Tremors

by Jaid Black

  At last she spoke, her voice barely a whisper. “I’m beginning to ask myself the same question.” She smiled slowly. “Why indeed.”

  He drew in a breath of air deeply, then exhaled slowly. “I love you, Marie.”

  “Fredrik, I—”

  “Shh.” He released one of her nipples and gently placed two fingers over her lips. “You don’t have to say anything, ängel. Just know that it’s true.”

  Marie closed her eyes, too overwhelmed to hold his gaze. After a few moments she nodded, inducing Fredrik to remove his hand from her mouth.

  “Thank-you,” she whispered, her eyes finding his once more. “Thank-you.”

  PART III

  Chapter 11

  Marie smiled at the sound of Fredrik’s humming as it wafted through the closed bathroom door and permeated the atmosphere of the bedroom. He always did that when he shaved, another one of his boyishly endearing qualities.

  “I’m cold,” she said to herself as she padded toward the bedroom’s walk-in closet. “Like it or not, handsome, I’m borrowing one of your shirts.”

  Doing a little humming herself, she threw open the closet doors and strolled inside. Glancing around, she quickly decided that the man had a definite affinity towards the color black.

  Black coats, black trousers, black shoes, black boots…there was little variance to relieve the harshness of it, save one or two white silk shirts.

  “Good lord, Fredrik.” She smiled to herself. “I like wearing black too but this is almost morbid.” She ran her hands over two black greatcoats, then made a part between them. Her smile faltered a bit when she espied a small table filled with watches and the like sitting just behind the coats.

  “What’s this?” Marie squinted her eyes a bit to compensate for the closet’s dull light. Drawing her head closer, her body stilled completely when her gaze settled upon one object in particular.

  “My barrette,” she murmured, reaching out to clasp the piece of jewelry in her hand. “The barrette I lost back in…”

  Her eyes widened as comprehension dawned. God in heaven, she thought in horror, please say it wasn’t possible that…oh god.

  Breathing raspily, Marie racked her brain to find the answer she sought.

  Her hair had come undone and her barrette had fallen to the ground sometime during her walk in the woods that night the Saab had acquired the flat tire. And if she wasn’t mistaken, she had lost it rather early on, almost from the beginning of that hours long trek through the forest.

  How could Fredrik have found it unless…unless he had been there the entire time, watching from a distance as she had stumbled around in circles, tired and afraid?

  “He killed her.” Helena’s parched lips turned upward, forming a cruel slash of a smile. “Raped her and murdered her. Cut her into pieces and threw her to the dogs.”

  Marie’s hand flew up reflexively to cover her mouth. She balled it into a fist and bit down on it. Oh god no.

  “He’ll do the same to you. If you allow him near you, the same will become of you.”

  Her breaths coming in short gasps, she stilled completely, listening for the sounds of Fredrik’s humming, proof that he was still in the bathroom and not about to walk in on her and realize she’d found the barrette.

  Mozart. He was humming one of Mozart’s compositions.

  Closing her eyes, she sent a quick prayer of thanks up to the heavens, then went about the business of quickly dressing herself into Fredrik’s clothes.

  She didn’t have time. No time. He would finish soon. He would come for her. And he would know. He always knew. Yes, Marie thought hysterically, he always knew.

  Slapping a belt around her waist to hold up the trousers, she threw the barrette down onto the ground unthinkingly, desperate to get away while she still had a chance. Before he got to her and…oh god what would he do?

  She had no time to consider the rashness of her actions, no time to worry about whether or not she was jumping to unfounded conclusions.

  Later she could think all she wanted. Later, when she was safe. Later, when she was still…alive.

  For now, she didn’t care. All she understood in the here and now was the primal need for survival, for continuing on at all costs.

  Sucking in her breath to hold back the tears of anger, fright, and disappointment, she tiptoed quietly toward the entrance to the bedroom, made certain he was still in the bathroom unawares, then sprinted at top speed down the twisting staircase that led to the ground floor below.

  Buttoning up his shirt to conceal her naked breasts, she flew through the front door and ran into the forest as fast as her legs would carry her.

  “I’m sorry, Fredrik,” she whispered to the trees, “but being with you is a chance I can no longer take.”

  * * * * *

  Fredrik sat on the edge of the bed, his head hung low. He twirled the black barrette absently between his fingers as he stared at nothing. The muscles in his back corded and tensed, the power of his emotions so raw and all consuming.

  She was gone. Marie was gone.

  He should have told her the truth. From the beginning. He should have told her everything.

  About Sophie. About Helena. About that black night ten years past. About what had really happened.

  And he should have admitted that he’d lured Marie into the woods as well. And then he should have admitted why.

  Because…he needed her.

  Because he connected with her. Because from the first moment he’d laid eyes on her, he had…felt.

  He’d been dead inside so long. So incredibly long. Stark. Barren. An abyss.

  And then came along Marie Robb. The beautiful woman with the large eyes and a wounded heart as buried as his own. He had looked into her eyes and he had known. Somehow, in some inexplicable manner, he had known she was the one that would bring light back into the dark void.

  But now that light was gone, and all that remained was the blackness.

  He should have told her.

  Why, he asked himself, as he ran a punishing hand through his short dark hair, why had he not confided in her this entire last week? Why had he let her go on believing the worst without offering her the truth?

  Fredrik took a deep breath as he hoisted himself to his feet. Glancing about the bedroom, he closed his eyes briefly against the pain.

  The bed linens smelled of her scent. The walls echoed her laughter.

  The sound of her climaxing in his arms. The smug look on her face when she beat him at chess. The serenity of her expression when she painted...

  “Christ,” he murmured, his hand balling into a fist. “Christ.”

  Chapter 12

  The Scottish Highlands, One Month Later

  Marie nibbled on her lower lip as she touched the paintbrush to canvas and tried once more to recreate the majestic scenery before her.

  It wasn’t working. And she knew why. Something, or rather someone, was missing from the equation.

  Fredrik.

  The stone cottage she’d purchased to live out the rest of her life in was exactly what she’d always wanted. It was neither too small nor too large, neither too isolated nor smack dab in the middle of a city.

  The serene little cottage was located in a remote area of the Highlands, ideal for when she wanted to be alone, yet it was also close enough to the city of Inverness for when she needed to be around other people.

  And what’s more she was finally in charge of her own destiny, she was finally all grown up. She’d taken extreme relish in telling her father that she wasn’t returning to the states…ever. And that she would see him…perhaps never again.

  It hadn’t been a difficult decision to make, not once she’d set her eyes on this terrific little stone fortress, this cottage that called to her on so many levels.

  Marie had found peace here, an inner serenity, a sense of well being she’d never again sacrifice for anyone. She would never return to the states again, not even to visit.

  And yet a
s happy as she was in the Highlands, she was also fundamentally aware of the fact that something important was missing. That something was a man. But not just any man, of course. Not just any man would do. She missed Fredrik.

  Fredrik Sörebo. Marie shook her head and sighed as she set the paintbrush in a dish of cleaner and stared absently at her painting.

  Why did she miss him? she asked herself for the umpteenth time since leaving Göthmoor. He was secretive and mysterious, dominant and unbending, authoritative and…

  She sighed as she raked a hand through her mane of golden locks.

  There was no use trying to talk herself out of it. No matter Fredrik’s faults she knew the man that dwelled beneath them. She knew he was intrinsically honest, fundamentally loyal and devout.

  Those things Helena had said weren’t true. They couldn’t be true. They simply didn’t add up.

  It no longer mattered to her what Fredrik’s role had been in that tragedy ten years past because she knew he hadn’t done the horrific things he’d been accused of.

  A stab of guilt jolted through her as she admitted to herself for the first time since she’d left Göthmoor that she had known the truth before she’d run from him. Even before then she had known it. And yet like a coward, as afraid of her emotions as she’d once been of Fredrik, she had still run away.

  “What have I done?” she whispered to herself. “Damn it, what have I done?”

  And it got worse. Marie closed her eyes and took a cathartic breath as she contemplated just how much worse it actually got.

  Fredrik had been looking for her, she knew. She had been tracked down as far as Inverness several times by him, but the Highlander friends she’d made had kept their own council and offered him no information concerning her whereabouts.

  But they had given her a letter. A letter from Fredrik that she had never read, that she had thrown in a drawer and refused to so much as glance at for fear that it would cause her to feel as badly about what she’d done to him as she felt this very moment.

  Groaning dramatically, she hoisted herself up to her feet and made a beeline for the cottage door. “You’re an idiot, Marie,” she chastised herself through clenched teeth. “A goddamn idiot.”

  She found the letter precisely where she’d left it, sitting in an unused drawer within the stone cottage’s airy kitchen. Her hands shaking, she fumbled to get the envelope open and to remove the letter it concealed. Closing her eyes, she held the parchment up to her nose and breathed in the scent.

  Fredrik.

  She would have known by the musky, masculine scent alone that the letter had been written by him.

  Her heart pounding, she fell into the chair closest to her standing position and began to read.

  My Dearest Marie:

  I don’t blame you for running, so don’t think that I do. So many unanswered questions, so many things I could have said to make you understand what had happened so long ago, and yet I held my silence.

  I’ve asked myself why for weeks now and all I can come up with is that I didn’t want to take the chance of losing you, to have you know what had happened that night and decide against Us.

  And yet, this is precisely what has happened, has it not? Life can be decidedly ironic.

  I didn’t kill, Sophie, ängel. Or at least not on purpose. I loved the girl once, or thought I did at the time.

  She was young and she was beautiful and she was full of life, Sophie was. She was the sort of woman that when she reached for the stars she always managed to grasp them in the palm of her hand.

  But there was a dark side to her as well. An emptiness and a void that eventually overpowered her and became all-consuming. It was a side of her I hadn’t been shown until later toward the end.

  Marie’s eyes widened as she scanned the pages. She was about to find out what happened. So much gossip, so many questions, and finally she was about to be told the truth of that horrific night ten years past. She clutched the letter tighter, crinkling the edges.

  Before her death, Sophie had come to me, wanting to confide in me, but was afraid I would turn away from her if I knew the truth.

  I assured her that was not the case, that it would never be the case, that she could tell me anything and I’d never leave her.

  I’ve heard it said that one should be careful before making such blanket statements and I was soon to discover how true those words rang.

  Sophie, you see, was pregnant. And I knew the child couldn’t possibly be mine because we had never consummated our relationship.

  So when she came to me at the estate and found me out on the balcony I turned on her. I flew into a rage and turned on her. I didn’t touch her, mind you, but merely shouted at her.

  I didn’t care what promises I’d made, didn’t care about anything else other than the fact that she had given her body to another man. And worse, she had given her body to another man yet had never allowed me to touch her.

  I wanted her out of my house, gone from my sight. I yelled at her to leave, to never come back. She was just like all the others before her, I’d shouted. A lying little slut that would tell a man anything to get what she wanted from him. A betrayer who wanted me for my money and naught else.

  But then when she turned to leave, I felt a sudden sense of guilt and sadness. I quieted down and held out my hand to her, telling her not to go, to come back out to the balcony and that we would speak of what had happened together.

  I thought she would be relieved, grateful even. But she wasn’t.

  When she turned around she was…smiling. Literally…smiling.

  I’ll never forget the eerie look in her eyes, the upward tilt to her lips as she slowly turned around to face me. It was enough to make me wary, a tad frightened even. That I stood a foot taller and eighty pounds heavier didn’t even register.

  “You’re a fool, Fredrik,” she had said. “A bloody fool. Did you honestly think I would ever let an ugly creature like you touch me when there are so many others much more handsome of face and form to choose from?”

  “Oh Fredrik,” Marie whispered, a single tear tracking slowly down her cheek. “She was wrong. So very wrong.”

  And then Sophie told me the name of the man she’d been lying with, the name of the man who had taken her to his bed, made her climax repeatedly, and had gotten her with child. She told me his name and I thought I was going to become ill, Marie.

  So I shouted at her to go, to leave once and for all because the very sight of her made my skin crawl.

  That’s when Sophie lost it completely. She lunged at me like some sort of rabid animal, clawing at me with her nails and spewing all sorts of vile things.

  I didn’t know how to react really. I wasn’t certain what to do. But my reflexes took over and I pushed her away from me with all of the force in my body.

  And then, like something out of a bad movie, I watched in horror as the balcony railing gave way and Sophie began to lose her balance.

  In that moment she looked sane again. In that moment she had become rational long enough to realize that she was going to die, that she was falling and that she was going to die.

  “Fredrik!” She had screamed, holding her hand out to me.

  And I swear to you, Marie, I swear to you that I lunged for her and tried to make it in time. And had I been closer to her I might have made it.

  But I wasn’t…and I didn’t.

  Sophie fell from the balcony and there was nothing I could do to save her. I heard her scream throughout the duration of the entire fifty-foot plummet. The very sound of it, the sound a person makes when they know they are dying…I hear it in my nightmares to this day.

  Marie clamped a hand over her mouth to keep from crying out. Poor Fredrik.

  She fell until her body hit an area of jagged rocks on the beach below. She hit it with such force that her chest was impaled by an oblong stone, leaving behind a hole the size of a basketball.

  For hours I sat there on the precipice of the broken ledge, too
in shock, too horrified to do anything else. I should have gone and cleaned up her remains that Helena might have had at least that.

  But I simply sat there instead, hours flying by like minutes, as I watched wild dogs feed from the broken flesh of a young girl who lay dead on a pile of jagged rocks, her body only hours beforehand having been impregnated by her own father...

  “Oh God.”

  Tears ran unchecked down Marie’s cheeks as she read the remainder of the story.

  She hated herself in that moment for not having stood by Fredrik, despised herself for giving credence even a second long to what the obviously crazed Helena had said about him.

  And then the story of Sophie Anders’ death ended and the letter continued, Fredrik then having recounted the last ten years of his life for her, telling her of the guilt and shame that had consumed him for so long.

  And finally he spoke of her, of Marie, and the tears began to flow again.

  You did as I requested and gave me a week of your life. A week to walk in the sunshine with you. A week to feel like a whole man again. A week to fall in love and have the pleasure of getting to know the real Marie Robb. I did all of those things and more, ängel…

  Marie swiped at her eyes with the sleeve of her art smock. Her hands were shaking so badly she had to set the letter on the kitchen tabletop and hover over it to finish.

  I will never forget not even one moment of the time we spent together. Never.

  I will remember each laugh, each embrace, each climax, each smile.

  When first I saw you I had determined to keep you. I thought never to give you the choice to leave me for I wanted you that much.

  But the more time I spent with you, the more I fell in love with you, and the more I began to realize that I couldn’t do it. Not and then attempt afterward to live in peace with myself.

  You’ve been like a caged bird all of your life, ängel, singing to everybody’s tune but your own. Papa’s tune. Society’s tune. Even my tune. But never to Marie’s.

  I hope you have found whatever it is you were looking for in Scotland, ängel, and I hope you’re singing a song that for once belongs only to you.