One Night With You

by Gwynne Forster

  “I’m not leaving you tonight,” he said to Kendra when they reached her door. “Not unless you put me out, and then I’ll go kicking and screaming.”

  She opened the door, took his arm and walked in. “If you leave me, I’ll have a very hard time forgiving you.”

  Eventually, he would demand to know why she had wandered off alone without telling him or anyone else where she intended to go, but she knew he wouldn’t do that tonight. She opened her arms to him and hours later when, still locked inside her, he remembered the wine; it had reached room temperature and was too warm to drink.

  “Come back any time,” Philip told Reid as they prepared to leave just before one o’clock Sunday afternoon. “I confess it gets dull here when we don’t have guests. Claudine will be here next weekend.”

  “I was surprised that you didn’t have plans with her this weekend,” Reid said.

  “We would have been together either here or at her place, but she had an opportunity to attend a retreat for teachers of handicapped children. She has two handicapped kids in one of her classes, so I encouraged her to go.”

  “So it’s still on,” Reid said.

  Philip stuffed his hands into his pockets and grinned. “Indeed it is.”

  Reid embraced his friends and headed back to Queenstown, but one question haunted him. “Are you going to tell me what made you so morose all day yesterday and why you needed to be alone? I figure you had to sort out things because you didn’t invite me to go with you. I need the answer to this, Kendra.”

  She remained silent for a while, evidently formulating her answer, for she knew he would weigh every word she said. “I went to sleep happier than I had ever been, feeling that I had in you the love I’ve always needed and dreamed of but which, until now, always eluded me.

  “I had it in the palm of my hand, and I was so happy that I could hardly contain my feelings. And then thoughts about the facts of our lives—yours and mine—intruded, crowding out all else. I thought of unsettled problems that can split us up, and I saw this wonderful love slipping through my fingers.

  “Yes, I saw a fifty-fifty chance that what you and I are facing can wreck us, and as I’ve done for years, I tried to think, to reason and analyze my way out of our entanglements. But the more I reasoned, the more I despaired. You know the rest.”

  He drew in a deep breath and blew it out slowly. “And after last night, do you still believe anything can separate us?”

  She leaned her head against the headrest, closed her eyes, and he could hardly breathe while he waited for her answer. “I know that nothing can make me stop loving you, but that’s all I do know.”

  He slowed down and tried to shake off the words that had come to him like a blow on the head. Better be careful here, he told himself.

  “It’ll take me a while to digest that,” he told her. “It’s what you didn’t say and what you probably are not going to say that’s bothering me.”

  Kendra arose early Monday morning, went to her bedroom window to gaze at the Albemarle Sound and inhaled the fresh salty air. It seemed that each time she reached a new high with Reid, a letdown followed. When they had arrived home the previous evening after their weekend at Dickerson Estates, Reid didn’t suggest that they prolong the evening. She wouldn’t say he was withdrawn, but he was more pensive than she’d ever seen him. While she stood at the window, still wearing the teddy in which she slept, a burst of wind reminded her of her isolation in the dark woods adjoining the Dickerson Estates and of that minute when she was at last safe in Reid’s arms.

  “I can’t let him out of my life,” she said aloud. “Because of him, I’m a different woman, ripe with life and living. He’s everything to me. I’ll find a way. I have to.”

  She dressed, drank a cup of coffee and headed for work. As she turned the corner into Albemarle Heights, she nearly collided with Myrna.

  “You’re not driving today?” Myrna asked her.

  “I don’t drive to work,” Kendra told her, aware that the woman knew who she was, what she did and where she worked. “Have a great day.” She didn’t want to walk along with Myrna, so she crossed the street, hoping that the woman wouldn’t have the temerity to cross with her.

  “’Morning, ma’am,” Carl Running Moon Howard said as she walked into her chambers. “Have I got a dilly for you! A group called CFSL, Citizens for the Sacred Lands, have managed to bring suit against Brown and Worley, and it’s on your docket for next Monday.”

  She gripped the back of her desk chair. “What did you say?” He repeated it.

  “But doesn’t the county clerk know that I moved out of Albemarle Gates?”

  “Yes, ma’am, but Brown and Worley said you moved because of some problem with the house’s structure, and that it was amicably settled. Their lawyer accepted you as trial judge without reservation.”

  “Thanks. Let me see the papers on it.”

  The case could tie up the court for weeks, and Reid would wait that much longer to clear his name. Life could be rough. As soon as she walked into her house after work that day, she called Reid. “Where are you?” she asked him.

  “Home. I walked into my apartment ten minutes ago.”

  “I have some news that will interest you,” she said.

  “Good or bad.”

  “Time will tell. Right now, it’s probably more good than bad. Where can we get together?”

  “I can always walk over there.”

  “Good. See you in a few minutes.” She made coffee, put some frozen hot cross buns in the oven and waited. As soon as she sat down and began to read the case of CFSL against Brown and Worley, she heard his knock and got up slowly, wondering how he would greet her.

  He stared down at her for a minute, then locked her to his sweet and wonderful body and let his tongue find its home inside her mouth. It was she who broke the kiss. She took his hand and walked with him into the kitchen.

  “Want some coffee?”

  “Don’t I always? I was about to make a cup of instant when the phone rang. What’s the news?”

  She poured the coffee into mugs, added milk to Reid’s cup, removed the hot cross buns from the oven and put a plate of them on the table, all the while gaining time in which to frame her thoughts. She sat down, sipped the coffee, which she discovered that she didn’t want, reached across the table and caressed his jaw.

  “A citizen’s group is suing Brown and Worley to stop them from building on those sacred lands across from the park. The case comes to court next Monday.”

  “Sounds good to me. What could be bad about it?”

  “I don’t know yet. I’m the judge.”

  “But how? You had a settlement with them over your house.”

  “Their lawyer told the county clerk that it was an amicable settlement, that I dealt fairly and that I was acceptable as judge for the case. Frankly, I’d rather not have anything to do with it.”

  “How long do you think the case will last?”

  “That depends on the number of witnesses, and how long it takes to get together a jury. I’m concerned that this case will cause yours to be postponed.”

  “I certainly hope not. So much is riding on the outcome. I want it to be over as soon as possible.”

  “So do I.” She passed the plate of hot cross buns to him.

  “If you have any more buns for yourself,” he said, “I’d like to take these home with me. I’ll be up in Edenton all day tomorrow, and they’ll come in handy.”

  “You’ll be working there every day now?”

  He nodded. “I’m my own man again with my own business and my own office. I have to find an office assistant, someone who’ll serve as secretary, office assistant and girl Friday.”

  She cocked an eye and regarded him with a measure of skepticism. “Be sure that’s all she serves as.”

  His features arranged themselves into a bright smile, displaying his charm and the sultriness that could make her heart palpitate. Then the smile disappeared. “At first I th
ought you were joking, but you haven’t smiled. You’re serious, aren’t you?”

  “If I appear serious, I’m serious. As I was on my way to work this morning, I encountered Myrna. She wanted to talk, but I got rid of her by crossing to the other side of the street.”

  “It wouldn’t surprise me if she tried to make friends with you. Myrna’s devious. I’d hoped that she’d given up and left Queenstown.”

  “As long as you’re unattached, she’ll think she has a chance, and she’ll stay right here.”

  “She must believe in miracles,” Reid said.

  They talked for more than an hour, and at times she thought the tension between them would rise to a boiling point. He would stop talking in midsentence and stare at her not remembering what he had intended to say; his gaze would seem permanently focused on her breasts, and he would actually shake his body to free himself from their grip on him. Once, his eyes narrowed when she dampened her lips, though she hadn’t done it as an act of seduction.

  “I’d invite you to dinner,” he said at last, “but after eating three of these buns, I won’t be hungry for another hour and a half.” He stood, leaned over her and bathed her lips with his tongue. She parted them and took him in, though she knew he hadn’t intended to give her that pleasure. She wrapped six buns and walked with him to her back door.

  “Let me know when you get over your annoyance with me. I’m getting tired of it,” she told him.

  “I imagine you are. I’ll call you when I get in tomorrow,” he said. “Tonight, I want to look over the contract Jack sent me.” He kissed her quickly on the mouth and left.

  When he gets ready, he’ll tell me what the problem is, she told herself. Who am I kidding? I know what I told him as we were driving home Sunday, and he’s trying to protect himself from probable pain. But what’s done is done. If he thought it inappropriate for me to judge CFSL versus Brown and Worley, shouldn’t he question the propriety of my judging his case against anybody? There is no way I can be unbiased in that case against him, because my future depends on it.

  She made a shrimp salad sandwich, ate it and returned to her study of the case that she knew could attract national attention. She had no sympathy for Brown and Worley because they had deliberately bought the properties long held to be Native American gravesites, properties that were vacant only because other developers had shied away from them. Thus, it behooved her to know everything about the case in order to avoid leaning toward the Native Americans’ cause.

  On the morning that the trial was to begin, a day after completion of jury selection, the lawyer for the defense asked to see her alone in her chambers before the session began, but she refused, sending word that she would see both attorneys ten minutes before court convened. The defense lawyer had a reputation for toughness, but he’d better not let her see it; he’d find that she had the upper hand.

  The lawyer for the citizens presented records for burials predating the American Revolution and witness after witness who related oral histories of the burials of their ancestors in that site and beneath Albemarle Gates. Most shed silent tears as they spoke, and she noticed that many in the audience also cried. Brown and Worley presented what appeared on the surface to be an airtight case, pointing to the need for housing at a fair price and for the continued development of a town once thought to be dying.

  “Have you reached a verdict?” she asked jury fore-woman Reba Hollings—the second friend she’d made in Queenstown—on the sixth day of the trial.

  “We have, Your Honor, and we find that the defendants, Brown and Worley, conspired to use and abuse land fraudulently obtained and to which they had no entitlement, that they owe restitution to individuals with families interred beneath Albemarle Gates, and that they have no right to build on any other sacred burial grounds.”

  She polled the jury, received no dissent. To Brown and Worley, she said, “Will the defendants please rise. You are hereby ordered to desist from building anything on a sacred Native American burial site anywhere within the area under this court’s jurisdiction and to pay five thousand dollars to each descendant of an individual buried beneath Albemarle Gates.”

  She clapped her hands over her ears at the uproar from those in the audience. So loud was it that she thought her head would split. They rose as one, applauding, yelling and shouting her name. She wondered how they would have reacted if she had imposed ten thousand per person instead of five as she had originally planned to do. But when she remembered that thousands of people in the area had ancestors buried beneath Albemarle Gates, she had lowered the amount to five thousand dollars.

  I pray it doesn’t bankrupt them, she said to herself, for Reid is surely going to charge them with defamation of character.

  “What’s next on the docket?” she asked Carl Running Moon.

  “Same old things, ma’am,” he said as he rifled through papers on his desk. “Paternity suits, divorce, theft and more theft, wife abuse. Say, what’s this?”

  He removed a sheaf of papers from the bundle in his hand and studied them. “Looks like Brown and Worley will be back with us in two weeks.”

  Chapter 12

  Kendra made her way to her chambers, exhausted and wishing for one of Philip’s margaritas. She hadn’t even hoped that the jury would bring in a verdict after one day’s deliberation. Nor had she envisaged a recommendation for restitution, though she had hoped for that and believed it to be just.

  “Congratulations, ma’am,” Carl Running Moon said after she sat down at her desk. “These are for you from your staff.” He handed her a vase of white roses. “We’re all mighty pleased at the result of the trial and real proud of you. You stuck it to those guys. Almost half of this town has somebody buried under Albemarle Gates. The money won’t compensate for the fact that we can’t visit our loved ones and perform our ceremonies and rituals, but it will put bread in the mouths of many and help the local economy.”

  “I didn’t think of that,” she told him. “I levied those fines because I believed them to be just.”

  “Well, you’re a hero, and your fame will spread far. This is the kind of justice we’ve been trying to get.”

  When she left the courthouse, she noticed the honking of horns, Old Glory waving from the hoods of a number of cars and small groups of people standing on the street talking and gesticulating. She put on her sunglasses and prayed that no one would recognize her.

  As she entered her house, she heard the phone and raced to answer it.

  “Hello.”

  “Judge Rutherford, I’m Minnie Canyon. Thank you on behalf of the Ossewendas of Wisconsin and all of my Native American brothers and sisters everywhere. You’ve set a great precedent, and we plan to make you an honorary Ossewenda. I hope you will come here for the ceremony.”

  “I’m honored, Ms. Canyon. Thank you so much. I only did what I knew was right.”

  Before an hour had passed, she received half a dozen calls from individuals who identified themselves as Native Americans, African-Americans and plain Americans in several states rejoicing in the outcome of the trial. “I had no idea this trial would generate such interest,” she told one caller. “I am glad that so many people are pleased, and I thank you for your good wishes.”

  At last she answered the phone and heard Reid’s voice. “Congratulations. I was listening to the radio as I drove home, and the announcer actually sang the verdict and the sentence. I’m proud of you, sweetheart. It would have been so easy to give them token punishment, but they will feel that deep in the pocket, where it hurts.”

  “Thank you, Reid. Your opinion of me matters more than that of any other person. I’ve had congratulatory calls from all over. Three tribes are making me an honorary member, and I’m going to the ceremonies, too, if it doesn’t interfere with my work.”

  “I’m sure they’ll arrange it to suit you. How about dinner at my place? We could go to a restaurant, if you’d rather eat out.”

  “Are you going to cook?” she asked him. “You
’ve never eaten my cooking at my house except snacks or something sweet that goes with coffee. I’ll fix dinner. Bring some white wine.”

  “A woman after my own heart. See you at seven-thirty.”

  “Don’t I even get a kiss? You’re getting stingy.”

  “You think so? Well, I sure as hell don’t feel stingy.” He made the sound of a kiss. “I’ll fix that at seven thirty-one.”

  She had committed herself to giving Reid a decent meal, so she’d better get busy. She rummaged around in her deep freezer and found Atlantic salmon, shrimp and scallops. Her refrigerator vegetable crisper revealed asparagus and lettuce. She had lemons, eggs and sugar, and some tomatoes on the windowsill. If she had any potatoes, she could make a decent meal.

  At ten minutes past seven, she stepped out of the shower, patted herself dry and went to her closet. “What the hell!” she said aloud. “I’m going for broke. I’m not letting him get away with trying his cool stuff on me.” She put on her red bikini panties and stepped into her red silk jumpsuit, its halter top and plunging neckline guaranteed to activate the libido of a healthy man. The last time she’d worn it, she’d nearly gotten in to serious trouble. If she got into the same kind of trouble with Reid, the jumpsuit would have done its job. She combed her hair down, attached some long gold hoops to her ears, and sprayed perfume in strategic places. If he thought he’d see the judge when she opened the door, he was in for an awakening.

  As she’d expected, the bell rang precisely at seven-thirty. When she opened the door, he gasped, and she let her grin tell him that he’d reacted as she’d hoped and planned. He picked her up and walked into the house with his arms around her and his tongue in her mouth.

  When at last he released her, she asked him, “Don’t you want any supper? Keep this up and the food won’t be fit to eat when you finally get it.”