Envy the Night

Frank’s laugh, low and genuine, caught her by surprise and relaxed her. She leaned back and twisted a little, facing him directly.

“The wedding date was set for a month ago, in fact. Came and went and here I remain. I had his full support when I came out here, after Dad’s stroke. Longer I stayed, though, the pushier he became about me coming back to Minneapolis. And I realized a couple of things. One was that I didn’t want my father to be alone in a nursing home, nobody coming to see him, his shop going out of business, all the rest of that. It seemed so wrong.”

“And the other?” Frank said.

“The other was that I didn’t want to get married. I’d been dating him for five years, living with him for two, and yet I kept coming up with delays.”

“Just reluctant, then? No specific reason, no epiphany?”

She started to nod, then stopped, wondering if agreement would be a lie. There had been an epiphany of sorts. A party not long after their engagement, when Seth had turned to a group of people to introduce Nora and said, This is my fiancee. She’d waited for the Nora to follow, but it never came. A simple thing, maybe, a minuscule issue of semantics, but in that moment it hadn’t felt simple or minuscule. It felt chilling. Because she knew that he hadn’t misspoken, knew that her identity, at least in his mind, had already been completed. The name was irrelevant; she was his fiancee. His possession. Standing there in an uncomfortable dress making phony smiles at people she’d never truly trust, she flashed forward twenty years and saw herself introduced as This is my wife, again no name behind it, then saw herself kissing his neck and running her hands along his back so he’d write a check for her daughter’s trip to Europe, saw herself doing that and not even recognizing it for what it was.

A powerful moment, one that had stayed with her as few others had and one that she’d never discussed with anyone, and would not discuss now, with Frank. It was a bit too much, a bit too personal.

“When I had to come up here, it was the first time I’d been on my own in a long while,” she said instead. “It felt good. The other thing, and this was a good deal more personal, was that he made too much money. Not millions or anything, but enough that he wanted me to forget about a day job and concentrate on my art.”

“Generally considered a positive thing.”

“That’s what I thought. First I had my mother and my stepfather taking care of me, spoiled little shit that I was, and then the future husband promising to do the same thing. Wonderful, right? But when I came up here and started going through my dad’s things, really looking at his life, at how hard he and my grandfather had worked to make a living off that crappy little shop . . .”

“Made you feel soft?”

“Made me realize I am soft. My dad got up at three in the morning when it snowed, ran the plow till eight, then came back and opened his shop up and worked all day. Would run the plow again in the evening, if he had to. Did that all winter, for thirty years. When I went back through their books, I saw that there was never a time when that shop did more than struggle to keep bills paid, but they kept them paid. For sixty-eight years, they kept them paid.”

The wind blew hair into her face and she pushed it back.

“I’ve never worked for anything. Not that counted. I worked for good grades, worked on my art, but that’s not the same. I’ve never had to work hard, never had my back to the wall in any way in my entire life. I suppose it’s awfully childish of me to say that like it’s a bad thing. I suppose I should just be grateful.”

“Is that what the fiance told you?”

“Among other things.”

“So you called it off?”

“He gave me an ultimatum.”

“Poor bastard. Hate to bluff on a play like that.”

“I guess.”

“A name,” Frank said. “I require a name.”

“Seth.”

“Horrible.”

“Someone named Frank is criticizing another guy’s name?”

“Frank was half of the first names of the Hardy Boys. It doesn’t get any more solid than that.”

She was laughing again, and he seemed to have drawn closer without ever moving, and there was a sudden intimacy to the evening that absolutely did not belong. Even while understanding that it didn’t belong, she didn’t want it to go away, either. There was a pause that went on a few beats too long, his face close to hers.

“This is where you tell me what a shitty kisser Seth was,” Frank said. “To inspire me.”

“Inspire you to what?”

He didn’t respond.

“Can’t do it,” she said. “He was actually a very good kisser.”

“She sets the bar high,” Frank said, and then his hand was sliding across the back of her neck and pulling her forward and his lips were on hers and, what do you know, he was better than Seth.

22

__________

It was the first time he’d watched anyone kiss through a rifle scope. When Ezra realized what they were doing, he dropped the gun and looked skyward, despondent. Just what this mess needed. What the hell was the kid thinking?

He lifted the gun again, watched them for a few seconds, Nora Stafford beautiful even bathed in the wavering green light of the scope. Okay, that was what the kid was thinking. On second look, even through the scope, it made a hell of a lot of sense. Well, good for Frank.

Very good, really. Ezra hadn’t liked the boy’s look this evening. Reminded him too much of other men he’d known, in other places. It wasn’t the way he wanted to see the young Temple go. The girl could be good for him. Once they got this shit cleared up, got those sons of bitches from Florida or wherever they were from sent on their way, the girl could be a wonderful thing for Frank. Ezra hadn’t seen her many times, but enough to know that she was a different cut than others her age. As was Frank. Certainly, as was Frank.

Ezra went into the water two hundred feet from the island, swam naked through the cold lake, spent all of thirty seconds on the motor, and then swam off into the darkness again, leaving the outboard disabled. Whole thing had taken maybe five minutes, but they were minutes that took him back to those other places, those other times. Damn, but the three of them had been close once. You got a different sort of close in combat. He’d read a couple of textbooks on the brotherhood of battle once, written by psychologists sitting in university offices in towns that held peace rallies even when the country wasn’t at war. Read just enough to know that the authors didn’t understand their subject, and then gave up and moved on to other books.

The lake had healed Ezra. That was something none of the psychologists would understand, but it was as true as anything he’d ever known. This place had healed him. He liked to believe the violence had drained away slowly, that the lake and forests had soaked it up, taken it from him. What he feared, time to time, was that it hadn’t drained away at all. That it was just a little better hidden.

He was esteemed throughout the area as a hunter, but what he never told anyone was that he’d let the real trophies pass by. He’d looked at some amazing bucks in the scope, and once at a bear that went a good eighty pounds beyond any he’d ever seen in these woods, and he’d turned away from them. Let them go in peace. Just to prove he didn’t even have to hunt, didn’t have to kill, didn’t have to squeeze the trigger ever again if he didn’t want to.

The lake had done that for him.

He was glad when Frank and Nora stood up and went into the cabin, left him to watch nothing but the building and the woods through his scope. He didn’t want to watch people through the scope anymore.

They’d been kissing for a while when Nora put her palm on his chest and pushed him back.