knowing what a risky thing it was, she asked, “Was it your honeymoon?”
He threw her a startled look, drew one last time on his cigarette and tossed it to the ground, extinguishing it with the toe of his shoe before walking on. She was surprised when he answered, and thought he was, too. “Not my honeymoon.” He laughed, a sound like the creaking of an old structure swaying in the wind. “We weren’t married, just…together.”
She held her breath, held back the questions she wanted to ask. It was a long time before he went on, almost as if she wasn’t there at all, and he was talking only to himself.
“This is where we decided to do it, finally. Decided to get married. We’d been together forever-since we were kids. We’d talked about it before, but…I guess we were both afraid of ruining a good thing.”
“What changed your mind?” Jane dared to ask, as softly as she knew how.
They were walking on a quiet street lined with picket fences, beneath the branches of enormous live oaks. She thought it was like being in some ancient, ruined cathedral, except that there was light now from some of the houses they passed, distant music, canned laughter from someone’s TV.
“Children,” said Tom, after she’d given up hope of an answer. “We decided, since we both wanted kids, we should get married first.”
“You have children?”
Unable to trust his voice, Hawk only nodded, knowing she’d misunderstand.
It had been a long time since he’d hurt this bad, not since those first terrible weeks and months, after the shock had worn off and before he’d learned other ways to numb the pain. Part of him wanted to hate the woman beside him, this woman whose gentle insistence was like a dentist’s probe on an exposed nerve. But he couldn’t. He knew he could have put an end to her probing, could have cut her down as he’d cut down so many before her, coldly, cleanly, bloodlessly as a surgeon’s scalpel. But he didn’t.
And when she fell silent for a time, he was bewildered to find that there was a part of him that was sorry.
They’d come back to the highway, the lights of the motel he’d telephoned from the ferry terminal visible up ahead of them, before she spoke again. It was late and cold; few people were still out and about She was hugging herself, and he imagined she must be shivering. So he was surprised by the softness, the easiness of her voice when she said, “You must have lovely memories of this place.”
Memories? Memories weren’t lovely, they were his enemies. But…yes, he remembered the little house they’d rented, he and Jen. They’d spent the weekend walking hand in hand on the beach, looking for shells, strolling the unpaved street under the great old oaks, looking at gravestones in the family cemeteries. They’d been like children playing house. They’d fought some and laughed some and made love in the quiet afternoons.
He reached for his cigarettes instead of answering.
“You should treasure them,” she went on, her voice sighing gently across his auditory nerves. “I always think that good memories are like beloved keepsakes. You put them away and keep them safe-but not buried so deeply you can’t get at them when you need them. They don’t cause you pain, they bring you pleasure. Sometimes a little sadness, too, when you bring them out and look at them. But you’d never want to lose them, and you wouldn’t trade them for gold or diamonds.”
He could only nod, his jaw clenched so tightly it hurt. Unable to look at the woman beside him, he plunged ahead of her, across the street and into the brightly lit motel lobby.
Jane insisted on registering separately, paying with her own credit card, though he’d offered to put it on his expense voucher. They had adjoining rooms on the second floor, his smoking, hers non. They smiled through the formalities, chatting with the desk clerk but not with each other.
They climbed the stairs together in silence, Hawk once again carrying the tote bag. He waited while she unlocked her door and turned on a light, then stuck his head in for a cursory check of the room before he handed over her bag.
She thanked him in a polite, expressionless murmur, then cleared her throat and said, “Um, what time do I need to be ready in the morning?”
“Plane should be ready to go at eight.” His voice was like a cement mixer full of rocks. “I’ll knock on your door at seven-we can go get a bite first, if you want to. Need a wake-up call?”
She shook her head and held up her bag. “I have my little travel alarm.”
Absolutely devoid of makeup, her mouth looked vulnerable as a child’s. Looking at her. Hawk felt something inside him begin to loosen, to ease and soften, like a balloon that had been filled to the danger point slowly deflating. He had a sudden urge to touch her. And then he did, even though he knew it wasn’t wise.
When he touched the side of her cheek with his fingertips, he felt her tremble. “Get some sleep,” he said softly, and letting his hand drop to his side, stepped back out of her doorway. “Good night.”
“Good night,” she whispered as he turned away. But she hadn’t closed her door yet when he suddenly turned back, his heart beating hard and fast.
“Her name was Jennifer,” he said. “My wife. She and our son, Jason, died when a terrorist’s bomb went off on a meny-go-round in Marseilles. In April. Seven years ago next month.”
Chapter 11
For the second day in a row, Jane found herself bone-tired and unable to sleep. After delivering his terrible revelation, Tom had gone into his room and shut the door, leaving her standing in her own doorway, appalled and trembling, icy with shock. Inside her room now, she paced, thoroughly rattled and furious, too. And frustrated. Furious with him for doing such a cruel thing to her, and frustrated because how, after all, could she be angry with someone who’d suffered so devastating a loss?
The cold inside her would not go away. A nice hot soak in the tub seemed the most sensible remedy, but first she had to compose herself enough to try calling the girls again. She sat on the edge of the bed and counted seconds up to sixty, then picked up the phone and dialed. The machine answered on the third ring. She was almost glad, and left the same message she’d left earlier. “Hi, this is Mom, I’ll try again in the morning, Love you, Bye.”
She did not leave the number where she could be reached, because she couldn’t think how to explain what she was doing on an island in North Carolina’s Outer Banks, when she was supposed to be in Washington, D.C. She wasn’t accustomed to lying to her children, but how could she tell them about any of this?
Perhaps, she thought, there were just some things about their parents children were better off not knowing. And vice versa.
While the tub was filling, she emptied the contents of her tote bag onto the bed. The painting and Roy Rogers six-shooter she set aside in their jumbled brown paper, to be rewrapped later. She checked the batteries in the flashlight, made a mental note to put in new ones as soon as she got home, and threw the cookie and peanut wrappers in the trash. Everything else went back into the bag except for her hairbrush, toothpaste and toothbrush, and the little zippered pouch in which she carried tiny sample bottles of deodorant and hand lotion, and the packets of shampoo and conditioner she’d taken from the hotel in Arlington. Had it only been this morning? It seemed a lifetime ago.
She undressed and hung her clothes neatly on the motel hangers, except for her knee-high nylons and bra and panties, which she was determined to wash, even if it meant she had to put them on wet tomorrow. She brushed her teeth, unable to avoid her reflection in the mirror and vaguely disheartened by it, having reached an age where it was sometimes a shock to see herself, especially like this, tired and without makeup. She’d already made the discovery everyone makes, sooner or later, which was that the human heart is ageless; on the inside she still felt exactly the same as she’d felt when she was eighteen. So how is it, she wondered as she contemplated her tired- looking eyes and the parentheses of lines at the corners of her mouth, that I have this middle-aged face?
She lowered herself into the tub slowly, her body shuddering and cringing with delight at the heat, and as she closed her eyes and lay back in the warm water’s embrace, something inside her gave in and let go, and tears began to seep between her lashes.
She knew it was silly, even shameful that she should feel so bad about such a thing, but that knowledge didn’t change the fact that she did, not one bit. The truth was, Tom Hawkins had touched her, and it had felt wonderful. And every nerve and cell in her body waited, ached, begged and screamed for him to do it again.
