“Yes, thanks.”
Eileen smiled as Dev entered the kitchen. “Hi. Just make yourself comfortable
out on the porch. Something to drink?”
“Whatever everyone else is having. Can I do anything?”
“Yes,” Eileen said as she handed Dev and Leslie each a glass of wine. “Keep
Leslie company while I ? nish in here.”
Leslie and Dev sat in two wicker porch chairs with ? oral print cushions and
watched the sun go down over the lake. Dev brushed her hand over the fabric,
thinking how some things never changed. Her parents had had the same chairs
on their small back porch behind the store. They’d had a small bit of land
running down to the lake too, and that was where she’d spent most of her time,
reading or daydreaming on the rickety, narrow dock.
“What is it exactly that you do, Dev,” Leslie asked, breaking the silence.
“My original focus was population dynamics among freshwater ? sh.” She
grinned when Leslie’s eyebrows rose. “I know. Sounds sort of bizarre, doesn’t
it?”
“Just a little.” Leslie laughed. “I take it that led to other things.”
“Believe it or not, it has some practical application. I study the effects of
environmental pollutants on freshwater marine life. Mostly the ? sh, but also the
other water life as well.”
• 59 •
RADCLY fFE
Leslie felt herself slide into that place of perfect emotional control where nothing
showed on the outside. She couldn’t remember when she’d learned to do that,
but it was one of the big reasons she’d advanced so quickly in the law. No
matter what she was feeling, no matter how unexpected the turn of events,
nothing in her expression or her tone of voice or her body posture ever gave her
away. “So you work for the state? Is that how you know the park ranger?”
“No, I’m a private consultant.” Dev stretched, enjoying the wine and the warmth
and Leslie’s company. “Right now, I’m at the Derrin Freshwater Institute in
Bolton in a short-term research position. But I do a lot of work with the
Department of Environmental Conservation when there are concerns about
industrial contamination. That sort of thing.”
“I see.”
Dev heard the chill in Leslie’s voice. “What?” Half joking, she said, “Are you
opposed to protecting the environment?”
“No,” Leslie said carefully, “I’m primarily opposed to the government forcing
unnecessary regulations with unproven results on private industry.”
“The government forcing…” Dev set her glass aside and regarded Leslie
intently. “What kind of law do you practice, Les?”
“I defend corporate clients, mostly.”
Dev was aware that Eileen had joined them, standing quietly off to one side of
the room. The tension had ratcheted up until it was visible in the air. “Like the
kind that violate EPA regulations.”
“Yes,” Leslie said, standing, “on occasion.” She smiled thinly at her mother.
“I’m going to walk down to the lake and tell Dad it’s time for dinner.”
Dev rose as well, watching Leslie go, her wine forgotten. She was trying to
come to terms with the fact that the young woman she had loved had turned out
to be someone she didn’t know at all.
“Have you and Leslie met before?” Eileen asked. “Before today, I mean.”
“No,” Dev said, then caught herself. This woman was a stranger to her, despite
their past. “We knew each other in high school. But things were different then.”
So very very different.
• 60 •
WHEN DREAMS TREMBLE
CHAPTER SEVEN
Naked on top of the sheets, Dev turned onto her back and stared at the ceiling.
Though the windows were open, there was very little breeze and the room was
warm. She couldn’t sleep, but it wasn’t because of the heat. She kept replaying
the events of the day. She’d picked up Leslie at the train station less than ten
hours ago, and now she couldn’t stop thinking about things she had assiduously
avoided recalling for ? fteen years. Memories were deceptive, she knew that.
The sun always shone brighter, the water was always bluer, the pleasure always
so much more poignant when viewed from afar. But even the ache of betrayal
and abandonment had not tarnished the simple truth of what she’d felt, and what
she’d tried so hard to forget.
The room was suddenly too small to contain the images that assaulted her.
Leslie sitting on the bank of the lake beneath fresh spring pines, her cheek
resting on the top of her bent knees, her face soft as she con? ded her dreams.
Leslie curled up beside her on a bench in the park, listening intently as Dev told
her about a book she’d read or how she planned to dress out her motorcycle as
soon as she had the money. Leslie laughing and nudging her shoulder, trying to
get Dev to crack a smile when she was pretending to be cool. Leslie that last
night, reaching for her, moaning into her mouth, burning her alive with kisses.
“Christ,” Dev muttered, jumping from bed. She couldn’t believe that a kiss
she’d shared with a teenager could arouse her now, but it did.
She was wet and throbbing and seconds away from reaching down for relief.
Somehow, the idea of climaxing to the image of a woman, no, a girl, who no
longer existed seemed wrong.
• 61 •
RADCLY fFE
She fumbled in the dark for jeans and a T-shirt and pulled them on without
bothering to ? nd underwear. She stepped into the boots she’d left by the door
and started down the path to the lake with the moonlight as her guide. The water
was black as it always was at night, an onyx surface that glistened beneath a sky
gleaming with stars. The water lapped gently inches from her feet, a soothing
sound like the murmur of lovers in the dark. Dev took a deep breath and
smelled pine sap and rich earth.
The tension in her chest and groin began to ease. She remembered who she
was, where she was, and she remembered, too, how that long-ago kiss had
ended. The phantom passion, like the taunting memory of a lost limb, might
refuse to die, but she did not need to breathe life into it.
She took another deep breath and turned to go back to the cabin.
Out of the corner of her eye, she caught a ? icker of light from a hundred feet
away. The lake curved inward to form a tiny bay just below the lodge, and the
boathouse, almost as large as the lodge itself, extended out into the water. Dev
stared, wondering if the light she’d seen had just been moonlight glinting off the
water, but then she saw it again, shining for an instant through one of the
windows in the center of the building.
