If he’d asked her to come in, she’d have had time to put on an expressionless face and stroll in, but the door opened abruptly.
“You want to see me?”
What could she say but, “Yes. I…I need to speak with you.”
He stared down at her, and his inquiring look was neither friendly nor unfriendly. Just curious. You’ve had all evening, at least two hours, his expression seemed to say. Why now and what?
He motioned for her to sit in the chair near his desk, but her discomfort increased when she realized that he intended to stand. She didn’t know where to start.
“Any problems?” he asked, as though anticipating something unwanted.
She nodded. “Yes. I didn’t tell you what I’m writing about.”
He shrugged. “As long as you aren’t doing an expose on me or using Tonya as a guinea pig for some kind of research, I wouldn’t think it would be something we couldn’t…well, handle.” His gaze bore into her, a well drill seeking an underground spring, and she shifted in her chair.
“No. Nothing like that. It’s…I’m the person who writes Aunt Mariah’s column for The Evening Post.”
He straightened up from where he’d leaned against a cabinet of books. “You’re kidding. Why didn’t you say so when you came here?”
She made herself look at him with all the honest innocence she could muster. “Al, that’s my editor, had it inserted in my contract that I couldn’t divulge Aunt Mariah’s identity.”
He seemed to muse over that, and she knew what he’d say next. “Then why are you telling me now?”
“Because…Duncan, a man has been calling here and pestering me. He said he’d teach me to mind my business. And today I took Tonya with me to the post office to get Aunt Mariah’s mail, and a man with that voice confronted me. I told him I didn’t know who he was talking about. I hung around there for almost an hour hoping he’d gone, but as I came out of the building, I saw him getting into his car. Mattie said he came here before I got home, and that he’d been here before asking for me.”
“What did she tell him?”
“That she’d never heard of me. She said he seemed unsavory.”
“I see. Did you get any letters from women who complained about their husbands or boyfriends?”
“Quite a few, but I only told three or four of them to take strong measures.”
He moved closer, more relaxed now and his voice softer. “Like what?”
“Leave the abusive man; go to work and exert some independence, that sort of thing.”
He knelt on his haunches and took both of her hands. “In the future, when you have a problem, don’t be afraid to tell me about it. This is dangerous. I don’t want you to go to that post office ever again. I’ll get your mail every day. And for a time at least, if you have to go to that paper, or anywhere, take a taxi and give me the receipt. Don’t take Tonya out unless I’m with you.”
She thought it over for a few minutes. If he and Al ever met and her name was mentioned, the fat would be in the fire. “I don’t go to the paper, Duncan. I mail my columns in once a week. Al and I speak by phone.”
“All right. If you still have the letters those women wrote to you, I’d like to see them.”
“I have them.”
He stood and began pacing the floor, and she didn’t doubt that his mind had begun working, misgivings sneaking into his thoughts. “Why couldn’t you have asked for my confidence and told me about your work? Did you think I wouldn’t wonder why you, a fledgling writer, never asked me, a journalist, to read anything you’d written?”
“I’m sorry, Duncan. Maybe I was unwise. Do you want me to leave?”
A look of uncertainty flashed over his face. “About this? Of course not. Your contract demanded your secrecy and, like your word, it’s your bond.”
She didn’t know whether to be pleased by that remark. It could be a forewarning of an intractable impasse somewhere down the road. And she already knew that when he took a position and decided not to budge, you’d need an earthquake to move him. He’d given her a reprieve, but she knew it was a temporary one.
She rose to leave. “I hadn’t picked up my mail in over a week because of the man’s threatening phone call and the calls I got when the caller didn’t identify himself.”
“I’ll get your mail tomorrow morning.”
“Thanks.”
He said he was glad to do it, but it seemed to her that his whole demeanor mocked his words and belied his apparent calm, and she had an intuitive sense that a storm was brewing in him.
“I’d better go,” she said, for want of a better way of announcing her desire to leave him.
He didn’t attempt to detain her, and she suspected that she’d lost some points with him.
He walked to the door. “See you in the morning.”
He let her pass close enough to brush his body and, from what she could tell, he didn’t move a muscle. She didn’t look him in the face. Who knew what he was thinking and feeling? He was magnanimous in overlooking her negligence, generous in his offer to collect her mail, and ice-cold in his behavior.
Aunt Mariah! And he’d bet that wasn’t the half of it. He hadn’t forgotten that she’d derailed his efforts to find a woman who would agree to marry him and care for Tonya in exchange for a comfortable, if celibate, life. Never mind that he had scuttled the idea for reasons of his own. She’d been out of line, and she hadn’t seen fit to apologize. Irritation bubbled up in him like stale bile, and he knocked on her door.
“I’m trying to understand about your column,” he said when she opened the door, “but it isn’t so easy, and the worst of it is, you don’t trust me.”
“I’m sorry, Duncan. I offered to leave.”
“That wouldn’t solve anything, and you know it. Furthermore, it isn’t what I want. You’re in danger and my home and my child are in jeopardy. I ought to call Al Jackson and give him a good dressing down. Your mail should have gone to the paper.”
“You said you’d collect it for me. Have you changed your mind?”
He didn’t want to upset her too much, but she had to know that she’d displeased him. “I keep my word, Justine.” He leaned against the doorjamb and crossed his legs at the ankles. “What’s done is done. That man has seen you, and I can’t risk your going outside alone.”
Her rueful smile tugged at his heart. “So I’m relegated to the back garden?”
He straightened up and put his hands in his trouser pockets. “Well, we’re going up to the Adirondacks for a few days. After we get back, we’ll work something out. It’s comfortable up there, so you’ll be able to work on your column, if you want to, and you can walk all you like. By the way, I forgot to tell you Warren called a few days ago.”
She rolled her eyes toward the ceiling. “Thanks.”
He’d been right. Warren wasn’t on her list. “Suppose we fly to Albany Friday afternoon, pick up a rental car, and drive on to Indian Lake?”
She regarded him carefully. “Are you sure you want to do this?”
“I don’t volunteer to do what I don’t want to do.”
“All right,” she said. “Friday it is.”
Justine walked out onto the log cabin’s front porch, gazed at the sun’s reflection in the lake, and took a deep breath of clean, crisp air.
“Glad you came?”
She turned toward the direction of Duncan’s voice. “I could stay here forever.”
He raised an eyebrow at that. “Without a TV, telephone, internet, air conditioning, a microwave oven, and central heating?”
She turned fully to face him. Did he think her so frivolous? “I’m not married to material things, Duncan. This place is comfortable, peaceful, and attractive. And the environment is spectacular. It’s…It’s wonderful.”
His fingers warmed her forearm. “I’ll make us some coffee. After Tonya wakes up, we can go up to the lodge and get our breakfast.”
Later that day, she strolled alone along the lake glan
cing occasionally toward the forest of thick trees and shrubs that grew almost to the water’s edge. She sat on a boulder, serene, almost happy, and regarded her surroundings. The six log cabins and central lodge sat at the edge of the lake nestled in the woods with a quarter of a mile or more between them. That Duncan’s cabin stood farthest from the others, inside the woods, was not an accident, she decided, but in keeping with his penchant for privacy. She picked up a sturdy stick and trudged over the rough terrain, back to Duncan’s cabin.
“Thought you’d gotten lost, or worse, that you met a bear,” Duncan said. “Say did you bring a radio?”
She hadn’t thought of it. “No. Why?”
“Up here, you need to know what the weather’s going to do, especially this late in the year.” He put some logs on the fire and closed the screen. “We have to keep Tonya away from the fireplace.”
In spite of the idyllic environment, Justine couldn’t relax. She didn’t believe in premonitions, but something made her uneasy, and she wondered whether Duncan had brought her to the Adirondacks to confront her with her deception.
Around three o’clock the next afternoon, Duncan decided to gather chestnuts from the cluster of trees that grew in the forest. “Nothing like fresh roasted chestnuts,” he told Justine. “I can’t imagine Christmas or Thanksgiving without them. If I’m lucky, the squirrels will have left me some. See you shortly.”
She walked to the back door with him and watched as he headed into the woods. Before leaving home, they had agreed to avoid all semblances of intimacy, and he hadn’t offered her a kiss, though his eyes had begged for her sweetness. For the next two hours, she answered Aunt Mariah’s mail, struggling with her reply to “Restless,” a teenager who wanted to leave home and who had good reasons. She looked up from her writing and stared, dumbfounded, at the grainy snow that fell so thickly as to obscure her view of the lake that lay a mere seventy-five feet from her window. She went to the back porch and could barely see the forest. Where was Duncan? And how would he find his way back to the cabin?
As night settled, her anxiety for him mounted. She looked in the shed on the back porch, found three lanterns, some flares, flashlights, light bulbs, and a cord, along with firewood. Another hour passed, and he hadn’t come back. Without a phone to call the lodge and with the path to it blocked by snowdrifts, she had to look for him, and that meant going into those woods. But she couldn’t leave Tonya alone in the house. She dressed herself and Tonya warmly, found a terry cloth bath sheet and tied it lengthwise around her hips. Then she sat on the bed, put Tonya in the sheet facing her and tied its top lengthwise around her neck to make a pouch in which to carry the child. Unaware of the implications, Tonya bubbled with joy as though beginning a new game. Justine put on a cap and a pair of gloves, got the lanterns, flares, cord, and flashlights and eased her way down the back steps.
She tied one end of the cord to the back porch, hung a lantern on it and tied the other end to the branch of a tree. With the flashlights and flares in her pockets and lanterns in each hand, she trekked through the icy snow toward the forest. She hung one lantern on a limb that she could barely reach, and its red blaze penetrated the night. If only she had a cane to help sturdy her steps as walking became more hazardous. But she couldn’t turn back; he was out there somewhere, and he needed her.
“Juju love Tonya?”
Justine wondered at the question and asked the child whether she was cold, but Tonya’s response was to sing, “Tonya loves Juju. Tonya loves Daddy,” oblivious to the danger they faced.
The wind gathered momentum, whistling ominously through the trees as though searching for her, and grains of snow like sharp icicles bruised her face. She closed her eyes for a minute, glad that she wore glasses, and trudged on. Increasingly desperate now, her fingers numb, she hung the third lantern and prayed that the snow wouldn’t wipe out her tracks and she and Tonya would also be lost.
She got a flashlight from her pocket, flicked it on, and its yellow beam penetrated deep into the woods. She rotated it several times and thought she saw a moving object. Again and again, she moved it in circles until she saw something settled against a tree trunk. Slowly, she blinked the light, fearful of attracting a wild animal and of wandering from her path. She looked back and could barely see the red blaze of the third lantern.
The grainy snow stung her cheeks like tiny needles. She put one arm beneath Tonya’s bottom and satisfied herself that her child was secure. Then, she blinked the light again, and the object moved. She had to risk it.
“Duncan,” she called. “Duncan, where are you?”
She stood still and her nerves seemed to scatter as though reassembling themselves. When there was no answer, she called again. Louder.
“Duncan. Can you hear me? Duncan, where are you?”
In the silence, she brushed the snow from the pouch in which she carried Tonya, from the cap on her head, and from her face. Again she called him. The low sound was not a growl, but more like a moan. Then she remembered the flare and lit it. If that was Duncan, he’d be able to see her. She stood still and waited as the object moved toward her, seemingly groping its way.
“Duncan,” she called, allowing herself a last chance to escape.
“Jus…Justine.”
She thought her heart would burst, but she knew she couldn’t celebrate when the task of getting him to the cabin lay before her. She held the flare until he reached her and slumped against the tree.
“Duncan. Honey, are you all right?”
“Soon…Soon as I g…get warm.”
Six hours in that weather without hat, top coat, or boots. She shook her head. With one arm around him, she led them to the third lantern. He slumped again, and she had to slap his face in the hope of energizing him. For what seemed like hours, she struggled with Duncan and Tonya until, at last, they reached the lantern at the door of the log cabin, and she knew they’d made it safely.
She got them into the house, put Tonya in bed without awakening her, and turned to the task of taking care of Duncan.
She ran a tub of hot water, led him to the bathroom, and helped him undress. “You have to get in that tub, Duncan. For all we know, you could be suffering from hypothermia and frostbite.”
“But I don’t—”
“Get in there, Duncan. I didn’t risk my life and Tonya’s for no good reason, so don’t be a baby.”
Unused to taking orders, he sat on the edge of the tub, put his feet in the hot water, and grimaced. She pushed him into the tub. “You’ll get used to it.”
She had to get out of that bathroom. Not even the raw condition of her nerves from their near catastrophe was sufficient to keep her libido quiet when she looked at Duncan’s body, nude but for a G-string.
Half an hour later, Duncan walked into the living room and sat down. “That was close. I’ve been coming up here for years, but that’s the first time I’ve gotten lost. The snow came so suddenly and so heavily that I couldn’t find my way. I couldn’t see a single landmark.”
“Let’s not think about it.”
His eyes stroked her with adoration. “I hadn’t given up, but I didn’t see how I would make it. You’re a brave woman, and a smart one, too.”
And right now, a happy one. “What I want right now is some food.”
He leaned forward, took the poker, and pushed a log in place. “We were going to have a cook-out tomorrow. Let’s eat the hot dogs. We can roast them and some potatoes here in the fireplace. How did Tonya react to that adventure?”
Her mind hadn’t been on Tonya, but on the man whom her soul loved. She thought for a minute. “For once, she used a complete sentence.”
“Like what?”
“Tonya loves Daddy.”
A grin streaked across his face. “Well, I’ll be.”
They finished the modest meal and sat before the fire, lost in their individual thoughts. Justine listened with consternation as the storm whistled around the log cabin.
“I might still be out
in that storm, if you’d been like Marie—scared of anything she couldn’t eat, wear, or spend. I’m tired, and I need to lie down, but I don’t want to leave you.”
She didn’t want them to get into a lovers clinch. Feeling about him as she did, glad he was alive, she wouldn’t have let him stop.
“We’d better turn in,” she said, as she looked into eyes that were turbulent pools of desire. “I know how you feel, Duncan, because I feel that way, too, but this time, I’m prepared to stop it. So let’s stick to our agreement. Goodnight.”
She felt his gaze on her, but controlled the urge to look at him, went into the room she shared with her daughter, and closed the door.
That had been close. Because of her ingenuity and guts, he was sitting there staring into the fire. He wanted her in his bed as he’d never wanted anything, but he couldn’t break his covenant with her. He got some coal from the back porch, banked the fire, and went to bed.
“Sorry you didn’t have as many opportunities to enjoy the outdoors at Indian Lake as I’d hoped. We’d better wait ’til spring before we try it again,” Duncan said, as the taxi stopped in front of his home.
“It had its great moments,” she answered, “and I enjoyed it.”
He lifted Tonya and took Justine’s hand. “Don’t forget to stay in the back garden if you want to spend time outside, and I wouldn’t venture into those woods alone. Okay?”
He could see from her face that it was not all right, but until he figured out a different strategy, she’d have to stay out of sight. He told her so.
“Will we try to catch this guy?”
He opened the front door with his keys. “We’ll get him.”
He settled down at his desk to work on the last article of his series on juveniles. The sooner he finished it, the quicker he could get started on that expose of Baltimore slumlords. Several hours later, he reread what he’d written. Bland. No guts. No hard facts. He shredded it, put on his “street” clothes and headed for “East of the River.” Something always happened down there, and it almost always involved young boys.
Fools Rush In Page 20
