Faint of Heart (2 page)

Rebecca woke up again around eight-thirty. She lay in bed for another ten minutes, but the dark specter of guilt began to hover over her--God, her conscience was annoying--and she reluctantly got up. She cranked up the thermostat, took a long shower, brushed her teeth, and got dressed in sweatpants and a heavy t-shirt.

Then she got back in bed, leaned some pillows against the headboard, and sat up to read the smutty romance novel she'd been looking forward to for the past couple of months.
Pauline and the Tailors.
Good stuff.

As the newly deflowered heroine strained toward the legendary heights of her blossoming womanhood and the hero's member throbbed (Gary had previously confirmed that a sensation of throbbing in that particular region was abnormal and would prompt him to seek medical attention), Rebecca began to feel guilty again. Damn. It wasn't fair. She had an entire weekend to do absolutely nothing, to live the life of a lazy bon-bon gobbling housewife, and her brain wasn't going to let her enjoy it.

Maybe she'd paint the house.

No, probably not.

Somewhere there had to be a happy medium between painting the house and reading smut.

Maybe she'd paint smut on the house. After all, they were a good half-mile from the nearest neighbor, surrounded by enough trees that you couldn't even see the house from the road. Nobody would complain.

Or maybe she'd just entertain herself all day with this kind of pointless mental conversation. Gary could come home, give her an I-missed-you kiss, and then drive her to the local sanitarium.

Maybe if she watched some educational programming on television she'd be able to be a worthless lazy bum without feeling bad about it.

After all,
People's Court
taught important lessons about the legal system...

* * *

By eleven, she was pretty much bored out of her mind, so she trashed her idea of staying inside all weekend and drove the twenty miles into Fairbanks to do some shopping. She ate lunch at the Mexican place she adored but that always gave Gary a good twenty minutes of bathroom time, bought two new blouses, and went to an art gallery, hoping that one of her students would be there and assume that was how she normally spent her weekends. None were, but she did get to see some fascinating artistic renderings of jellyfish, unless they were supposed to be pipe cleaners.

Then she went to see a matinee of the chick-flick she'd been unable to drag Gary to see because he thought the lead actress had weird lips. It was predictable but amusing and she left the theatre in a good mood.

As she pulled out of a fast food drive-thru a few minutes after six, it was just starting to get dark. She hoped Gary was having a good time camping, and not having
too
many beers. The only time he ever overindulged was in the presence of his buddies. At least she knew they weren't drunkenly stumbling around the woods with rifles. Worst-case scenario, they were playing flatulence games.

She drove home, singing along poorly to the classic rock playing on the radio. She pressed the button on the visor to open the garage door, drove inside...

...and suddenly had a creepy sensation that somebody was in the house.

This was nothing new.

There was no evidence to indicate that anybody had broken in, there was nothing even remotely out of the ordinary, and Rebecca knew perfectly well that nobody was inside waiting for her. The alarms would have gone off.

She also knew that she'd spend the next fifteen minutes searching the house, and would probably be uneasy for the rest of the night.

She shouldn't have gone anywhere.

Of course, she would have been just as paranoid if she'd been inside the entire time, so it didn't really matter, did it?

Maybe Gary would come home early.

She shut off the engine, closed the garage door, got out of the car, and proceeded to check every possible location that an intruder could conceivably be hiding in her home. And then double-checked them.

Nobody was inside.

She didn't feel any better.

She almost wished she and Gary kept a gun in the house. Unfortunately, guns scared her more than hidden intruders.

She turned on the television and watched the tail end of
Only You
, which was one of her all-time favorite movies even though most people didn't like it. But the romantic comedy did nothing to keep her from looking over her shoulder every thirty seconds. From checking the windows. From cringing every time she heard a noise, most of them probably imagined.

She should never have let Gary leave.

No. That was ridiculous. She'd be fine. If Gary ever suspected just how much of a scaredy-cat she was...well, he'd probably never leave her alone in the house ever again. Which would be nice, but he hadn't married her so he could be a babysitter. She didn't want him thinking she was some timid, cowardly wife who couldn't take care of herself.

Around nine o'clock, she brushed her teeth and prepared to get in some comfy pajamas and read some more delightful smut. She unbuttoned her pants, tugged out the bottom of her blouse, and then hesitated.

What if somebody was watching?

Oh, for God's sake, there aren't even any goddamn windows in the bathroom
!

It didn't matter. She was still uncomfortable.

She'd be more vulnerable while she was naked.

If anybody was going to get her, they could do it in that second of darkness as she pulled her shirt over her head.

Which was, of course, completely absurd, but her entire life had been spent suffering from these absurd fears, and it didn't matter how many times she told herself she was being an idiot, she wasn't going to feel any less scared.

Remaining dressed, she got back in bed and resumed reading her novel. So she was pathetic. There were worse things in life than being pathetic.

Shouldn't Gary have called by now?

* * *

At exactly ten o'clock, after about an hour of forcing herself not to check the clock every thirty seconds, she dialed his cell phone number. His voice mail came on after five rings, so she disconnected and dialed again. Still no answer.

It wasn't a big deal. There were plenty of perfectly good reasons why Gary might not have answered. Most likely the cell phone reception was crap. It often was. Or they were doing some night fishing, and he'd left it back at camp. The battery could have died. He could have dropped it in a lake. He may even have accidentally left it in the car.

He'd never
forget
to call, but he was out in the wilderness, and he couldn't exactly jog over to a pay phone to let her know he was all right.

Everything was fine.

She dialed once more and this time left a quick I-Just-Called-Because-I-Was-Thinking-About-You message, trying to keep her tone upbeat. She got out of bed, went into the bathroom, and shut and locked the door before she changed into her pajamas.
  

At least nobody could see how pathetic she was.

She hoped.

She returned to bed, snuggled under the covers, and lay there all night, unable to fall asleep.

* * *

If nothing else, an entirely sleepless night erased some of her guilt, and after a breakfast of cold cereal she finished off the smut book, which had a happy ending where the principal characters decided to live in a threesome. Then she went into the den, booted up her laptop computer, and participated in a lively online conversation about standardized testing for about an hour.

Finally, unable to stifle her yawns any more, she lay on the couch and closed her eyes. At least in the daylight, she could fall asleep.

* * *

Rebecca woke up about five hours later, just before noon, feeling barely refreshed but glad that she no longer had those five hours to sit around worrying. She tried to call Gary, but again there was no answer. She considered leaving another message and decided against it. She didn't want Scott and Doug to make fun of him.

For a moment she thought about calling the police, but immediately rejected that idea. They'd laugh at her. Gary had said that he might not be able to get through, and he wasn't even due home until this evening, so there was absolutely, positively no need to worry unless he didn't come home tonight. Which he would. They'd kiss and laugh and have really good sex and she'd never even give him a hint of how scared she'd been alone in the house.

* * *

By nine o'clock, he still hadn't come home.

He hadn't called, and he hadn't answered his cell phone.

So, he was running late. It wasn't like you could plan out a camping trip with split second precision. His cell phone wasn't working, and he was hurrying back to the car right now, while Scott and Doug asked him to please slow down because their backpacks were too heavy.

Nothing to get worried about. He hadn't given her a specific time that he was going to be home; just that he'd be home in the evening.

But it wasn't evening anymore. It was night.

Were they lost?

What if, God forbid, they'd let
Doug
lead the way? They could be at Mount Denali!

She squeezed her eyes shut.
Stop it. Nobody likes a crazy paranoid lady.
He'd probably be home by the time she finished ironing her clothes for tomorrow.

Rebecca ironed her clothes
very
slowly, but he still didn't show up. Maybe they'd had car troubles. Maybe they were hitchhiking along the side of the road right now.

What kind of person would pick them up?

There was a knock at the door.

For several seconds she stood there, frozen. Then she snapped out of it and walked across the living room, feeling a bit sick to her stomach. She looked through the peephole in the door and saw a man, blond hair, maybe in his mid-thirties, standing on the porch. He wore jeans and a brown jacket.

"Who is it?" she asked.

As if aware that she was looking at him, the man reached into his jacket pocket and took out a badge. He held it up to the peephole. "State Troopers, ma'am."

The sick-to-her-stomach feeling turned into full-fledged nausea. "May I ask what this is about?" she inquired, trying to keep her voice formal and steady.

"Is this Mrs. Harpster?"

"Yes."

"Please open the door. It's about your husband."

CHAPTER THREE

"What happened to him?" she asked. In the time it took her to ask that question, a dozen ghastly scenarios flashed rapid-fire through her mind.

"Ma'am, this is not something we should discuss through a closed door."