SUMMERS FREEDOM

by Ruth Wind

  But it was what she sensed below the surface that disturbed Maggie. Joel and Galen seemed on some level to be having a completely separate conversation, using shorthand and double meanings to give and receive information unrelated to the topic at hand.

  Not only that, Joel held her hand or touched her thigh throughout the meal. He was a naturally affectionate man, one of his most endearing qualities as far as Maggie was concerned, but she felt a difference in his touch tonight. It reminded her of the way Samantha and David had constantly held hands the week before Sam's departure.

  Since there was nothing wrong to which she could quite give a name, Maggie finally decided she really was getting paranoid.

  Then, as she passed the bread, Sharon shot Maggie a quizzical glance. The food Maggie had eaten turned to a lump of clay in her stomach. She wasn't imagining it—something really was wrong.

  After the plates had been cleared, the little group wandered into the living room. A breeze through the screen door blew the smoke from Galen's cigarette into eddies of pale blue, and Maggie watched them musingly. What now? she thought.

  Next to Maggie, Joel fidgeted with a rubber band, twisting it between his thumb and forefinger, over and over. His voice broke the difficult pause building in the room. "What's the plan for the concert tomorrow night?" he asked.

  "David is going to meet us at the gate, and we'll just play it by ear." The burning in Maggie's stomach intensified, and she felt Joel's fingers land on the back of her neck, where they massaged gently at the taut muscles there. She flashed him a grateful look over her shoulder—and caught the most acute expression of sorrow in his eyes that she'd yet seen. It disappeared almost immediately.

  "What concert?" Galen asked.

  "Proud Fox, but we're not going for pleasure. Sharon and I are going to cover it for the paper."

  "It's been a mess everywhere they've gone this summer," Galen said, stubbing out his cigarette. "Wear some pointed boots in case you have to kick your way out," he said with a smile, then stood up. "Sharon, let's go scare up some fun, shall we?"

  "Thought you'd never ask, buddy. These two make you lonely, don't they?"

  Joel awakened the next morning to a chorus of bird song outside the open windows of his bedroom. Beside him, gilded with the diffused light of the morning sun, Maggie slept deeply, one long leg thrown over his knees. Her skin glowed like honeyed fruit, and her full, pouty mouth was barely parted to let breath pass. Pressed softly into his side and hip were the curves of breast and belly he'd grown to know so intimately the past few weeks.

  The past few weeks. Stolen time, now gone. He gave his eyes their last feast, letting them wash from her temple to her toes. When his eyes had finished, he stretched out a hand and followed the length of her back all the way down her spine, gently. Her flesh was velvety and supple.

  When she stirred sleepily, reaching for him even as she dreamed, he bent to taste the column of her throat and the peach-soft cheeks. With one hand, he cupped a breast for the last time and felt a piercing, bittersweet pleasure at the eager pearling of the tip against his palm. He let his hands span her rib cage and fondle her bottom, and when she opened for him in the sweet, sleepy morning, he took sanctuary once more. He moved slowly, as if all their time were not gone, moved slowly to remember each brush of her breath on his chin, each nearly inaudible whimper in her throat.

  Afterward, he didn't move because he couldn't bear to leave her. Her eyes, fawn brown and clear, opened to him at last. "I love you, Joel Summer," she said.

  "You're the best thing that ever happened to me, Maggie. You changed my life." He kissed her one last time. "Don't ever forget that."

  The gravity in his face frightened her. When he pulled away, she asked quickly, "Where are you going?"

  "To make us some coffee. You can have the shower first." His voice sounded utterly normal as he stepped into a pair of jeans, normal enough that Maggie gave him a lazy grin. In the dust-moted light filtering through his curtains, he looked like a television jeans commercial—his dark hair tousled, powerful chest naked and feet bare. As he slipped out of the room, she wondered with a smile why his bare white feet made him seem sexy. A barefoot man isn't going anywhere, she thought, and headed for the shower with a wry twist of her lips.

  A few minutes later, wrapped in a big terry-cloth robe, Maggie met Joel in the bedroom. He'd carried up two steaming mugs of coffee, but there was no food to go along with it. Joel ate a lot, and morning bread was not something he ever missed. "Where's the food?"

  He paused, his hand in a drawer. "I'm sorry." His attitude was distracted. "Are you hungry? I didn't think about it."

  Maggie frowned, her elbows and knees suddenly going a little wobbly. "I'm not in any hurry," she said.

  Taking her cup, she sat on the edge of the bed. "Joel, what's wrong?"

  The dark head moved once, side to side, as if to shake away a bad dream. Maggie saw his chest rise with a deep, long breath. He looked at her. "There's no easy way to do this," he said, and swallowed.

  "Do what? You're scaring me."

  "I'm sorry." He took a shoe box out of the drawer. For one more moment, he paused, then carried it to Maggie and gave it to her.

  "What's this?" she asked. The terrible foreboding that had been building in her belly now spilled into her veins, raced to her heart and sent it thudding like the cannons at an army base.

  "Open it," he said grimly. His hands were curled into fists. As she let her fingers edge along the lid, he suddenly turned away, then back again. "Just do it," he said harshly.

  "I don't want to," she said. "I don't want to know. I don't care about the past. If I don't know about it…" She trailed off, unsure of what she meant.

  He stared at her, his face set. "Open it."

  Maggie tore off the lid—and her breath left her. Inside were dozens and dozens of letters, letters addressed to Mitchell Gray, care of the Colorado penal system. In Maggie's hand.

  For a long time, she stared at them, her mind echoing. Of course. Of course the dinner last night had been so strange—Galen had known Joel instantly, for they'd been in prison together. Of course she'd felt as if she'd known Joel—she'd been writing to him seven years. Of course the photos in his living room, those bare, lonely photos, had triggered recognition—they were just like the drawings Mitchell used to decorate his envelopes.

  In a voice hard and distant, one she hardly recognized as her own, Maggie asked, "So what's your real name?"

  "Mitchell Joel Gray," he said. "Summer is my mother's name."

  "You deliberately changed it so that I wouldn't know who you were."

  "Yes." He made no effort to deny it, and Maggie realized she had expected an explanation.

  "Why?"

  He drew a breath. "I wanted to see if we would like each other in person."

  "That's not it," she said, looking at him for the first time. "You didn't trust me to take you at face value."

  "You're right." His blue eyes were cold. "I thought it was the right thing to do."

  "How is a lie the right thing? Ever?"

  "Maggie, I could tell from your letters, even if we didn't allow anything personal, that you wouldn't be able to handle the knowledge of my background. You'd have been artificially polite and scared to death."

  "How do you know? I don't even know. You didn't give me a chance."

  A note of impatience crept into his voice. "Come on, Maggie, this is no time to try and fool ourselves. You wouldn't have given me the time of day."

  She jumped up, trembling. "So, you cooked up this elaborate plan to sucker me in—moving in next door like a stranger!"

  "That wasn't the plan. My last place had cockroaches the size of dragons. I had to find something new." He shook his head. "When I looked in the paper, this place was open. I just took it." His posture eased a bit, and he held out a hand of entreaty. "Maggie, I'm sorry."

  At the sight of the flat, wide palm, Maggie felt a redoubled sense of betrayal. "Don't touch me." The word
s were hard and cold. He pulled back.

  Maggie flipped through the letters. The one on top was the last one she'd written, not three weeks before. "How did you manage to keep up the masquerade after you got out?"

  "A guard helped me. He was my friend."

  A whirl of violent emotion swelled up within her. Overcome with a fury she'd never known she possessed, she hurled the box across the room. It hit the wall with a thud, and rectangles of white exploded out of it, scattering all over the floor.

  Joel grabbed her hands. "Take it easy, Maggie."

  She stared at him, the mass of her insides so confused and torn she could barely breathe. "What did you do?" she asked, an edge of despair in her voice. "Did you kill your wife?"

  "No." His eyes flared with emotion, and his jaw went hard. "I killed her lover."

  "Oh, my God," Maggie said, reeling away from him.

  Passion, she thought, her mind flooded with memories of her childhood, her father slapping her mother in a fit of fury; Galen screaming as his hair was chopped away viciously; Maggie cringing before him as he raged, spittle dotting her face as he screamed. Now her imagination chimed in: she saw Joel discovering his wife with her lover, saw the huge body and power aimed with fury at a man and saw that man fall. "I can't do this," she choked out, backing away from him. "I can't."

  She turned and fled the room.

  Joel wanted to throw back his head and howl, to somehow release the pain she was causing him by leaving. Instead, he grabbed his keys and headed for the only solace he knew. His birds and the open sky.

  At first, Maggie couldn't decide what to do. She paced around her bedroom restlessly, wishing that she could tear out her heart the way animals chewed off a leg caught in a trap.

  For a time she considered going to her grandmother, who would provide a shoulder to cry on. The problem was, Maggie couldn't imagine allowing her emotions to flow in the manner that would be necessary to cry. If she began, she thought she would never stop. Confession might be good for the soul, but it wasn't Maggie's style. Just as she'd felt uncomfortable discussing her attraction to Joel with anyone, she couldn't discuss his betrayal.

  Finally, tired of roaming her room, she headed for the newspaper and the job awaiting her there.

  The day passed in a blur. She couldn't decide whether to be grateful or disappointed when she found that Sharon wasn't at the paper. A note she'd left for Maggie explained she was following up a lead on Cory she'd gotten from a cop at a bar the night before. Turning on the radio for company, Maggie threw herself into planning the traditional Fourth of July issue on books.

  But as she typed reviews, Mitchell's sharp analysis of books haunted her. Or rather, Joel's.

  A bubble of pain broke within her. Maggie closed her eyes. He'd created an entire persona for her benefit, led her down the proverbial garden path like an expert. And she'd followed willingly, blindly naive. With a sharp, bitter sense of betrayal, she remembered how she'd created the category of sincere men, just for him. The irony grated on her wounds.

  At five, Galen appeared at the door of the newspaper office. "Hi," he said. "What's up?"

  Maggie knew by the expression in his eyes that he pitied her, and the knowledge made her furious. "What are you doing here?" she asked sharply. "I thought you were going to spend the night in Denver."

  "I had a feeling you might need me."

  She met his eyes, nostrils flaring. "I don't need your damned pity, Galen."

  "I meant you might want someone to go to the concert with you."

  "It's a bit late to be playing protector, don't you think?"

  He raised his eyebrows and sighed. "Maybe."

  "How did you know he'd tell me?"

  "Because I know him."

  "Do you know that he's a murderer?"

  "Is that what he told you?" Galen frowned.

  "He didn't go to prison for murder?"

  "Yes." Galen straightened, seeming to come to a decision. He pursed his lips and took a step closer to his sister. "Look, I know you're hurting, but don't write him off yet, okay, kid?"

  Maggie shook him off. "I already told you—you're too late."

  Sharon arrived then, breathless and disheveled. "Maggie! I got everything."

  "What?" Maggie leaped at the distraction. She hurried around the desk. "Tell me."

  "The kid's name is Cory Silva. He's fifteen and until a year ago, racked up a bunch of charges in petty arenas—vandalism, car burglaries, that kind of thing. He's been in foster homes several times because his father is suspected of beating him, but he always goes home within a few months."

  Maggie glanced at Galen, whose mouth thinned to a hard line. "Go on," she said to Sharon.

  "He used to spend every waking moment with a brother who was a year older. Two years ago, at a Proud Fox concert in Denver, the brother was stabbed by a gang outside the arena and died."

  "So," Maggie filled in, "he's on a vendetta."

  "Right." Sharon flipped through some papers. "The cop didn't have a picture, but he gave me a good description. Cory has a long, thin scar on his face, from his mouth to his eye." She gave them a sober look. "Got it from his dad when he was four years old—nobody knows how."

  A rush of excitement energized Maggie. "I know who he is," she exclaimed, grabbing her jacket. "I spoke to him one afternoon with Samantha, downtown. If we can find him in the crowd, maybe we can prevent any trouble."

  "I'm going with you," Galen said firmly.

  Maggie flashed him a hard look. "Do whatever you want."

  He grabbed her arm as she began to turn away. "Don't blame me for your pain, Maggie." His face was grave. "You're all I've got."

  The words reached past the wall she'd been hiding behind all day, and a quick rush of tears flooded her eyes—the first tears. "I won't," she said quickly, then hurried out of the offices behind Sharon, away from any reminder of Joel and his betrayal. If she worked hard, ignored the upheaval in her life, maybe it would all just go away.

  That theory seemed to hold as the trio, joined by David at the entrance to the grounds, searched the concert area for any sign of Cory. There was an atmosphere of tense excitement infecting the air, and thousands of milling teenagers filled the grounds, their blankets spread on the grass under the sky.

  Just outside the main gates, a small cluster of the familiar, neatly dressed teens marched in a solemn circle, carrying their signs and singing a hymn. Their number was small, Maggie thought, and they seemed to be having no impact at all on the eager crowd gathered to see the band.

  Her lips formed a grim line. The night before the tickets had gone on sale, there had been no hint of trouble, either, she thought. Not until one rocker had suddenly started hitting the other kids…

  Realization struck her. "Cory isn't going to be with these kids," she said with certainty. "Look for a black leather jacket with a red pentagram on the back. He'll have long hair." As they split up to comb through the crowd, Maggie's stomach burned. All the pieces of the long puzzle aligned themselves—and the full picture chilled her. The reason she'd been unable to find any adults responsible for the protests was because there were no adults involved. Cory Silva, with the charisma of a teenage evangelist, had stirred up an incredible amount of trouble.

  The discordant notes of the warm-up band's music and the general cacophony began to grate on her nerves, giving her a headache. After carefully scanning the portion of the crowd she'd agreed to search, she returned to the meeting spot. First Galen, then Sharon and David met her. "No luck," Galen said for all of them.

  Maggie bit her lip. The sun had disappeared behind the craggy tips of the mountains, and a gray dusk spread over the field. "It's going to be harder and harder to find him," she said, her eyes flowing over the field and the less-favored seats above. "Maybe we ought to check the stands."

  "What about calling his father?" Sharon suggested.

  Maggie and Galen exchanged a glance. "No."

  David looked impatient. As much as he wanted to
participate in the drama of the search for Cory, Proud Fox would be on in a few minutes, and he'd been looking forward to the concert for weeks. Maggie smiled at him. "I think we can handle it from here, David. Thanks for your help. And be careful, okay?"

  He lifted a hand. "No problem."

  The opening band finished with a jangling crash of guitars. They departed the stage. "At least that's a relief," Maggie said with a sigh.

  "I'll go check the stands," Galen said. "Don't go anywhere."

  Maggie glared at him. "We're big girls, now, Galen."

  "I just want to find you when I'm through," he answered evenly.

  As he melted into the bodies, Sharon touched Maggie's arm. "Are you all right?"

  Maggie considered a lie, but her heart wouldn't let her do it. "No," she said, and swallowed hard. She trained her eyes on the stage lights. "I found out that Joel is Mitchell." With a bitter laugh, she added, "Or Mitchell is Joel, however you want to look at it."

  Sharon didn't answer immediately. "I thought so," she said.

  "Well, thank you for sharing your insight," Maggie said sharply.

  "Come on, Maggie. If I guessed, you had to have guessed yourself. You just didn't admit it."

  "That isn't true," Maggie retorted. "I really didn't know, or I wouldn't have allowed the relationship to progress."

  The volume of the crowd steadily rose. In the bleachers, the sound of stomping feet rocked the stands with steady thundering, and whistles and chants added to the noise. For one instant, Maggie thought of the day with Joel in Manitou, the first time he'd kissed her. For that moment, her world had seemed this alive, this vibrant.

  With the memory came a clutch of excruciating pain to her stomach, and Maggie pressed her hands to it. Next to her, Sharon said, "Maybe you can work it out."

  Maggie let go of a short near laugh. "Not a chance," she said. "This just proves my theory that you absolutely can't trust a man. Not any man."

  "Your brother is a man."

  Raising her eyes to Sharon's face, Maggie said slowly, "I know."