Wildwood Road (9 page)

“Thanks, Brit.”

She told him he was welcome, but by then he was already pushing through the door that led into the interior offices of Krakow & Bester. The map book felt oddly cold in his hand as he carried it back to his office. Teddy Polito's office was on the way but Michael did not feel like talking to him about the Newburyport Premium campaign at the moment, so he took a detour amongst some cubicles.

The map in his hands made him feel as though he had accomplished something. It was a beginning. This weekend he would drive into Jameson and do some poking around, see if he could find anything that looked familiar. His guilt at having been so negligent with this girl would go away if he could find her house and know that she was safe. All he wanted was to get her out of his head.

In his office, he set the map book down and went to his drawing table. There was a broad sheet of sketch paper there, with only the basic female figure penciled in. In his mind's eye he could still see the wide-eyed face Brittany had made earlier, and he started working on the features of the woman in the sketch. That would be the expression on her face as she glanced down at the melting ice cream dripping on her bikini-clad breasts and bare belly.

His pencil flew across the paper, scratching quietly.

A kind of peaceful contentment filled him. Yes, he would find the girl. But for the moment, this was what he needed. Get a little work done. Get lost in his art.

His nostrils flared.

Cinnamon. He smelled cinnamon, and something more. His stomach rumbled hungrily as he recognized that smell. Cinammon-apple pie, baking in the oven. But there was no oven here, and the door to his office was closed.

The tip of his pencil broke off and Michael froze. A wave of cold air seemed to rush over him, as though the heater had just clicked over to a/c. He glanced up, and something moved in the corner of his eye.

The sunlight streaming through the window washed her out, so that she was like a transparency superimposed over the world. Blue jeans. A ruffled peasant blouse. The sunshine passed right through her, silhouetting her like the headlights of his car. For just a sliver of a moment, he thought perhaps he had killed her after all, and now she was haunting him.

He gasped and blinked.

And she was gone.

“Oh, hell. You have got to be kidding me,” Michael whispered to himself. His hands were shaking. And when he looked down at the sketch he had been working on he found that just above the bikinied Brittany with her drippy ice cream cone, just where his pencil tip had broken, stabbing a dark mark onto the page, he had written the words again.

Come find me.

His eyes darted to the map book.

“I'm trying,” he whispered. His hands came up and he ran them over his face and hair, then leaned back in his chair, glancing around the office, which had become only ordinary again. “I'm trying.”

O
N
W
EDNESDAY NIGHT, WITH THE
wind outside the only sound, Jillian lay beside her husband in bed, feeling more alone than she had ever felt before. Three nights in a row she had lain awake like this, feeling lost. Never in her life, if she had been asked, would she have thought she could have felt lonely in her own bed, with Michael at her side. It wasn’t the fight they’d had. She was pretty certain they had cleared that all up days ago.

So, what, then?

Her face felt warm, flushed with emotion. The clock read 1:07 but her pulse was racing too fast. There was no way she was going to go to sleep. Not yet. All she could do was lie there with her arms crossed, corpselike, across her chest. Beside her on the nightstand was a reading lamp. Her book was on the floor. But it was too late to start reading, too late to turn on the television.

She had a history of insomnia—maddening, crippling stuff. The first time had been the night before her brother's wedding. As maid of honor, she had been expected to make a speech, and though she was normally outgoing, the prospect filled her with such anxiety that sleep eluded her. From that point on, any time she went to sleep late, she would remember what it had felt like and dread its return. It had been a terrible period in her life but she had gotten past it. Mostly.

Now, here it was again. Monday night had been difficult, but she had been asleep a little after midnight. Tuesday had been slightly worse. Now, with the fear that the torment of persistent insomnia was returning and the hollow feeling in her chest that sprang from the distance she felt between herself and Michael, she felt as though she might never sleep again.

1:11. She stared at the painting on the wall, proper Victorian ladies walking through a park. Its hues were darker in the night, deeply shadowed. Almost as though they were strolling long after midnight.

1:26. Michael lay so still beside her, no sound of snoring nor really any sound of breathing, that she wondered a moment if he was dead. Or worse, if he were lying there awake, listening to her rustling the sheets and not wanting to speak, unwilling to comfort her. She considered very seriously the question of which option would be worse.

1:33. Listening to the gears of the clock.

1:39. Wistful thoughts began to fill her mind. She dredged up images of the past. Though she had felt frozen before, she found herself able to turn now, and placed her right hand on Michael's hip, wishing he would turn toward her. Wishing he would open up his eyes and kiss her. Or, even better, that he would let her hold him and kiss away whatever was weighing so heavily upon him. This Michael—the one who had come home on Monday night with such faraway eyes—he was so different from the Michael she had first fallen in love with. The Michael she had first made love with.

1:41. Jillian at last closed her eyes, but still she did not sleep. In her exhaustion she fell into a kind of half-wakeful limbo, and with a grateful heart she let herself follow the path her thoughts had laid for her. Her mind drifted back to that night . . . that first night with Michael.

L
ATER ON,
J
ILLIAN WOULD MAKE
the distinction that it was not their first date. They had, after all, been to lunch half a dozen times previous to that evening. But the truth was that in her heart and mind she considered it the first real date they had been on. Michael had suggested they leave campus and go into Boston for dinner, even suggested a restaurant and bar in Quincy Marketplace called Seaside.

Jillian loved Quincy Market. The aquarium was only a stone's throw away, and Boston Common not much farther. The abominable bit of concrete architecture known as City Hall was just up the street. But Quincy Marketplace, with the historic Faneuil Hall as its centerpiece, was one of her favorite spots in Boston. It was vibrant with color and with the music of street performers who roamed the cobblestones, and the scents of the various food carts and flower sellers battled it out on each breeze.

On that night they walked, hand in hand, past a juggler on a unicycle; she marveled at the face-painted performer for a moment. When she glanced at Michael, she found that his attention was not on the juggler, but on her. While she had been smiling and laughing at the man's antics, Michael had been watching her, and his smile was not so much different from her own. She had loved him a little bit, right then. Though it would be a long time before she said it.

The truth was that Jillian believed—and told all of her friends—that Michael was just going to be a summer fling. But her heartbeat quickened when she saw him looking at her that way, and her step felt lighter as they continued along the cobblestones. He bought her a flower, a single red rose, and he did it so nonchalantly, with so little fanfare, that it seemed not like some grand romantic gesture but as a matter of due course, as though the very idea that he might not have bought her one was ridiculous.

The long summer day was coming to its close, the sun having lasted well into evening, when they abandoned the tourist-trodden thoroughfares of Quincy Market and stepped into Seaside. They had reservations, but they were still told they had a twenty-minute wait ahead of them, and so they took a seat at the bar.

They both had wine, sitting close together to be heard over the din. He held just the ends of her fingers in his hand and there was a light in his eyes, a confidence and passion for life that excited her. The conversation leaped from one topic to another, but they talked about family, and about life and ambition . . . about the future.

A strange feeling swept through her and she blinked and smiled.

“What?” he asked. “What's wrong?”

“Nothing,” she said, face warm. Jillian took a sip of wine and urged him to go on.

That strange feeling, so odd in the midst of the crowded, noisy bar, was her own arousal. How could she feel that way with all of those people around, with this guy that she had only just begun to get to know?

“Listen, Michael,” she said, shyly dropping her gaze.

“Yes?”

She raised her head. Acting coy would not get her message across. She locked eyes with him. “I like you. I really like you. But I just want to get it out of the way now, so we can enjoy the rest of the night. This is our first real date, and I need to know somebody a lot better than I know you before I'm comfortable enough to . . .”

Jillian offered a small shrug, hoping that would suffice. It did.

Michael nodded sincerely. “Oh, yeah. Of course. I'm . . . well, it's certainly not as if I was expecting the night to end that way.”

There was a moment when they gazed at each other as she interpreted the underlying message of that statement. It wasn't what he expected, but it wasn't as though he had written it off as impossible.

“Just so there are no misunderstandings,” she said.

Totally earnest, he nodded again. “Of course.”

Four hours later they were on the roof of the university library with the most breathtakingly romantic view of Boston she had ever seen as a backdrop. Jillian had told him what she wasn't
going
to do, but that left a great many questions about just what she might be
willing
to do. Kissing him was certainly within the realm of possibility.

His face was limned with moonlight and he slid his hands behind her head, dipping his chin to kiss her. Jillian felt as though the ground was giving way beneath her. Her arms went around his back and she found herself kissing him in return, her body molding to his. Michael's hands caressed her back, gliding down over the curve of her ass. When one of his hands slid up beneath her skirt she had a moment of utter conflict. Everything in her mind was telling her to close her legs, to push his hand away . . . but her legs would not obey. Instead, they shuddered and threatened to give out beneath her, and she had to lean back against the railing.

Without hesitation, Michael pushed her panties aside. He kissed her sweetly, gently, as he touched her there, fingers tracing her, teasing her.

A fire blazed up inside her, burning away all of the reservations and hesitations she had so carefully constructed. She whimpered as she pulled his face down for another kiss and then she reached for his belt. The leather slapped her wrist as she unbuckled him, then unzipped his pants. They were out in the darkness, in the shadows atop the library roof, but people came up here all the time. They might be interrupted at any moment.

Jillian didn't care.

When Michael lay down on the stone roof and pulled her to him she slid her panties down over her ankles and then climbed onto him, kissing his face, letting her hair hang down, cascading into his face. Her skirt covered both of them, but she did not need to see. She could feel him there, inside her, and she stared into his eyes with amazement at the heat, at the passion that had come over them. Her breath came in quick gasps, timed with the rhythm of her hips as she rose up and down upon him. He looked into her eyes as though she was the only girl he had ever seen.

She could barely breathe.

Just a summer fling.

N
OW IT HAD COME TO
this. The two of them in bed together, and her heart aching, feeling as though he was a million miles away.

Jillian had hoped that whatever had been troubling him on Monday night would fade, but if anything he had seemed more distant than ever tonight. She had felt it the moment she had walked in the door. Michael had made dinner, a chicken stir-fry, and he had done and said all of the right things. But it was in his eyes.

“Are you all right?” she had asked as they sat down to dinner. “You've been on autopilot all week.”

“I'm okay. I guess I haven't been feeling that well.” He had glanced away.

For a long time she had studied him, forking stir-fry up to her mouth without ever really tasting it. He did look pale. There were dark circles under his eyes. She had wondered if it was just the lingering effect of their horrible weekend, and if it was, what about it was staying with him. Someone had slipped something into his beer, but that should be long out of his system by now. Maybe he was fighting the flu, or something.

Or maybe it wasn't anything physical. Jillian had not wanted to think about it, but she had to consider that it might be nerves. That it might be remnants of their fighting over the weekend. Or worse. Maybe it was her. The way he wouldn't meet her gaze, the way he gave that little laugh when she asked him about it.

Something was haunting Michael, and he didn't want to talk to her about it. Jillian had felt herself closing off from him at dinner. Even her own body language had changed, her arms in tight to her body, her legs turned away from him under the table. Normally he was so perceptive with that kind of thing, but he failed to notice at all. He was too wrapped up in whatever was going on in his head.

Now she lay beside him, remembering that first night they had made love by the light of the moon, with the Boston skyline as their backdrop. A flicker of the thrill of that night still lingered in her heart. This was Michael. She loved him. And one of the things he had always said he loved about her was that she never suffered other people's bullshit.