Trouble in Paradise

“Those eyelashes weigh two tons and you know it.”

Four tons. And all she wanted to do was curl up like a kitten with her cheek on his lap, but she didn’t. The long weekend had confirmed too many things, and she wanted to mull them over at leisure. How much she shared Griff’s values. How much she loved him.

And Griff loved her. Yes, she had known that before, but somehow in the back of her mind over the past few weeks had come a sneaking sense of insecurity, a nagging suspicion that he’d also married her because he wanted a mother for his children. She thought of the old cliche about the way to a man’s heart… But that didn’t apply to her situation. Griff was a decent cook in his own right; his stomach was adequately taken care of. But his kids were not. And until this weekend, the most horrible anxieties had been creeping up on her. She’d told him nothing of her exchanges with Barbara and nothing of the feelings of inadequacy Tiger dredged up in her. And she wouldn’t tell him. Her heart felt full and pleasantly bursting at the moment, and hope was part of that. She would work harder on the kids, in silence. Griff had made it clear that she had her own place in his life and his heart that had nothing to do with his children.

“Too cold?”

“Not really.” But Griff switched on the heat in spite of her.

“Take off your shoes,” he coaxed.

She bent down to unlace the canvas shoes. “You’re extremely dictatorial,” she announced sleepily.

A hand hooked itself over her shoulder and tugged her closer until her cheek was resting in the crook of his arm. “I don’t want you falling asleep against the door. There’s a draft.”

“There is no draft, and you can’t drive with one hand.” Her protest was only a token. They’d had no more than three hours’ sleep last night. Then they’d made the canoe trip back to base, rearranged all their gear and hiked through his forest… Perhaps she was tired. A little.

“Did you know you always argue when you’re sleepy?” Griff asked dryly. His fingers sifted gently through her hair, then settled.

“It’s my turn to drive. You must be as tired as I am.”

“Hmm.”

Her head jerked up, and she stared suspiciously into his eyes, but Griff was suddenly busy driving. “You just turned my own ‘hmm’ against me.”

“I caught the habit from you. Why bicker when you know you’re not going to win? You are not going to drive, Susan, you’re going to sleep.”

She yawned, about to deny it, and then wondered vaguely if she really did quibble over nothing when she was tired. Her cheek snuggled just so against soft camel-colored flannel. It was like trying to find a spot on soft rock; beneath his shirt were muscles that just didn’t yield. She couldn’t imagine why she was so comfortable.

***

Her eyes opened instantly, like a doe instinctively reacting to danger. Griff was gently untangling himself from her, but there was something stiff about his movements, a strange, silent tension that had nothing to do with the gentle man whose shoulder she’d fallen asleep on. Outside it was dark; Griff had just pulled into their driveway. His eyes were distracted, black-cold, flickering beyond the car window toward their house.

“What’s wrong?” she asked groggily.

“We seem to have company.”

“Company?”

He gave her a swift kiss, square on the lips, his eyes holding hers in the dim light of the car for several seconds. “Don’t worry, Susan. Everything will be fine.”

Worry promptly clawed at her. Griff’s expression was grim, his jaw tight and white as he reached behind the seat to start gathering their gear. Susan glanced at the strange white car parked ahead of them. She hadn’t noticed it before. The huge elm in the yard threw its giant shadow on the driveway so that it was impossible to identify the person who stepped out of the house, slammed the door and stalked toward them.

“Where on earth have you been? I’ve been waiting here more than two hours. For God’s sake, Griff! At least you always used to have the courtesy to leave me a phone number.”

Griff bounded out of the car, slamming his door as Susan fumbled with her shoelaces. Then she frantically reached for the door handle. The grating female voice seemed to flip an instinctive switch inside Susan from calm to nervous. Hurriedly, she reached up to restore some kind of order to her hair before she stepped out of the car.

Sheila wasn’t quite as beautiful as Barbara’s photos of her, but the difference wasn’t worth mentioning. Her raven-black hair was sleeked back in a coil, aristocratic features were mounted on a spotless complexion. The color of the crepe blouse was indecipherable in the shadows, but the leather jacket had that certain luster, rippling in the darkness when the woman moved; it was unmistakably expensive. And expensive was the first label Susan had unconsciously pinned on Griff’s former wife.

But not tonight. Hysterical was the label tonight. Sheila’s hands were whipping around her as she talked, and her venom was clearly directed at Griff. “You care so much-so you’ve always said-but then you turn around and take off without a single thought for any of them. You didn’t even leave a phone number!”

“Why don’t you just tell me what the hell is wrong?” Griff snapped.

“I thought at least there was a chance he went somewhere with you-otherwise I would hardly have wasted nearly two hours just sitting here. It would be just like you to scare me half to death.”

“Sheila, what the hell are you talking about?”

“Tom is what I’m talking about. He’s disappeared. Just taken off…”

Griff turned white, a sudden statue in stone. Susan felt a lump too big to swallow form in her throat as she moved swiftly to his side. Sheer anguish fired a terrible bleakness in her husband’s eyes as he grappled with the thought of his son gone, missing.

Sheila seemed to see something else in Griff’s expression. Her jeweled hands went into overtime and, like a miracle rain, tears started to fall from her eyes. “Griff, don’t you dare blame me! After all I do for those kids- your kids-they pay me back like this. Barbara won’t listen to a word I say. Tiger makes more of a mess in the house than ten normal children. Tom doesn’t have a damn thing to be unhappy about. He’s got everything. He can come and go when he pleases, he’s got a car-”

“Sheila, shut up. This isn’t the time to play Lady Macbeth.” The statue took life. Griff threw back his head and breathed, and when his eyes focused on Sheila again they were perfectly calm. And as cold as ice. His voice came out in a long, low growl. “What have you done?”

“What do you mean, what have I done? I’ve worried myself half to death about him, that’s what I’ve done. He went to school on Friday. I went out Friday night. I assume he came home, but he wasn’t there when I looked for him on Saturday. He has this girl-”

“You called her?” Griff barked.

“I-”

“Did you call her? Did you call the school, his friends, the police?”

Sheila stared around wildly, spotted Susan and froze. She took in the mop hairstyle, the wrinkled flannel shirt, all of it down to half-tied canvas shoes. Like a dealer in diamonds, she seemed to have an uncanny ability to detect flaws. Susan got the message. “If you hadn’t been so busy,” Sheila said defensively, “I could have contacted you. I can’t do everything, you know. You have just as much responsibility to know where your son is-”

Griff muttered something distinctly unprintable and stalked toward the house, snarling at Sheila to follow him, demanding to know where Barbara and Tiger were. If she knew.

“They’re at my mother’s, of course. Don’t you talk to me like that, Griff…”

The two faded into the shadows of the doorway. Of their own will, Susan’s arms wrapped themselves around her chest. The night had turned incredibly chilly, and her mind was filled with the image of a lonely boy out in that black cold.

Tom was already special to her. She hadn’t spent as much time with him as she had with the others, but when