With a squeal of old water pipes, the shower turned off.
Nick took a deep breath and let it out. He picked up his phone from the nightstand, tapped the screen, and saw that he’d received five new e-mails. Half wishing for the days before the Notchland had Wi-Fi, he put the phone aside. Whatever those e-mails were, they would have to wait.
The bathroom door opened, the old, heavy wood sticking for a second before being dragged wide. A halo of steam surrounded Kyrie as she stepped over the threshold with a thick white towel wrapped around her; she dried her hair with another.
“Brrrr,” she said, smiling. “I’m starting to think a fire would have been a good idea.”
“I can turn the heat up,” Nick told her. He whipped back the covers on her side of the bed. “Or you can just come here.”
Kyrie wrapped the towel around her head, rubbing her wild red hair dry so fiercely that when she lowered her arms she looked like a beautiful Medusa. Twenty-four years old to his thirty-three and formidable despite her petite, almost spritelike appearance, her presence in his life had invited a barrage of comments about professor-student relationships from friends and colleagues on both sides. But Kyrie was working toward her master’s in medieval literature and Nick had never been her professor.
To hell with them, she’d said over and over.
In the seven months since they’d begun dating, they’d made it their mantra.
Now she laughed and raced for the bed, slipped off the towel, and dove in beside him, burrowing immediately under the covers as she snuggled against him.
Nick kissed her head. “Don’t worry. I’ll keep you warm.”
But she knew him too well. His tone gave him away and she looked at him with those piercing eyes whose intelligence was like a laser, searching his face.
“Hey,” Kyrie whispered. “I’m naked here. Skin still warm from the shower. Slightly drunk on whiskey and high on the music from tonight. It’s quiet and dark and it’s just you and me—”
“I know. I’m sorry I—”
“—but I love you,” she said, putting her hand on his chest. “A romantic night doesn’t have to mean a room full of antiques in a mountain inn. There’s more to us than soft skin and pretty pictures.”
Nick smiled. “I love the way you talk.”
She smacked him. “Hush. I agree I’m pretty excellent. Now what’s on your mind? Still thinking about Tess?”
“Not Tess,” he said quietly. “Maddie.”
“She can come with us,” Kyrie said, eyes bright in the darkness, skin luminous in the rose hue of the bedside lamp. Her smile turned shy. “With you, I mean…”
“With us. I’m going with you.”
“Maddie can come, too—”
“Tess will never go along with it. Letting her daughter spend two years in London? Even if I brought her home in the summer and at Christmastime … she’ll never go for it.”
Kyrie twined her fingers in his. “It’s not too late to change your mind.”
Nick wondered if she meant it. The plan had come together almost accidentally. Just two months after they’d started seeing each other, Kyrie had told him that she intended to do her Ph.D. at Oxford and he had mentioned that he had always dreamed of living in England for at least part of his life. She had kissed him and invited him along, flirty and half kidding. He’d also been half kidding when he had agreed, but it had niggled at him until he had started putting feelers out and learned there might be an adjunct faculty position there for him if he wanted it.
“I’ll understand,” Kyrie said, nestling into the crook of his arm. “This has been fast, you and me and England. Even if you travel to see Maddie, even if Tess lets her come out and stay with us for the holidays and part of the summer, it’s not even close to the same as seeing her as often as you do now. It’s a big decision—”
“It was,” he said, a calm coming over him. “But I’ve made it. We’re talking about two years, with lots of visits in between. I’ll make it work.”
“We’ll make it work,” Kyrie promised.
It was the right thing—Nick was certain of that—he just hoped that somehow Maddie would understand when he explained it all to her on Tuesday. He had always had difficulty reading other people’s emotions, but never with interpreting his own. Tonight he felt sadness and regret mixed with the excitement of anticipation and the contentment of being with Kyrie. Normal, ordinary emotions. But as always he wished he could understand the emotions of others as easily.
It had been the loose string in his marriage, the thing that had begun the unraveling. Tess had claimed to understand the hints of Asperger’s in his personality and to accept them, but she never had. Not really. Nick himself had never really understood, had met people much more deeply afflicted with the altered perceptions of human behavior that came with this particular brand of autism. From his perspective, relying on it as an excuse was tantamount to a person who needed reading glasses claiming to be blind.
Still, it had been enough to create a hairline fracture in his marriage. When Tess had been recovering from her accident, Nick had tried to be attentive and sympathetic, but knew his efforts came off as stiff and awkward. The rift between them had grown wider, resentment breeding in the newly opened space. Then Tess had kissed another man. Nick had assumed it had been to get his attention. Furious, he’d told her she’d gotten what she’d wanted, but he’d been wrong about her motivations. Too much wine had been part of it, but it all circled around the fallout from the accident, her pain and her scars and the fact that she couldn’t get past the assumption that he would be repulsed by the damage done to her body.
That was when he’d fully understood that neither of them had ever really understood the other. A marriage couldn’t survive that sort of epiphany, and theirs had been over just a few weeks later.
“Hey,” Kyrie whispered, leaning in and kissing his neck, cleaving her body to his in a soft, stark reminder of her nakedness. “There’s nothing you can do about London and Maddie tonight. Come back to now.”
Nick exhaled, released her hand, and reached over to trace his fingers along the curve of her hip.
“I’m here,” he said in a quiet rasp.
She kissed him and all of his concerns fled. Kyrie seemed to understand him, worked at it, and he did the same for her. Made a conscious effort. In the peaceful, rose-hued isolation of that room, they made love without sparing a single thought for the noise of the squeaky antique bed or their own exhortations. The rest of the world retreated and nothing mattered but that chilly room and the heat that passed between them.
Later, Nick would remember the hours they had spent in that room and wish they had never left.
FRIDAY
ONE
Early Friday morning, under gray skies threatening rain, Nick and Kyrie drove south. She sat in the passenger seat, wrapped in the green knit sweater she’d bought the day before, and searched satellite radio stations for the silliest, frothiest pop songs she could find. On blue-sky days she liked to listen to stark folk music and bands like The National, which Nick thought of as mourning rock, but when the clouds rolled in and the rain began to fall, Kyrie always wanted something bouncy and fun. She found an all-’70s channel and started singing along to a one-hit wonder Nick himself was too young to know the words to. How Kyrie knew the song so well, he had no idea, but he couldn’t stop himself from grinning.
When his cell phone buzzed, it took him a couple of seconds to recognize the sound. His first instinct was to peer out through the windshield and then into the rearview mirror. They’d only come a mile and a half or so from the Notchland, but apparently just far enough to move in range of a cell tower.
“Check that for me, would you, love?”
Kyrie picked up his phone from the cup holder where he’d placed it. “Voice mail from Derek Wheeler. Isn’t that—”
“The Realtor, yeah.”
Wheeler had been preparing the listing on Nick’s apartment in Somerville. Kyrie ta
pped the phone screen twice and the radio cut off as the message began to play through the car speakers.
“Hey, it’s Derek. I know you said not to bother calling, but I can’t just let it go.”
Nick sat up a bit straighter. The Realtor sounded angry.
“I’m not gonna swear at you or anything,” the message continued. “I’m a professional. But I’ve rarely been so tempted to throw professionalism aside. I have no idea what I could’ve done to piss you off so much. We’ve barely started this process. You didn’t even give me the opportunity to really try to sell your place. If you want to go with someone else, that’s fine, but you didn’t have to be so rude about it. That’s all I wanted to say, I guess. You won’t hear from me again.”
The message ended and ’70s pop started streaming through the car speakers again. Brows knitted, Nick turned to stare at Kyrie.
“What the hell was that about?” he said. “He’s talking like I fired him.”
“You didn’t?”
“Of course not.”
“Well,” Kyrie said with an amused shrug, “someone did.”
TWO
Tess emerged from the conference room with a cup of cold coffee. She’d barely taken a sip during the meeting and now she just wanted to dump it in the sink and start over. Her skirt had been riding up—maybe because she’d been fidgeting in her chair—and she needed a few minutes in her office to adjust it and just exhale. All through the meeting, the rain had pattered the windows and streamed down the glass, distracting her. She stretched now, arching her back for a count of thirty before holding her left arm across her chest to give the shoulder some relief.
“Hey, Tess, got a minute?”
It took her a second to realize she was being addressed. Smoothing her skirt, aware that the zipper was out of alignment and irritated by it, she turned to face Eli Pinsky. At sixty-three, he continued to defy those who thought he ought to step down from the management of the Bostonian Society, a nonprofit association whose staff worked with museums, architects, local government, and the historical society to research, promote, and preserve the city’s rich history. They hosted parties, lobbied politicians, recruited corporate and wealthy individual sponsors, and marketed Boston to the media, but the staff put just as much effort into research, sometimes hands-on. That was the stuff that intrigued Tess the most—exploring abandoned T stations and leafing through centuries-old blueprints—and she knew it was the part Eli Pinsky enjoyed the best as well. The short, portly man with his walrus mustache and round spectacles still had the passion for all aspects of his job, and she was glad he hadn’t bent to pressure.
“What can I do for you, Eli?” she asked.
Her boss glanced around to make sure that the others departing the meeting moved on to their offices or wherever else they were headed.
“Just wanted to check on you,” he said.
Tess frowned. “Check on…?”
Eli fixed her with a fatherly gaze. “You weren’t in the meeting.”
“I was two seats away from you.”
“That’s not what I meant, Tess. Your head’s not in the game today. I’m not saying you were falling asleep, but all I could think about every time I looked at you was what it felt like to be sitting in the back of my high school geometry class while the teacher droned on. I didn’t think I was as boring as that guy, but today I sure felt like I was about the least exciting orator on the planet.”
Flushing, feeling guilty, she smiled apologetically. “You’re not boring, Eli. It’s a rainy Friday and I didn’t get a lot of sleep last night. Plus my back’s acting up. But I swear I wasn’t ignoring you.”
“I’m not offended,” he assured her, “and I’m as susceptible to rainy Fridays as the next guy. I just wanted to make sure you were all right. You’re not usually one to space out, so I wondered if something might be wrong. Something more than the usual aches and pains, I mean.”
Tess felt a pang in her heart at the man’s sweetness. From someone else, the approach might have been some kind of passive-aggressive management technique, but she’d known him long enough to see his sincerity.
“I’m fine,” she promised. “Maddie, too.”
The urge to kiss his rough cheek came over her, but she resisted. It would have been entirely inappropriate in the office. Instead, she grasped his arm. “You’re a kind man, Eli.”
“This isn’t a job for me,” he said, and she knew that words would follow, just as they always did. “It’s a calling.”
“Me, too. Except on rainy Fridays. Then it feels like work.”
They both laughed and Eli glanced around to make sure they weren’t being overheard.
“If you want to knock off early, I won’t tell the boss,” he said.
“Thanks,” she whispered theatrically, “but I don’t want to risk it. That guy’s an ogre.”
Eli stroked his mustache, enjoying their playacting, and wished her a fruitful afternoon—the sort of sentiment that would sound silly coming from anyone but him. He headed for his office, though she knew he would stop in the staff galley and make himself a cup of tea on the way, maybe grab a couple of Milano cookies. They were his greatest weakness.
It occurred to her that she loved the balding, gray-haired little man, and she marveled at how fortunate she was to have a boss who inspired such feelings. Suddenly, rainy or not, Friday didn’t seem quite so depressing.
The morning had not started well. She’d slept less than five hours and woken at half past four, shoulder hurting so much that she was unable to fall back to sleep. When Maddie had dragged her sleepy self into the kitchen two hours later and Tess had told her that she’d have a babysitter again that night, the little girl had sulked over her waffles. Tess had offered her a choice of three different juices to go with her breakfast and her daughter had huffily replied that she didn’t care, didn’t like juice, and didn’t like Erika, the babysitter she had always adored beyond all reason. In retrospect, Tess knew there were a dozen things she ought to have said to reassure the girl, and to remind her that she loved spending time with Erika. Exhausted as she was, she’d let impatience get the best of her.
“Honey,” she’d said, “it’s important.”
Her little girl, not yet seven years old, had cocked her head, tossed her hair to one side to give her mother a searing glance, and said, “I used to be important.”
The memory cut at Tess’s heart. She walked to her office window and stared out at the rain-veiled city and the sea of black umbrellas on the sidewalk below. Maddie’s remark had led to a stream of further reassurances and eventually she had gotten the girl to smile and later to laugh. Erika would entertain her, and Tess knew Maddie would eat better for the babysitter than she ever did for her mother. Still, the words had hurt. How had her baby girl become so smart, so fast? Attitude and sass were going to become a part of their daily ritual—Tess could see it coming—but that was all right. Mothers and daughters sparred all the time. It was perfectly natural.
Still, she had considered canceling on Lili a dozen times. Going out two nights in a row made her feel neglectful.
Yes, you’re such a bad mom, she thought.
Maddie knew Tess loved her. She’d been four at the time her parents divorced and barely remembered what life had been like before it. Tess knew her daughter’s irritation stemmed from how much she hated to be left out of anything, to feel like she might be missing something fun. But it was their weekend together, and she had promised to make up for it, to devise some adventure for them to share, and Maddie’s ire had been mostly extinguished.
It’ll return, Tess thought. Just wait till she’s twelve or so.
Oh, boy.
Her cell phone buzzed and she glanced at it, not recognizing the number. A shudder went through her, a lingering uneasiness. Her modus operandi was to let unknown calls go to voice mail—ninety-nine percent of them were scams, surveys, or sales—but cold curiosity prodded her and she answered.
“Hello?”
Tess’s tension evaporated. A small laugh bubbled up from inside her. “Alonso?”
“You remembered my name.”
“You only served me two beers,” she said. “I don’t start forgetting guys’ names until at least the third pint.” God, what are you saying? “Which isn’t to say I do a lot of drinking, or meet a lot of guys whose names I want to remember.”
Now she was babbling. Tess slumped against her desk, closed her eyes, and promised herself she’d remember that he’d called, even though he wasn’t likely ever to make that mistake again.
“So … you wanted to remember me,” Alonso said.
Tess perked up. “Apparently.”
“Sometimes women flirt with the bartender and then they remember that he’s just a bartender.”
She heard the edge of resignation in his voice. Alonso seemed like a generally confident, good-natured man, but she reminded herself that nearly everyone had their demons of doubt. The only people she’d ever met who weren’t sometimes crippled with self-doubt were the same assholes whose certainty invariably led to disaster for those around them, if not for themselves.
“I’m glad you called, Alonso.”
“Since your friend Lainie gave me the number—”
“Lili,” Tess corrected, privately ecstatic that he’d remembered her name and not Lilandra’s. The opposite had so often been true.
“—I wasn’t sure I should call.”
“Tuesday,” she said before she could stop herself, privately terrified.
“Sorry?”
The pain in her back flared and she felt the scars on her chest and shoulder tingling and aching as if they were far more recent than they were. More than two years had passed since the accident. She wanted to hide in her closet, certainly had no intention of letting a strange man see her naked. So why did the thought make her want to smile?
“My ex takes my daughter on Tuesday night. If you want to have dinner or get drinks or something, and you’re not working, that’s the next time I’m free.”
Dead Ringers Page 5
