Strangewood (6 page)

"No!" Nathan shouted, getting angry now. "Crabapple
saved me and they
killed
him, Daddy! I saw them. They killed
Crabapple!"

"I don't . . . who's they, Nathan?" Thomas asked,
finally, though he suspected he knew the answer. "Who killed
Crabapple?"

Nathan froze and stared at Thomas. The terror was gone,
replaced by grief and shock. All too real emotions for a flesh and blood child
to feel over the dreamworld murder of an imaginary friend.

"Nathan?" Thomas prodded, his heart already aching.

"It was them, Dad," Nathan whispered, a chilly
calm having descended over the boy. "They were after me. They wanted to
take me away, from you, and from Mom. Mostly from you, though, I think. But
Crabapple . . .

"It was Feathertop and Grumbler," the boy said,
and then the tears returned, and Nathan buried his face in his father's
shoulder once more, and cried until he fell back to sleep.

All that time, Thomas didn't say another word. There was no
more comfort he could summon, so stunned was he by his son's nightmares. He'd
had no idea that the divorce had affected Nathan as profoundly as it obviously
had. So much so, that his nightmares now consisted of what he must perceive as
his father's imaginary friends slaying his own. But what was worse was Nathan's
insistence that the creatures of Strangewood had been after
him
, had
wanted to do harm to him.

For several minutes he could only sit and stare at his
beautiful son and stroke his hair, overwrought by the horrible things his
divorce had done to Nathan's imagination.

It seemed clear that Nathan's nightmares and daydreams had
something very specific to do with some kind of resentment against Thomas. The
vulnerable part of Thomas Randall didn't really want to hear what Dr. Morrissey
had to say. But he was a father, and whatever it took, he wanted to secure the
health and happiness of his only child.

Thomas lay Nathan back down in his bed and kissed the boy's
forehead. He pulled the spread over his son and walked back across the hall to
his own room without even glancing down to see if the green feather was still
there.

It took a long while before Thomas was able to get back to
sleep. Even then, he rested fitfully, with nightmares of his own, all of which
he had forgotten mere seconds after rising with the dawn on Sunday morning.

It felt like cheating. That was the bitch of it. No matter
how many times Emily told herself that Thomas wasn't her husband anymore, it
still felt like cheating.

The early morning sun slashed across the bed, a world of light
and shadow where she curled under a burgundy cotton sheet. Her legs were warm
in the sun, her left foot jutting out from the covers. But her upper body, her
face burrowed into her two thick pillows, was pleasantly cool in the shadow
that was all that remained of the dark.

All that remained, except for Joe Hayes, the man she'd
accepted into her bed last night. Into the bed where she and Thomas had
conceived their only child, had made the baby boy they both loved so much.

It felt like cheating.

Emily kept her eyes closed for a time, long minutes after
she'd come fully awake. She didn't want to know, didn't want to think. She
enjoyed the cool morning breeze on her face, the warmth on her legs, and the
mere sensation of a presence next to her in bed. The weight of a man there.

Finally, Emily turned, sheets rustling, and was relieved to
see that Joe was still sleeping. She watched him, the rise and fall of his
chest, the benevolent expression on his face, an innocence that belied the
power men had to crush a woman's soul without a single malicious intention. That
was the worst thing about them, Emily thought. So often, they wreaked havoc,
left destruction in their wake, all with only the best of intentions. They just
didn't think the same way.

Well, maybe there were more similarities than Emily liked to
admit. After all, she'd ended up in bed with him. Joe was kind and sincere,
intelligent and funny; maybe a little arrogant, but she liked that in small
doses. Those things had been what convinced her that last night was the night
to consummate their budding relationship. But what attracted her to him in the
first place? What made her flirt with him that night the girls from work
dragged her out to "meet men?"

He was really good looking, and he didn't seem to know it.

And, yes, he was fully seven years her junior, and there was
something intoxicatingly unattainable about a man his age. Well, at least he'd
seemed unattainable the night they'd met. Apparently not.

Suddenly overwhelmed by her attraction to him, Emily leaned
forward, the sheet slipping down to reveal her nakedness — and when was
the last time she'd slept naked? — and kissed Joe hard on the mouth. His
eyes flickered open instantly and he was returning her kiss seemingly before he
was fully awake. His arms came up and encircled her and she moved on top of him
in a languorous crawl. His body tensed a moment, a physical query as to her
motivations. But it wasn't sex she wanted just then; it was intimacy.

She found it, and was delighted that Joe was able to give it
so well. He kissed her passionately, fingers twirling in her hair as her
breasts pressed against his chest. Then the kiss ended, and the lovers pressed
noses and grins together, and then parted, Emily almost falling away from him
onto the bed.

Suddenly, and happily, it didn't feel like cheating anymore.
It felt like the best decision she'd made in a long, long time.

"Good morning," Joe said huskily, sleep still in
his voice.

"Yeah," Emily agreed. "It is. Although if
you'd gotten up before me and made breakfast, it would have been even
better."

"Do I look like a houseboy to you?" he asked with
a smirk.

"Well . . .” she teased, and he slapped her ass
lightly. Lightly enough that it felt good. "Oooh," she cooed,
"do it again."

"Forget it," Joe said, feigning insult. "You
don't deserve my spankings."

"Don't I?" she flirted.

They were quiet then, just looking at one another.

"I'm glad I didn't take off last night," he said.

An alarm went off in Emily's head.

"You were going to leave last night?" she asked, not
bothering to hide her hurt and annoyance.

"I don't usually like to stick around till
morning," he replied matter-of-factly. "It's crossing a line, when
sex comes into things, and you never know if a woman's going to regret it in
the morning. It can be really uncomfortable, and sometimes it's better to
leave, and see how things shake out later."

"So why didn't you leave?" Emily asked, guarding
her emotions better now.

"Isn't that obvious. I didn't want to go. Is that
okay?" Joe asked hopefully.

"That's very much more than okay," she replied.

"So you don't regret it?" he asked.

The question lay there between them for a few seconds, and
Emily flashed on the nuns walking around her eighth grade school dance telling
the girls and boys to leave room between them for the Holy Spirit. She almost
chuckled, but stopped herself. Joe would probably misinterpret that. And she
found herself wanting to be very careful what she said next.

"Em?" he prodded, brow furrowed, and sat up on his
knees in bed to look at her.

She liked that it all seemed so important to him. It had
been so long since she was with a man other than Thomas, since she'd even been
in the race, that she'd been terrified. She remembered the mind-bending gender
games of her singlehood, and not at all fondly. Being with Joe was a relief. She'd
lucked out.

So far.

"No," she said finally, and with a gravity that
seemed to alter even the temperature of the room. "I don't regret last
night, or that you're still here this morning. It feels . . . frighteningly good
just to lay here with you."

"I can hear that 'but' coming a mile away," Joe
said grimly.

"But," Emily said, and smiled wanly, "I'm a
lady with a lot of baggage, you know? Thomas is going to be a part of my life
as long as I live, even if I want to kill him sometimes. He wasn't just my
husband, he was my best friend as well. And he's the father of my son. He's
going to be around, whether I'm pissed at him or still love him a little, a
state that changes from day to day, that's not going to involve you. That's a
part of me you can't ever touch."

Emily stared at him.

"Well, you're not beating your chest and doing a Tarzan
yell, and you're not running for the door, so I guess that's a good sign,"
she said after a moment.

But it was Joe's turn to be quiet now. His eyes flicked back
and forth, looking for something in her face that she wasn't sure he'd find. Then
he looked down at the bed and took a breath. The sun had stretched across the
entire bed now, and the way he held his head, his gray eyes were in shadow. He
rasped his knuckles across the scraggle of overnight beard on his chin.

When he finally looked at her, Emily felt, for a dangerous
heartbeat, that she could love Joe Hayes if he played his cards right. Dangerous
because she'd never been very good at card games.

"Emily, sweetie, listen," Joe said. "We're
still in chapter one of this thing, whatever it might become. Me? I want to see
where the story goes. What happened in the last book doesn't interest me
outside of what it contributed to making you the amazing woman I believe you
are."

Emily smiled broadly, wrapped the sheet around herself and
got up from the bed, leaving Joe naked behind her.

"Whew," she said, without turning. "I'm
trying to play it cool, here, Mr. English Professor, but that's about the
smoothest line I've ever heard. I hope it isn't just a line, though, Joe. See,
my world is pretty much Nathan Randall right now. That little boy is my entire
heart and soul, and the idea of letting somebody else in, somebody whose
presence is likely to have an effect on him one way or another . . .”

"It's no line, Em," Joe said confidently. "And
it's up to you to decide how much of our relationship Nathan sees, or even
knows about. It's your play all the way."

"Well, when you put it that way . . .” Emily let her
words trail off and turned to face him. She let the sheet fall to the floor and
stood before him, naked in the sunlight, overcome with the eroticism of it. She
hadn't stood so naked, so vulnerable in front of anyone for years. There was a
fear in it, and a freedom as well. And she revelled in it.

Emily took two steps and leaped onto the bed, bouncing and
laughing as she wrestled with Joe. He kissed her, caressed her face, and they
made love until it was too late for breakfast and too early for lunch.

* * * * *

After breakfast that Sunday morning, Nathan escaped into the
backyard to play in the big sandbox his father had surprised him with on a
visit several weeks earlier. It was shaped like a dragon. More precisely, it
was a big plastic version of Fiddlestick, the skinny, fussy little dragon from
Strangewood
,
who made music like a monstrous cricket, rubbing his wings together to create a
melody.

Fiddlestick was lime green, with darker wings and bright
orange scales on his belly. But the sandbox Fiddlestick didn't have an orange
belly. His belly was a big hole full of dirt. The plastic dragon lay on his
back, improbably small wings spread on the ground, and Nathan Randall played on
his sand-filled stomach.

Thomas watched his son through the window above the sink as
he did the breakfast dishes. All seemed well this morning, without a trace of
the previous evening's nightmares. The boy hadn't mentioned Crabapple once, and
yet Thomas couldn't shake the feeling that something was going on inside
Nathan's head.

Maybe the nightmare had just been Nathan's subconscious
getting rid of Crabapple. No more need for an imaginary friend, or something. Thomas
wanted to believe that. It would ease his own conscience a great deal. But it
struck him as odd that Nathan hadn't brought it up. He'd been horrified,
terrified, the night before, and Thomas couldn't blame him. To come up with
that dream, that Crabapple had been . . . well, murdered. In a moment of
levity, he might blame it on the boy watching too much television, but it had
to be more than that.

Sister Margaret had been right. They never should have had
Nathan stop seeing Dr. Morrissey. He'd seemed to be handling the divorce all
right, even the doctor had said so. But that was what both Emily and Thomas had
wanted to believe as well. His son was a perfect, healthy, funny, imaginative
little boy. With all that could go wrong during and after pregnancy, with all
the pitfalls to avoid during the first few years, they had been so fortunate.

So blessed.

Then, because they couldn't bear to live together anymore,
Thomas and Emily had shattered that perfection. It tore Thomas apart even to
think it, but since last night he had been unable to stop the voice in his head
that said he and Emily had tainted Nathan in some way.

Maybe forever.

Forever was a mighty long time.

Suddenly, he realized he was near tears.
Jesus
, he
thought.
Get a hold of yourself.
People got divorced every single day. Most
of their kids grew up happy and healthy. Maybe there were things they lost, but
some of them — arguments, hostility, watching their parents cry — were
no loss at all.

"Maybe I'm the one who needs a shrink," he said to
himself.

An unhappy thought, but Thomas couldn't avoid it. No more
than he could avoid the guilt that Nathan's nightmare had brought on. Despite
the pain and anger it might enkindle — like poking a beehive with a stick
— Thomas resolved to speak to Emily about counseling when he dropped
Nathan off that afternoon.