It was bliss, and as the time neared to go home I dreaded that more and more. I knew this wasn't a fling, but I couldn't bear to leave the cottage and go back to the real world. How would Bill and I fit our lives together?
He must have felt the same way, because as everyone began to pack their cars he said to Sandra, "I meant to show Rhiannon the tree house Jamie and I built in high school. Do you mind if I drive her home for you afterward?"
Sandra gave me an angelic smile, her eyes devilish, and said that was fine with her, and Jamie left Bill the keys so he could lock up the cottage, and in minutes we were gloriously alone.
We both knew what would happen that night, but we weren't in a hurry. Instead, I got a cursory viewing of the tree house and then we sat by the water and talked and talked. We had so much in common and yet there were things that were different, and finding them was amazing. He'd never played an online game, for one thing, and he played golf religiously and I'd never tried it. We explored every aspect of our lives as they were, and began to make plans for how they'd be together.
As the sun began to set over the lake, he turned to me and we both stood up as if we'd rehearsed it. We walked silently, holding hands, to our tree in the forest, where we spread out the blanket he'd brought and made love for the first time as the beautiful day deepened into a gorgeous night. Tenderness and passion and joy beyond anything I'd experienced before, and I wasn't the only one with tears in my eyes when it was over.
"I do love you," he murmured against my lips.
"I know. I love you too."
And for the next six months, we did love each other. It wasn't always perfect, of course. I'd been wrong when I'd assumed we wouldn't have to see Julie; Bill was adamant that the group of friends couldn't be fractured. She treated me with icy politeness, which suited me fine, and I did my best to be cordial and avoid flaunting my relationship. I tried hard. I didn't want to hurt her, I just wanted to be with the man I loved.
She was our only issue, though. Our work schedules were similar, our groups of friends compatible, our love life exquisite. We had the excitement of a new relationship and the comfort of people who've been together for decades.
After three months, his apartment's lease was up and he moved in with me. Julie didn't seem to care; she did tell a few people, when she knew I could hear, that he was just living with me to save himself the rent, but otherwise it didn't seem to matter to her. And her opinion didn't matter to me.
But then we got engaged a few weeks before Christmas. Somehow, she found out. Bill was going to tell her, but hadn't quite gathered the nerve to face what would surely be an uncomfortable conversation. I never did find out who told her. Everyone denied it, but the person was probably too horrified at the outcome to admit it.
Nobody would have expected what she did, though. We all thought she was harmless. Obsessed with Bill and unable to move on, but not dangerous. So when Bill sent me a text message the night of January second, saying he was going to meet her for coffee because she'd heard about our engagement and was upset, I was annoyed but not worried.
I texted him back and asked him to make sure she understood she had to leave him, and us, alone. He said he would, then immediately sent another message saying he loved me. I nearly didn't bother writing back, but I did. I told him I loved him too, and thank God I did.
Because Julie drugged his coffee, then drove him to the cottage and left him there, naked in the snow. Naked and alone, chained like a dog to the tree on which he'd carved our initials.
When he didn't come home that night, I knew something was wrong. He'd never been even an hour late without calling. To stay with her and not let me know? Unthinkable.
I called the police, but they wouldn't do anything for twenty-four hours. Our friends and families drove around looking for him, but to no avail. Jamie called Julie for me, and she said they'd had a quick coffee and then he'd rushed off and she'd spent the evening alone at her house.
Sandra and I wondered if maybe Bill's car had died somewhere and he was trying to get home, if he'd gone out for a drink after the frustration of seeing Julie and been mugged, if he'd been hit by a car and was in the hospital. None of our ideas made much sense, but we were desperately searching for an explanation.
When the police finally did get involved, they zeroed in on Julie quickly. Her insistence that Bill had probably run away because he didn't want to be with me any more was so contrary to everyone else's statements that Bill had been thrilled about starting our new life together.
Thanks to the television-reporter father of one of Bill's horrified students, his disappearance hit the news that day, and the police were flooded with calls. Easily twenty people had seen Julie half-supporting and half-dragging Bill out of the coffee shop. She'd said, with the perfect degree of embarrassment, that her boyfriend was drunk and she'd better get him home.
Bill had insisted he hadn't been drinking, and that they weren't dating, but the witnesses had heard in his drug-slurred speech just a drunk denying his status, and Julie had removed him before anyone became suspicious.
One woman cried on the stand at Julie's trial, so sorry she hadn't recognized the truth.
But none of them did. Nobody in the coffee shop, and then none of the people who saw Bill slumped against Julie's passenger window as she made the four-hour drive to the cottage. She even stopped for drinks and bathroom breaks along the way, and everyone she spoke to accepted her story of the boyfriend too tired to take his turn at the wheel.
When the police told me and Bill's mother what the witnesses had seen, I realized we'd been wrong: she was dangerous. I also knew where she'd taken him. But it was too late. Bill had frozen to death, with nothing around to cover his nakedness but snow.
He hadn't used the snow for that, though. Instead, he'd smoothed it the best he could and written notes explaining what had happened and saying goodbye.
It was Julie.
Mom, I love you.
Rhiannon. FOREVER.
He'd always told me he'd love me forever, and the block letters he used were deep and defiant, right down to the frozen ground beneath the snow, his final refusal to let Julie destroy us.
At her trial, her lawyers had tried to paint her as a poor lovelorn girl, scorned by a heartless man then driven temporarily insane when he'd flaunted his new woman. They'd even suggested Bill had been abusive to her. Watching his poor mother listen to the horrible accusations was almost more than I could bear.
But Julie's careful pre-planning put paid to the insanity defense. It wasn't clear that she'd meant for Bill to die, and of course her lawyers insisted she hadn't, but she'd certainly meant to kidnap him. The overwhelming evidence that Bill had always been kind to Julie hadn't worked in their favor either.
In the end, though, she damned herself. Being portrayed as weak and pathetic had clearly enraged her throughout the case, and she stunned the court by responding to the prosecutor's final question with "I did what Bill asked. I left him alone."
As everyone sat shocked she stared directly at me. "You told him to tell me to leave him alone. And that's what I did. Now you're alone too, just like me. Are you happy now?"
*****
It isn't until I feel heat cutting trails along my cold cheeks that I realize I'm crying. I felt so helpless after he died, and nearly a year later, I still do. But now the helplessness is mixed with anger. At myself.
About a month after Bill's death, a little boy was kidnapped from a playground near our apartment. An Amber Alert was issued at once, so every news station and highway electronic sign bore details of the child and his abductor. The kidnapper must have felt trapped because he'd left the terrified but unhurt boy across the street from the police station an hour after the abduction.
Such a different ending than with Bill. I'd been furious with the police for ignoring our fears but I'd also understood that they couldn't jump on every case of a missing adult.
But I'd envisioned a group that could. A foundation devo
ted to missing adults, to either reuniting them with their families or letting the families know they'd left on their own and didn't want to come back.
If even one of those witnesses had known Bill was missing and put the pieces together, he might have been saved. Julie would probably still have chained him there, but he might not have died.
But the sheer size of the project had overwhelmed me. I had no idea how many adults went missing each day, and the foundation would have to be widely known if it were to be of any use and I didn't know how to publicize it. I hadn't known what to do, and in the end I'd done nothing.
I regret that now. No, regret's not the right word for the depth of the pain and frustration I feel at having done nothing to honor Bill. I might not have had it fully operational by now. It might even have been an abject failure. But at least I'd have tried.
I make myself a promise: tomorrow morning I will start working toward the foundation.
It's a huge project. Audacious is the word I want.
But that doesn't mean I can't make it happen.
Chapter Five
Everything changed after Bill died. I'd always been the planning type, always had my lists of tasks, but while I'd been with him I'd loosened up a bit in the face of his freewheeling style. He planned his teaching, of course, but other than that he'd gone with whatever seemed right and I'd begun to understand how wonderful life could be with that attitude.
But when I lost him, all I could think of were the things he'd wanted to achieve and hadn't. The most painfully immediate was the New Year's Eve party he'd wanted to throw for his group of friends. Sandra had a party every year, and she was happy to let us invite anyone we wanted, but he really wanted to do it himself in our apartment. I was still going to go to Sandra's; Bill's party would have been his time to be with his friends.
Which would have been fine, had he ever gotten around to doing it. Instead, he got caught up in work and in the preliminary arrangements for our wedding, which we'd planned for the two-year anniversary of the day we met, and by the time he did try it was too late: everyone had plans already. He came with me to Sandra's party and we had a great time, but he'd regretted that he hadn't made his party happen.
Had he thought about it, chained to that damned tree? How he'd missed that opportunity?
I'd spent hours, far too many awful hours, wondering what he'd been thinking about. He'd had so many dreams, and they would never be realized. One night, as I wandered the apartment unable to sleep, I'd looked into my eyes in the mirror and promised myself I would do everything in my power to reach my own goals and dreams so that I would have learned something from his death: the importance of going after your goals when you had the chance. And so began my nightly ritual of questioning my day's accomplishments.
At first, I think, it was good for me. I used it to show myself how much I had done and where I could do even better. But it's turned into a session where I analyze everything I've done and always come up lacking. I so badly want to live both my life and Bill's, or at least to live my own well enough to in some way make up for all he lost, and when I inevitably fail I hate myself for it.
But I don't have time to hate myself right now, and I don't want to fail in getting out of this car. There has to be something I can do. What would Bill do? I look around and try to imagine how he'd respond. What would Andrew do, for that matter? The idea of the two of them in the car with me makes me smile. I think they'd have liked each other. They both have such sweet hearts. Have. Had.
My throat tightens but I take another sip of water and make myself relax. I can't see Bill again, but I can see Andrew, and I will. I am smart and resourceful and increasingly desperate and there has to be a way for me to escape.
I systematically retry everything I tried at the beginning. First I reach for the phone, using my hands and my free leg and my water bottle and my bag's strap. When that fails, I try starting the car again, and then honking the horn. This time I also try to flash the car's headlights. They don't work, but I'm pleased to have thought of a new option.
Finally, I slide my hands down my leg and give it the most careful inspection yet. I can't find anything to push away from my foot, so I try wiggling my foot and ankle from side to side.
The pain that explodes through me, the worst I've ever felt, puts an immediate stop to that.
I force myself to take slow deep breaths until the shock and pain dissipate and I can think more clearly. My foot didn't even shift, so pulling at it will cause me more pain with no gain. Unless I think of a different way to escape, this situation is not under my control.
I need to wait. Someone will come.
My stomach grumbles, and again I eye my mother's cookies. If only she'd given me something lower-calorie instead, but I know the calorie count of those cookies and I can't add another six hundred or so to the too many I've already taken in today. No, I will wait, and when I'm rescued I will be proud of myself for my discipline.
Discipline. Andrew and I talked about that the day we met, and I knew right away he was nothing like me. But I liked him, even then. I was terrified of him, but I liked him.
*****
We met in early September, at a mandatory and painfully useless all-day seminar on planning and time management. I'd seen him around the office and assumed he was one of the newly graduated software developers we hired each summer. Tall, blond, cute, and no doubt too young for me, not that I was anywhere near ready to date.
After an hour of the morning session our eyes met and his expression mirrored my own thought of "I wouldn't need to manage my time so much if you didn't keep stealing it from me for stupid seminars". Most of our coworkers enjoyed being away from the office, and I was surprised to see one dislike it as much as I did.
The highlight of the morning was answering a ten-page questionnaire that purported to measure our personalities. Supposedly we would end up with a pattern representing where we put the most emphasis in our lives. The ideal was a perfect circle, with interpersonal relationships and hard work and self-development all receiving an equal amount of focus.
Unimpressed by what I saw as a waste of time, I answered each question without thinking, throwing down the first answer that came to mind. I made the pattern as instructed, then sat staring at it trying to figure out what I'd done wrong.
My perfect circle looked like it had been punched in the gut.
Hard work was at the maximum. So were intellect and drive and focus. But interpersonal relationships? According to my pattern, I gave them scant attention. Recreation, and spirituality, had received the same treatment. My circle was caved in on one side, warped and awkward.
The seminar facilitator, a bubbly blonde who I was sure had been a head cheerleader at some point, came bouncing over to see my pattern, and I looked up in time to see her face change. "Wow. That's unusual. Are you sure you answered them properly?"
"Maybe not," I said, turning my attention back to the questionnaire. "I'll check."
"Good idea."
She wandered off, but I didn't check. I knew I'd given truthful answers.
I had Sandra, and a few casual friends, but that was about it. Some of my other friends hadn't known what to say after Bill died and had decided to ignore me, and I'd done nothing to keep our friendships going. I hadn't exactly felt spiritual since Bill's death, and since I'd started the WeightAway program a few weeks before I'd paid even less attention to recreation, devoting whatever spare time I had to an extra exercise session in a desperate attempt to drop another ounce before my next weigh-in. My pattern was an accurate representation of my world.
I flipped slowly through the questionnaire to keep Bubbles from coming back to me and thought about whether my results were really that bad. Religion wasn't for everyone, after all. And wasn't a friend like Sandra worth more than a dozen acquaintances? Definitely.
We ate lunch while watching a terrible video which basically repeated everything Bubbles had said in the morning, and then she said, "Okay, ever
yone grab a partner."
To my surprise my eyes immediately went to the guy from the morning, and to my far greater surprise he was already looking at me. He pointed at himself and then at me, his eyebrows raised, and I nodded. He smiled and walked over to join me, weaving through the crowd of people changing their seats.
"Hi, I'm Andrew Thornton," he said as he settled into the empty chair next to mine.
"Rhiannon Taylor."
He blinked, then repeated, "Rhiannon," his eyes holding mine in a way nobody had looked at me for a long time. "Very nice to meet you."
"You too." He'd somehow caressed every syllable of my name without being remotely creepy, and it embarrassed and delighted me, scared me and stirred me, all at once. I tried to pull myself together, though. I couldn't go freaking out just because a man said my name.
Bubbles explained that we would be analyzing our personality patterns from the morning and giving each other recommendations for how to make them better.
"Improve your personality in one lame-ass session," Andrew muttered.
I burst out laughing then had to stifle it as everyone looked in our direction.
"Sorry," he said once Bubbles had set us to work.
"It's okay. They all think I'm weird anyhow." An exaggeration, but not much of one. My already strong work ethic had been on steroids since Bill's death. At first my coworkers had tried to be sweet and sympathetic to me, but when I'd pulled our relationships back to purely professional they'd returned to seeing me as an over-achieving nerd. Since I saw most of them as clock-watching whiners, I wasn't bothered.
"You seem normal enough to me."
"Don't say that too loud," I said, casting over-dramatic furtive glances at the nearby tables. "Won't do your reputation any favors."
Toronto Collection Volume 1 (Toronto Series #1-5) Page 57