Cutter's Run (17 page)

I flopped onto my back and blew out a long breath. “Jesus, Susannah.”

“I did not intend for this to happen,” she said. She sat up, picked up her beer bottle, and took a long swig. Her throat worked as she swallowed, and a trickle of beer dribbled down her chin. She lowered the bottle and wiped her mouth with the back of her wrist. “Want to get me another one?”

“Sure.” I stood up, steadied myself until a moment of dizziness passed, fished out another beer from Arlo’s saddlebag, and brought it back to her.

“Thanks.” She pressed the wet bottle against the side of her neck. “I came here hoping I’d find you,” she said quietly. She was sitting cross-legged, staring down at the blanket.

“To seduce me?”

She frowned at me. “Of course not.”

I shook my head. “I’m sorry. That was uncalled-for. It was my fault, not yours.”

She gazed off into the distance. “No,” she said quietly, “maybe you’re right. Maybe I did think about kissing you.” She took a sip of beer. “I apologize. It’s our secret. No harm, no foul.”

“I’ve got to tell Alex,” I said.

“Don’t be silly.”

“It’s not good to have secrets.”

“Everybody has secrets, Brady. It was just a kiss, for God’s sake. Nothing happened.”

I shook my head. “That was not just a kiss. Something happened.”

Susannah nodded. “Do what you think you have to do. Just keep in mind that Alex is my friend, and if you tell her that we—that you kissed me—I’ll probably lose her friendship. And I know,” she said quickly. “We should’ve thought of that before.”

I sipped from my beer and said nothing.

“It was nice, though,” she said after a minute. “Wasn’t it?”

I nodded. “Yes. It was nice.”

She smiled at me. “Would you kiss me again?”

I shook my head. “I don’t think so.”

Her hand slithered under my shirt and crept up my back. “Hey,” she said softly.

I looked at her, and she tilted up her face, and I touched her cheek and bent to her, and I kissed her again, and this time it was gentle, almost sexless, and when we broke it off, I kissed her eyes and hugged her against me. “Noah does want to talk to you,” I said into her hair. “He will if you make it easy for him.”

She nodded.

I pushed myself to my feet and picked up my rod and vest. My light-headedness seemed to have passed, but I felt weak and faintly nauseated. “Come on,” I said to Susannah. “Give me a ride back to my car.”

She told me she had put the saddle on Arlo for my benefit, so I grabbed the reins and mounted him and she scrambled up behind me. She wrapped her arms around my waist and laid her cheek against my back, and Arlo began to meander up the sloping meadow.

“I’m sorry you didn’t catch any trout,” she said. “Was it pretty? The beaver pond, I mean?”

“It was perfect. I think the beavers have deserted it, though. There’s a break in their dam, and they haven’t fixed it. They built it exactly where the old dam used to be. I saw some of the ruins of the old tannery. I’d like to look at it sometime. Old broken things interest me.”

“Nothing much to see,” said Susannah. “It’s been gone a long time. Fire and flood and time have taken it all away. There’s nothing left but briars and mosquitoes and a few random hunks of concrete and brick.” She hugged me from behind. “Anything new on Charlotte Gillespie?”

As Arlo carried us up the meadow, past the cabin, and down the roadway to my car, I told Susannah about the vile phone message we’d had waiting for us on Sunday evening. I told her about talking to the girl at the animal hospital, and my visit from Norman and Paris LeClair, and how Sheriff Dickman had deputized me. I told her how I had met with William Keith at the accounting firm where Charlotte had worked, and I finished my story just about the time Arlo stopped beside the Wrangler.

Susannah slid off Arlo’s back, and then I dismounted.

“What about Paul?” I said to her.

She cocked her head and frowned at me. “What about him?”

“You going to tell him about… about what just happened?”

“Of course not.”

I shrugged. “I just thought…”

“Look,” she said. “Paul Forten is a nice guy. He’s amusing and smart. He seems to care for me, in his own self-absorbed way, and he believes he can persuade me to care for him. That’s his term—‘care for.’ He says, ‘Susannah, I care for you.’ And I want to go, ‘Paul, I wish you weren’t such a damn romantic’” She blew out a long breath. “It’s as if entering into a relationship is this logical decision I’ve got to make. He buys me gifts. He waits on me. Hell, he does the dishes.” She smiled. “And I let him do it. I know that’s not nice. But it’s easier than arguing with him.”

“I figured women nowadays went for that stuff,” I said.

“Not me.” She looked into my eyes. “Paul Forten is not my type of guy.” She laughed quickly. “Actually, I think he likes Daddy more than he likes me. He—he’s persistent, Brady. I just don’t have the energy to tell him to stop coming around. I certainly don’t owe him any explanation for anything, never mind an apology.”

“Well,” I said, “it’s different with me and Alex.”

She nodded. “I know.” She stepped toward me and wrapped her arms around my waist. “Maybe we’ll run into each other again.”

She tilted up her face. I kissed her forehead, then put my hands on her hips and gently pushed her away. “I hope not,” I said.

I
BUMPED SLOWLY OVER
the dusty roads, heading back to Alex’s house. I had to tell her what had happened with Susannah, and I had to say it the right way, explain it so that she understood. I did not want to lie or distort or exaggerate or minimize.

I practiced my speech, tried to play out the scenario, to visualize Alex’s face as I spoke to her. “I kissed Susannah Hollingsworth this morning. I kissed her several times, and I wanted to make love to her. I didn’t, but I wanted to. I thought of you, and I kissed her anyway. Two of them were deep, long, passionate kisses, and she had her body pressed against mine, and I responded to her. I touched her breast and I held her ass in my hands. I broke away from two of those kisses. But one of them, it was Susannah who pushed me away. If she hadn’t done that, I don’t know if I would have stopped.”

Alex would be staring into my face as I spoke, and she would not reveal what she was thinking. I would tell her: “Before today, I believed I was a good, strong, faithful man. I think you believed the same thing. I want you to know that I am not that good or that strong, and today I was not faithful.”

And I would also have to tell Alex that if a similar situation arose in the future, I could not promise that I would be good or strong or faithful enough to resist kissing Susannah again. Another time I might make love to her.

I would tell Alex that I had wanted to make love to Susannah, that she had aroused me and excited me. Even now, riding in my Jeep over the back roads, I realized that part of me still wanted to make love to Susannah Hollingsworth.

I would talk to Alex right away, just as soon as I got back, while I still had the courage to do it. She’d be at her desk working on her book, and I’d have to interrupt her.

“Later, honey,” she’d say, leaning forward, peering at her computer monitor, barely registering what I was saying.

“It’s important,” I’d tell her. “I wouldn’t interrupt your work if it wasn’t important.”

Then she’d shake her head, turn to look up at me, and give me a frown, because I should know better than to interrupt her work.

But then she’d see my face and recognize the importance of what I wanted to say to her. She’d nod. “Okay,” she’d say quietly. “What’s up?”

And then I’d tell her.

And then it would never be the same with us again.

When I got there, Sheriff Dickman’s green Explorer was parked in Alex’s driveway. I pulled in beside it, got out, retrieved my rod and vest from the back, and went inside. I stowed the fishing gear in the closet and went into the kitchen. When I peeked out through the glass sliders, I saw Dickman and Alex sitting out on the deck.

They were sipping what looked like iced coffee. Both of them had their heels propped up on the railing and they were rocking and gazing off toward New Hampshire. Dickman was talking and gesturing, and Alex kept glancing at him through her big glasses in that endearingly myopic way of hers that makes you think you are the only person in her world. She cocks her head and thrusts her face forward slightly, and through her glasses her eyes look big and childlike, and you can see that she’s fascinated with the wit and intelligence of what you’re saying to her. A little half-smile plays on her mouth while you talk, and her lips sometimes move, as if she’s silently repeating your words to herself so that she will remember every single one of them.

Alex listens with her entire face, and her hands, too. Her hands are restless. They stroke whatever she might be holding, and when you say something clever or sad or profound, she touches your arm or grabs your sleeve. She keeps poking her glasses up onto the bridge of her nose with her forefinger, as if it’s very important for her to keep you in focus.

I noticed all these things about Alex the first time I met her. But I had never before really noticed that she looks at everyone that way when she’s engaged in a conversation. I’d always thought it was only me.

Now, as I stood in the kitchen watching her through the glass door while Dickman talked to her, I saw her shift her gaze from the horizon to Dickman’s face, and I saw her flash him a quick smile. She was moving her finger up and down the side of the wet glass she was holding as she peered into Dickman’s eyes. And then, without shifting her gaze away from him, her finger, the one that had been caressing the glass, moved up to her mouth. The tip of her tongue darted out to touch it, and then her lips closed around it, and it looked like she was kissing her fingertip.

It was painfully intimate, achingly erotic, and I felt like a voyeur, standing there in the kitchen watching Alex sucking her finger and peering into Sheriff Dickman’s eyes.

I wondered if Dickman saw Alex the way I did.

I went into the bathroom and splashed cold water on my face. That strange light-headed sensation had passed, but I still felt a bit wobbly and very thirsty. I dried my face, popped three aspirin, washed them down with water, and went back into the kitchen. I filled a tall glass with ice cubes, then took the jug of iced coffee from the refrigerator and poured it over the ice. I gulped down half of it, then refilled it.

I opened the sliding door and went out onto the deck.

They both looked up at me. “Sorry if I’m late,” I said to the sheriff. I bent down and kissed Alex on the puckered mouth she held up to me, then shook hands with Dickman. I sat in the empty rocker beside Alex.

She was grinning. “Look at you,” she said. “You look totally wiped. You must’ve hooked a monster.”

“I hooked nothing, actually. There are no trout in that beaver pond.”

“Wait a minute,” said Dickman. “You trying to say that because you didn’t catch one, there aren’t any there? Are you that good?”

“Trust me,” I grumbled. “I know when there are trout in a fucking stream, whether or not I actually catch any.”

Dickman frowned and held up a hand. “Whoa,” he said. “No offense intended, my friend. I was just kidding.”

I shook my head. “Sorry. I know you were. I had a nice morning, and maybe there are some trout there. But I couldn’t catch any of them.”

“Well, it looks like you’ve been battling Moby Dick,” said Alex. “And Moby won. You look awful.”

“Why, thank you kindly, ma’am,” I said to her.

“No, seriously,” she said. “Do you feel all right?”

I nodded. “Sure. I’m fine.”

“Well,” she said, “tell us about your adventure.”

So I told Alex and Dickman about checking out Charlotte’s cabin again and my fruitless visit to the beaver dam. I left out the part about Susannah being there when I stopped fishing. That was the important part of my story, but it was for Alex, not the sheriff.

After I finished my tale of incomplete truths, she stood up. Dickman started to rise, too, but she put her hand on his shoulder and said, “I’ve got to get back to work. You go ahead and have your law-enforcement conversation with your trusted deputy, here.” She touched my cheek. “You’ve got a nasty scratch on your neck, Brady. Wash it and put a Band-Aid on it. You don’t want it to get infected.” She squeezed my shoulder, said “Bye” to Dickman, and slipped inside.

Susannah had dampened a tissue with her tongue and dabbed at that scratch on my neck. I had to tell Alex about Susannah, but now was not the time.

I realized that I felt relieved.

I turned to Dickman. “So what’s up, Sheriff? Or did you come here to ogle Alex?”

He smiled. “She’s easy to ogle, my friend. I asked her about that phone call, of course. She seems okay with it. Tough lady.”

“You listened to the tape?”

He nodded. “Couldn’t make any more out of it than you did. It’s a threat, that’s about all I could say for sure. How seriously we should take it…” He shrugged.

“I’ve decided to stick around for a few more days,” I said. “I know Alex is tough, and when she’s writing you couldn’t distract her with a nuclear explosion. But still…”

“She’s certainly absorbed in her book,” said Dickman. “She told me about it, and then picked my brain on the subject of abuse. I told her that it’s not uncommon in rural Maine, but rarely gets reported. Husbands beat wives, mothers and fathers and stepparents and grandparents beat kids, and when kids get older, they keep the tradition alive with their own kids. Sometimes kids beat their parents and grandparents. No one talks about it much, so we law-enforcement types generally hear about it secondhand—if we hear it at all—and we hardly ever get a complaint. It’s amazing how many people show up in the emergency room with black eyes and broken noses and cracked ribs from slipping and falling. This was of great interest to Alex. She said that based on her research, what I see around here is what’s happening everywhere. Urban slums, rural slums, rich suburbs. You name it.”

“Alex thinks Charlotte Gillespie might’ve been the victim of abuse,” I said.