“It’s a dumb idea.”
“Why’s that?” she asked, giving a little push with her foot to keep the glider moving. The terrace was shaded from the morning sun, leaving the air pleasantly warm, rather than hot. Lying in her arms, Nicky was content as long as the motion went on.
“For one thing, you’re a woman.”
“What does that have to do with anything?”
“You can’t sashay into an all-male prison to interview the guy.”
“I’ve been sashaying in there for the past five months.”
J. B. didn’t respond to what should have been a minor bombshell. He was too busy staring at Nicky. He was sitting in a chair opposite the swing, wearing nothing but a pair of Jams. Even faded, they clashed with the floral-colored cushions.
Like the time he’d shown up at the hospital. J. B.’s appearance the night before had surprised Sabrina. She’d seen him twice now in three months, which was a record of sorts. The official story was that he was in New York to discuss the choice of a screenwriter for the adaptation of one of his books into a movie, but Sabrina assumed much of that could have been done on the phone, particularly since J. B. hated New York.
She wondered whether he had another reason for coming. She didn’t think he’d come just to see Nicky and her. He’d never been attentive.
Resting her chin on Nicky’s head, she continued rocking. J. B. stared on. She wondered what he saw when he looked at Nicky that way, but she wasn’t about to ask. If her brother started in on brilliant little spirits from the center of the earth, she’d have to get up and leave.
She didn’t want to have to do that. She was comfortable. It felt good to sit and swing.
“You’ve been to Parkersville?” J. B. asked.
She nodded.
“What’s it like?”
“Restrictive.”
“What’s McGill like?”
She thought for a minute, trying to choose words to describe Derek that wouldn’t be too revealing. She didn’t want J. B. to ask questions she wasn’t ready to answer. “He’s very bright. And interesting. He doesn’t belong there.”
“Is that what he tells you?”
“No.”
“Then how do you know?”
“I just … know.”
“How much longer does he have?”
“A few months.”
“And then?”
She shrugged. “I don’t know if he’s made any immediate plans.”
“When would you write this book?”
“I’d try to do all my interviewing before he gets out. He has the time now. He may not then.”
J. B. thrust a hand through his hair, then forgetfully left the hand on his head. His expression was blank as he continued to look at Nicky.
Closing her eyes, Sabrina rocked. She breathed in Nicky’s fresh-bathed scent, pressed one kiss on his head, then another, began to hum a little song. It was a happy song, one she’d deliberately chosen for its cheer, because when she sat here with her baby, knowing that before long he’d be hundreds of miles away, she felt cheerless.
“You shouldn’t send him there,” J. B. said, reading her mind.
“J. B.—”
“Don’t do it. What’s so awful about this—beautiful terrace, beautiful day, beautiful child?”
“Nothing. You’re right. It’s all very beautiful. But life is more than a single beautiful moment. This is a rare breather for me. In a few minutes I’ll have to get Nicky back to work.”
“I thought you said you stopped the drills.”
“Intensively, yes. But he still needs to be regularly exercised for muscle tone and flexibility.” As she talked, she looked down at the small arms and legs that wouldn’t work by themselves. They were bare now; Nicky was wearing a diaper, bright red terrycloth shorts and nothing else. His skin was smooth. Since he didn’t play, he had none of the scrapes and scabs that other three-year-olds had. And his hands and feet were perfect.
“Mom isn’t thrilled.”
“I know. Neither is Dad. He called the other day just to make sure I knew. But they don’t know what it’s like, J. B. They don’t know what it’s like to wake up to a nightmare and find that it’s real. They don’t know the heartache … the frustration … the exhaustion.” She held her hand straight. It had a faint tremor. “That’s nervous tension.”
J. B. looked at her hand, then at the arm of his chair. The wrought iron had fancy scrollwork that would normally have occupied him for a while. Surprisingly, though, he looked back at her after little more than a minute. “Why didn’t you tell them about the divorce?”
“I did.”
“Not until a month later, and only after Mom heard it through the grapevine.”
Sabrina sank into a silence of her own. She figured that if J. B. could tune out, she could too.
“You thought you were different,” he said.
The glider moved back and forth, its tick-tick not quite in tune with the sounds of the city below.
“You thought,” he went on, “that your ‘conventional marriage’ would be the exception to the rule in our family.”
Sabrina brushed her lips back and forth over Nicky’s soft pecan curls.
“You’re embarrassed,” he stated, shoving his glasses up with the tip of his finger. “You’re embarrassed to have to admit that you’re not superior after all.”
That brought her from her silence. “Superior? I never said I was superior. I never thought I was superior. Just different.” She met her brother’s gaze and found surprising clarity there. “You’re right. I am embarrassed. None of you liked Nick, but I chose him. I chose him because I thought he’d make the perfect husband, and I was wrong. I failed. I seem to be doing that a lot lately. I’ve failed as a wife, failed as a mother, failed as a writer.”
As though to make one of those points, Nicky wailed. Sabrina had stopped pushing the glider. Quickly she resumed.
“As a writer?”
“I haven’t written. I haven’t been able to write. I always loved writing, and I was good at it. To some extent, I define my self in terms of it, and I suppose that’s inevitable, coming from a family like ours. But I’ve done nothing for three years. Do you have any idea what it’s like to feel stunted that way?”
“No.”
“What’s your secret, J. B.? How do you manage to keep on writing, regardless of what else is happening in your life?”
“Nothing else is,” J. B. answered. “I write. Period. Mom and Dad write. Period. Is that the kind of life you want?”
Sabrina didn’t have to give it much thought. “No. That’s where I’m different. I want it all. I thought I had it all: husband, child, career—a cornucopia.”
“But it fell apart. Y’know, Sabrina, you’re not any different from us. We wanted all that too, but we weren’t willing to work for it. One makes choices in life. I only hope you’re making the right ones.”
J. B. stayed with Sabrina for two days, which was a first. Always before he’d had hotel reservations. He hadn’t cared for Nick, and Nick hadn’t cared for him. But with Nick gone, he felt perfectly comfortable imposing on Sabrina.
Strangely, though, she didn’t find it an imposition. Her brother had definitely mellowed. He was more focused than he’d been. He still had his tuned-out moments, his moments of absent concentration, but he wasn’t so contrary as he might have been—and as though sensing Sabrina would kick him out if he hatched a horror plot in her living room, he behaved. He didn’t go so far as to work out with Nicky, but neither did he make any comments about the Greenhouse. He even offered to stick around the city and drive her there on the day Nicky was to be enrolled.
But she refused. That was something she had to do alone. And besides, she would be visiting Derek.
* * *
She was clinging to his neck. Her arms trembled. Her whole body trembled. He tightened his hold, trying to absorb the tremors and impart strength in return, but she continued to shake. So he held her and felt
inadequate, wanting to do something to help, not knowing what she needed.
“What is it, Sabrina?” he whispered, dipping his mouth to her ear.
She gave a quick, almost convulsive head shake.
Leaning back, he tried to get a look at her face, but she wasn’t having that either. She overlapped her arms at his nape and made a sound of protest against his throat, but the sound was followed by another, and though she seemed to regain control from there, he realized she was crying.
“Oh baby,” he moaned. He didn’t know the exact cause of her tears, but it didn’t matter. Her grief became his. “Shhhh,” he whispered, rocking her gently. “Shhhh.”
Minutes went by. At one point a nearby guard caught Derek’s eye and must have seen something powerful there—vulnerability, pleading, pain—for he turned his back on the embrace that had gone on too long and walked away.
Gradually, Sabrina quieted. She sandwiched a hand between Derek’s throat and her face and tried to blot her tears.
“Is there a tissue in your purse?” he asked softly. When she nodded, he tugged at the purse strap, one-handedly opened the purse, found the tissue and pressed it to her.
Head bowed, she stepped back from him and dabbed at her eyes and cheeks. Still without raising her head, she folded the damp tissue and slid it into the pocket of her dress. Then she reached for his hand and held it.
Derek had had little experience with weeping women. He’d had little patience with them, so he’d always walked away. Cynically, he’d believed that women used tears as a tool, and he supposed that was true in some cases. Only now he wondered about the others. It occurred to him that he’d copped out. It was far easier to see tears as a tool than to try to understand and deal with the underlying problem. He’d been a coward. By disgustedly stalking from the room—or the office or the apartment—he’d taken the easy way out. He’d never had the time or desire to offer comfort.
Now he had both.
Sabrina hadn’t planned to cry. She wouldn’t look at him. She was clearly embarrassed by her tears. Putting her at ease was a challenge he intended to meet.
Without a word, he led her to a bench and eased her down. Then he settled himself so that he faced her. His thumb lightly caressed the back of her hand.
“How was it?” he asked softly. He knew that she’d come from Vermont. She’d told him in her last visit that she’d made her decision.
It was a minute before she could speak, and then only after she’d taken a shaky breath. “Let me put it this way. When you drive twenty miles down a lonesome country road and you can’t see the road for the tears in your eyes and you don’t crash into a tree or a fence or a cow, you know that Someone’s watching over you.” Her voice fell to a breath above a whisper. “It’s reassuring. There are times when I’ve wondered if He exists.”
Derek knew the feeling all too well. He’d never been overly religious, but he must have assumed there was a God, because he’d been upset by the thought—and it had come to him more than once in the past twenty months—that He wasn’t there. “I guess the proper attitude is that things happen for a reason.”
“Mmm. That is the ‘proper’ attitude. The only problem I have with it is figuring out the reason. Why was Nicky born brain-damaged? To punish him? Or me, or Nick? To give the Greens another boarder? And why are you here?”
“That one’s obvious. If I weren’t here, you’d be making that trip to and from Vermont without a break.”
Sabrina was astonished by his tongue-in-cheek humor. If she’d asked why he was at Parkersville when she’d first started visiting him, his eyes would have darkened, his jaw would have clenched, he’d have glared off into the distance. She knew that he hadn’t come to terms with his incarceration, which meant that his good humor was for her benefit. That knowledge was both warming and humbling.
“I hope you know,” she said quietly, “that given a choice of having you here or free, I’d have gladly made the trip without a break.”
Derek had to swallow down the hardness in his throat. She did it to him every time—looked at him a certain way, spoke in a certain tone, said certain words that touched the raw and sensitive spot no woman had touched before. He was never quite expecting it, and wondered if he ever would. He felt so unworthy at times.
He kissed her cheek, then her forehead. Drawing her arm through his, he started to walk.
They walked the length of the yard, then sat beneath a tree and quietly discussed Sabrina’s feelings about leaving Nicky at the Greenhouse. She told him about the Greens’ enthusiasm and understanding, and about the concern she felt nonetheless. She told him about simultaneous feelings of letdown and relief, and about a sense of floundering. Tears came to her eyes when she mentioned the pocket of emptiness that was a dull ache in her chest. And the guilt. She told him about the guilt.
Derek was a good listener. As an interviewer, he’d had to be. But his patience now came not from that training, but from the heart. He wanted to help Sabrina. Offering a sounding board was one of the few things that circumstance would allow him to do. Moreover, he thought her decision was the right one. When she was finished, he told her so.
“Trust yourself, Sabrina. You’ve done the right thing.” She shot the sky a beseechful glance. “Lord, I hope so.” But her gaze quickly returned to Derek. He was looking at her as though he wanted to wrap her in silk and love her.
At that moment she wanted it, too. When, with the slightest tilt of his head, he beckoned her into his arms, she went willingly, then sighed in sheer pleasure. There was something of a homecoming in the embrace, something comfortable and right. The hardness of Derek’s body was a perfect foil for her softness, her vulnerability. In his arms, she felt shielded from the woes of the world.
For several minutes, holding each other was enough. Then, just when she was beginning to feel the need for something more, Derek took her face in his hands and tipped it up. Starting at the spot near the bridge of her nose and working slowly, symmetrically and with the slightest of tremors, his thumbs traced her eyebrows, arced back to skim the beginnings of her ears, swung down along her jaw and met at her chin. With a smile in his eyes, he lowered his head and found her lips, close to the center of the heart he’d drawn.
Sabrina was startled. She’d known not to expect the feather-light kisses of earlier visits, and had truly been prepared for the hunger of a man who’d been without for too long. She’d seen that hunger, had heard it in his voice and felt it in his body on other days. And the hunger was there now, but it was different. It was everything he’d been all afternoon—gentle, understanding, compelling, intelligent, stimulating in the most subtle of ways.
His lips were warm, firm yet mobile. They caressed hers, slid and shaped and enveloped her with such incredibly tender force that she had to fight for breath.
The shock registered through the fingers she dug into the hard flesh of his shoulders. Quickly releasing her mouth, he gave her a minute’s breath while he stroked her back and gentled her with whispered words. Then, unable to deny himself, he captured her mouth again.
He was bolder this time, because the shock of gentleness had hit him too, zeroing in on his loins. His mouth grew more daring, coaxing hers wider, and when the only resistance she offered was a tiny gasp, he touched his tongue to hers.
The jolt was physical, frightening in its intensity. Sabrina pulled back, and the fear she felt must have filled her eyes, because rather than forcing her, Derek cupped her face and held it tenderly. His eyes touched each pale feature. A tiny smile touched his mouth. “You’re beautiful, do you know that?”
She was about to say that she didn’t feel it, that she rarely had in the last few years. But at that moment she did. Derek’s caring acted on her like a master’s brush, painting beauty where there had been none. He made her feel feminine and confident. She wanted the first and needed the last. Very badly.
“I think you’d better leave,” he whispered, dropping a soft kiss on the tip of her nose. �
��If not, I’m apt to get rough. I can feel it coming, and you’re not helping.”
Sabrina could feel it coming, too. His arousal was very real, not complete but getting there. “Oh dear,” she murmured.
“‘Oh dear’ is right.”
“Shall I step back … or wait?”
Derek took a good look around the prison yard. He saw an inmate named Foss, a specialist in armed robbery, and Webber, who had earned hard time by selling crack to a group of high-schoolers, one of whom had later died. He saw Hamhock, whose real name was as much a mystery as his crime and whose reputation was based on his way with his fists. Then there were the guards. Derek looked from one to another of them, and by the time he looked back at Sabrina, his ardor had cooled.
“I’m okay,” he said somberly and stepped back. “Drive carefully.”
She nodded but didn’t move.
“Go, Sabrina.”
With her eyes focused on his face, she took a single step backward.
“Sabrina…” he warned with just enough frustration to sound like anger, and that brought her to her senses.
“I’m going,” she said quickly and started to walk. After several paces, though, she paused, turning back for a final look. Derek stood watching her. His shoulders were straight, his feet planted firmly on the ground. He looked grim, and determined as he hitched his chin toward the gate.
Not wanting to make things worse, she left.
* * *
Sabrina slept for nearly three days straight when she got back to New York. She didn’t get dressed. She didn’t make the bed, since she wasn’t up long enough to bother. She took an occasional bath, made an occasional meal. Then she went back to sleep.
Though she knew that she was making up for three years’ worth of fatigue, she also knew that there was an element of escape in her rest. When she slept, she didn’t have to think. And more than anything, that was what she wanted—and needed. She’d done too much thinking lately. The decision to place Nicky in a residential center was the hardest she’d ever made. She’d earned the rest.
At the end of those three days, she got out of bed, bathed, dressed and went for a walk. She walked very slowly. It struck her as she walked that she was the only one doing it. In spite of the heat, people were passing her, rushing off to wherever it was they were headed. Hundreds of people, hundreds of different destinations. Facial expressions ranging from preoccupied to bored to hassled. There was something disconnected about it all that she found depressing.
Commitments Page 19
