by Zoe Sharp
He drove without apparent effort, shoulders relaxed. I’d once driven through the night with Sean from Stuttgart to Berlin and back, at hair-raising speeds of over a hundred and sixty miles an hour for most of the journey. Going a steady sixty-five on an arrow-straight freeway should have been child’s play by comparison, but there was so little stimulation that the hardest part was staying awake.
“Not getting tired?” I persisted. “Let me know as soon as you are and I’ll take over for a while, let you get some shuteye.”
“I’m fine,” he said. He glanced across at me. “You maybe ought to grab some sleep yourself, though, so you can spell me later.”
“Yeah, I know,” I said, lifting a wry shoulder. “Still too wired, I suppose.”
“Well, you could always talk to me, Charlie. Keep me awake that way.”
Something in the silky way he said it had my heart rate accelerating. “What about?”
He must have heard the way it slightly changed my voice, because he laughed softly. “Not that,” he said dryly. “Although, if you really want to talk dirty to me while your parents are dozing lightly in the backseat then feel free, by all means.”
“No, I don’t,” I said, aiming for stern but badly let down by the hitch in my breath. “And it was a reasonable question. It’s only your dirty mind that puts any other slant on it.”
“Guilty,” he said cheerfully. A pause. “Actually, I wanted to talk about us. About last night.”
My pulse had begun to slow, but at that it took off again like someone had fed in a squirt of nitrous oxide. I felt the liquid burn under my skin, firing a primitive flight response that translated into such a fierce blush I was glad of the surrounding darkness.
“Wow,” I said, surprisingly sedate. “I thought it was supposed to be the woman who always initiated conversations like that.”
“Don’t hedge, Charlie,” he said, and though his voice was mild, I heard the underlying serrated edge to it. “I promised I wouldn’t hurt you and … I did.”
“No,” I denied quickly. “It—”
“I hurt you,” he repeated, more harshly. “And I’m sorry for it. More than you’ll ever know.” The last part was muttered under his breath, hardly audible.
“It doesn’t matter,” I said, and saw the frustrated twitch that crossed his features.
“Well, it damn well should,” he said quietly. “In one breath I tell you that I’m not the same as the bastards who raped you, and then, in the next, I’m practically doing the same thing myself. I let my temper get away from me.” His fingers flexed round the steering wheel and I had a flash recall of them braceleting my wrists with the same unforgiving grip. If his hollow tone was anything to go by, he remembered it, too. “It’s not something I’m proud of.”
“Do you honestly believe what you did—what we did—was rape?” I said, cracking the last word like a whip, even though I kept my voice down to a fierce whisper. “Nowhere near. It was wild, yes. A little rough, maybe. But if you think that qualifies, you’re a bloody fool!”
“I disagree,” he said icily.
I tried to let go of my anger. “Okay, have it your own way—yes, you raped me,” I snapped, still keeping the volume as low as I could manage, feeling the slightest tremble of the car as he controlled his reaction. “I didn’t enjoy it for a second and I faked my orgasms—all of them. Happy now? Hair shirt uncomfortable enough for you?”
For a second Sean’s face had frozen, then all the tension went out of him and he made a spluttering sound that might have been suppressed laughter, but could just as easily have been anguish.
“Oh my God, Charlie,” he said at last, almost a groan, shaking his head. “I’ve always tried so hard not to remind you—”
“You don’t,” I said, cutting him short. “And do you think I don’t know that, anyway? Do you honestly think I would stay with someone who deliberately set out to intimidate me? To hurt me?” I huffed out a breath. “You must have a pretty low opinion of my own sense of self-worth, Sean.” A wisp of an earlier conversation drifted through my mind. “And you’re not the only one,” I muttered.
It took Sean all of a second to latch on to that. “Your father?”
“He made his feelings clear over breakfast,” I said lightly. “Told me how pitiful he found me—that I must be a whack-job to have enjoyed any of it.”
“Your father actually used the expression ‘whack-job,’ did he?” Sean murmured. “Don’t you just hate it when he comes out with all that technical medical jargon?”
I shrugged, more an annoyed roll of my shoulders. “So I’m paraphrasing,” I allowed. “‘Pitiful’ is definitely one of his, though.” I debated silently for a moment about how much of the rest to tell him, then said, “When I told him I wasn’t likely to turn into a battered wife, he nearly had a heart attack.”
“At the ‘battered’ part or the ‘wife’ part?”
“Either—or both. Take your pick.”
A mile passed in silence. The periphery of the Camry’s headlights picked out some unidentified large bird of prey lying as crumpled roadkill on the shoulder of the highway, the feathers of one stiffened wing ruffling slightly in the wash from the passing cars like it was waving for help.
“Does the prospect have any appeal for you?” Sean asked then. “Marriage?” There was nothing in his voice, no clue to which way he hoped I’d answer.
“I’m assuming that wasn’t some kind of proposal,” I said, with the same care I’d use to approach a suspect device. “I think, at the moment, I like things the way they are. What’s that old saying? If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it. Besides, I’m not sure I’m good wife material—battered or otherwise.” I only caught Sean’s shoulders shift by some infinitesimal amount because I was looking, and looking hard. “Why?”
Sean pulled out to overtake a truck that seemed to be going only a few miles an hour slower than we were, despite hauling a double trailer-load of tree trunks behind it. The driver was tired enough to wander slightly into our lane as we drew alongside. Sean accelerated out from under him, then let the cruise control pick up again.
“Because it’s not a question that’s occurred to me before,” he said. “And this is the kind of journey where no doubt we’ll get to say all kinds of things that haven’t occurred to us before.” He took a breath, cocked his head as if considering. “I don’t think I’m good husband material, either. And, if genetics are anything to go by, I’d make a lousy father,” he added, his voice hardening just a touch.
“Well, like I said—if it ain’t broke …”
“That’s not to say it will never need fixing, at some point in the future,” Sean said then, his voice calm, almost remote. “It’s just, right now, I think this is probably all I have to give you … to give anyone. But, if—or when, but more likely if—I ever get to the stage where I feel inclined to propose, it would be to you, Charlie.”
Inside my head I heard a soft hissing sound, like a lover’s gasp or spray on summer lawns, followed by a smooth vortex of tightly spiraling, conflicted thoughts.
Too much.
Not enough.
As good as you’re going to get.
“Thank you,” I said quietly, listening to the rhythm of the tires over a section of mended road surface. And I found myself smiling. “My parents would utterly freak out.”
“All the more reason for you to say yes, then—if or when it ever happens.” I saw the answering flash of his teeth. And, as if I’d asked the question out loud, he added, “And no, you’d never be battered if you were my wife. Not by me, at any rate.”
I reached across and brushed my fingers along his cheekbone, where the hollow dipped it into shadow. The skin was tightly stretched. He was concentrating on the road ahead and almost flinched under my touch.
“I’m not made of glass, Sean,” I said, keeping my voice deceptively gentle. “Four of them couldn’t break me. You won’t come close. And I meant what I said last night.”
“Wh
ich part?”
“The part where I told you if you dared hold anything back, I’d kill you where you stood.”
He let a laugh form, even if it was a shaky one. “Ah, that part,” he murmured, and his voice turned wry. “I think you almost did.”
I grinned at him, mostly in relief. A feeling that lasted right up until a disembodied voice spoke up from the backseat.
“I’d like to stop for a short break when it’s next convenient,” my father said, sounding cool and collected and not at all like a man who’s only just woken from an uncomfortable nap. “No rush,” he added. “Please—do finish your conversation first … .”
CHAPTER 27
We drove through the night, Sean and I, heading steadily southwest, one town blurring into the next on the endless road. We passed signs for familiar English place names in unfamiliar locations, all jumbled together until it was like something out of a long bizarre dream.
Dawn broke as we crossed the border from Virginia into Tennessee, the sun rising ragged over the Appalachians. It sparkled on the dew in roadside pastures, stretching the outlines of the trees and the dozing horses. We chased our own shadow for a hundred miles before it fell away and was trampled beneath the Camry’s wheels. The daylight, which started out so softly tentative, sharpened to a vicious edge by noon.
By 3:30 P.M., allowing for the hour we’d gained going from Eastern to Central time, we were approaching Memphis, Tennessee. We stopped at a roadside diner that had been cryogenically frozen sometime in the mid-fifties. An antique jukebox played a series of old maudlin country numbers, to which the wait staff sang along with more enthusiasm than technical accuracy. Raucous, but welcoming.
Our waitress must have been sixty-five, with skin the color of bourbon and the legs of a woman half her age, which she showed off beneath a skirt that was barely longer than her apron. She also had an accent thick enough to slice as she called my father “sugar” and bumped him with her hip as she declared how much she just loved the way he done talk.
I half-expected my father to tighten up like a clam’s armpit at her impertinence. To my surprise he seemed happy to chat to the woman, whose name was Glory, even going so far as to compliment her on the caterwauling she’d been subjecting us to.
“I knew you folk must be believers,” she said, beaming at us. “You on this road, headin’ west, and you gotta be goin’ to Graceland.” She finished scribbling on her pad, already heading for the kitchen, which we could see into behind the long counter, calling back over her shoulder, “You see the King, sugar, you be sure to done tell him Glory never lost the faith, now. We know he ain’t dead. It’s all some gov’ment conspiracy. Yes sir.”
“Of course,” my father said gravely. “I’d be delighted to pass on your message.”
“‘Delighted,’ huh?” She laughed and shook her head as she slapped in our order. “You sure talk pretty, sugar.”
My father waited until she was out of earshot, then looked at the rest of us, totally puzzled. “The king of where?” he said.
Once we’d stopped, it was hard to get going again. We drove for another couple of hours before Sean finally caved and agreed that we needed to rest up until morning. By that time, we were just approaching Little Rock and night had fallen hard on Arkansas. The city looked very bright as it loomed on the horizon, initially beautiful against the utter black. It was only when we got nearer that the glitter seemed to take on a slightly tarnished quality.
We picked out a small nondescript chain hotel near the airport. It was close to the interstate and promised Jacuzzi rooms, free HBO movies, and a business center.
We left the Camry under the impressive portico at the front entrance while we gave the woman on the desk a sob story about having our passports and wallets stolen. We assuaged her immediate suspicions by producing a large enough cash deposit to counterbalance any qualms that we were about to trash the place and skip out. I think our air of bone-deep weariness mixed with English respectability won her over.
She gave us adjoining rooms, told us what time the complimentary breakfast would be laid out in the lobby, and had already wished us a pleasant stay before it occurred to her that might be difficult.
As we trudged back out to fetch our luggage I was aware of being so tired my vision was vibrating with the effort of keeping my eyes focused. I noted the movements of the people in the lobby almost on autopilot. If someone had pulled an Uzi out from under his coat I would have seen it, but I was probably too far gone to comprehend what it meant.
More than twenty-four hours sitting in a car without sports seats made me feel like someone had been kicking me repeatedly in the base of my spine. I was praying that, sometime sooner rather than later, the nerves into my left thigh would overload and shut down.
Walking out of the hotel, I could feel the gathered heat releasing from the ground up into the darkness. The night air was hot, and humid enough to drink, sticking my shirt to my back almost instantly. Sean popped the boot and he and my father grabbed the bags while my mother wheeled out a luggage trolley from the lobby.
It was only as Sean swung my bag up with the others that I remembered I hadn’t re-zipped it fully after our last stop. I stretched out a hand, but I was too tired and too slow. The little brown plastic bottle of Vicodin I’d stuffed just inside the top of the bag went spinning onto the ground and rolled to a stop by my father’s foot.
He picked it up before I could stop him, recognized the type of the bottle and scanned the label automatically. He was halfway through handing it back when he stopped, frowning, and looked up at me.
“These are yours, I assume, Charlotte?” he said. He held the pill bottle top and bottom with a disdainful finger and thumb and shook it gently, gauging the level of the contents by the resultant rattle.
“Yes,” I said, reaching for the bottle, but he whisked it out of reach. Fatigue is not a good sedative for temper. Mine lurched into life, leaving blotches of vivid color splashed behind my eyes. I held my hand out. “Do you mind?”
“That my daughter’s on Vicodin? Certainly,” he said. He shook the bottle again and peered at the date on the label. “And, it would seem, consuming them at a rate of knots. How long have you been taking these?”
I glanced to Sean for support, but he had that closed-up look to his face. He didn’t need to speak for me to see his mind working it out.
“On and off,” I said bluntly, “since I was shot.”
“I see. Naturally, you are aware that Vicodin is addictive if taken long term.”
“Of course I am,” I said, aiming for haughtiness but not making it much past defensive instead. “I don’t use them regularly—just when I need to. When my leg’s bad.” Like now. Give me the damn bottle!
“Were you taking them the day you passed your physical?” Sean asked suddenly, and the unexpected coolness of the question took me by surprise. Our closeness in the car, our solidarity, suddenly evaporated in the face of his veiled accusation.
“I—”
“Oh for heaven’s sake, both of you, leave the poor girl alone!” my mother said. “Don’t you think she’s got enough on her plate without you both jumping on her over this?”
“I’m sorry if you feel that the danger of our daughter turning into a drug addict is something we should just ignore, Elizabeth,” my father said.
My mother laughed. It was a bone-tired laugh, with a touch of hysteria skimming just under the surface. “Of course we shouldn’t ignore it, but I hardly think this is the time or the place to make it into an issue, either,” she said stoutly. “How many times have you told me people make bad decisions when they’re in pain? Surely you agree that’s the last thing any of us want at the moment—least of all Charlotte?”
“Vicodin is a mix of acetaminophen and hydrocodone,” my father bit out. “Hydrocodone is a narcotic pain reliever and acetaminophen increases its efficiency. Among the many possible side effects are impaired reactions and reduced mental alertness. In other words, it can se
verely affect the decisionmaking process. One has to be careful about letting a patient drive, or operate machinery. But you’re quite happy for Charlotte to be running around with that,” he said, gesturing dismissively in the direction of my hidden SIG, “and very little compunction about using it, when she’s on this type of medication?”
My father must have been tired, too. It was the first time I think I’ve ever heard him sound so testy with her, but my mother was undaunted. She drew herself up straight as a duchess and treated him to a lofty stare.
“And have Charlotte’s actions so far shown her to be anything but entirely rational?” she asked with brittle dignity. She allowed herself a shaky smile. “Terrifyingly so,” she added, and her voice softened. “Whether we like it or not, Richard, our lives are in Sean’s and Charlotte’s hands and I, for one, am prepared to trust her judgment implicitly.”
My father gave a single muffled tut, the only outward sign of his annoyance. He glanced at Sean, as if for support. I didn’t expect for a moment that he’d get it.
“Why didn’t you tell me you were still taking painkillers, Charlie?” Sean said quietly.
My brain was working too sluggishly to do more than gape at him for a moment. “Don’t start, Sean,” I snapped. “Nothing I’m taking has stopped me from doing my job. You said so yourself.”
“Yes, but are you doing it in spite of the Vicodin?” he said. “Or because of it?”
My mother stepped between us and put an arm around my shoulders. “Be sensible and leave it for now, Sean,” she said gently. “We’re all tired enough to say things we’ll regret in the morning. Come along, Charlotte,” she murmured steering me towards the hotel entrance. “I think for once we can forget equality of the sexes and leave the men to bring in the luggage, hm?”
I shrugged her arm away. “I can still do my job,” I said, dogged, stepping away from her and struggling not to stagger.
