Mortal Fear

I don’t know what to say. When Erin speaks again, her voice is so soft I hear it as a shout.

“What do you believe in, Harper?”

Out of the mouth of a distraught woman comes the question I have tried to answer since I started thinking for myself. A question Brahma asked me only yesterday. And I am no closer to an answer now than I was when I was thirteen years old.

“I guess I believe in… honor. Keeping faith. Trying to do the right thing. And consequences if you don’t.”

“If you believe in that, you believe in sin.”

“Erin….”

“And that we have an obligation to try to make things right. Don’t you?”

“Not the way you’re talking about. You’re talking about more pain.” Too anxious to sit any longer, I get to my feet and shake the tingles out of my arms and legs. “You know what I really believe in? Goddamn it, it’s only now that I see it. I believe in Drewe. In her optimism, her trust. Her faith in happy endings, that happiness is even possible. I know there’s nothing out there but an abyss, but she doesn’t. Or she’s convinced herself she doesn’t. Either way, it doesn’t matter. My point is that if happiness is possible, it’s going to be made by people like her. People with the strength to hold on to their illusions in the face of all evidence to the contrary. In the face of nothing.”

Erin watches me in silence for a long time. “I understand what you’re saying. Some illusions are necessary. But the reality sleeping on the Piglet blanket back in my bedroom can’t be ignored or suppressed or anything else. Holly may be a symbol of weakness, something we’d like to shield Drewe from, but she is also real. And to have a life, the life she deserves, she needs both her parents. And I don’t mean you. I’m sorry, but that’s the way it is.”

“So what do you want to do?”

“Not want. I’m going to tell Patrick the truth about how Holly was conceived. Tonight.”

Jesus God.

“And you’re going to tell Drewe.”

I am numb. I try to tell myself this is not happening, but the fact that my brain is trying to shut down my peripheral nervous system confirms that it is. Blood is rushing from my extremities to my core organs as surely if I were being chased by a man with a machete.

“Harper?”

As I stare at Erin’s bruised angelic face-her eyes burning with misplaced conviction-several thoughts crystallize at the speed of light. She means what she says about telling Patrick. She means to make me confess to Drewe. Words will not stop her.

But one thing could.

She is speaking again, but I hear only the blood in my ears. A roaring blast like a divine voice: She’s the one who put you in this situation … who showed up on your doorstep and stepped naked into your shower. She could have told you she was pregnant before you married Drewe. She could have prevented ALL of this. I feel sweat in my palms, an electrical tensing in the muscles of my arms. Forced to choose which woman is more important to me, I have chosen. With dreamlike slowness I take two steps toward Erin, then another. Her eyes widen in puzzlement as she speaks. I outweigh her by close to a hundred pounds-

“-but Holly would never be the same, would she?”

I feel as though someone just slapped me.

“Are you listening to me, Harper?”

I nod dully, look down at my closed fists. It was Holly’s name that broke my trance. Not the fact that Drewe knows I am here, or that I would almost certainly be caught if I hurt Erin. Holly’s name. There are not two women in this insane emotional equation, but three.

“I’m listening,” I murmur, dimly aware that I’ve dodged some point of no return.

“Did you take something today?” Erin asks, staring suspiciously at my eyes. “Are you wired or what?”

I laugh hollowly. “Hell no. You’re the drug addict.”

“I resent that.”

“I’m sorry.”

“Are you going to tell her or not?”

“Erin-”

“Because if you don’t, I’ll have to.”

“I’ll tell her, goddamn it!”

She is no more shocked by my shout than a ghetto kid by gunshots. In a taut voice I add, “I just hope you realize what could happen because of all this.”

She laughs softly and turns away. “I know better than anyone. I think about it day and night. You and I could lose everything we love. But don’t you see, Harper? It’s also the only way we can truly have the things we love.”

“They’re not things, Erin. They’re people.”

She says nothing.

“Nothing’s going to change your mind?”

She shakes her head and turns back to me, her eyes wide and earnest. “This is the right thing, Harper.”

I give her a brief hiss of scorn.

“Do you remember Chicago?” she asks.

“According to you, I do.”

Two spots of color touch her cheeks. “I remember. Do you remember the strange thing that happened? What you did for me that no one ever had?”

She steps to within two feet of me and rests a sun-browned hand on her flat abdomen. I swallow and clear my throat. “You mean the passing out?”

She nods. “You remember we talked about it? How it was like a little death? A momentary union with whatever is beyond life?”

“Yes.”

“We had it backwards, Harper. That wasn’t death at all. That was life. The purest distillation of it, the love we felt for each other. I know what the little death is now. It’s the way we’ve been living. Hiding our secret, pretending things are fine, every day having to pile one more lie on top of all the others to keep the house of cards from falling on top of us. That’s death. Dying a little each day. Don’t you feel that?”

I cannot quite grasp the fact that this is Erin speaking. There is absolute certainty in her voice, her eyes, in the set of her perfect mouth and the angle of her chin.

“I guess there’s nothing else to say,” I sigh with resignation.

She steps back and smooths her sundress. “Yes, there is. One thing. As insane as it is, I’m glad you’re Holly’s father. You’re a good man, Harper. But Patrick is too, and he’s my husband. He’s Holly’s father now. And he’s losing his mind. I have a duty to do right by him.”

“By forcing me to destroy my wife?”

“Drewe is stronger than you think. She’s stronger than any of us.”

“I hope you’re right.”

With proprietary boldness Erin crosses the space between us and raises a hand to my left cheek. Her fingers linger there a moment, cool and dry in the heat of the house. They transmit the sensuality she has always embodied, and something more.

“We probably won’t see each other for a long time,” she says, her eyes wide and unblinking.

“Erin-”

She rises on tiptoe and silences me with a soft kiss on the lips, then turns and walks from the room. My face burns from her touch. As I make my way out of the house, it hits me with humbling sadness that this grown-up girl, once known merely for having the Best-looking Ass in the State of Mississippi, has much more than that. She is a woman now, and she has more courage than I.

The ride back to Rain takes half again as long as the ride to Jackson did. I play no music; I don’t even run the