gleaming metal. His premonition was only a fantasy. He moved his car into its space beside the Jaguar, pressed the second button on the remote control again to close the door, then turned off the car’s engine.
He sat still for a moment, staring at the back wall of the garage. There was the door to the old tack room, and it reminded him of the things he had taken when he had left. He pushed the button to pop his trunk, then got out, picked up his small suitcase, and looked into the space behind it. His car was clean. He closed the trunk, then walked out the side door of the garage onto the stone walkway to the house. It was still dark, but he could hear a few chirps from birds beginning to move around in anticipation of the sun.
He was careful to grip his keys in his palm so they wouldn’t jingle when he unlocked the front door. He prepared to punch in the code to turn off the alarm before it sounded, then pushed the door inward. The alarm was off, and he let out a breath in relief. Caroline had undoubtedly decided she didn’t want to be awakened.
He stepped into the broad foyer of his house and felt the hard, slippery surface of the marble tiles, the black-and-white pattern just visible in the dim star-glow from the skylight. The substantial, weighty presence of the architecture made him feel even more protected and invulnerable than before. The house was not just big interior spaces and thick walls. Hardinfield was several generations of importance and unassailable position. He was aware that there were mobs of people living on the coast to the south and the north of him-movie-studio people and computer billionaires-who each had the money to build several houses like his. But it would not have been appropriate, and even they seemed to sense it. When they opened their windows they didn’t see vistas of open land running all the way to barely visible foothills. They saw the houses of the rest of the rich rabble, all shouldered up to each other along streets in Beverly Hills or San Francisco, and actually touching each other in Malibu.
“I see you’re back.”
His head spun toward Caroline’s voice. A love seat that belonged beyond the vaulted arch in the living room had been pushed across the marble floor into the foyer. As his eyes adjusted to the deeper shadows along the far wall, he could see that she was wearing a pair of jeans and a sweatshirt, and there was a quilt pushed into a lump beside her. “What are you doing here? Did you sleep here?”
“I didn’t want to miss you.”
“Very interesting. You can tell me about it another time. I’m going up to bed.” He started toward the staircase.
“I want to talk now, Ted. There are no servants in the house. I told Maria to give them the rest of the week off, so we can settle this. We’re going to start right now.”
He had almost made it to the stairway, but he heard something in her voice that made him stop. “Oh? Something’s urgent?”
“You bet. It’s very urgent. I would like you to put your suitcase down and come with me to the library where we can see each other and talk.”
“And what will happen if we wait until I’ve had some sleep and a shower and maybe even some breakfast?”
“Are you trying to goad me into saying something that will give you an excuse to stomp off? I don’t want to threaten you.”
“That’s good. I don’t think there’s much you could threaten me with at this point, is there? That there will be less than no sex? That you’ll be more extravagant and demanding? When would you find time?”
“You just wanted to hurt me, and it always works, I guess, because your wanting to do it is what hurts. In spite of that, in spite of everything that’s gone on in the past few years, I find that you’re still more important to me than anyone else. Whenever I do something, or even think something, part of me is already looking around for you, to be sure you noticed. I know it’s just a reflex now because you haven’t been there watching or listening in years. What hurts most is the unfairness.”
“What’s unfair?”
“We don’t have a better relationship because you haven’t wanted one. When I went off to find ways of keeping busy, I wasn’t choosing them instead of you. I was filling a vacancy.” She looked down and shook her head, as though to push away a distraction. “It doesn’t matter. I don’t want to fight, I want to save you.”
His jaw was tight, but he spoke quietly. “What the hell are you talking about?”
“I listened to your phone messages.”
“You what?”
“You heard me. You’re having a-I don’t even know what to call it-Is it called an affair if it’s with a child?”
His heart seemed to him to have stopped, but then he felt it begin to pound. He could barely breathe. “What on earth would make you say that?”
“Jesus, Ted! I heard her message. I asked Maria’s daughter if she knew her from school, and she did. The girl is barely fourteen, Teda child. You’ve been sleeping with a child.” She couldn’t say it without having her mouth contort so her face became a mask of horror and despair. “There’s a doctor, a psychiatrist, who specializes in this kind of thing. Diane Bidwell’s cousin Burt was seeing him, and she thinks he saved his life. It was completely confidential.”
“Until Diane found out.”
“I remember the doctor’s name, so we don’t have to ask some other doctor for a referral or something. It can be completely-“
“Stop right there,” he said. “Don’t even finish. The answer is no.”
“It’s not that simple. This problem isn’t going away. You can’t have sex with children. If anyone finds out, you’ll go to prison. And if this Kylie Miller is leaving messages like that on your voice mail, how long will it take? Her parents, her teachers, her friends, somebody, will find out.”
Ted Forrest snorted. “This is actually pretty funny. You’re completely wrong. She’s just a kid who wants a summer job in the Forrest Enterprises office. She went in and talked to Denise, and Denise has been trying to set up an interview. That’s all.” He was aware that his voice was too flat, but he hoped she hadn’t noticed.
“Denise gives out your personal phone number to job applicants?”
“Sometimes. Why not? This is a high school girl, not a stalker.”
“Ted, this isn’t a game. It isn’t just the usual infidelity. I’m used to that. When you first stopped wanting me, I knew you had to be having sex with someone, and for a few years I tried to always know who. I found out about your friends’ wives because I confronted one of them and she told me. I knew about the ones in your office because of the way they treated me. I knew there must be others because I saw receipts for hotel rooms in San Francisco and Sacramento that you had to have used in the daytime. I always blamed myself for not being attractive enough or fun enough or something, and kept quiet. Not this time. We’ve got to get you into therapy now.”
“I know, inpatient therapy. Then, while I’m in some hospital so doped up I can’t walk out the door, you can be out here spending my money, right?”
“I’m trying to save you.”
“From what?”
“She’s a child.”
“She’s a couple of years younger than you were when I met you.”
“That whole period seems a lot different to me now than it did when I was seventeen and you were thirty. People talked, and now I know they were right to. You’ve got a problem, and you’ve got to admit it to yourself and see a doctor.”
“You’re a jealous woman who wants to lock me up. What sort of therapy do you recommend-chemical castration? This is the perfect revenge fantasy.”
“My fantasies aren’t that way, Ted. I dream about having a decent, normal life.”
“Great! Have one. Go behave the way you would have if you had never met me. Have a decent, normal life. I’ll pay you a salary. Find a nice guy. I’ll pay him a salary, too.”
“Are you so deluded you don’t see? You’re in trouble. If you’re already in voluntary therapy before anyone knows, we might be able to keep you out of jail. We might even be able to settle the lawsuit her parents file when they find out. And make no mistake, they will. She has no sense of propriety.”
He paced the foyer for a moment, then stopped in front of Caroline. “Listen carefully. You’re wrong about Kylie, and you’re wrong about me. You listened to a phone message in which a young local girl I don’t even know called for an interview appointment. Your imagination and your bitterness toward me magnified it into a big story. It isn’t.”
“I didn’t hear anything like that.” Caroline looked amazed, then confused. “You don’t seem to-” She stopped.
