Forever (36 page)

The events of the last few days had shocked Julie back to life. She had temporarily lost her way, her vision, but what she wanted now, was what she’d always wanted—Tom. Her husband.
Hers
. If she hadn’t been one hundred percent sure of that when she arrived here, walking into that bathroom and being terrified that he was dying had pushed her up to that percentile. And though he might have strayed from the path their marriage cut through this life, she knew to the bottom of her soul that he wanted her just as much.

With a sexual hunger and boldness she hadn’t felt in years, she laid claim to her man. Not so much offering Tom her body as she was demanding his, she pushed him to his back and straddled him. His erection was clearly outlined through the fabric of his jeans, and she rubbed herself against it for a moment. She rose to her knees and trailed her mouth down his chest, teasing his nipples with the tip of her tongue while her hand sought his zipper. She eased it down, allowing only her fingertips to touch him. A low growl came from his throat. His hands found the clasp on her bra and freed her breasts. She let him pull her closer, guiding a nipple to his mouth.

Although her desire was almost unbearable, she sought to delay the release of it, to make it all the more intense when she finally surrendered. She backed away, running her fingers lightly over his chest and stomach. Finding his navel with her tongue, she tortured him. He seemed nearly mad with desire, groping for her, wanting her. Her body ached for him; his every touch inflamed her more. He tugged at her panties, and she lifted her hips so he could remove them. His hand slid between her thighs. She was slick with craving, and his fingers slipped easily into her. The sensation took her breath away. A groan came from deep within him.

Julie collapsed onto the bed beside him. He rose over her. She wrapped her legs around his waist, and he thrust forward, merging their bodies into one. They breathed as one, they moaned as one, they ascended as one toward that pinnacle of ecstasy, becoming two only briefly as they relished the exquisite, utter selfishness of orgasm.

“I love you,” they whispered at the same time and then laughed. They lay side by side, turning their faces to each other, exchanging tender kisses.

“Here and now,” he said.

Julie stifled a yawn. “Only you and me.”

Tom and Julie lay together naked, satisfied, and drowsy. Through the window drifted the subtle shift in sounds from the lake and woods as evening segued to night. Tom marveled that only an hour earlier he’d thought their life together might be over. Now, the future stretched luxuriously before him, and he vowed never to let a single moment of it pass unappreciated.

A soft snore from the floor at the end of the bed told him Max had returned and was sleeping peacefully. Sleeping dogs. He could do that—let sleeping dogs lie. He would tell Julie no more than she wanted to know. Annie seemed so distant, almost unreal, to him now, as if he’d finally woken from a long tortured sleep to find it had all been a dream.

Julie stirred beside him. He studied the gentle arch of her brow, the graceful slope of her nose, the soft fullness of her lips where, even in her sleep, she wore the hint of a smile.

Yes, as much as possible, he would keep his sins to himself.

He wanted a cigarette. But it felt so good to lie beside his wife, their bodies curved together in perfect fit, he evaluated whether his want had progressed yet to need. Before he could decide, he drifted off toward sleep.

Moments later, Julie’s abrupt movement on the bed jerked him awake. “Wha’?”

“What the hell are you doing here?” she shouted.

“Julie?” Tom sat up, rubbing the sleep from his eyes. Julie wasn’t talking to him. She’d risen to her knees. With her hands outstretched palms forward, she stared wide-eyed toward the door. He followed her gaze.

In the doorway, stood a monstrous parody of Patricia. In a sandpapered voice she wailed, “I love you. How could you come back to
him
?” Slowly, she raised her right hand.

Julie screamed.

Tom heard the scream, but all sound after was drowned out by the noise of blood rushing through his veins. He had one last thought.

Isn’t this ironic
?

September 2, 2010

J
ulie busied herself with the checklist, but she kept an eye on Tom. With their psychologist’s backing, she’d insisted he come with her to ready the cabin for winter. They were planning to stay here until their new home was built. But Tom had avoided the cabin for over two months, and Julie wasn’t sure he would be able to live here. Today was a test.

He’d designed and built this place with his own hands. It hurt her to know he’d now, for some reason, focused on it as the cause of all his pain. She certainly wasn’t dismissing the trauma of seeing Patricia kill herself at their feet. And she knew that in those confused first waking seconds, Tom believed Patricia was about to murder her, not commit suicide. But Tom had never even liked Patricia. Why had her death affected him so?

A month ago, she’d come out here with Dave, to face the horror of it all. Tom had refused to join them, and neither she nor Dave had pressed him. During the drive out, Dave questioned her about Tom.

“Why hasn’t he gone back to work full time, Julie?”

“He says he’s not ready. He says Steve’s handling things.”

“Is he drinking again?”

“As far as I know, he hasn’t touched a drop. Not even a beer.”

Julie had questions of her own. “What was going on here while I was in California?”

“Tom was trying to deal with the possibility you would divorce him.”

“What did he talk to you about?”

“He was drinking heavily. He was depressed and not always making sense.”

Dave’s answer would do a politician proud. Julie tried again to pin him down to specifics. “But he must have told you
something
.”

“Something?”

“Did he talk about . . . anyone?” Dave broke eye contact.

“Our mother,” he said. “He talked a lot about her not loving him.”

Julie sighed. It was obvious Dave was being evasive, but she left it at that. She preferred to leave it at that.

Now, she stood on the screened porch with her clipboard while Tom stood in the main room of the cabin. She was giving him “some space” as Lindsay would say. She glanced through the screen door just as he walked up to the fireplace. He touched the hole left by the missing engraved slate. Tears welled up in his eyes, and she looked away. He’d cried often since the end of June, and it always made her uncomfortable to see it, as though she were intruding.

He claimed to have dug up that stone in the woods, but she’d always suspected he’d carved it himself, and somehow that had been more significant of his love for her than anything else he’d ever bought or done for her. When he’d shown it to her, she’d been almost speechless with the fear she was not worthy of such devotion.

On that horrible night in June, the stone had somehow been destroyed. Tom was convinced Patricia had ruined it out of spite before she forced them to witness her death. Julie didn’t try to dissuade him, but she’d woken when someone entered the cabin. At first, she hadn’t known it was Patricia, but she knew the intruder had hurried straight to their bedroom.

The piece of slate had loosened on its own and broken into pieces when it hit the hearth. That was the story she told herself. It happened before Patricia arrived. Maybe while she and Tom were making love, oblivious to anything but the pleasure they were giving each other. It was a logical explanation. But in her heart, she remained unconvinced.

What actually happened to the stone was one of many little puzzles Julie pulled out at idle moments to twist and turn and try to solve. Eddie’s disappearance was another. And sometimes she would see Tom’s eyes glaze over and know he was working a puzzle of his own. Tom had confessed to her he was frightened of the blank spots in his memory. “I guess I was just drinking too much,” he always said in half-hearted explanation.

But she held back from admitting things were hazy for her too. She hadn’t been drinking, of course, so her own weak excuse was that she’d been insane with the worry she was dying of cancer. Hell, she’d been oblivious to the fact Patricia was in love with her. It was no wonder she’d forgotten other details of those first few weeks of summer.

She hadn’t been completely honest with the psychologist either. She’d admitted fearing Tom no longer loved her. She’d even hinted there were signs he wanted someone else, but she always denied ever believing he’d
found
someone. But every time she denied that, there was a niggling at the back of her mind. Patricia had certainly tried to convince her Tom had another woman. And Patricia’s friend Eddie, who had always creeped her out, sided with Patricia, even going so far as to lie saying he’d
seen
Tom with another woman. Or
had
Eddie said that? Julie rubbed her temple. Sometimes the whole dreadful month of June seemed a blur. As much as possible, she tried not to think of it at all.

Patricia was dead. Eddie had vanished to God knows where and who cares? Lindsay was settled in at the university. The old house was sold, Tom had nearly finished plans for the new one, and by Christmas they would be parents of a newborn son. What better way to start a new life together?

Tom hadn’t dared go back to the cabin before today. Sometime during that long June night, he’d vowed to burn the place to the ground, but cooler heads prevailed, and he was glad of it now. He and Julie had fallen in love on this property and spent years of happy times together here. Too much life was linked with this place to let one instance of death take it away from them.

Now, while Julie walked around outside, he stood in the main room trying to work up the nerve to move further into the cabin. It had been closed up since June and, as if it still held that summer air, was warmer inside than out but less stuffy than he’d expected. Someone, he couldn’t remember who, had hired people to clean the place up after the police had finished their work here.

The silence in the cabin was almost palpable. It seemed to close in on him, and he deliberately cleared his throat in an effort to push it away. He couldn’t help thinking how much it reminded him of that last day, when he’d sat here waiting for Julie, fearing she’d change her mind and decide on the divorce after all. But then—she was here. He couldn’t remember hearing her arrive. He’d just looked up, and there she was and everything was all right. Until later.

He wished he could slam the door on that last horrid memory. But as he looked around the room he accepted there was no way to avoid pain here or anywhere else. Everything reminded him of how close he’d come to losing Julie. Working that pain, like you worked your tongue against a sore gum, felt good in a peculiar way.

His eyes were drawn to the fireplace. He noticed the clock had stopped at twenty till seven, and then his eyes were drawn to the empty spot below the mantel. As he made his way over to it, sudden tears blurred his vision and rolled down his cheeks. On the mortar below the cavity there was a smear of maroon. It took him a second to identify it, and then a frown creased his brow. There was no logical reason for Patricia’s blood to be there.

I cut my finger.

With that memory, the horror of that June day washed over him again. Never would he be able to say he lived his life with no regrets. In just the first half of this year, he’d stacked up regrets like the logs in these walls. It would take a long time to erase the marks his mistakes had left on their lives.

Even when he’d seen that Julie was drifting perilously far away, he’d pulled back, deliberately sabotaging their marriage. Patricia had poisoned Julie’s mind against him, feeding every doubt Julie had about him. But he’d allowed it. After a while, he didn’t even try to fight for Julie’s attention. Choosing to see only what he wanted, he’d seen that she seemed to have little time for him and was happy only when she was with Patricia.

What he hadn’t seen was that Patricia was the only one who encouraged Julie to explore her wants and needs, to grow and express herself. If
he
had done that, Patricia’s influence might have been broken before it nearly destroyed them. Even taking into consideration the benefit of hindsight, it was hard for him to believe he’d been so blind. Even Lindsay had seen that Patricia was in love with Julie.
In love
. What kind of love was it that destroys?

(What kind of love is it that cheats?)

He’d put as much distance as he could between
that
man and the man he was today. The night of the suicide, he’d thrown his cell phone in the lake. And though he replaced the phone, he changed the number to cut himself off from Annie as thoroughly as he knew how. By the time he realized he hadn’t seen or talked to her for weeks, he could almost convince himself she never existed. Almost.

Tom pulled a couple of Excedrin tablets from his shirt pocket, popped them in his mouth, and headed to the kitchen for a drink of water. The unused cupboards had become havens for daddy-long-legs, so he drank directly from the water jug he found in the refrigerator. As he washed down the pills, he noticed a cigar butt in an ashtray on the counter. He picked it up and sniffed. Dave’s.

It had completely slipped his mind that Dave had been up here again in August. He’d tried to get Tom to come out to the lake with him, probably hoping to shock him out of his depression. He hadn’t been ready to face this place yet. And he wasn’t sure he was ready now, but they’d come to check what needed done to winterize the cabin. The Chatham Estates house had sold, Lindsay was living on campus, and soon this would be his and Julie’s temporary home. Time to get on with life.

Tom, Julie, and even Lindsay had seen counselors throughout the summer. Secure in the love of both her parents, Lindsay had healed rapidly. And nourished by the child growing within her, Julie had progressed steadily through various stages of anger, guilt, forgiveness, and grief. Tom had just remained numb. No, that wasn’t exactly right. He’d gone straight to the guilt stage and stayed there. Mired in guilt, swallowed up in it, consumed by it. And when the counselor questioned why, he couldn’t give a reasonable answer.