Wild in the Moonlight

Victorian lace and neon-orange underpants.

Nothing but lonely silence greeted him in the house.

It was funny, but coming home, he’d made all kinds of foolish assumptions. For sure, he hadn’t blindly assumed that Violet was ready to talk about wild, crazy things like marriage. But it was going to be so much easier to see her now, easier to talk, easier to be together. He’d planned to try a relentless romantic assault by courting her in all the old-fashioned ways.

It had never once occurred to him that she wouldn’t answer his notes or phone calls.

In the brick kitchen he poured the last mug of coffee from this morning’s pot. The brew was now thicker than mud, not that he cared.

One of the girls had left a pink sock, and a couple of teen girl magazines zooed up the pristine neatness of the place, but otherwise there was nothing inside but wood and a stone fireplace and big leather furniture and silence.

It was tough, accepting that he’d misunderstood everything that mattered. He’d thought he was ready to settle down. He’d thought he was ready to finally belong. He’d thought he’d finally come to terms with his father’s legacy of fearing a place could own him instead of the other way around. Instead, he’d discovered that his lack of interest in a home had nothing to do with his father.

All this time, it had simply been about finding a woman he wanted to belong with.

He got it now. He got it all. Except, he couldn’t seem to believe that he’d come this far, hurt this much, finally found himself-and found her-and then had to accept that he’d lost her.

The phone rang, a shock of sound that made him whip around and spill a few coffee drops from his mug. He grabbed the receiver and tucked it under his ear.

“Cameron Lachlan?”

He heard the woman’s scream, and immediately recognized the voice as Daisy Campbell, Violet’s oldest sister. He’d always liked her. She was breathtaking, an exotic beauty, fiercely independent, her own woman. She’d been living with some artist in the south of France, which was how she’d been in his “Jeunnesse neighborhood” these last years. But the thing was, they’d always gotten along well, so it was nearly impossible to connect the cool-eyed beauty with the woman yelling at him across the ocean.

“Lachlan, did I or did I not tell you that I’d kill you if you broke my sister’s heart?!”

“What?”

“I told you she was vulnerable. I told you to be good to her or to leave her alone. I thought you were a decent guy!”

“Um, I could have sworn I was, too-”

“Well, I’m leaving Provence for good and coming back across the Atlantic. And the very minute I get home, I’m going to kill you. I’m not sure how yet. I’ve never killed anything before. But where I grew up, buster, a man didn’t get a woman pregnant and then take off.”

“What?” This time he’d been lifting the mug to his mouth. Only, he dropped it. Sludgy hot coffee spattered all over the place. The ceramic mug broke in a half dozen pieces. “What did you say?’

“Give me a break, Lachlan! I don’t care whether she told you or not. If you weren’t going to use some protection, you knew perfectly well you were taking a risk. You know damn well how babies are made!”

“But not for your sister.” He couldn’t seem to catch his breath, couldn’t seem to think.

“What’s that supposed to mean, not for my sister?”

He opened his mouth to answer but then couldn’t. In a flash he realized that Violet had never told her family about the infertility, how her ex-husband had treated her, none of it. She loved her sisters, talked about them all the time. So it must have hurt more than she could bear to even try to share it.

Except with him.

She’d cared enough to share it with him. The thought registered, but it was pretty hard to concentrate. Daisy was still winding up, and beauty or no beauty, she could yell like a drill sergeant. “Don’t even try playing any stupid games with me, Lachlan. I’ve heard every excuse a man can make up for irresponsibility. I can smell them. I told you my sister was vulnerable. All I asked was that you be decent to her, be nice, be fair. If you two ended up in the sack…all right, I admit I thought you’d like each other. I even admit I thought an affair was a good idea for our Vi. But to get her pregnant, you scoundrel, you creep, you turkey, you unfeeling, revolting, irresponsible… Cameron, why the hell aren’t you answering me?”

“Daisy, do me a favor and don’t tell your sister that you called me.”

For the first time since the phone call started, Daisy stopped frothing fire and brimstone. Confusion silenced her-although not for long. “Do you a favor? Do you a favor? Did you want me to do you that favor before or after I murder you?!”

He didn’t mean to hang up on her. He just forgot she was there. Violet? Pregnant with his child? And once those wheels started spinning, they seemed to pick up speed nonstop.

He was in upstate New York, not Vermont. He had fresh food in the fridge, a coffeepot on, a load of clothes heaped in the washer, bills waiting to be paid on the counter, a dentist appointment two days from now. He couldn’t just take off.

Fifteen minutes later he started the car.

If everything went perfectly-no pit or food stops, no construction zones-he could make the trip in four hours.

Naturally he ran into three construction zones and one minor accident. He combined a pit stop with a run on fast food and strong coffee. Even this early in fall, the sun dropped fast. By the time he crossed the border into Vermont, dusk had fallen. Blustery clouds stole the last of daylight, and then there was only that quiet blacktop and him.

He remembered the rolling hills. The stone fences. The white steepled churches in White Hills. The pretty red barns and winding roads. Every familiar sight heightened both his anticipation and his fear.

He pulled into her yard after nine, not realizing until then how long his heart had been pounding, or that the burger he’d wolfed down was still sitting in his stomach like a clunky ball. Yellow lights glowed in her windows. A cornstalk scarecrow sat at the bottom of her porch steps, keeping two of the cats company. A pair of giant pumpkins, still uncarved, framed her door. Pruning shears sat on the porch swing, not put away.

He vaulted the steps of the porch, hiked toward the door and then abruptly stopped. Faster than lightning, he tucked, buttoned, straightened. Then he realized that, hell, he hadn’t brushed his hair since he could even remember. And he should have shaved. Still…he’d come this far, and God knew Violet had seen him in worse shape than in an old black sweater and cords. So he knocked.

Nothing. No answer.

He knocked again, louder this time.

Still, there was no response. So he poked his head in. Smells immediately swarmed his senses-apples and cinnamons and cloves. A bowl of mums nested on the hearth. A copper pot held long, tall grasses and reeds. Lavender-naturally-hung upside down from the kitchen beams. Two cats spotted him, remembered him for the sucker he was and leaped down from the rockers to get petted.

Still, there was no sight of Violet, only the sound of her. She was singing from somewhere upstairs, assuming one could call the sounds emanating from her throat “singing.” Her sister Daisy could scream like a shrew, where Vi’s singing voice, he thought tenderly, resembled steel scratching steel-at a high pitch.

“Violet?” He had to let her know he was there, didn’t want to scare her. “Vi?”

The caterwauling stopped. A hesitant voice called down, “Cameron?” But then followed through with a swift, “Don’t answer that. Obviously you can’t be Cameron.”

Oh, God. It was like coming home. Only his ditsy Violet could make irrational comments like that, and maybe he was crazy, maybe he was risking his heart and his life, but he took the stairs three at a time and galloped down the hall. He wouldn’t have known positively where that ghastly operatic voice had been coming from, if there hadn’t been puffs of fragrant steam dancing out the open door of the master bath.

He leaned both arms against the doorjamb, trying to catch his breath. Yet almost immediately he realized that he would likely never catch his breath because his heart had completely stopped.

She was in the bathtub. No longer singing the blues, just sunken in the warm water to the tips of her nipples, her long hair twisted and clipped out of the way. Two cats sat on the porcelain rim, balanced precariously but acting