NO SAFE PLACE

by Richard North Patterson

  “Because he’s forever a myth?” she asked.

  “Yes. God, how people still love him for dying young.”

  Quiet, Lara listened to a surf she could no longer see, felt again her fear of losing him; the fear of standing in his way; the sense that fate and circumstances were slowly, sinuously, drawing Kerry toward the race. “Are you afraid of that?” she asked. “Dying like Jamie, because some sick person wants to join his name to yours?”

  For a moment he said nothing, and then he leaned his face next to hers. “Never more than now,” he answered.

  After a time, the wind cooled.

  In the warmth of the beach house, they made love again. They fell asleep to the sound of the ocean, the breeze coming through the window screens, the smell of salt.

  The next morning, on the radio, Kerry heard the first warning of the hurricane.

  * * *

  Listening, Kerry looked out the window. In blue jeans and a Stanford sweatshirt, Lara sat on the deck, drinking coffee and watching the ocean sparkle with morning sunlight. For a moment, he did not wish to tell her.

  When he walked outside, she took a deep breath of ocean air, shivering with pleasure. “I love this,” she announced.

  He put both hands on her shoulders. “We may have to leave,” he told her. “There’s a hurricane on its way. It was supposed to hit the Carolinas. But now it’s veered.”

  She looked up at him awhile. Finally, she asked, “How long do we have?”

  Gently, Kerry rubbed her shoulders. “Three days, they think.”

  “That feels good,” Lara murmured. She leaned back, looking up at him. “Do you have to decide now? If this hurricane veered once, maybe it can veer again.”

  Kerry smiled. “Tomorrow morning,” he said, “I’ll turn on the radio again.”

  “Good. Do you think you could keep on rubbing? Maybe a little higher.”

  But she seemed pensive after that. It was only when he brought her a second cup of coffee that she said, “There’s something I’ve been meaning to tell you.”

  Her tone was serious, soft-spoken. He sat beside her on the deck, cross-legged, his own cup of coffee a centrifuge of warmth in his hands. “What is it?”

  “I’ve had a feeler from NBC. Believe it or not, they may want me to do television.”

  “Oh, I believe it. How doyou feel?”

  “Ambivalent. I did a little of that in college, so it’s not completely bizarre.” She sipped her coffee. “On one side, there’s not the depth of print reporting. On the other is what they may be prepared to offer.”

  She did not look at him, and her tone of reticence, unusual for Lara, unsettled him. “A lot more money?” he asked.

  Lara nodded, still gazing at the water. “There’s that,” she answered, and then turned to him. “They’d send me overseas, Kerry. If that’s what I prefer.”

  It startled him. “Do you?” he asked.

  She paused, a troubled look in her eyes, as if she felt the shadow in his soul. “I would,” she said quietly, “except for you. I’ve been telling myself how stupid that is.”

  Kerry looked down.Be fair, he admonished himself.Be her friend. “I know,” he said at last, “that you’ve always wondered if this job’s right for you. I’ve known since the first time we really talked.”

  He felt her hand, gently touching his arm. “And that was two years ago, Kerry. How much more political intrigue can I cover?” Her tone was soft. “The real irony is, if you ran for President, theTimes would probably ask me to coveryou . And I couldn’t.”

  Looking up at her, he tried to smile. “Then I’ve lost my reason to run.”

  Lara gazed into her coffee cup. “I didn’t look for this. But we knew that sometime . . .” She shook her head. “I don’t expect you to do anything about this. I don’t even want you to. But our careers are getting all tangled up withus .”

  Kerry took a deep breath. “I can’t tell you what to do, Lara. All I know is how good you’d be. If it’s what you want.”

  Slowly, she intertwined her fingers with Kerry’s.

  For the rest of the day, they did not talk about it. But to Kerry, their lovemaking had a desperate quality.

  The next morning, the hurricane was one day closer, and every plane, every ferry to the mainland, was booked.

  * * *

  Lara phoned her office. Then, knowing that Kerry had to call Meg, she walked the beach alone.

  Illicit lovers, she thought sadly, develop a strange tact; she would never make Kerry lie in front of her. Upon her return, he said, “It’s done. I’m staying here a little longer, trapped in my solitary retreat.”

  She took his hand. “Then you should make the most of it.”

  Afterward, they spent their time preparing for what would come. Lara drove to the Chilmark General Store for flashlight batteries, canned goods, candles, and bottled water; Kerry moved the furniture to the center of the room. Returning, Lara saw this and, for a time, felt irrationally cheerful. “It’s an adventure,” she said. “Like camping out.”

  Kerry grinned at her. “Oh, yeah. And I’m an Eagle Scout. Did you bring your cell phone, by the way?”

  Outside, the winds had risen, and then the rain began.

  * * *

  For another day, the storm closed in on them.

  There was no one on the beach now, no boats on the water. The sky, close and dark, seemed to merge with the ocean.

  At dusk, the lights went out.

  Kerry had a memory from childhood—a dead tree fallen across a power line. “It could be like this for days,” he said to Lara.

  Kneeling, she lit a candle on the coffee table. “I don’t mind,” she answered. In the background, the radio, powered by batteries, continued its mournful narrative—a lone announcer, playing disks and counting down the hours.

  The rain came in sheets now, gusts of wind rattling the windows. They were squares of black; nature could no longer be seen, Kerry reflected, only heard. He turned to Lara. “There’s too much glass out here. When it hits, we should be in the bedroom.”

  In the candlelight, her face was sculpted, her eyes black. “Well,” she said, “we wanted to be alone.”

  Kerry smiled. “Got our wish, didn’t we.”

  He went to her, holding her close.

  From the radio came the first bars of “A Summer Place.” “Someone,” Lara murmured, “has a sense of humor. Or maybe it’s prom night.”

  Kerry kissed her. “Care to dance?”

  “In a minute.” Stepping back, she unbuttoned his shirt. “Weare alone, after all.”

  His shirt fell on the floor, and then Lara’s blouse. “There,” she murmured, putting her arms around his neck. “Like this.”

  The wind became a low, insistent moan. In light and shadow, the senior senator from New Jersey and the congressional correspondent for theNew York Times danced to the thin sounds of their radio, bodies lightly touching, confident for once that they could not be seen.

  * * *

  To Lara, the storm, when it hit, felt as awesome as Creation.

  There was an eerie stillness. Then it seemed the house would come apart—a shrieking wind, glass shattering, the rafters creaking, straining, as sideways rain struck the wood like gunshots. She shivered in Kerry’s arms.

  “Ignore it,” he murmured, “and maybe it’ll go away.”

  She could not see his face. Only feel his mouth, slowly, gently, as it traced her chin, her throat. As he did, she shivered again, suspended between fear and the first faint glow of wanting him.

  His mouth moved further. As the wind screamed, Lara shut her eyes. And then, for a time, she felt a part of everything around them.

  Kerry held her until the storm passed.

  At dawn, the world had changed. One of the windows had shattered, and slivers of glass glistened in the rain-soaked living room. Outside, electric air crackled like sheets hanging in the wind, and the beach was ruined—rocks and debris driven into the sea grass, the sand devoured by
roiling waves. Lara leaned against him. “I love you,” she said simply. “No matter what.”

  THREE

  The morning after Lara’s first meeting with the president of NBC News, she knew.

  She had been tired for several days—unusual for someone with her energy. But going to bed early had not helped; this morning, her nipples were sore, sensitive. She felt nauseated.

  Suspended between dread and disbelief, she walked to a pharmacy on Connecticut Avenue and bought a home test kit. Then she called in sick and waited for the kit to confirm what, with uncanny certainty, she already knew.

  It must have happened the night of the hurricane.

  Seized by emotions she could not yet grasp, she returned to the bathroom and saw that the stick of paper had turned pink at the tip.

  Though she could scarcely imagine it as real, she was pregnant with Kerry’s child.

  Listless, she tried to catalog the reasons she must put an end to this. She sat on the bed, elbows propped on knees, so stunned that minutes passed with Lara motionless, so overwhelmed that her emotions seemed to have the gravity of prayer.

  There was only one solution. But her thoughts kept slipping to where they should not go—imagining Kerry, laughing and careless as he had been on Martha’s Vineyard, carrying their baby on his shoulders. Kerry, cast in the role of one of her friends’ yuppie husbands, a picture from an album. The fantasies of a woman who knew the truth—for both of them—even as her heart recoiled.

  This was not an abstraction. She had come to love Kerry far more than she thought he knew, and to give him up was hard enough. To abort their child was more than she should have to bear.

  Yet she must, and without involving Kerry. What could he offer her but guilt; what could she give him but anguish?

  The telephone rang.

  “Hi,” he said. “Playing hooky?”

  “Can I see you?” she heard herself ask, and realized that she was weaker than she knew.

  * * *

  As long as she lived, Lara thought, she would never forget his face at that moment.

  Speechless, he gazed at her with such confusion, guilt, and love that no words could have captured it.I know, she thought.I know.

  She leaned her face against his shoulder.

  After a time, he murmured, “We need to think about this.”

  As he held her, Lara closed her eyes. It was painful to feel the consequences hit him, already knowing where they led. Leaning back, she took his face in her hands, wanting to spare them both. “There’s nothing to decide,” she told him. “I’ve had a few more hours to live with this, and I know that.”

  Gently, he removed her hands and went to the window, gazing out at a crisp fall afternoon that Lara knew he should be spending in the Senate. Instead he was here, in a sad corner of his secret life, with the lover no one knew he had. For the world, Lara thought, this will never have happened.

  Turning, he said softly, “Thereis something to decide. I want you to marry me.”

  Lara sat quiet, stunned. Tears of shock came to her eyes; she felt herself caught between irrational hope and the harshness of their reality. “I can’t,” she managed to say. “You’re already married, remember?”

  Kerry bowed his head. “I’m well aware of that. But Meg and I should have divorced long ago.”

  “I think so too.” The quiet edge in Lara’s voice surprised her. “But you didn’t. I don’t want you because of a birth control mistake.”

  He came to her, grasping her wrists. “ButI wantyou .”

  She looked away from him. “Please, don’t make this worse. This isn’t what you want. If it were, you’d have asked for it.”

  Cradling her chin, Kerry turned her face to his. “Youwere the one who didn’t want a politician. If you’d said to me just once, ‘I want to marry you,’ do you think an affair would have been enough for me?” He caught himself, softening his voice. “I’m in love with you, and I want our child . . .”

  “At any price?” Intently, Lara looked into his eyes. “Instead of running for President, you’d be a running joke on Letterman: Kerry Kilcannon, the man who knew what theTimes really meant when it promised home delivery. Does the name Gary Hart mean anything to you?” Pausing, Lara battled a fresh wave of nausea. “You’d probably lose your Senate seat in 2000, and you’re the only one who doesn’t know how much that defines you. How can the ruin of your career be the premise for our marriage?” Lara drew a breath. “I don’t want that for you,” she finished simply. “And I don’t want that for me.”

  “Do you think that little of me, Lara? If I’m only what I do, and not who I am, how can you have loved me at all?”

  She turned from him. “Because you’re all those things. I can’t separate them, and you shouldn’t try . . .”

  “There’s something else.” His voice had the first hint of accusation. “Notmy career.Yours. ”

  After a moment, she nodded. “I’d be done too, Kerry—the journalist who fucked the senator she wrote about. Maybe I deserve that, but . . .” In an act of will, she forced herself to meet his eyes. “Part of us is who we are in our own lives. And what you claim to want would end that.”

  “There’s another life involved here.” Kerry pulled her close, her forehead resting against his. “It’s not what we’d have chosen, I know that. But it’s here, staring me in the face.

  “I want you much more than I’ve ever wanted to be President. And if the Senate is the price I pay for our child, I’m willing to pay it.”

  For the first time, Lara felt angry. “Do you think this is easy for me?” she demanded. “You can say anything you like, andI still have to decide what’s best. And then live with it.”

  Kerry considered her. Quietly, he asked, “What else do you want from me?”

  “I want you tosupport me, dammit.” Tears sprang to her eyes again. “If you want me to thank you for offering to help ruin both our lives, I will. But I know what’s right, andyou know what’s right. Please, don’t make me do the right thing by myself.”

  This time, Kerry turned away. “Am I supposed to lie about my feelings,” he asked, “becauseyou’re the one who’s pregnant? Doesn’t this involveme , too?”

  The justice of his question undercut her anger, even as she saw, with aching sadness, the chasm opening between them. She was the one whose body was already different, whose spirit might never be the same.

  “Please, Kerry. Just be my friend.”

  He took her hands. “Give us two weeks, all right? We’ll be a long time living with this. Whatever you decide.”

  Lara felt wrung out, without peace or consolation. All that was left was to let him hold her, to wish, with bitter longing, that she had never told him.

  At four o’clock, Kerry had to leave.

  He had four speeches to give in the next few days, Lara remembered—in Philadelphia, Chicago, Denver, San Francisco. It reminded her of the possibility enveloping them both that, until today, Kerry had willingly preserved: a race for the presidency, which would put an end to them. The world outside their secret spun on as before.

  As Kerry left, he kissed her. “I’ll call you,” he said. “Every night.”

  For two years, she had counted on it, even as she worried that each call added to the paper trail of their affair. Now she felt a chill, an instinctive sad finality.

  “I love you,” she said. “Remember that.”

  “And I love you,” Kerry answered, and was gone.

  * * *

  Give us two weeks,he had asked. But every day she felt the life grow inside her, and nothing changed but her attachment, the vividness of their imagined child.

  For three nights, he called, not pressing. Every night, she asked herself how she would answer if he said, “No matter what you decide, I’m leaving Meg.” Every night, she wondered why he had not.

  Lara called a clinic, did nothing. She sleepwalked through her days, her decision growing harder, more scarifying. Until she acted, her life was about nothing
but Kerry’s phone calls, the other life inside her.

  We’ll be a long time living with this,he had said.

  Waiting, she found, was even worse.

  The day he arrived in San Francisco, she stopped answering the telephone.

  * * *

  Sleepless, he called every hour.

  He would hear five rings, and then the answering machine. “Please,” he implored the spinning tape. “Wait until I get back.” Kerry did not say the rest: that whatever she chose, he wished to marry her. That, he would say in person.

  By the morning, he had called twelve times. His hopes for their child had turned to ashes.

  He went to the banquet hall, heart leaden, and began his speech.

  * * *

  In the waiting room, Lara stared at the forms, her mind echoing with the sound of Kerry’s voice.Please, Lara, don’t do this.

  Name, address.

  She had driven to Maryland alone. The clinic had promised Lara privacy; like the room, it was small, discreet, anonymous. No one else was waiting.

  As if by rote, Lara printed her name.

  Please, I love you. I don’t want you to face this alone.

  Did she want counseling? the form asked.

  I want Kerry,her mind answered, even as her hand scrawled “No.”

  A nurse appeared—stout, benign, motherly. “Have you filled everything out?” she asked.

  Mute, Lara handed her the form.

  Looking from the papers to Lara, the nurse touched her gently on the shoulder. “Then we’re ready.”

  Standing, Lara thanked her.

  They went to a small room without windows. Silent, Lara gazed at the operating table.

  In a calm voice, the nurse explained what would happen. When Lara did not respond, she felt the woman study her.

  “Afterward,” she told Lara, “some women are relieved. Others need more support.”

  No, Lara answered, she was fine. All she wanted was for this to be over.

  Then you need to undress, the nurse said. The doctor was with another patient; he would come once he was finished.

  Alone, Lara took off her clothes, folding them neatly on a chair.

  I’m in love with you, and I want our child.