The Burden of Desire

by Natalie Charles

  The moment of silence between them was penetrated by the sound of a door closing. Ben turned to see his mother approaching, wrapped in a knitted, cream-colored cardigan. Her hands were tucked into her pockets.

  “Ben,” she called in a warm tone that reminded him of happier days, “aren’t you going to introduce me to your lovely friend?”

  He stepped to his mother’s side, reaching out a hand to steady her as she walked. She waved him off crossly. “I’m fine. Stop fussing.”

  “Mom, this is my colleague Sally Dawson. She was in the area and offered to help.”

  “Lovely to meet you, Sally. I’m Eleanor.” She extended her right hand, which Sally gripped warmly. “Thank you so much for supervising my son today. I worry about him every time he fires up a saw, but it looks like he still has ten fingers.”

  Sally grinned. “Your son is a man of many talents. I had no idea he knew his way around a table saw.”

  “Takes after his father,” Eleanor confided. “More bookish, though. What were those books you always had your nose buried in? Those detective novels?” She turned back to Sally. “He used to read them in bed with a flashlight.”

  Ben rolled his eyes. “Okay, Mom. Thanks. I’m sure Sally didn’t come here expecting to hear about my childhood.”

  “Nonsense. I have to repay her in some way.” Her eyes shone. “Stay for dinner. Both of you.”

  Before Sally could reply, Ben interjected, “She was just leaving. It’s been a long day.”

  He thought he detected a flash of hurt passing across Sally’s face. Just as quickly as it appeared, it vanished. “Maybe another time, Eleanor,” she said cheerfully.

  “I’d like that very much.” His mother turned to him and pulled him by the elbow. “You’ll stay, though. I don’t see you enough.” She gave him a pat on the upper arm and headed back into the house.

  Ben waited until his mother had closed the door behind her before he walked Sally to her car. She popped her trunk, momentarily disappearing from view, only to hand Ben a grocery bag stuffed with the rest of his tuxedo.

  “I was in such a hurry,” he said softly.

  “I know.”

  She cleared her throat and looked uncomfortable. Suddenly Ben felt like an ass for declining his mother’s dinner invitation for Sally. “You’re welcome to stay for dinner,” he said. “I didn’t mean...I just thought you had to go—”

  “It’s fine,” she said in a tone that made it clear she didn’t mean it. “I’m pretty tired, anyway.” She sniffed and opened the driver’s side door. “I’m glad we were able to smooth things over. This is a good place for us to be. Teammates. Partners. We’re just too...volatile any other way.”

  He nodded lamely as if he agreed. As if he hadn’t been thinking just the opposite for the past few hours as they worked side by side. He couldn’t be close to Sally without wanting to touch her. Being “partners” with her was some kind of a cruel joke.

  “I agree,” he said. “Let’s keep it professional. Thanks for your help today. I know my mom appreciates it.”

  Sally nodded rapidly a few times before sinking into the driver’s seat. He waited while she fastened her seat belt and backed out of the driveway, his hands jammed into his pockets. She gave him a little wave as she set off down the street. The car was going faster than it should. The woman had such a lead foot.

  He walked back into the house, greeted by the smell of garlic and basil marinara sauce simmering and pasta boiling. “Mom. You shouldn’t be doing those things.”

  But she stood with her back to the stove, her arms crossed in front of her, leveling that same pointed look he’d received a hundred times. The one that told him he’d just screwed up. “All right, what did I do?” He sighed.

  “I raised you better than to speak for a young woman,” she said. “She wanted to stay for dinner. She likes you. A lot.”

  He didn’t want to explain how complicated this thing was between him and Sally. He chose to duck the issue entirely. “You’re right, I shouldn’t have spoken for her. I’ll apologize.”

  His mom made a sound like harrumph, but kept her eyes trained to him. “I know you, Ben. You’re thinking this is complicated with you two. That’s what you always think. You like this girl, but it’s complicated, and you’ll use that as your excuse to walk away. You know, you’re not the first people to ever fall in love, but it doesn’t come around very often.” She tilted her head. “I’ve always preferred complications to loneliness. Maybe you need to think about whether you feel the same.”

  He ground his teeth, relieved when the water for the pasta bubbled over the side of the pot in a cascade of steam and hissing water. “Why don’t you sit down,” he said. “I’ll finish dinner.”

  He had his back to her, and he didn’t hear her move for several moments. Then he heard her sigh deeply in a way that told him she wasn’t finished with the discussion, but only taking a break.

  He tried not to think about the weight of her words as he drained the pasta into a metal colander in the sink, sending blasts of steam onto the kitchen windows. He returned the pasta to the pot, added some sauce and cooked it on the stove for a minute, his brain somewhere else entirely. He was thinking about Sally driving home alone to an empty house. He was thinking about her safety, and realizing that he wouldn’t rest until Mitch Kruger was behind bars.

  Chapter 12

  Seven-eighteen in the morning. That meant that Mitch Kruger would be opening his garage door in six minutes, backing up his old pickup truck and driving off to work, just as he had each weekday morning for the past two weeks since Ben had started following him. Trailing him. Following sounded creepy.

  Mitch Kruger was a physically fit man who looked to be in his forties, but was actually in his late thirties. Ben recalled James saying that his parents had been young when he was conceived, and James was only eighteen. In his mind, Ben had constructed Mitch Kruger to be a monster—a beast who frothed at the mouth and had biceps the size of thighs. Physical features that would coincide with his capacity for homicide, because Sally was right: Mitch Kruger had killed someone.

  Ben couldn’t prove it. Yet. But he’d received several calls from Dan Maybury over the past few weeks, informing him of new developments in the Kruger case. Since the lab had identified hair possibly belonging to Mary Ann Hennessy on the infamous area rug, the police detectives had doubled their efforts to locate the missing woman, contacting her relatives in Pennsylvania and even looking for traces of her in Hawaii. They’d learned from the airlines that Mary had purchased a ticket to Hawaii and had boarded the plane to San Diego, but she’d never boarded the connection to Hawaii. Dan surmised that Ronnie Kruger had taken the flight in her place and had then taken a bus to Las Vegas. No one had seen or heard from Mary Ann in almost a year, as if she’d disappeared from the face of the earth.

  Her family members had cooperated, at least. One brother had expressed some concern about her disappearance, but he claimed she’d been seeing someone before she’d left, and that the relationship had been all-consuming.

  “Could’ve been a married man,” Dan had explained. “This definitely sounded like a forbidden love of some kind.”

  Ben lowered the back of his seat so that he was barely visible in the vehicle window. Mary Ann may have planned to run away with this forbidden love of hers, but it looked as if something had gone wrong. The only question was whether the Kruger household had been her last stop.

  As if on cue, the garage door opened, sputtering and jerking on squeaky wheels. Ben’s pulse quickened the way it had every day so far. He knew what he’d been looking for the first time he’d followed Mitch Kruger: some kind of clue or sign that Sally’s hunch was correct, and that he’d murdered Mary Hennessy. That first morning he’d followed Mitch, taking note of his route to the hardware store. There were plenty of wooded areas on the
way, lots of places where a body could be concealed and go unnoticed for a long time. Mitch had dumped the area rug on his way to work; he felt comfortable in this neighborhood, and may have left a body here. Now, as the routine stretched into weeks, Ben no longer knew what he was looking for. A slip up, or maybe a moment of carelessness. He waited for the truck to back out of the driveway and round the corner before he turned the key in the ignition and followed.

  Officially, Ben was finished with his investigation. The report was completed and Jack had issued his approval. “Solid report,” he’d said. “Looks like investigative error.”

  Ben supposed that was the only conclusion to draw. The investigators had missed the significance of certain pieces of evidence, most notably Mary Ann’s hair on the area rug. The sisters lived in separate states and didn’t speak to each other anymore; red flags should have been raised. Still, he doubted that there would be any repercussions. The police had been looking for Ronnie Kruger’s body, and that had been a red herring.

  Sally’s job was safe. Not that they’d talked about it. For the past two weeks, they’d made significant efforts to avoid each other, and they’d been largely successful. Once they’d wound up in the kitchen at the same time, both of them with their coffee mugs in hand. They’d done an awkward dance, moving this way and that, each trying to give the other space, before muttering something about the size of the kitchen, and dropping their gazes to the floor.

  So much for being partners. Ben had left a copy of his report in Sally’s mailbox, just as he’d promised. He’d even waited twenty-four hours before turning it in to Jack, to see whether she would comment, but she hadn’t. Everything between them seemed simultaneously finished and maddeningly unresolved.

  He was no good at this courtship thing, anyway. What should he have brought a woman like Sally to indicate his interest? Flowers? Chocolates? Instead, he was hoping to bring her evidence of murder.

  Ben followed Mitch from two cars behind. The pickup careened down the hill in front of him, approaching a scenic reservoir. What leaves remained on the trees clung to the branches in desperate brown clumps and spatters, shaking in the breeze. The day was cold, the ground covered in frost.

  His spine straightened as the pickup turned abruptly off the road. This wasn’t the usual routine. Ben tapped the brakes, his pulse kicking as he debated whether to turn around. Maybe Mitch had finally gotten wise.

  He slowed his approach to the spot. The truck had continued along a dirt path that led deeper into the woods. If he followed Mitch now, he’d look suspicious. Ben swung onto the shoulder of the road and pulled the car to a stop. Damn, now what? Follow him on foot? The place looked empty. It was early morning in November, hardly the time most people would choose to visit the reservoir.

  He slapped his palms against the steering wheel in frustration. Just as he was about to spin the car around and follow that same dirt track the truck had taken, the pickup came creeping out of the woods. Ben lowered himself in the seat, but Mitch didn’t appear interested in him. He slowed the truck as he approached the main road, looking right and then left, and turned and drove the way he’d been heading.

  The guy probably had to urinate, and here I was thinking he’d been checking up on a shallow grave.

  Ben backed up the car and spun up the track. May as well check it out.

  The route was riddled with lumps from protruding tree roots, and Ben clenched his jaw as the car careened from side to side deeper into the woods. He’d driven past the reservoir before, but never stopped to visit. Stone fences were common even in thick woods in this area—evidence of the region’s farming past, and relics from a time when much of the forest land had been cleared for cattle. These, however, were dense, old woods that appeared to have been untouched for hundreds of years. As he drove through a grove of mature pines interspersed with bare birch limbs, he didn’t see any stone walls.

  A clearing appeared momentarily—a small parking lot. He pulled into a space and climbed out of his car. A large wooden guide post at the entrance to a trail directed visitors down five different paths, each designated by color. Ben scanned the parking area. Mitch must have come here, but the ground was too cold to reveal tire tracks. Ben followed the short, single rail fence that bounded the lot, looking for anything at all that would give him a clue as to why the pickup truck had pulled in here this morning. The morning air chilled his lungs, and the ground held firm beneath his feet. Something told him he might never know why Mitch had taken this detour, and that something began to eat at him.

  A bright sun hovered just above the horizon, sparking a gleam on the ground that caught Ben’s eye. It was something shiny, and as he drew closer, he saw it was silver. Not round enough to be a quarter. He pulled a tissue from his pocket and bent to pick it up, his heart pounding wildly as he carefully turned it over. It was a small oval-shaped locket, its clasp open to reveal an empty interior. That wasn’t what he cared about. On the back, in elaborate script, were the initials MAH. Mary Ann Hennessy. He smiled.

  Bingo.

  * * *

  Sally leaned over the sink to splash icy water on her face. The colder, the better. She cupped water in her palms and rinsed her mouth once, then twice. Her fingers trembled as she reached for a thin paper towel and blotted the moisture off her face. Then she straightened, catching a glimpse of her ashen complexion in the mirror. Balling the paper towel in her fist, she chastised herself for even caring what she looked like right now. There was no one to impress, and it was only a matter of time before everyone in the office realized that she’d been locking herself in the far bathroom stall and getting sick every morning.

  “This will pass, honey,” Tessa whispered from the next sink, eyeing her in the mirror. “I promise it will.”

  Sally groaned, not quite ready to stand upright. “How can this be worth it? How could I have wanted this?”

  She closed her eyes and felt Tessa’s hand on her lower back, rubbing in small circles. “I’ve heard that it gets better after the first trimester. How many weeks along are you?”

  “Eight,” she mumbled. Six more weeks until the second trimester. “Just kill me now.”

  She didn’t wait for Tessa’s response before stumbling out of the women’s room and into the hallway. Keeping one hand against the wall, she slowly made her way, holding her breath as she walked past the kitchen, which promised the smell of freshly brewed coffee. Once she was safely in her office, she nearly dived into her desk drawer for the bag of peppermints, popped one into her mouth and sank into her chair. Her thoughts unwittingly turned to Ben.

  He was going to find out she was pregnant, just as everyone else would. Naturally, he would wonder if the baby was his, and she’d have to explain that no, she’d actually been expecting before they slept together, but she’d neglected to tell him. A minor detail, really.

  Her stomach lurched again. Her pregnancy wasn’t any of his business, so why did all of this feel like a giant deception?

  It wasn’t as if she owed Ben anything, and they didn’t exactly have an open, friendly relationship since they’d spent that night together, either. Nearly two weeks had passed since she’d helped Ben build the ramp for his mother. That night had been a mistake. There was no hope of being more than business colleagues, not with a baby on the way.

  Sally kept to herself under the misguided belief that the awkwardness between them would diminish with each passing day. Rather than forgetting their shared night and settling into the casual friendship of coworkers, they became two people making great efforts to look as if they were oblivious to each other. She’d never been so aware of anyone in her entire life, and ignoring Ben was akin to ignoring a Tyrannosaurus rex in the room. At some point she was only fooling herself.

  Sally rose from her chair and opened the blinds. She’d spent the evening before with her parents, packing up old books for a charity collection. S
he’d been supposed to do that a few weeks ago, but then Ben had accepted the invitation to dinner. He really shouldn’t have done that. Now he was all her mother could talk to her about.

  “What a nice young man,” she’d said, her voice heavy with meaning. “Do you think he’ll be over again sometime?”

  “No,” had been Sally’s blunt reply. God, no. Never ever. “He’s just a coworker.”

  “Really?” Her mother had arched an eyebrow in that knowing way that always made Sally’s cheeks heat. “Because he looked at you as if he’d like to be a lot more than that.”

  For God’s sake. She had never spoken with her mother about her love life, and she wasn’t going to start now, especially when the man in question was Ben McNamara. How, exactly, would she explain that one?

  Oh, well, you know how it is, Mom. We’re both single and not interested in settling down. We had amazing sex in a wine cellar and then ate pizza in my bed. But it was strictly a one-time thing. Also, I’m pregnant by donor sperm.

  Once again she’d chickened out on that last part, much too afraid to tell her parents she was expecting. Deciding to have a child was such a mature decision, and yet the thought of telling her mom and dad the truth left Sally feeling like a schoolgirl. They wanted her to find someone to marry, and she’d given up.

  Sally rubbed her forehead. It wasn’t even a one-time thing with Ben, was it? He’d broken her heart in law school, and then she’d gone back for seconds. There would be no third time. In this case, third time would not be the charm, it would be masochism.

  And yet something about him drew her, and that made her feel out of control and desperate. She’d done her best to get over him, she really had, but in her misguided attempt to ignore him she’d succeeded in observing everything about him. She now knew the sound of his footsteps in the hall, and the sound of his laugh from three offices over. She knew he came into the office at eight-fifteen in the morning and that he always parked in the same spot, way at the back of the parking lot—she could see him from her window.