Sleep With The Lights On

by Maggie Shayne

  “Why don’t you make thorough use of it right now? How much time do you need?”

  I shrugged. “Two hours?”

  He smiled, as if that was a surprisingly long time.

  “I can make it one.”

  “I have plenty to keep me busy for two hours. You’re not here to entertain me, you know. Enjoy it. It’s probably just what the doctor ordered, given all the stress you’ve been under lately.”

  “Yeah, well, if that’s your rationale, you should probably book yourself a couple of hours, too. After I’m done.”

  “Maybe I will.” He reached out to flip a button on the towel rack, then turned on the Jacuzzi and adjusted the temperature.

  “I’ll show you the rest of the place while your water runs.”

  * * *

  I took the tour, saw the finished half of the basement—two bedrooms, the big one his mother preferred and a normal-sized one, with a game room in between and a utilitarian bathroom—and even the unfinished half, which combined the garage and a small woodworking area full of tools. It made me want to ask about Mason’s father. He’d talked about his mother but never his dad. I presumed he’d died, but I wanted to know when and how, and how Mason felt about it.

  How he felt about it? What am I, freaking Oprah now? Getting all touchy-feely? Yuck.

  So yeah, tour completed, drink refilled, I sat in the delicious Jacuzzi with the jets running full throttle, leaned my head back on one of the tub pillows I’d found on a shelf nearby and thought, This is the life and Why do I not have this bathroom in my house?

  It didn’t matter why. I would have one before another year was out, period. In fact, mine was going to be even bigger and include a hot-stone sauna room.

  The candles were glowing—mine would be electric, with a flickering effect and less danger of fire—and the incense was burning. I would do an electric simmer pot with essential oils, because smoke, even tiny tendrils of incense smoke, would dirty up my planned white ceiling in a hurry. I’d found the little sound dock on the shelf above the one that held the pillows and stuck my smartphone into it, then hit my “mellow” playlist, which hardly ever saw any use. Amy had put it on there for me. The first song was James Taylor, so I decided her taste was better than I’d feared. Above the two shelves, behind a set of cabinet doors, there were bottles and jars galore, body washes, shampoos, lotions, hair products, enough to get my inner girlie-girl all revved up.

  What the hell? I’ll indulge her for a bit. Maybe I deserve it, after all this. Or maybe that’s the vodka talking. Either way...

  By the time I got out of the Jacuzzi, I had a very slight buzz, and was feeling all relaxed and loose. I wrapped myself up in my prettiest robe and didn’t even bother drying my hair. Just combed it and left it hanging, drippy and, so long as it was wet, dead straight. That was how I went back downstairs, wet and mellow, makeup free. My stomach had been growling sporadically, so it jumped for joy when I smelled food wafting up from below. I’d been a little less than the two hours I’d predicted, but only because I was too lazy to refill the tub with hotter water for the third time.

  Mmm, that smells like Italian. I love Italian.

  “There you are. Not only on time but actually early.” Mason was right where I’d left him, on the floor in front of the fireplace, loving on my bulldog. But he hadn’t been there the entire time. There was a fresh stack of logs in the round iron firewood rack, and the dining room table, in the open space between living room and kitchen, was set for two. No candles, thank God. I would have run screaming if he’d lit candles, because that would mean he was thinking romance, and I had no interest in romance.

  Sex maybe, but definitely not romance.

  What the fuck was that? Didn’t I already decide that would be Bad?

  I watched him get up off the floor and stretch his arms above his head to work the kinks out. His shirt rose, and my stupid lecherous eyes latched on to the expanse of flesh that was left exposed. His jeans rode low, so I could see the slight indent below his hip bones, and the fine dark hairs making an arrow pointing to his button fly and beyond.

  It’s the vodka. I’m fine. I just need to lay off the vodka.

  Arms down. Skin covered. He nodded at the empty glass I’d brought down with me. “You need another drink?”

  Say no.

  “Definitely.”

  He took my glass, then sauntered across the room to the kitchen. I looked at his ass, then looked away, then jumped out of my skin when he was suddenly a foot from me, handing me the fresh drink.

  “Hungry?” he asked.

  Okay, come on, that was sexy. Deliberately sexy. That gruff edge in his voice, just then? That had to be on purpose.

  “Ravenous.”

  Okay, sound slutty much? Shut the front door, Rachel.

  He blinked slowly, then turned around and headed back to the kitchen. I followed like a lost puppy and wished someone would put me to sleep. Dumb shit.

  “I hope you like lasagna. My entire repertoire consists of lasagna, and mac and cheese.”

  “It smells great.”

  “Oh, it is great. I don’t do a lot, but what I do, I do really well.”

  “Is that your cooking philosophy, or does it apply to life in general?”

  “Applies to everything,” he said, as he took a foot-square lasagna pan out of the oven. I thought it would feed me for a week. Or Myrtle for a day.

  Turning, he hustled it past me to the counter. “There’s another oven mitt there. Would you grab the garlic bread?”

  Garlic bread, too? Is he trying to seduce me or fatten me up for slaughter?

  “If there’s dessert, you might get lucky tonight. And if it’s chocolate, I’ll blow you.” I clapped a hand to my mouth to silence the evil whore who’d said all that, and as I did, I noticed my third drink was almost gone already.

  “I will find chocolate for dessert if I have to tear this place apart,” he said when he finally stopped laughing. “You’re quite something with a couple of drinks in you.”

  “Yeah, so I’ve been told.” I took the garlic bread to the counter, grabbed a bread knife and started slicing it while he piled giant hunks of gooey lasagna onto a pair of thick plates and carried them back to the table. I followed with the sliced, steaming bread. No salad.

  God, is this guy too good to be true, or what?

  Down, girl. Vodka goggles, remember?

  Whatev.

  So we ate, and I had another drink and couldn’t stop thinking about banging him. When we were finished, he cleared up while I fed Myrtle—again. No wonder the poor thing was such a tank, but she looked so pathetic that how could I resist? I offered to help and he said no, so I sank onto the big teddy bear sofa near the fire, and he came back in with freshly brewed coffee, two cups of premade chocolate pudding just like the ones like my mother used to put in my school lunch box, and a shit-eating grin on his face.

  I grinned back and when he sat beside me, I sipped, watched the fire and ate my pudding.

  And then I said, “You know, I’ve only been a sighted adult for a few months now.”

  “And how are you liking it so far?” He was licking his spoon.

  That’s it. God must want me to screw him.

  “Loving it,” I said. “As independent as I thought I was before, it didn’t compare. I can drive. I can redecorate my house in the brightest colors I can find. I can...well, hell, I can see.”

  “Must be like a whole new world for you.”

  “It is. And I want to explore every corner of it. I want to check out everything before I commit to anything. Even a little bit. You know?”

  “I guess.”

  I nodded, even though he was looking at me like he was starting to wonder where I was going. “Good. So you’ll understand when I tell you that this is just this. Nothing more.”

  His dark brows bent until they touched. “This...what?”

  I took a breath, stood up and figured I might as well go for broke. It wasn’t like he would
refuse me. He’d been sending signals all night. So I bit my lip and dropped my robe. Just that simple. “This.”

  “Hot damn, I was hoping you’d say that.” He stood up slowly. Didn’t touch, except with his eyes, which were scanning me from head to toe and back again. “And I’m liking what I see.”

  “Which part?”

  “All of it.” He smiled, one side of his mouth crooking up higher than the other, and then he pulled me hard against him and kissed my face off.

  Oh, yeah, this had been a very, very good idea.

  19

  I woke up about 1:00 a.m., because he was a blanket hog and I was shivering. We were curled up back to back, with only our butts touching. The sex had been amazing, and frequent, and pretty damned creative to boot. I was still tingling from it.

  I rolled onto my back, stared at the ceiling and wondered if I was going to regret this in the morning.

  I don’t regret it yet. Good sign, right?

  That’s probably just because the afterglow thing is still in effect, dumb ass.

  Three hours later? Does afterglow last that long?

  It was good sex.

  Yeah, it was really good sex.

  At least myself and I could agree on that much. I peeled back the covers and eased out of the bed as carefully as possible, because, A, I wanted to avoid the awkward moment when we both woke up in the morning and had to say something, B, I didn’t want to wake Myrt, who we’d hefted onto the bed after our playtime was done, and C, I fully intended to spend the night in Eric’s room.

  I don’t know why. Maybe to prove to myself that I could, or maybe I was hoping to figure something out while I was in there. Who can tell?

  I got there by way of the bathroom, because I had to pee, and I almost scared myself when I passed the mirror. Going to sleep with wet hair is never a great idea.

  Then I was back in Eric Brown’s childhood bedroom. I doubted I would ever get to sleep, but I was damned well going to give it my best shot.

  I lay there for a while. I tossed and I turned. I cussed under my breath and thumped my pillow. I figured I’d been lying there for an hour or so when I finally conceded defeat and sat up.

  The bed rocked a little with my motion, and I heard the gentle slapping of oars in water. What the hell? It was still dark, but when I looked around I knew I wasn’t indoors. There was cool night air on my face and mist rising all around me.

  Ahh another dream, then. Okay, let’s see where this one goes.

  The oars, it turned out, were in my hands as I rowed a small boat across the water. It was nighttime, and the mist made it hard to see how far away the shore might be, but I could see a few stars winking high above. And as I settled more deeply and comfortably into the dream, I could smell the air, the wet fishy scents close to the boat and the pines farther away. The dampness of that mist was like the air kissing my skin.

  I was rowing, and I was crying. But as before, I wasn’t me. I was riding along inside another body, looking at the world through another set of eyes. A killer’s eyes.

  Hell, this is Eric. I’m in Eric’s head. What is this? A memory?

  I tried to focus, to really look at my surroundings, at my body. I could see my legs, big, male legs clad in jeans and badly stained work boots. Wait, there were other feet in the bottom of the boat. Someone else was there.

  Don’t look don’t look don’t look.

  I forced myself to look further, up the long, skinny legs, also dressed in jeans, and then higher, to the button-down shirt that was buttoned only partway. To the white T-shirt beneath it, red stains making my heart beat faster. Higher, to the pale skin of the neck, past a mark on one side of it, to the face, the head, but I couldn’t keep my focus there. One glance, that was all. Hamburger. He looked like hamburger. I jerked my vision lower again, and this time, I paid attention to the mark on his neck. It was a badly done tattoo. A tiger, upright and climbing the neck like it was a tree.

  It’s Tommy.

  The person whose body I was inside stopped rowing and brushed tears from his eyes/my eyes with a big hand. He was thinking, This is the last time. This is the last time. I can beat it, I know I can.

  He leaned over and grabbed a length of rope I hadn’t noticed before. He knotted the rope to one of my brother’s wrists, then looped it around both of them and tied them together.

  I can’t watch this. Wake up now. Come on, wake up.

  I closed my dream eyes, then opened them again, hoping I would wake up in reality, but no. I was still in the boat, and another length of rope was being knotted around my brother’s ankles. Then the killer turned and picked up a pair of cinder blocks, connecting the free end of each rope to one of them.

  Sobbing loudly now, the killer picked Tommy up and lowered him into the water, just as gently if he were handling a beloved child. As Tommy began to sink, the killer tossed the two cinder blocks over the side, as well, and then he sat and watched the body descend into the weeds and vanish from sight.

  When it was gone, he grabbed the oars again and started rowing away. The mist was clearing a little. I could see the shape of the shoreline in the distance. The sun was starting to rise and the sky was growing lighter, making a silhouette of the trees.

  I tried to squint things into better focus, and the scene turned into a window with the same trees and the same sky beyond it. I was sitting up in bed, wide-awake now, and looking through Eric’s bedroom window at the paling sky outside.

  I pressed my hands to my eyes. Dammit, I’d just seen Mason’s murderous bastard of a brother dump my own brother’s body.

  Well, that was what you wanted, wasn’t it? That was why you slept in here, to see if you’d dream up more information about what happened to Tommy. Right?

  Right. So now I knew. Tommy was at the bottom of a fucking lake.

  A fucking lake.

  I looked at the window again. There were, I realized, probably a couple of hundred lakes in the Adirondack Preserve.

  But how many of them did Eric Brown have a personal connection with?

  I got up and got dressed, tamed my hair down and ponytailed it, then padded quietly downstairs, because I didn’t want to wake Mason. No, I wasn’t just being polite. I was still avoiding the awkward, post-sex discussion we were going to stumble through eventually. I made coffee, filled a big mug of it to take with me and then pulled on my jacket and the cute brown knit hat and scarf Amy had bought me last winter.

  Coffee in hand, I went to the French doors and out onto the big redwood deck for a better look at the lake. Leaning against the rail, cupping the warm mug in my cold hands and sipping, I stared across the sloping expanse of back lawn to the water, some fifty yards distant. It was foggy, dammit. Mist rising from the water just like in the damned dream. It would burn off once the sun got up a bit higher, I thought, but for now I couldn’t see a hell of a lot. Still, there was a set of redwood steps leading down to ground level, two short flights with a landing in between. Sighing, I decided to take them. At the bottom, I saw a pair of red kayaks leaning against the back of the house, under the deck. I walked through the wet grass, peering through the fog at the lake the entire way.

  Birds were singing like maniacs. It was even louder than what I’d heard last night, because apparently most birds were morning people. Unlike me. You know, except for when I spend the night in a serial killer’s bed, or in a serial killer’s head, or both.

  There was a wooden dock extending into the water, with a couple of little boats bobbing serenely, tied up on either side. One was a canoe. Gleaming hardwood, shining and glossy, with a stripe in pine green and the words Old Town, which I figured was the brand name. That was on the left. On the right was a flat-bottomed metal rowboat that didn’t even come to a point in the front. It was boxy. The bow tapered a little, but then squared off, and the stern was identical. It had two built-in bench seats, and oars in the oarlocks.

  I stood there staring at that boat and wondering. Could it be the same one I saw in the dream? I
stepped into the thing and then crouched to grab the sides when it rocked way more than I’d expected. I damn near tipped it over, but no, it steadied. I sat myself down on the bench seat, my eyes riveted to the floor at the stern. And then, leaning forward, I put my hands there, right where Tommy would have been lying if this was the same boat.

  I stared hard, trying to recall the image of my dead brother and the boat from the dream, so I could compare. I strained to see any trace of blood, but there was nothing. Nothing obvious, anyway. And all the while, I pressed my hands to the cold metal.

  Were you here, Tommy?

  Blinking away hot tears, I stared out at the water. The mist was starting to dissipate a little, and I could see the shape of the lake better now, along with the trees lining the shore. It looked a lot like the lake from the dream, but then, so did most of the other lakes up here, I imagined.

  Are you out there, big brother? Are you out there in that dark water somewhere?

  “Going for an early-morning boat ride?”

  I jumped so damned hard I almost capsized, sucking in a breath that could have busted a lung, and twisted my head around like a freaking hoot owl.

  “What the fuck are you doing here!” It wasn’t a question.

  David was standing on the dock, handsome as all hell in his bomber jacket with his GQ-model blond hair just perfect, despite the morning breeze. He had his hands in his pockets but offered me one when I started to climb out of the little boat.

  I didn’t take it. I was good and pissed. And yeah, maybe that was partly because I’d just realized that my brother might be anchored to a pair of cinder blocks not far from me, but mostly it was deserved.

  “I decided to drive up for the weekend. I told you I like to camp up here sometimes, didn’t I?”

  I was on the dock now, facing him and not trying one bit to hide my temper. “You came up here because I came up here with Mason and you’re jealous. The question is, how the hell did you know that?”