by Radclyffe
frightened she’d been in the middle of the night when she couldn’t breathe, when
she’d felt as if her heart would pound its way out of her chest or simply stop
beating altogether. She wasn’t superstitious.
She didn’t believe in omens. But that morning, as they’d been injecting the drug
into her arm to put her to sleep while they administered an electric current strong
enough to completely inactivate her heart, her last thought had been that she
wanted to go home. She just wanted a few days to breathe free again. She
looked at Rachel and knew there was no way her totally focused, driven lover
would ever understand that. Rachel lived to work. So did Leslie. It was the
strongest bond they shared.
She couldn’t very well explain to Rachel what she didn’t understand herself.
“I don’t want to go into the ofÞ ce every day and have people look at me as if
there’s something wrong with me,” Leslie said, which was partially true. So
many half-truths. “I’ll get this straightened out while I’m up there and be done
with it.”
“I don’t know that I can get away, darling. You know what my calendar—”
“I don’t expect you to.” Leslie reached through the aluminum bars of the railing
for Rachel’s hand. Her skin was smooth and soft. “I’ll miss you if you can’t Þ
nd a way to come up, but I’ll understand.”
Rachel leaned over the railing and kissed Leslie quickly. “Good.
Call me when you get settled up there. I’ll see what I can do.”
• 27 •
RADCLY fFE
“Okay. You should go before you’re late.” Leslie watched Rachel walk out the
door, wondering when she would see her again. Rachel likely wouldn’t even
miss her, not when she was this tied up in a big case. With an increasing surge of
melancholy, Leslie admitted that she didn’t really mind.
• 28 •
WHEN DREAMS TREMBLE
CHAPTER THREE
Shortly after 6 a.m., Dev opened her eyes to sunshine and the unmistakable
sounds of morning in the mountains. Birdsong.
Wind rustling in the trees. A far-distant hum of an outboard motor. Her rented
cabin was the last in a row of ten similar rustic log cabins that were situated at Þ
fty-yard intervals within small clearings in the woods.
A meandering dirt path connected them to one another and to the main lodge at
Lakeview Cottages. Similar wooded trails led from each small front porch down
to the water and a sliver of sandy beach. She couldn’t see the other cabins,
most of which were still empty so early in the season, or the lodge where the
owners also lived, nearly a quarter of a mile away. The solitude was welcome,
and although meals were included in her weekly rent, she had yet to avail herself
of that amenity in the three days she’d been at Lakeview. She hadn’t quite
gotten over her uneasiness at Þ nding herself at the Harrises’.
When she’d called the park ranger headquarters a month before to explain who
she was and the work she’d be doing in the lake area that summer, Natalie had
extended the professional courtesy of arranging local accommodations for her.
Dev had been happy to have one fewer thing to do, her only stipulation being
that she wanted a private cabin that was as far from the popular tourist haunts as
possible. She hadn’t even considered that Natalie might reserve a place for her
at the Harrises’ secluded resort just north of Bolton Landing, and when she’d
found out, there hadn’t really been a good reason to refuse it. It was close to the
Institute’s labs, and she doubted that anyone would recognize her. No one had.
• 29 •
RADCLY fFE
Even so, when she’d arrived to check in, she couldn’t shake the disorienting
effect that seeing the place again produced. She hadn’t expected to be bothered
—it had all been over so long ago. Dead and buried and gone.
At the moment, though, lying naked beneath a soft ß oral print sheet that smelled
of wind and water, she was very glad to be there.
Turning on her side, she just enjoyed the beauty outside her windows.
She also reß ected on the question of why she was enjoying it alone.
When Natalie had casually asked her to dinner at the end of the workday the
night before, it had seemed natural to say yes. They’d worked well together all
day, collecting samples, planning when and where to take others, and
conversation had come easily.
Dinner hadn’t had the feel of a date, not quite. It had the feel of two women
who liked one another at Þ rst meeting, getting to know each other better. And
when they’d returned to the park ofÞ ce so that Dev could pick up her truck for
the drive back to her summer quarters and Natalie had casually kissed her good
night as they’d stood in the dark parking lot, that had felt natural too.
Recalling the kiss, Dev knew if she’d done any more than return it lightly and
then step away, they might be waking up together right now. She suspected that
would have been pleasant. It had been a long time since she’d met someone like
Natalie, someone who might offer uncomplicated but satisfying intimacy. It was
an unusual combination, and hard to Þ nd. Which was probably why she hadn’t
had sex in over a year. But there was no rush, and she might be wrong. Not
worth the risk.
Still, thinking about it would give her something to enjoy in the shower. Smiling,
she stood and stretched and headed to the small, neat bathroom to start her
day.
v
At 1:00 that afternoon, Dev pulled her black Chevy Colorado into the parking
lot at Lakeview, planning on a Þ fteen-minute stop to change clothes before
driving to a meeting in Troy. As she climbed down from the cab, she nodded to
Eileen Harris, who looked over from where she was leaning beneath the hood of
her dusty green Jeep Cherokee. Dev recognized it and Þ gured it had to be
twenty years old.
“Hey,” Dev said. “Problem?”
• 30 •
WHEN DREAMS TREMBLE
Eileen Harris, in her early Þ fties and still looking youthfully blond and Þ t in her
baggy jeans and well-worn blue cable-knit sweater, gave an exasperated sigh.
“The damn thing won’t start. Again.” She wiped sweat from her forehead with
the back of her hand and left a streak of grease behind. She looked even
younger then. “Paul has been promising to look at it, but you know how that
goes. He’s ferrying a group of campers out to the islands right now.”
Lake George Islands campsites, accessible only by boat, offered some of the
best recreational Þ shing, hiking, bird watching, sailing, and camping in upstate
New York. Not for the fainthearted, however, since everything had to be
packed in by water, and private arrangements needed to be made for trips back
to the mainland. If her husband had gone out with a group, he might not be back
for a while.
“I’d lend a hand,” Dev said, “but I don’t know as I’d be much help. Can I offer
you a lift somewhere instead?”
“Ordinarily it wouldn’t be such a problem,” Eileen said. “But I have to be at the
train station in Rensselaer this afternoo
n, and even if I reach Paul and get him
back here, and he can Þ x it, I don’t think I’ll make it in time.”
“I’m about to drive down to Troy for a short meeting. If you’ve got guests
coming in by train, I can pick them up and bring them back.”
The Rensselaer train station stop on the Amtrak line that ran from New York
City to Montréal was ten minutes from where she was going to be.
“I hate to ask you to do that. I imagine you must be busy.”
Dev sensed her hesitation and was embarrassed that Eileen Harris felt
uncomfortable accepting a simple favor from her. Eileen’s reserve was probably
due to the fact that Dev had avoided Eileen and her husband since her arrival.
Dev hoped she could make up for the rudeness now. “It’s right on my way.
Really.”
“Well,” Eileen said, clearly still torn. She glanced once at the truck, then smiled
gratefully at Dev. “That would be great. My daughter’s coming in from New
York City, and I hate for her to wait there or Þ nd some other way up.”
“Your daughter.” Dev heard her voice and it sounded normal, but she felt like
she was hearing it underwater.
“Yes. Leslie. She’s an attorney in Manhattan, and she called unexpectedly. Just
this morning. It’s been a while since she’s been here, and I…”
• 31 •
RADCLY fFE
Dev was trying to follow the slightly disjointed conversation but she didn’t seem
to be catching all the words. Leslie. Coming here.
She looked past Eileen down the grassy slope to the lake and the boathouse. It
looked exactly the same as it had Þ fteen years before. She could actually hear
the music.
The party at the Harrises’ boathouse was in full swing when Dev arrived
close to midnight. The parking lot was jammed with dusty pickup trucks, old
sedans, and even a few shiny new graduation cars here and there. She rode her
motorcycle onto the grass under some trees and sauntered down the slope
toward the music and the swell of voices.
Every teenager in the area would be there, including those who were only living
at the lake for the summer while they worked at the area restaurants and resorts.
It was the last big bash of the summer before half of the kids there left for
college.
Dev wouldn’t be leaving just yet. She’d missed the age cutoff for starting
kindergarten with most of the kids close to her age by a month, so she still had a
year before she graduated. She looked eighteen, although she had six months to
go, but she never got carded when she bought beer or tried to get into the
Painted Pony, a local drinking hangout.
The fake ID she’d gotten mail order from a place in New York City didn’t hurt,
either. Fortunately, there were so many kids in Lake George during the summer,
it was all the cops could do to keep the really young ones under control. She
never got stopped on her motorcycle, and no one bothered about what went on
at private parties.
Dev strode through the crowd that had spilled out onto the grass in front of the
boathouse, looking straight ahead and ignoring the few people who stared in her
direction. She knew she looked nothing like the pretty girls in their shorts and
pastel blouses or even the boys who stood with their arms around those same
girls, nuzzling their necks and casually brushing their Þ ngers under the curve of
their breasts, arrogant with their male privilege. Knowing she didn’t Þ t and
knowing why, Dev wore her tight jeans smeared with engine grease, her heavy
motorcycle boots, and her frayed white T-shirt with angry pride. Her hair was
shaggy and dark with sweat. She ignored even the few who greeted her; she
had only one thing on her mind.
The boathouse, extending out over the water on three sides, was as big as a
basketball court and sweltering, the air thick with sweat and smoke and the
sexual energy of a hundred teenagers in the last throes
• 32 •
WHEN DREAMS TREMBLE
of innocence. Huge speakers in the back corners blasted Aerosmith, and
writhing bodies Þ lled every inch of the room. Most of the lights were off and
the cavernous space was so dim she could barely make out anyone’s features
until she was almost in their face, but she knew she’d Þ nd her. She always did.
It was like they were connected. Except only she felt it.
She grabbed a beer from a row of coolers below one of the open windows,
popped the top, and guzzled half of it. It was her fourth in two hours, but she
didn’t feel it. The adrenaline rush of riding her bike at high speeds along the
curving roads bordering the lake had burned off a lot of the alcohol. She loved
the way the wind felt blasting against her face at sixty miles an hour, like another
body molded to hers. The rush of speed and the engine throbbing and the pulse
pulse pulse of the pressure against her body was enough to make her come
sometimes.
The pleasure was enough to make her forget for a little while that she was alone.
She drank the beer and tossed the can into the corner. Leslie was perched in
one of the open windows, her face turned toward the water, her hair blowing
ever so lightly in the breeze. Moonlight highlighted her slim form, the curve of her
breasts and the arch of her bent legs so beautiful it was like a pain in Dev’s
heart. On the far side of the room, Leslie’s boyfriend Mike was standing with a
group of boys shooting pool, his legs spread wide, posturing with the cue stick
angled against his crotch like a phallic extension.
Dev snagged two more beers and eased her way along the wall in the near dark
until she was next to Leslie at the window. She placed a cold, sweating beer can
against the outside of Leslie’s thigh and laughed softly when Leslie jumped with
a small sound of surprise.
“Want another beer?”
“Dev!” Leslie smiled and took the beer. “I thought you said you weren’t
coming.”
Dev shrugged and leaned her shoulder against the window frame.
The big rectangular window swung out on hinges and canted over the water, the
glass reß ecting the shine of moonlight on the black surface of the lake.
“Changed my mind.”
“Yeah?” Leslie sipped the Budweiser, trying not to grimace. It was the guys’
favorite, so that was what they had at the parties. “How come?”
“Just thought I’d hang out here for a while.”
• 33 •
RADCLY fFE
“I’m glad you came by.”
“You leaving this weekend?” Dev knew she was, but somehow she kept hoping
to hear Leslie say, No, Dev. I changed my mind. I don’t really want to go
three hundred miles away from home. From you.
But she wouldn’t, because that was just Dev’s dream. Not Leslie’s.
“Uh-huh. Sunday. My folks are driving me down.”
Dev thought she sounded just a little bit wistful, and that made the ache in her
belly worse somehow. She dared to touch Leslie’s bare knee ever so lightly.
Leslie’s skin, damp from the mist off the water, was cool against Dev’s hot Þ
ngertips. “You’ll be okay.”
“Oh, I know.” Leslie smiled brightly. “It’ll be gr
eat. I can’t wait.”
“So you’re still gonna be a landscape architect, huh?”
“Someday. You know, after college and everything.”
Dev nodded, although she really didn’t know much about how college worked.
She wasn’t really too interested, since she Þ gured she’d end up working in her
parents’ convenience store after high school.
They expected her to help out, save them the cost of hiring someone.
Her older brother had left home as soon as he could, refusing to be tied to the
drudgery that seemed to be their parents’ lives. So Dev worked, in his place,
after school and on weekends.
She didn’t care. She didn’t think about it much. When she looked into the
future, she could never see anything except more of the same.
Her. Alone.
“So when will you be back? You know, vacation or whatever,”
Dev asked.
Even in the moonlight, Leslie’s face was shadowed. “Thanksgiving, I guess. Not
that long.”
“No, I guess n—”
“Hey, Leslie!” One of Leslie’s girlfriends shouted above the din.
“Come on, come outside. We’re gonna smoke a joint.”
Dev knew the invitation didn’t include her. Her friendship with Leslie was
something that Leslie’s crowd just ignored, clearly unable to understand why
Leslie would give Dev the time of day. After all, Dev was a year behind them,
and if that weren’t enough to make her company less than desirable, she was
strange. Different. But for some reason, Leslie and she were always able to talk.
It had started by accident the year before when they’d shared a table during
study hall.
Leslie was having trouble with a math problem, and since it was the
• 34 •
WHEN DREAMS TREMBLE
one subject that Dev could pick up just by sitting in class without doing any
work at all, she’d shown Leslie how to set up the solution. The next day she
helped her again, and somehow they’d started talking about other things.
Everything, really.
Dev had never met anyone she could talk to so easily. Leslie always listened.
Always made her feel like what she had to say was important and interesting.
They never met outside of school, never visited each other’s homes. Never did
anything social together except sit for an hour every few days on the lawn
