jokes a sincere laugh in a long while. He offered her a ride home; she was drunk. She asked him to come inside and have a cup of coffee and a couple of aspirin to help sober themselves up (although she had watched him nurse a single Corona for two hours and knew the only drunk one was herself), and while they stood chatting in the kitchen and the coffee brewed, she surprised herself by reaching out for him and saying, ‘Is that a gavel or you just happy to see me?’ Her jokes got worse with more bourbon.
It wasn’t a gavel and he amply liked her, too. They spent the next several hours in bed, half of the time sleeping, the other half making strenuous love. She was left gasping but energized, freeing some long-buried shadow of herself to face the world. She watched Whit nap and traced his lips with a fingernail while he softly snored. Since Pete had left her, the few men she’d allowed intimacy with her tended to be older and snagged in the intricate web of state politics. They talked of little else. Here was a man lying beside her who was younger with a flat stomach and long legs and probably not overly bright but he knew how to make her feel my-God shivery good. She brushed his light fuzz of whiskers grown in the course of the day, wondering how quickly he would bolt in the morning.
He didn’t. He made love to her again, and she almost wept with pleasure and an odd relief. She didn’t want a romance, but she did want him, warm and kissing her throat and giving his halfway smile as he filled her. They began to see each other discreetly. She didn’t want Sam or Lucinda to know – he was the only private part of her life – and Whit didn’t argue.
They saw each other perhaps twice a month. Faith and Whit learned about the constellation of small motels along the Coastal Bend, little way stations in Rockport and Aransas Pass and Laurel Point and Copano. They would meet, share a bottle of Shiner Bock while kissing and slowly unburdening each other of their clothes, soap their skin in the shower, make love on the bed, and then talk – about her work, about his struggle to learn enough law to be an effective JP, about books they’d both read. He was smarter than she thought. A love of reading was, other than sex, the only thing they had in common. All perfectly friendly.
But now he had failed her, and the memory of the taste of his skin soured in her mouth. Faith backed her BMW out of the Hubble driveway and gunned the engine toward Whit’s house.
Faith rocketed over to the Mosleys’, ready to carve Whit’s guts into ribbons of flesh, but instead the storm turned to shower. She cried as soon as she saw him.
Babe and Irina were dining with friends in Rockport and would not be back for quite a while.
Faith and Whit sat in the cramped living room in the guest house, the Corpus Christi news turned on but muted. Pete’s death – as the son of a prominent state senator, not as a porn star, which had not yet been mentioned by any news source – had been the second story, after the gunshot war that had slowed down the Nueces County coroner’s office.
Faith’s hard, heavy weeping slowly eased. Whit handed her a wad of tissues to replace the ones she’d rendered sopping, and he poured them each a hefty glass of an inexpensive merlot. She gulped down a third of the glass in a long swallow.
‘You don’t think you can cry for someone you ceased to love a long while back.’ Faith sniffed, tamped her nostrils with the tissues. ‘I keep thinking of the boy I knew and married, not the sleaze he turned out to be… but he came home, and all I saw was the sleaze. Nothing more.’ She drank again. ‘This is good, Whit. Thanks. You know how he proposed to me? On Port Leo Beach, at midnight. The beach was closed, but we snuck in and sat on the sand and counted stars. He told me I had missed one, and then he dangled this beautiful diamond on a string before my eyes.’ She studied the red depths of the wineglass. ‘I loved him then – sure I did. But he married me only because his mother wanted it. I found out later she’d bought the ring for him and told him just how to propose. She knew what would light my fire.’ She set the wineglass down, folded her fingers together in her lap. ‘Whit, you’ve got to believe me… We didn’t have anything to do with Pete’s death. Nothing. And Lucinda, she shouldn’t have come across so hard-assed with you.’
‘Why didn’t you tell me Pete was back in town?’ Whit kept his voice gentle, quiet, and unaccusing.
‘Because… God, we didn’t want anyone to know he even existed anymore. But he cooperated with us. He kept a very low profile. I mean, I guess a couple of people commented to me he was back, but no production was made of it.’ Her mouth twisted. ‘Did you want to waste away our motel time chatting about my ex?’
‘You didn’t want people – or me – to know he was back because he had starred in blue movies?’
‘Yes.’ She took another bolstering slug of wine and shuddered.
‘Not because he could derail Lucinda’s campaign. And your career. Not because he was going to sue you for custody of Sam.’
‘Look, as far as I’m concerned, Whit, this custody crap is a complete fiction Velvet dreamed up in her screwed-stupid little mind.’
‘You asked me to help y’all get through this, to not make a big production of the inquest. But I’m not doing you any such favors until I know what’s going on here.’
‘I clearly don’t mean diddly squat to you, do I?’
‘This has nothing to do with us. Faith. But I don’t believe a man who wants to get his child back just kills himself.’
‘I don’t suppose it’s occurred to you the source of his depression was he knew he’d never, ever get Sam.’
‘Yes, it occurred to me. It also occurred to me to wonder exactly why he’d even think he had a chance in court. Did he have something on you. Faith?’
‘There’s nothing that could trump porn!’ she barked at him. ‘For God’s sakes!’
‘There are worse crimes than dirty movies.’
‘Not to a family court.’ She stood. ‘I came over here to talk, not to be grilled by you.’
‘You came over to presume on our relationship,’ Whit said. ‘You’re asking me to not make a public spectacle of the inquest for Sam’s sake. But I’m asking you for an explanation of what was going on with Pete. This cuts both ways, sweetie.’
‘I told you what I know.’ She sat again.
‘Perhaps I should excuse myself from the case.’
‘No. Don’t.’ Panic flashed in her eyes. ‘You do that, you’ll have to explain why, and I don’t want Sam to know about us.’
‘Don’t lock Sam in a glass bubble forever.’
‘Look, it hasn’t been easy for him… no father… his grandmother and I so busy. And now, with Pete dead, I can’t rub salt in his wounds, please, Whit. Not now.’ She covered her face with her hands.
‘The boat Pete was staying on. It’s owned by a family suspected of heavy drug activity up the coast.’
‘Lucinda mentioned that.’ She leaned back against the thick pillows of the couch and dropped her hands. ‘Good God, he chose well, didn’t he? One little explosive charge after another to sink his mother’s ship.’
‘He’s the one who’s dead, not Lucinda.’ He sat next to her. ‘Where were you last night?’
‘Am I not supposed to be insulted at the question?’
‘That’s up to you, Faith.’
‘I was at home last night, with Sam. I haven’t spent enough time with him lately. We had dinner, watched TV, went to sleep early. It’s all in my bland little police statement.’
‘Okay,’ he said. ‘Thanks.’
She took his hand. ‘I’ve been nothing but honest with you. I’m sure he killed himself, okay? All these other diversions – this Corey movie, this custody idea, him staying on a drug hound’s boat – I’m begging, Whit. Keep it all out of the inquest, can’t you? It has no place. If you don’t you’re letting a nobody like Pete win. Over me. Over us.’
‘I can’t promise that, Faith. I can’t.’
She rose, her face contorting as though slapped. ‘The problem with you, Whit, is that everyone has low expectations of you and you never fucking disappoint.’
A rap sounded at the door. Faith fell silent. Whit stood, wondering if she might go hide in the bathroom or closet, but she stayed put and he went to his door.
It was Claudia. ‘Hi,’ she said, and she glanced past his shoulder to see Faith Hubble standing by the couch, the empty wineglass on the coffee table, the half full one next to it.
‘I’m sorry,’ she said. ‘I didn’t realize you had company.’
‘Come in,’ Whit said. ‘Mrs Hubble and I were just discussing her ex-husband. You want something to
