by Linda Barlow
The spiritualism her mother practiced was anathema to him. Not only did he despise it on a personal level, but he had also made it his profession to expose such charlatans for the frauds and schemers they were. It was one thing to spend a few hot nights with a woman who was suffering from unscientific delusions, but something entirely different to permit himself to want more: to imagine building a life together.
Unfortunately, that was exactly what he had been doing. He couldn't seem to stop envisioning the two of them together, laughing and exciting each other for the rest of their lives. Just like Macbeth, he’d been tempted by visions of a future that offered him so much more than he already had. Unlike the Scottish king, he wasn’t lured by power or ambition, but by the idea–the delusion–of love.
There were several old Revolutionary War era cannons in the park, and as he stopped pacing to lean against one, he was assailed by a memory from his childhood. Before his parents had moved to Winchester, the three of them had lived on the first floor of a house near the Common. His father had been a graduate student at the Harvard Business School. They had brought him to play here when he'd had been a toddler, and he had loved to climb on the old cannons. Dimly, he remembered his parents running about the park with him and laughing. His mother, dark-haired with sparkling eyes, pretty and happy. His father, tall and husky, a bulwark against all the dangers of the big, noisy, busy world.
It had been so long since he had thought of his parents as young, vibrant and lively that it was a shock to realize that at the time they had played with him in the park, they must have been around the same age that he was now. Both had died far too early–his father of a heart attack in his early forties, and his mother of cancer a few years later.
His parents had been in love. It had shone radiantly in both their faces whenever they looked at one another. Even as a child, he had recognized this. The bond between them had been deep and strong.
But somewhere, somehow, something had gone wrong. His father had become obsessed with his demanding career. He had turned ambitious, driven, stressed. He'd also been a smoker who kept quitting, only to take up the habit again when under pressure. Disdaining doctors, he'd refused to be monitored for things like cholesterol and high blood pressure. His mother’s laughter–so like Kate’s–had gradually worn away, leaving her pale-faced and worried all the time.
But she had never stopped loving her husband, not even when death snatched him away. She had loved him so much that she had sought his spirit in the afterlife. If there was an afterlife, which Daniel, frankly, doubted. Towards the end, as she had lain dying of cancer, also far too young, she had told her only son that she didn’t mind because she would soon be with her husband again. And so she had gone to him, leaving Daniel alone to fend for himself.
Kate looked a little like his young mother, he realized for the first time. The same dark hair and laughing eyes. After his dad’s death, though, his mother's hair had dulled, grey coming into it prematurely. Her eyes had laughed no more.
Daniel pushed himself off the cannon, irritated by the memories. What was the point of loving someone so much, if it opened you up to such pain, such torment? That sort of misery wasn’t for him. Much better to live as he had been living for years, engaging in short affairs that didn’t lead to uncomfortable feelings of attachment. Until now, he had been adept at choosing for his lovers women who were independent and busy with their careers; women who enjoyed the exciting sex he could provide but weren’t looking for anything more complicated than that.
Granted, these women had been getting younger recently; women his own age, he had found, were more likely to be seeking committed relationships and making plans for marriage and motherhood. Before he’d met Kate, he had briefly dated a 22 year old. She had listened to music by bands he'd never heard of and she'd worn weird clothes. Her thumbs were always texting rapidly on her smart phone. She'd gone down on him less than an hour after meeting him, and tweeted him goodbye a couple of weeks later because he'd objected to her blogging the full details of their sexual encounters for all her friends to scrutinize. He didn’t consider himself particularly romantic, but he wanted more romance than that.
As he strode back down the street to the theater, he mused about how Kate had seemed perfect for him in so many ways. They were close in age, they liked many of the same pastimes, they never had any trouble finding interesting things to talk about, and her laughter had warmed his cold heart. They had both lost people close to them and grieved over the losses. That was a powerful bond between them, even though it wasn't something he cared to dwell too much upon.
He had always felt comfortable with Kate. More than just comfortable. When he was with her, the world had seemed to open like a blossom, revealing scents and colors and textures that had previously been unimaginable to him. The air itself had seemed fresher and more breathable. He remembered the first night they'd made love when, after tramping through the hurricane, cold and shivering and dodging falling branches, she had laughed, lifted her face to the rain, spread out her arms and started twirling. Damned if she hadn't ripped his heart out right then and there. "What a magical night," she had said. And it had been.
Their lovemaking was incredible. Once she had gotten over her thing about not having sex with anyone except the sainted Arthur, she had turned out to be deliciously ardent and responsive. She had no inhibitions and she loved to laugh, but she could be a little wild and unpredictable in bed, too. Once she had taken him deep into her mouth while at the same time digging her nails into his ass and slipping one finger—
Don't think about it! You're only making yourself more miserable, loser.
He'd been with plenty of women, many of them attractive and passionate, but no one had ever been quite as physically attuned to him as she was. If he had actually believed any of the nonsense astrologers spouted about planets lining up to put two people in conjunction with one another, he might have begun to suspect that he and Kate had been destined to meet and fall in love.
But of course, he didn’t believe in that sort of idiocy.
But he missed her. Dammit, he missed her a lot!
The curtain was going up when he found his way to his seat in the theater. He felt his heart contract with anticipation as the play began. Any moment now. He would see her. He would hear her voice.
But he didn’t. There they were, the three witches, but his witch wasn’t on stage. Daniel did not recognize the actress who was speaking her lines. He felt as if he’d just been kicked down a flight of stairs. He actually hurt. Why wasn’t she performing tonight? Where the hell was she?
At the next scene break, he left his seat and went around to the rear of the theater. The stagehands recognized him as a friend of Kate and let him in. It didn’t take him long to find Graham, who wasn’t due on stage yet. "Where is she?" he demanded.
What he got in return was a cold stare. "Why is that any business of yours?"
"Just tell me, dammit."
"If you had been in touch with her at all, you'd know where she is. All her other friends do. Knowing when someone is in trouble is one of the responsibilities of a friend."
His heart thudded. "What kind of trouble?"
Graham just sneered and turned away. For an instant, Daniel nearly grabbed him and flung him up against the wall. He was bigger and probably stronger than Graham, but it had been a long time since he’d felt a physical urge to hit somebody. With an effort, he controlled it. "Fine. I’ve behaved badly. I’m sorry. Tell me what kind of trouble she’s in. Please."
Kate’s fellow actor relented enough to say, "One of her friends was in an accident. She’s taken some time off to be with him."
Daniel immediately pictured Kate’s own terrible accident. He had found crash scene photos through his connection with a friend who worked for the state police. He had wanted to understand the event that had so changed her life, and the scars it had left on her mind and her body. He had seen the wrecked car. He had seen Arthur's body, covered wit
h a plastic sheet, lying on the ground. He had seen Kate being removed from the wreckage, unconscious and bleeding, but alive.
If a friend of hers had suffered something similar, she must be in agony, worrying and reliving her own experience. Which meant that he, Daniel, couldn’t have chosen a worse time to indulge in his own relationship histrionics. He ought to be there, with her, wherever she was, supporting her.
"Who? Where?" he asked Graham. "How badly injured is this friend of hers?"
"You, like everybody else in the world, have a phone, correct? Has it occurred to you to call her and find out? Or isn’t she taking your calls anymore?"
Daniel whirled and left the theater before he lost it completely and slugged the guy. He didn’t know if Kate was taking his calls. He hadn’t tried. He had known that if he’d given in to the impulse to call her, he’d be lost.
Just as he’d known he’d be lost if he came to the theater tonight. Her pull on him was too strong.
He walked back to his car and sat in it. His cell phone was burning in his palm. Staring at Kate’s name and number in his contact list, he could feel his heart pounding. He didn't seem to be able to breathe properly. It was as if the air had turned thick and heavy. What if she wouldn’t take his call? Why should she, after all? She had needed him, and he hadn’t been there for her.
Had he ever been there for her? His gut twisted as he realized that he'd spent the entire duration of their short relationship obsessing about himself and his own feelings. The sexual desire for her that must, at all costs, be satisfied. His increasing need to possess her body, mind, and heart. He hadn't been able to tolerate the thought of her first marriage. He was jealous of a dead man. How crazy was that? Worse, he was, at times, resentful of her grief, because it reminded him, uncomfortably, of his own.
She had told him she loved him. Sometimes he thought he’d imagined that, but, no, it had been real. She had said it, and he’d brushed it off because he didn’t trust or believe in love. And then he'd walked out on her, so consumed by his own pain that he'd refused to acknowledge hers. Now she was enduring a different kind of pain, and again he wasn’t there to support her.
Why should she take a call from him now? He’d been nothing but a selfish jerk from the night they’d met to the night he’d left her weeping. He couldn't believe he hadn't realized this before now.
Damn. Was it too late to make amends? What if she wouldn't talk to him?
He pressed the screen to initiate the call. He might be a jerk, but he wasn’t a coward.
He half-expected the call to go to voice mail, but it went through. A male voice answered. He didn’t sound friendly. "This is Kate’s phone."
"I’d like to speak to her, please."
"Why? What do you want?"
"Uh...who am I talking to?"
"This is Stephen Silkwood. Kate's asleep. Call back some other time."
Daniel’s brain felt fuzzy. Stephen Silkwood, the mystery novelist. What the hell was he doing with Kate’s phone, and how did he know she was asleep? Jealousy and confusion warred in him for a moment. Kate had told him Stephen was like a brother to her, but right now it felt as if the guy was a rival.
"Look," he said. "I'm a friend of Kate's. In fact—"
"I know who you are," the man on the other end interrupted. "Your name came up on the screen when the phone rang. I doubt she’ll care to speak to you, but if you want to leave a message, I guess I could pass it on to her."
There were about a dozen questions he wanted to ask, but the one that came out was, "Is she all right?"
"Do you care?" countered Silkwood.
He swallowed. "Yes. I do. I went to the theater to see her tonight, and I was told that one of her friends had been injured in an accident. Was it you? Are you, uh, okay?"
There was a short silence on the other end. Daniel guessed that the other man was deciding what to tell him. At last he said, "It wasn’t me; it was Jeff. You met him, digitally speaking, that night you and Kate logged into the game."
"I remember. The college professor. What happened to him?"
"He was cleaning out his gutters and fell off his roof."
Shit, thought Daniel. "How bad is it?"
Without answering directly, the other man continued, "I picked Kate up in Cambridge this morning and drove her out here. We collected Jeff from the hospital and brought him home, and now we’re taking turns sitting with him."
"So he’s going to recover? He’s not seriously injured?"
"He’ll live," Silkwood said shortly.
Daniel let out a deep breath that he hadn’t realized he’d been holding. He felt absurdly grateful to the man on the other end of the phone, who had just cleared up several points that he’d been agonizing about. If this guy had already been released from the hospital, his injuries couldn't be too severe. Which was good, for Kate’s sake as well as for Jeff.
"Thank you," he said feelingly. "I had no idea what was going on. Graham refused to give me any details."
"Graham the actor? From Kate’s theater company? He can be a bit of a dick at times."
"You've got that right," Daniel said dryly. "So." He hesitated for a moment before saying, "You guys are good friends, so I’m sure Kate has told you about me. I’m guessing I’m in pretty deep shit at the moment?"
"Oh yeah. To hear Kate tell it, you’re quite the heartbreaker. And since I’ve known her since we were both freshmen in college, I’m inclined to believe it. In fact, I’ve been thinking about kicking your sorry ass, and I’m sure that Jeff, when he recovers from his broken bones, will be glad to help."
Daniel found himself grinning. "It’s gonna take two of you? Why don’t you just send that torturer hero of yours–what’s the guy’s name? Bartholomew Giles?"
"Whoa. The boyfriend can read? I’m impressed."
"I've read a couple of your books. I liked them a lot."
"Thanks, but flattery won’t get you off this particular hook. You really messed with her heart and mind, and that pisses me off. Why are you calling? If your thing with her is over and done with, I get that. It happens. Just leave her the hell alone and let her heal."
"It’s not over. At least, I hope it’s not. I screwed up. I’m kinda just realizing how much."
"In that case, I don't know, man. You’ve got a lot of ground to make up, but this is not the time. She was pretty shaken up about Jeff’s accident–understandably, considering what she went through three years ago. She doesn’t need any pressure from you right now."
This was not what he wanted to hear, but it was hard to deny that it made sense. Of course Kate was upset, and of course she had turned for comfort to the friends she had relied on for years, rather than the short-term lover who had seduced and abandoned her. At least this Stephen seemed like a good guy. He was direct, open, and was protective of Kate. It was hard to find fault with that.
"Your friend, Jeff. How badly hurt is he?"
"He’ll be fine. Broken leg, ribs. Mild concussion. He needs to take it easy for a while. But it was scary last night when I first got the news, because I didn’t have any details. It took forever to get a doctor on the phone, but I waited until I knew something solid before calling Kate this morning. I didn’t want to frighten her. It still freaked her out, though."
"How’s she doing now?"
"Better. She finally went up to bed, and I haven’t heard her stir, so I presume she’s sleeping."
Daniel had a sharp yearning to be lying next to her. Damn. What a fool he had been. He needed to see her, to hold her, to make things right again. A possible plan occurred to him. "What about you? If you were up last night trying to pump his doctors for info, you must be exhausted yourself. Do you need help? I think Kate told me Jeff lived in southeastern Massachusetts somewhere? I could be there in a little over an hour."
Silence. Then, "You’re kidding, right?"
"I’m serious. Look, you don’t know me, but I’m not bad in a crisis. Hell, I even spent some time a few years ago as an embe
dded journalist with an army med unit in Afghanistan. In a pinch, I can, like, change dressings and stuff."
"Dude, please don’t try to convince me that you have any interest in changing dressings. You want to see Kate."
"Fine. That’s true. But that doesn’t mean I wouldn’t be willing to help. I’m not completely selfish."
Silkwood made a skeptical sound.
"Look. I fucked up. I need to fix it."
"That’s laudable," said Stephen, "but, number one, Max is arriving any minute to take the night shift. You remember Max, the guy you accused of being a hacker? Number two, this is a private party. No offense, but you haven’t exactly earned a place in the club yet."
Daniel didn’t have a good answer to that. He’d known that Kate’s friends had collectively pulled her out of a pit of depression after the death of her husband. He’d known, of course, that they gamed together, although he had begun to suspect that the gaming was less of a geek pastime and more of a way for these old friends to connect and keep in touch. Arthur must have been part of their club, too. Kate had told him that she’d gone to college with Arthur, Stephen, Jeff, and at least one other guy whose name he couldn’t remember. But Max wasn’t one of the original group; Kate had never actually met Max, who was privacy-obsessed and possibly the only real hard-core gamer.
These were her friends, her support group, her circle. They'd had their own bodies tattooed for her. This had to be a tight-knit group. They had the power to take Kate in and close ranks against him. It occurred to him for the first time that maybe these were the folks he ought to be worrying about instead of dear dead Arthur.
"How do I do that?" he asked. "Earn a place?" It was a difficult question for him to ask. Daniel was unaccustomed to being humble. He had always been confident in his own abilities. When he wanted something, he thought about it until he devised the most direct and efficient way to get it, and then he charged into action. He rarely failed. But this problem didn’t seem to have an easy solution.
