“Dog, Daddee!”
The puppy, a six-pound Dalmatian mix, darted off after a butterfly, tripping over his own feet. Taylor ran after him, giggling and squealing. “Dog, Daddee!”
“The dog’s running, Taylor.” Scott’s grin made the moment bearable, but nothing could assuage the guilt knotting in her stomach. The puppy was one more thing for Taylor to get attached to. One more thing a little boy should be allowed to get attached to. Like a dad. One more thing Taylor might very well have to leave.
“Wun!” Taylor yelled.
Scott and Tricia exchanged a startled look. “He said run!” Her smile wasn’t as painful, suddenly, as she watched her son gallop along as drunkenly as his new puppy, screaming “Wun, Dog, wun!”
For three months, no matter how she’d coaxed, encouraged, worried, Taylor had adamantly held to his repertoire of five words. He’d just added a sixth.
Thanks to Scott. And Dog.
“You shouldn’t have done this.” Half lying on an old maroon-and-white quilt on the kitchen floor Saturday evening, propped up against the counter, Tricia held out both hands, ready to catch the puppy cavorting on her chest should he slip and fall.
Scott, on his side next to her, leaning on one elbow, reached over to scratch the little guy behind one comically pointed ear. “He was free.”
“He’s going to pee in the house.” There was only a momentary twinge at the vulgarity she would never have uttered in her other life.
“We’ll wipe it up.”
Dog pounced on Scott’s finger, digging in sharp puppy teeth. “Ouch! You little rat.” Scott laughed, playing keep-away with the puppy just beneath Tricia’s unbound breasts. Hoping to go to bed, she’d undressed an hour ago, and pulled on the violet nightshirt and panties when it became obvious that Dog had other ideas than sleeping in a cardboard box by himself in the kitchen.
Or the bedroom.
Or any room.
The box was now outside, next to the trash can. And Scott and Tricia were facing a possible night on the kitchen floor—with a light on over the sink because Dog whined as soon as they turned it off.
“He’s going to chew on stuff.”
“Only for a while.”
Dog rolled off her, settling between them while Scott continued to pet him gently. “And what happens when we call it quits?” She asked the question that had been torturing her all day. “How do we tell Taylor that Dog isn’t his?”
She and Scott shared a bed, shared their bodies and their grocery bills. They did not share possessions.
His hand on the puppy’s back, Scott, still in the jeans he’d worn that day, rubbed one bare foot against the other. He didn’t look at her. His chest provided distraction for her restless gaze. But only for the second it took her to want to be there, her fingers buried in the dark wiry hair.
“You planning to go soon?”
Oh, God, I don’t know. “I have no plans.” Just a bunch of secrets and lies piling so high on top of me that I’m burying myself with no hope of rescue.
“Well, then…”
“Scott.” She spoke firmly. And waited for him to look at her before she went on. “Things aren’t great here.” One of them had to acknowledge the truth—and as it was the only truth she could acknowledge, she figured she was the one. “We haven’t made love in more than a week.”
“Couples go through times of adjustment.”
“Couple implies two people who have made a commitment to each other. That’s not us. We’re two people who are together for the moment. Period.” The words hurt so much.
His green eyes were completely serious as he peered up at her. “Do you want to be a couple?”
Tricia swallowed, her mind skittering around his question. “It’s not an option.”
“Why?”
Dog was asleep. “We have an understanding.”
“Made by us, so it can be changed by us.”
It just didn’t stop—the knife twisting inside her, the guilt growing heavier and heavier.
Her hands on the floor on either side of her, holding up the weight of her life, she stared at her bare feet. “The reasons we made them still exist.”
She didn’t even realize, or at least admit to herself, that she’d half hoped he’d argue with her until he didn’t.
“Do you want to leave?”
Her gaze darted to him. “No!” It wasn’t something she could lie about. That truth was just too strong to be denied.
His dark hair hanging over his forehead, he studied her silently, until all Tricia wanted to do was press herself against him. Lose herself in the only thing that made sense anymore…
“Do you want me to leave?”
“I brought Taylor a puppy, didn’t I?”
They both looked at Dog, sleeping soundly now that he wasn’t in a box by himself.
“Yeah.”
“Hardly the sign of a man itching for his freedom.”
“I guess not.”
“On the contrary…”
Tricia met his eyes as he paused.
“It’s more the sign of a man desperate enough to use bribery to get you to stay.”
His love was clear to see, as he stared openly, breaking her heart, and filling it up at the same time, giving her strength when she had none left to give herself.
“Then why haven’t you made love to me?” Her words were whispered, not because she feared waking either of the babies in their household, but because that was all she could manage.
“Too many walls between us.”
Here it comes. He was going to push again. And take away her choices. Until she decided to blow her cover, she couldn’t be anyone but Tricia Campbell. For her son’s safety and her own. But for Scott’s, too. If he knew nothing, he’d be innocent later.
If he knew something, he wouldn’t be able to let her go on this way, a fugitive, hiding, looking over her shoulder. He’d charge forth to fix the whole mess. To make it right. Because that was the kind of man he was. He couldn’t live with himself if he did any less.
It was one of the traits she loved most about him.
It was also the one that frightened her.
“So what do we do about that?” she asked, her vision starting to blur in the dim kitchen light.
“We could try talking.”
She couldn’t stay. This wasn’t going to work. He had to have answers. He deserved answers. He was a good man and she was using him and—
“If I could ask you just one question, completely unrelated to the past or any future you might have that does not involve me, I’d be doing a hell of a lot better.”
On the verge of standing, darting out of his life, Tricia settled back onto the floor. He’d confused her. “What?”
“Are you pregnant?”
“Of course not! I’m on the pill. You know that.” She got them for a nominal fee every month from a clinic associated with the women’s shelter.
“You aren’t?”
“No!” And then, studying him as best she could in the dim light, said, “You sound disappointed.”
Scott sat up slowly, one hand still close enough for the puppy to feel his warmth. “No! I’m not! At all!” His eyes traveled over her face, down her body, and then back up. “Well, maybe I am, just a little.”
“Scott, we can’t…” She was going to leave this time. She had to.
“Wait.” One hand on her shoulder, he shook his head. “I know we can’t. And the largest part of me doesn’t want to. At all. I always take the biggest risks on the job so the other guys don’t have to. I couldn’t do that if I knew I had—”
“I know….” Tricia put a finger to his lips. She couldn’t bear to hear him spell it out any further. “I understand.”
He believed his life was dispensable, owed to make up for the life he’d inadvertently taken in a few seconds of teenage abandon. Guilt had a way of exacting its toll. And the price was eternal.
Scott lifted a hand to her face, running his fingers light
ly down her cheek to her collarbone. Her skin absorbed his touch with a thirst that left her gasping. Moving carefully around the sleeping puppy he settled on her other side, sliding off his jeans and underwear before pulling her on top of him.
“That’s it then?” she half teased, pushing away all the worry that haunted her. “No baby so we’re back to normal?”
Scott sighed, raising his hips against hers, stroking her back lightly. “I have no idea what we are,” he said. “I just know that whatever it is, I want it.”
“Me, too.”
“Then we’ll leave the rest to take care of itself, okay? For now?”
Tricia nodded, allowing the passion she felt for him to consume her. For now might only last this hour, this night, and in spite of that, or maybe because of it, she gave herself completely to that moment. Sliding her panties down to her ankles she slipped one foot out and then, with the silky material hanging off her other ankle, mounted Scott, riding him slowly, watching the expression on his face change as he gave himself up to the fire burning inside him.
Long into that night she loved Scott, in ways she’d never before loved a man, giving him everything he asked for, things she hadn’t even known she had.
And all the while Dog slept beside them, seemingly unaware that the earth was shaking.
San Francisco Gazette
Tuesday, May 3, 2005
Page 1
Missing Heiress’s Body Found
“Crazy” Sister Not So Crazy After All
Searchers on Miner’s Mountain discovered the body of a woman lying sprawled in the middle of a broad-leafed maple tree Monday afternoon. Police believe she fell nearly a hundred feet from the cliff where Leah Montgomery is reported to have spent many hours with her best friend, Kate Whitehead, missing wife of Senator Thomas Whitehead. The body was later positively identified as that of Montgomery, who has been missing since the fourth of last month.
Searchers have been all over Miner’s Mountain and the hundreds of acres of old mines and undeveloped mountainous terrain since the late Leah Montgomery’s sister, Carley Winchester, appeared on Good Afternoon, San Francisco. In that interview, she alerted the city to a possible cover-up in the investigation of her sister’s unexplained disappearance. Early yesterday morning, after dogs continued to seek out one particular spot on the cliff, a team of climbers went over the side of the mountain for the third time in a week. They would have missed the body again if not for a sudden gust of wind that blew a torn piece of Montgomery’s blouse down from the tree where she had apparently fallen to her death.
No Baby Found
While earlier reports indicated a suspicion that Montgomery was pregnant, a preliminary autopsy late last night showed no signs of a fetus. Judging by the decomposition of the body, Ms. Montgomery is believed to have been dead since the time of her disappearance. A more thorough autopsy of Montgomery’s remains, which investigators hope will help shed more light on the tragedy, will be performed today.
A spokesman for Senator Thomas Whitehead said this morning that the senator was greatly disturbed by this confirmation of his friend’s death, stating that Whitehead fears Montgomery committed suicide. He cited the claim of a pregnancy that didn’t exist (a claim she supposedly made to her sister the day before her disappearance) as indication of mental or emotional instability. Mrs. Winchester was unavailable for comment.
An idyllic night of lovemaking led to a three-day reprieve while Tricia played house with her lover, baby son and new puppy. She didn’t let herself think beyond the moment, tending to practical concern only as needed—like grabbing Taylor’s blue, hooded sweatshirt the evening they went to the zoo or thawing one pound of hamburger or two the day they invited Cliff and his wife for a cookout. Vera and Cliff were in high spirits, as they waited hopefully to find out if the most recent session of artificial insemination had succeeded.
She didn’t read a paper. Didn’t ask herself what she was going to do about anything. Didn’t think of the future. Or the past. It was almost as if her spirit, knowing that she was depleted past the point of carrying on, took the reins of her life out of her hands long enough to let her rest.
Which was why it was Wednesday morning, Scott’s first day back at the station, when she finally saw Tuesday’s San Francisco Gazette headline, alongside a similar San Diego headline.
Three days of healing disappeared almost as if they’d never been.
She sat at the edge of the dog park, where she was in plain view of traffic and could make a run for it if she had to, and where she could also be seen doing exactly what she’d been doing for the past eighteen months—taking her middle-class baby for a morning stroll in the park while his father worked putting out the city’s fires. Sitting there, in the warmth of that first Wednesday in May, Tricia slowly froze inside. Her son slept in his stroller and the puppy they should never have given him had worn himself out tugging at the leash to which he was tied and now lay at her feet chewing on a twig.
He’d be up and darting off again. Just as soon as someone walked by, or a bug buzzed or a bird flew. He didn’t know that Leah was dead. Didn’t understand what it meant.
Throat dry, Tricia read the headline again. She’d been dreading the news for so long, it hardly seemed real. Leah’s body had been found. Without Leah in it. Tricia, who’d counted on their friendship to see her through every single crisis in her life, was alone now—just one woman, not part of two. All these months, the awareness of Leah’s presence had kept her strong, kept her pushing ahead.
Through her whole life Leah’s unconditional support had kept her sane, believing in herself.
She didn’t even know that tears were dripping silently down her cheeks until she felt their splash as they hit the paper. Leah was gone.
The rest of it—the fact that her friend’s body had been trapped in a tree for twenty-one days, the fact that their cliff had been the site of her death—were things she’d have to think about later. Tricia couldn’t take them in right now.
Not if she was going to get her son and his puppy safely home. A car pulled up several yards away. A woman got out with a Papillon in her arms.
Leah had fallen a hundred feet and hit a tree. An impact like that could easily cause a miscarriage….
The Papillon saw Dog and barked, a high-pitched insistent call. Jumping up, Dog moved closer to Tricia, pushing against her ankle beneath the table, oddly silent. Scott had given her son a coward.
Taylor flinched, but his eyes didn’t open. He’d be awake soon, though. The stroller almost always put him to sleep, but his morning naps were usually no more than an hour.
…and if the fetus hadn’t been caught by the tree, as Leah had, marauding animals could easily have dealt with it, leaving no evidence. She and Leah used to talk about all the mountain lions, foxes, bobcats, black bears and sundry smaller creatures that shared their secret place with them. They’d had a healthy respect for the land’s inhabitants, but, still, had valued their presence.
The Papillon barked again—much farther away now. His owner had stopped beside a masculine-looking woman who’d been in the park all morning, working with a German Shepherd.
Tricia knew she’d have to move. When Taylor awoke, he wasn’t going to lie there quietly and wait for her to find the strength to get up.
You know what to do. She had almost two years’ worth of practice. That woman she’d been in San Francisco, the life she’d known there—all off-limits. She couldn’t think about them. She wasn’t that woman anymore. Her heart had been irrevocably marked. If it was going to survive, if she was, she had to focus only on the present.
And what if the lack of a fetus let Thomas Whitehead off the hook? What if Leah’s pregnancy had been the probable cause the prosecutor had been planning to use for motive in his case? Would they drop the charges? Cut a deal? Let him out to hurt someone else? Because he would. There was no doubt of that now.
Taylor moved. Just an arm thrown over his face. Tricia stared at him as
hard as she could, willing herself to focus only on him, only on this second’s reality. The park. Dog. Taylor and her. She could make it off the bench, out of the park, if there was nothing but Taylor and Dog and her.
And she would. But even as she stood, crooned shakily to the puppy, threw the newspaper she’d purchased in the trash, Tricia knew that her time was running out. Things were getting too complicated. Someone was having her watched—and he or they were doing that for a reason.
Taylor stretched. In about ten seconds his eyes were going to pop open and he’d be raring to go. Wrapping Dog’s leash around her hand, she set the stroller in motion so her son would be content to remain seated for a few minutes longer.
She couldn’t let Thomas Whitehead get away with her best friend’s murder.
And Scott…he’d come to mean so much. Too much.
She might shut her mind off to places inside herself, but that didn’t stop them from hurting. And the pain was becoming too intense to hide.
How her life had ever become so crazy she didn’t know. She’d done her best, made choices dictated by conscience, not merely desire, thought of others, did for others, worked hard, shared what she had. And she’d ended up here, in a web of confusion so tight, so thick, she didn’t think she’d ever find a way out.
14
Tricia was almost home, past the Big Kitchen, a quaint old restaurant that still did a decent business. She’d thought Scott was kidding when he’d first told her Whoopi Goldberg used to live there. He hadn’t been. Taylor chatted away, his conversation obviously interesting to himself, although unintelligible to his mother. Occasionally he’d lean over the side of his stroller, inform her that Dog was there, and then sit back again. Maybe the balmy, seventy-degree breeze was having a calming effect on him, too.
He was a happy boy. And that was all that mattered.
Next to the bingo building on the corner was the Alano club—a place for recovering alcoholics. Tricia turned down Ivy Street. Everywhere she looked was vivid green, trees, grass—even the weeds were intensely green—interspersed with beds of boldly colored flowers. And behind it all were rows of houses, a lot of them stucco, relatively small, some with aluminum siding, mostly old, and yet each was original with a style, a personality, unlike its neighbors. Some had trash in the yards instead of flowers, but always there was green.
Hidden Page 14
