Twice

“You look like an angel,” Lydia told her mother.

“Only because you love me.”

Marion’s black hair streaked with gray flowed down over her shoulders to the small of her back. She wore a crisp white cotton nightgown that Lydia remembered from her childhood. Sitting there, the amber light from the street lamps outside leaking through the blinds, she seemed to glow.

Lydia observed every line on Marion’s face, the way her strong veined hands rested in her lap, the arch of her dark eyebrows, the black of her eyes. She wanted every detail seared into her memory. Because that was all she would have of Marion to share with her own children. It was all she’d had for so long. Sometimes it seemed as if the sadness she felt over the loss of her mother was a well within her that could never be filled.

“I’m pregnant,” Lydia said, feeling an odd longing, a kind of desperation, grow in her heart.

But Marion only smiled sadly and shook her head.

“People die,” she said, as if she hadn’t heard. “But love lives on, we carry it in our blood and our bones. When you lose someone, you’ve only lost the giver, not the gift.”

When Lydia awoke she was already sitting up, her heart rate elevated, her breathing coming sharp and shallow. She reached for Jeffrey and shook him awake. He sat up quickly, startled.

“What’s wrong?”

She didn’t know what to say, so she moved to him, clung to him, feeling the soft skin and hard muscles of his chest against her cheek. He held on to her tightly. She needed to be as close as the boundaries of their bodies would allow so that she could feel his life and the warmth of blood flowing beneath his skin.

“It’s okay. I promise,” he said, not knowing what she was feeling but understanding that she needed him to comfort her. “I swear it’s all okay.”

She looked up at him and in her eyes he saw such a painful combination of fear and love that it awoke a powerful longing within him. He regretted deeply the lecture he’d delivered when they’d returned to the apartment about her carelessness for her health and safety. Even in the darkness of the room, he could see the purple and black of the bruise that dominated the right side of her face.

“I love you so much,” he said. “I’m sorry.”

“No, I’m sorry,” she said quickly. “You were right… about everything.”

He pressed his mouth to hers, wanting to be gentle but overwhelmed by a sudden hunger for her, which he felt returned in her kiss. She knelt before him on the bed now. He touched the slope of her shoulder and the curve of her bare breast. He touched the line of her jaw. She moved in closer, running her hand down his chest, over his tight abs, then stroking him as he grew hard in her hand. Then she leaned in to take him into her mouth. He lay back, her tongue, the wet walls of her mouth sending a shock of pleasure through him.

She slithered up his body and he felt every inch of her slide along every inch of him in a current of taut and silky flesh. Then she straddled him and took him inside of her with a moan. He placed his hands on the fullness of her hips and held her as she rocked, her movements slow, sensual. He felt weak with pleasure, as the rhythm of their bodies became more intense.

She threw her head back slightly as he pulled her closer, took her breast in his mouth and teased her nipple with his tongue. Her breath came in soft low moans. He knew her body so well, he could feel her coming to climax, every nerve ending in his body alive with the heat of wanting her. Then he came deep and hard inside of her.

“Lydia,” he whispered, her name sounding like a prayer as she came for him, pulling him deeper inside of her.

She lay beside him, back to his front, her body curved into his, his arm draped over her. He breathed in the lavender scent of her hair.

“I need you to promise to take better care from now on,” he whispered.

“I promise,” she answered, trying to push away the memory of her dream and be in the present, feeling the warmth of him beside her.

He moved the hair off her face and touched the bruise there, then kissed it lightly.

She closed her eyes for a second, and when she opened them again, his breathing had sunk into the rhythm of sleep. She turned so that she could look at him. She observed every detail of his face, loving the tiny lines around his eyes, the fullness of his mouth, the small star-shaped scar on his right cheekbone. She watched him like this for she didn’t know how long until sleep came for her as well.

To her obvious disappointment, Ford had dropped Irma off at her Central Park West apartment building. He was flattered by Irma’s subtle advances and not a little attracted to her, but he was and maybe always would be in his heart still married to Rose. Still, Irma had awoken a terrible restlessness in him and he lay in bed, staring at the ceiling fan as it turned lazily above him. He thought of Rose, wondering where she was, how he might reach her, what he would say if he had her on the line.

He had the television turned on but the sound muted; it was something he did when he couldn’t sleep, when he was missing his wife. It made him feel less alone. Something on the screen had attracted his attention and he turned his head to see Fran Drescher being interviewed by David Letterman. The Nanny, he remembered, was a show that Rose had liked. The thought brought Geneva Stout to his mind, reminded him that he’d wanted to have another conversation with her. Then it occurred to him that he hadn’t seen Geneva the day they’d interviewed the twins.

He thought back to the night of the murder. After the paramedics had taken Julian Ross from the duplex, Ford had interviewed the live-in au pair. She was young, he remembered, twenty-one or twenty-two, soft-spoken, and very upset by the events of the evening. She’d been pretty in a dark, exotic way, with full lips and almond-shaped eyes. He remembered thinking the name sounded off, bringing to mind a busty Swedish girl with silky blond hair. Geneva clearly didn’t have a Nordic bone in her body, with cafe au lait skin and a bolt of shiny black curls that spilled across her shoulders and down her back.

She’d been sleeping, she claimed that night, and had seen nothing. Ford had no reason to suspect otherwise, since her room was in the back of the first floor behind the kitchen, far from the entrance and master bedroom in the palatial duplex. He’d given her his card, asked her to call if she thought of anything that might help him, and told her she’d probably be hearing from him.

He leaned over, looked at the clock, hesitated, and then picked up the phone anyway.

“Where’s the nanny, Ms. Ross?” asked Ford into the phone.

“Detective McKirdy, it’s after midnight,” said Eleanor, indignant.

“The nanny, Geneva Stout. She was there the night of the murder. But she wasn’t with you when we interviewed the twins this evening.”

“Well, naturally, she quit, Detective. Wouldn’t you?”

“Where did she go?”

“How should I know? I didn’t hire her. Only Julian would know that… and she doesn’t even know who I am at this point.”

“Do you know how long she worked for the family?”

“I’m not sure. A year, maybe eighteen months… Why is this relevant, Detective?”

“Thank you, Ms. Ross, sorry to disturb you.

“Huh,” he said aloud after hanging up the phone.

Other than the name, nothing else about her had set off any alarms. He’d asked to see ID and she’d provided him with an NYU student ID and a New York State driver’s license, both with the Rosses’ address as her own. He knew he’d written down both her student ID and driver’s license numbers. He’d run them through first thing in the morning. Even though she’d left the Rosses’ employment and Eleanor was right about that, why wouldn’t she? he figured she’d be easy enough to find.

He’d need to check his notes again and then look through the papers at the Stratton-Ross home, see if there was another address for her. It was probably nothing, but now that the twins were part of the equation he had a strange feeling that maybe Geneva Stout, someone who’d been intimate with the children for more than a year, had more to contribute to his investigation than he’d originally thought.

After talking to Eleanor, he lay still for a few more minutes. Then with the remote he switched off the television and closed his eyes, hoping that sleep would come, that he wouldn’t lie awake watching the hours pass, thinking of murder and lost love.