Teo was still hovering above her, his expression eager. She couldn’t give her husband what he wanted. What he so richly deserved. But she couldn’t crush him by telling him the truth either.
She reached up and kissed him, praying forgiveness for all that the gesture implied. Praying she’d be able to live up to it … and almost certain she would not.
35
Saturday, May 7
Pikes Peak, Colorado
IN HER DREAMS, MIRIAM was being kissed, a kiss that transported her to the edge of ecstasy. But when she peeked over the edge, she found herself looking instead at an abyss of eternal damnation. It smelled less like sulfur than hot machinery. She heard a noise behind her, like someone blowing up an air mattress, only louder. She turned to see Dicey wearing a black contraption around her chest. Plastic tubes protruded from it.
Miriam tottered on the edge. The hot wind gusting up from the chasm scorched her back, but she focused on the pregnant woman. “What’s going on with you, Dicey? Are you sick?”
“It’s not your problem,” Dicey answered. Her voice was fractured, as if she were speaking through a fan.
Miriam reached out. “Let me help you.”
Dicey’s visage shifted, becoming brighter and more terrible, like a vision out of Lord of the Rings. “Why would I want your help? You almost cheated on your husband!” She grew in height until she towered over Miriam. “Gu-i-i-i-i-lty-y-y-y!” she rumbled. Lightning shot from a slim finger. Miriam scrambled back and fell into the pit with a scream.
A gentle touch roused her. “Hey, Miriam. It’s okay.”
She pried her eyes open to find herself looking at Dicey, who retreated to the other bed and sat with her hands folded.
Miriam had to blink a few times to bring the image into focus: stretchy maternity jeans, sparkly sandals, the pretty, feminine flare of her maternity top. Miriam had never looked half so stylish when she was pregnant.
“Had this weird dream,” she said. Her voice sounded like it had been dragged over gravel. She cleared her throat. “You were wearing this black thing that looked like a suicide vest, with hoses coming out of it. It made your voice all funny.”
Dicey’s eyes widened; she gave a strange little laugh. “Suicide vest,” she said. “That’s funny. And kinda twisted.”
“Sorry.”
“You were calling out for Teo.”
Miriam groaned and rolled onto her back. The best thing about hotels was the sheets: beautifully tucked in, neat and tidy and untangled. Teo had always pulled the covers untucked. It used to make her crazy. Now, the memory made her smile.
Or would have, if she didn’t feel so lousy.
Miriam pushed herself upright. The world swam. Her nose wrinkled. She could smell alcohol. And something else—something mechanical. Like hot machinery. She frowned, but her brain was moving too slowly to put together whatever pieces it wanted to connect. “It was a dream, wasn’t it?”
“Wasn’t what a dream?” Dicey grabbed a bottle of orange juice and two red-coated tablets. “Here,” she said, handing them to Miriam. “You must’ve had some night.”
“Some night,” Miriam mumbled. As her slow-moving brain began to replace dream images with memories, she deeply regretted putting anything down her throat. Gus. Dinner with the band. Drinking … a lot. Dancing with Hadley.
Almost sleeping with Hadley.
She’d known she was a mess, but she hadn’t realized just how big a mess.
Dicey cleared her throat. “The auto shop called. We can pick it up anytime. There’s a train headed up Pikes Peak at noon. I figured we could catch it.”
Miriam nodded slowly.
“But first, you need a shower. Badly.”
A shower made her feel marginally human again. Miriam answered the knock on the bathroom door to find Dicey holding out a bundle of clothes. “Here. Figured I’d help you out.”
Miriam stared at the black dress, red flowers splashed across it like blood.
“You haven’t worn this yet. It’s pretty,” Dicey said.
Miriam looked up. “I’ll get my own clothes,” she said shortly, and closed the door.
Dicey showed her disapproval of Miriam’s rudeness by barely speaking a word all the way up the mountain. Not that they could have talked much, anyway; the noise of the cog railway all but buried the guide’s narration. Still, it smarted.
The sunlight felt stronger on the summit of Pikes Peak. Miriam couldn’t tell if that was real, a result of glare off the snow that hadn’t yet melted at this altitude, or merely a figment of her imagination. She did know that, no matter what her inner ear wanted her to believe, the ground wasn’t actually moving.
She gazed down over the plains. Blaise had promised her a view of five states, but there was nothing to distinguish one from another. She shivered, chilled by more than the cold at fourteen thousand feet.
Miriam swallowed the last bite of her high-altitude donut. No doubt it was as good as Blaise had claimed, but a hangover had a way of making everything taste like dust. A hangover and regret. Regret for last night and for a lifetime of bad choices.
She’d given Gus so much power over her: first as an obsession, briefly as a lover, and ever since, as the ghost in her bed.
She needed someone to talk to. Becky, perhaps, although Miriam couldn’t imagine baring the gunked-up depths of her soul to her serene, competent friend. She needed someone who could see her for all that she was, good and bad alike, who would listen without judgment and still love her unconditionally.
In other words, she needed Teo.
The locket burned like dry ice against her chest.
How she missed that man. The way he always pushed her tempos in choir practice and mouthed off when she pointed out the metronome markings. “The Bickersons,” her older choir members used to call them, laughing. The way he could figure out how to fix anything with a YouTube video and a trip or ten to the hardware store. The
