down the outside of her arm, bumping the Harris buzzer clipped to her waist, where his hand came to rest just above it.

  Lucinda stood her ground — she didn’t want there to be any question, any more prowling around. Any more venom. She was going to do this herself; this had nothing to do with Harris. Or Orion.

  “Listen,” she said, leading the mare forward a few steps, out of range of his personal electricity that circuited for his benefit only. She finished tightening the girth and adjusted her stirrups for mounting.

  “Whatever it was that I felt for you, you killed when you took up with Caitlin. Then toying around with Thea, preying on someone who doesn’t have a clue. Now it’s Vanessa, although the two of you deserve each other. That’s not my thing, Jay.”

  Jay took a step toward her and then stopped.

  “I’m not sure what got into you when we were together,” Lucinda continued, her mind, her memory becoming clearer even as she spoke. “That you managed to focus on just me for what, like six months? Or maybe I was just blind.”

  Jay stood now in a shaft of sunlight, smiling a smile that made her feel that it didn’t matter what she said in the world according to Jay.

  “Thank God I realized what you really were before you completely wrecked my life.”

  The mare stood still, ready to mount. Lucinda slid her foot in the stirrup and gathered the reins at her withers. She turned to unleash one more thing on Jay, but he was gone.

  * * * * *

  She walked under her apple trees later that night, their petals falling and swirling with the full-strength lilac scent delivered on a warm breeze up the hill from the bushes in front of the house. Fragrance in the dark is powerful, she thought. She was feeling better than she had in weeks.

  Though Bart was still out of reach, she knew deep down now, in a way she hadn’t known before, that there was nothing she could do about him. Whether he wanted to be with her or he didn’t. She felt hollow now when she thought of him — that he thought less of her because she plowed on after the second miscarriage? That was the worst. Was there anything to be salvaged from the memories of their love? She honestly couldn’t answer. But thinking of what went wrong with him did not seem to scorch her soul as it had for so many months after he left. When she’d blamed herself for most of it.

  She knew what she’d done with Jay was wrong but felt she’d atoned enough. She also believed that Jay really heard the message today in the woods that anything that they might have had together was ripped to shreds. That was the first time she said it while really believing it one hundred percent. If for some reason he hadn’t gotten it she was planning to tell Tori something that would make it easy for her to kick him out of the barn, make something up if necessary.

  Back down the hill sat the quiet farmhouse. She’d left her bedroom light on for some reason. Bart would be gone a whole year in another two weeks. I’ll give him till the end of the summer, she resolved suddenly. To see if he’s going to dry out. If he wants to try to be us again. Us in a new way. If not, then I’m filing for divorce. I need to move on. The thoughts came to her as suddenly and definitively as the lilac scent.

  Just as she decided to walk through the field and out into the dunes, a yellow VW Beetle tore down her driveway, stones spewing from under the tires as it pulled up in front of the farmhouse. Lucinda didn’t know then that she wouldn’t need to be making anything up for Tori.

  Lucinda hurried back down the hill to the house, oblivious to the apple blossom petals. She saw Thea slam the car door and rush toward the front door.

  “Lucinda!” Thea screamed. She didn’t stop to knock or ring the bell, but tore open the door and disappeared inside the house.

  Lucinda followed Thea a few seconds later, switching on the wall switch in the entranceway and the standing lamp in the living room. Thea crouched on the hooked rug in front of the fireplace, clutching her shins, her lower face covered by her arms. Gabriel was sniffing her muddy sneaker.

  “Thea, what is it?” Lucinda asked.

  “Jay. He — ”

  Lucinda pulled Thea’s loose hair back from her face, but Thea would not look at her. Thea gulped for breath as if she had run all the way from Salt Marsh, then she shut her eyes and her breathing slowed.

  “We were just talking, in my apartment?” Thea said. “Then, I don’t know, he just like flipped out or something. He was… all… over me.”

  “What happened?”

  “He didn’t realize I saw him with Vanessa, or that it was a big deal. So I was giving him the cold shoulder. Well, trying to. He kept teasing me. About my pouting. About getting what I wanted.”

  Tears flowed down Thea’s cheeks as she spoke. Lucinda handed her a tissue from the box on the end table. Thea’s ragged breathing returned, and the tears that dripped off her jaw landed on Gabriel’s right ear. He flattened his ears, then flicked the teardrops off. But he didn’t leave his spot by her shoes. Lucinda’s nose registered that familiar musky scent on Thea’s clothes. She knew Jay was eventually going to do something beyond stupid, but she didn’t think him capable of this.

  “Then,” Thea said, trying to sniffle back mucous into her nose, “he forced me to… to… .”

  Lucinda put her hand on Thea’s shoulder. She pulled Thea up and guided her over to the couch. Gabriel followed.

  “I tried to get him to stop, but I couldn’t.” She pulled her knees up to her chest and turned sideways, laying her cheek on the back cushion. “So I kind of gave up. At the end. He scared me, you know?”

  “Oh, Thea,” Lucinda said, newfound joy sinking away. “Was it actually, like, rape?”

  Thea nodded once slowly.

  “We need to call Harris. Did he hit you, or — ”

  “No! I don’t want to press charges. I just want to forget the whole thing. To crawl under the covers… .” She balled her fists, then opened them.

  “To just die,” she said, looking at the disintegrating tissue in her hand. “I shouldn’t have — ”

  “Stop right there, Thea! He had no right. He shouldn’t even have been in your apartment. We have to report this, Thea. I’ll come with you to the hospital for, well… you’ll have to get examined.”

  Thea stared
at the tissue in her hand.

  “Are you using any birth control?”

  Thea nodded and shifted her eyes to Gabriel’s marbled fur. She turned from her side to sit with her back against the cushion and lowered her knees. She hunched over the cat, who had wedged himself between Lucinda and Thea on the couch where there was about three inches of space between their thighs. He overflowed onto both of them, claiming his spot where there was none. Thea sunk her hand into his fur.

  “I’m calling Harris. Ok?” Lucinda said quietly. Thea nodded again, this time looking up at Lucinda.

  She could see the new pain in Thea’s eyes, the first real shock of betrayal in her life. But she had come to Lucinda for help, which had to be difficult for her. As Thea looked at the cat, Lucinda could see some touch of the buoyant spirit she knew drew Thea forward toward her dreams. Dented as it was tonight.

  Lucinda unclipped the Harris buzzer. Was this some especially cruel way Jay had of taking revenge on her?

  Jetty Dreams

  Bart’s week in Newcester wrapped up on the beach at Granite Point — where he’d taken some of his best art shots over the last two years. He’d crashed the last two nights on John Pringle’s cracked faux leather couch, begging off from Martin and Tori’s well-meaning but intrusive hospitality. They watched every sip he took. And that bird giving him the eye. And the likelihood that Lucinda would show up again. He couldn’t face her. Or Weld. He could barely face himself whenever he ever stopped moving and unwelcome thoughts flooded his brain.

  He’d gritted his teeth and followed Weld around the docks and beach like a puppy, indulging his every whim for a flattering shot. Weld needed good visual content for the PR launch of Atlantic Associates, and, for some reason that Bart couldn’t fathom, Weld thought that would best involve photos of him prancing around the shoreline of Cape Tilton like he owned the place.