Toy Boy (16 page)
I liked his eyes in that particular picture. We’d been lucky on our wedding day. It had been beautifully sunny, not a cloud in the sky. After our vows, we’d had photographs with family members then, sneakily, before the reception, the photographer had taken us around the back of the church to stand beneath an archway made up of delicate pink roses. It had matched the flowers in my bouquet and hair perfectly. Matt had hugged me close and told me I even smelled of roses.
I’d laughed and asked him if he could cope with thorns. He’d replied, “No marriage is without a few thorns, Katie, but for better or for worse, good times or bad, we’re together now until death do us part.”
He’d kissed me on my right temple, and the close-up shot had been taken. His eyes had been dreamy, soft, their dark depths mellow and his lashes casting shadows on his cheeks.
I recalled his smooth, clean-shaven chin against my face as clearly as I remembered my next words, spoken through a smile. “We’ll still be together when we’re old and gray and one hundred and ten.”
How wrong I’d been.
I swung my feet to the floor and stared at my toenails—the dark pink nail varnish was hideously chipped—and forced myself to stand. There, that was it. I’d made it through the first painful moment of the day—only a million more to go.
I wandered into the bathroom, flicked on the shower and drowned out the sound of the mower. It was Saturday and I had the day off for a change so I didn’t have to worry about getting into work and finding a smile to wear.
To start with it had been okay for me to be sad, quiet, closed in on myself. But since the first anniversary of Matt’s accident had gone by ten months ago, I kind of got the feeling that people expected me to be ‘getting on with my life’, ‘pulling myself together’. Really? A year and ten months to get over losing the man I’d spent over half a decade in love with, whose babies I’d wanted to carry and who I’d seen myself with for all eternity? It seemed it was. But I didn’t have the energy to argue or try to justify the loss that still followed me everywhere, so I slapped on a smile, put a chirp in my voice and acted as if I cared about the goings-on in the shop.
The shower water was only just warm, but that was okay. The forecast had been for another scorcher, so starting off cool was a good plan. That’s what Matt and I had done on our honeymoon in Thailand. We’d had cooling showers several times a day to lower our body temperatures, although sometimes, if he’d snuck in beside me, it had gotten pretty damn steamy in the bathroom, even with the faucet turned to cold.
I smiled at the delicious memory and stepped out, dried, then pulled on knickers and a thin sundress that had a built-in bra. The lemon-colored cotton was soft on my skin, and I recalled wearing it to a candlelit seafood dinner on the beach in Koh Samui. It’d fit a bit nicer back then. I’d filled it out properly. Now the material at the chest gaped slightly and it drowned the thin flare of my hips. But Matt had liked it, so I still wore it.
After piling my hair high, I wandered into the kitchen. As I put the kettle on I heard the letterbox rattle. My heart gave a familiar flip. I’d been waiting nearly eight weeks to hear back from Brian Davis. Would today be the day?
The brown hessian doormat held the usual bills and junk mail, but there was one slim white envelope with my name, Katie Lansdale, printed on the front. Quickly, I ripped it open, pulled out a sheet of paper and saw the words
Brian Davis, Private Detective
, written in bold print at the top.
I juddered in a breath, willed myself to keep calm, not to tear the paper in my urgency to unfold and read. My knees were weak so I headed into the kitchen, forced myself to lay the letter on the table, then made a cup of tea. The ritual of milk, squeezing the bag then stirring settled my movements, if not my nerves.
Questions without answers spun in my head like a sticky web, each one leading to the next, but not if I couldn’t navigate the way. Would Brian have found anything out about the man who stomped through my thoughts? Had that man even survived this long? And if so, where was he now? In Britain? Europe? The other side of the world?
Eventually, tea made, kitchen door flung open to the back garden and the doves now pecking on the patio, I sat at our round kitchen table and unfolded the letter. The impulse to scan the sentences was strong, but I controlled it and started from the beginning, slowly, each word forming in my head.
Dear Mrs. Lansdale,
Further to our meeting on the 2
nd
of May, I have undertaken an investigation. Your request was unusual and did pose some ethical issues, but it seems fate has been on our side and I’ve found the man you seek.
He’d found him! I took a sip of tea, holding it over the table but away from the letter—my hand was shaking and I didn’t want to spill a drop and risk blurring any precious words.
His name is Ruben Strong, and as you were already aware, he is thirty-three years old.
From what I can gather, he is doing extremely well health-wise. He is a UK resident and lives in Northampton, England, working as a curator in the town’s park museum.
Since, as we discussed, address details cannot be revealed from health service documents, that is the extent of the information I can share. I trust that will satisfy your curiosity and have enclosed an invoice for the remainder of my fee, which should be settled within three weeks.
Yours sincerely,
Brian Davis
Personal Investigative Services
“Ruben Strong.” The name sounded hard and alien on my lips and so different from melodic Matthew Lincoln Lansdale. Yet he had a part of Matt. He
was
a part of Matt. I re-read the letter, soaking up the information anew. Northampton. That was only an hour away from Leicester. In fact, I was pretty sure the cosmetic shop I worked for had a branch in the town center there. Here was me thinking he could be anywhere in the world and he was only forty miles away.
And after all this time he was doing well.
That’s good, isn’t it? Yes, of course it is.
It meant something positive had come out of the senselessness of Matt’s death. He was dead, but someone else was alive. Not just alive but ‘doing extremely well’.
I read the letter twice more then picked up my tea and stood in the doorway, my shoulder huddled against the frame as I sipped and stared out at the garden. The doves sat side-by-side on the wooden bench, fussing each other’s feathers. The sun beat down on my dry and crinkled lawn. I’d been unkind to it and had forgotten to put the sprinkler on night after night. Matt would have remembered. He’d been good like that.
But I didn’t linger on the withered grass. Instead, I wondered if Ruben Strong was like his name—strong, big and tough. Not likely. Not if he’d needed a new heart and lungs. Maybe he’d had formidable strength once, but perhaps he’d always been sickly. He could have spent thirty-three years hoping someone would die in tragic circumstances so he’d get the chance of a normal life.
What must that
feel
like, to hope a stranger dies so you can live?
A bitter taste sat in my mouth. The tea wouldn’t wash it away. It was the unfairness of it that was sour. Why did anyone need to die or be ill in the first place? Young men, all in the prime of their lives, taken or about to be taken. I shut my eyes and tipped my face to the sky, wondered,
What divine creator would dream up such unfair scenarios?
The sun beat down on me, unrelenting, unconcerned, just blistering. The neighbor thankfully turned off his cranky old mower.
I sighed then took a deep breath. The scent of summer filtered toward me—the pink roses that sat beneath the kitchen window were in full bloom. Matt had planted them on our first anniversary, and they were content in their south-facing position with the occasional jug of water thrown over them. I decided to cut several stems for the table. That was a normal thing to do, wasn’t it? Have a vase of flowers in the kitchen?
I swapped my empty mug for a pair of scissors and set about snipping. The velvety petals were a delicate baby pink and smaller than usual roses. Their heads were dainty and didn’t droop with weight. I gathered a dozen or so and stepped back into the shade of the house, already feeling a drip of perspiration in my cleavage.
After reaching for a glass vase then filling it with water, I dropped in the stems.
“Ouch. Bugger!” A thorn had caught on the inside of my index finger. Quickly, I sucked the drip of blood to take away the sting. As I stared at the haphazardly landed roses, an urge rushed into me. It was like getting hit by a moving object. It railroaded through my chest, swirled up that weight in my stomach—hurricane-style—and sent my heart rate rocketing.
I’d been a fool. A damn fool to think just knowing his name and where he worked would be enough. Didn’t I know anything about myself? Had I learned nothing about grief and its obsessive, dark, manipulative nature?
It was obvious I hadn’t. Because if the thorn in our marriage had been Matt’s death, the thorn in me now was that I’d be unable to rest until I’d seen Ruben Strong.
About the Author
Lily Harlem lives in the UK with a workaholic hunk and a crazy cat. With a desk overlooking rolling hills her over active imagination has been allowed to run wild and free and she revels in using the written word as an outlet for her creativity.
Lily’s stories are made up of colorful characters exploring their sexuality and sensuality in a safe, consensual way. With the bedroom door left wide open the reader can hang on for the ride and Lily hopes by reading sensual romance people will be brave enough to try something new themselves–after all, life’s too short to be anything other than fully satisfied.
Email:
[email protected]
Lily loves to hear from readers. You can find her contact information, website and author biography at
http://www.totallybound.com
.
Also by Lily Harlem
Treble: Orchestrating Maneuvers
Stand to Attention: Who Dares Wins
Christmas Crackers: Candy Canes and Coal Dust
Bollywood: The Unwholesome Adventures of Harita
What’s her Secret?: Breathe You In
What’s his Passion?: Dark Warrior
With Natalie Dae
Totally Bound Publishing
