I heard the bathroom door reopen. When I turned around, Lorna was standing naked before me.
I looked at her for a moment before I spoke. "I think you left something in the bathroom," I said. I made no move toward her.
"Don't you want to be with me?" she asked.
"I can't, Lorna. If I did, it would be for the wrong reasons and, frankly, I'm not sure I could deal with the consequences."
"No, it's not that," she said. A tear trickled down her cheek. "I've grown old. I'm not like I was when you knew me first."
It was true: she was not as I remembered her. There were dimples on her upper thighs and buttocks, and small folds of fat at her belly. Her breasts were less firm and there was soft flesh beginning to hang on her upper arm. The faint trace of a varicose vein wormed its way across the upper part of her left leg. On her face, there were fine wrinkles around the mouth and a triad of lines snaked away from the corner of each eye.
And yet, while the years had transformed her, were changing her even now, they had not made her any less beautiful. Instead, as she grew older, her femininity had been enhanced. The fragile beauty of her youth had withstood the harsh winters of the north and the difficulties of her marriage by adapting, not fading, and that strength had found expression in her face, in her body, lending her looks a dignity and maturity that had been buried before and had only occasionally displayed itself in her features. As I looked into her eyes and her gaze met mine, I knew that the woman I had loved, for whom I still felt something that was almost love, remained untouched within.
"You're still beautiful," I said. She watched me carefully, trying to be certain that I was not trying to blind her with kind lies. When she saw that I was telling the truth, her eyes closed softly as if she had just been touched deep inside but could not tell whether she felt pain or pleasure.
She covered her face with her hands and shook her head. "This is kind of embarrassing."
"Kind of," I agreed.
She nodded and went back into the bathroom. When she emerged, fully-clothed. she walked straight to the door. I followed her, reaching it as she touched the handle. She turned before opening it, and rested her hand against my cheek. "I don't know," she said, her forehead resting gently against my shoulder for a moment. "I just don't know."
Then she slipped out of the room and into the morning light.
I slept for a time, then showered and dressed. I looked at my watch as I strapped it to my wrist, and a pain lanced through my stomach unlike anything I had felt in months. In all that had happened-the hunt for traces of Caleb Kyle, the encounter with Rachel, the death of Stritch-I had lost track of the days.
It was December eleventh. The anniversary was one day away.
It was past three when I ate dry toast and coffee at the diner, and thought of Susan, and the rage I felt at the world for allowing her and my daughter to be taken from me. And I wondered how, with all of this pain and grief coiled inside me, I could ever begin again.
But I wanted Rachel, I knew, and the depth of my need for her surprised me. I had felt it as I sat opposite her in Harvard Square, listening to her voice and watching the movements of her hands. How many times had we been together? Twice? Yet, with her, I had felt a peace that had been denied me for so long.
I wondered too at what I might bring upon her, and upon myself, if the relationship was allowed to develop. I was a man moon-haunted by the ghost of his wife. I had mourned for her, and I still mourned for her. I felt guilt at my feelings for Rachel, at what we had done together. Was it a betrayal of Susan's memory to want to start over? So many feelings, so many emotions, so many acts of revenge, of attempted recompense, had been concentrated into the last twelve months. I felt drained by them, and tormented by the images that crept unbidden into my dreams and my waking moments. I had seen Donald Purdue in the bar. I had seen him as clearly as I had seen Lorna naked before me, as clearly as I had seen Stritch impaled on a tree.
I wanted to start again, but I didn't know how. All I knew was that I was moving closer and closer to the edge, and that I had to find some way to anchor myself before I fell.
I left the diner then drove down to Greenville. The Mercury was parked at the back of the motel beneath a copse of trees, making it almost invisible from the road. I didn't think Rand would come after Angel and Louis, not as long as he had me, but it didn't hurt to take precautions. As I parked, Angel opened the door to room six, moved aside to let me in, then closed the door behind him.
"Well, look at you," he said, a wide grin on his face.
Louis lay on one of the room's two double beds, reading the latest issue of Time. "He right, Bird," he said. "You the man. Pretty soon, you and Michael Douglas both be in one o' them sex clinics and we be reading about you in People magazine."
"We saw her arriving as we left," said Angel. "She was in kind of a state. I didn't see there was anything else I could do but let her in." He sat alongside Louis. "Now I just know you're going to tell us that you and the chief sat down and talked this thing out and he said, 'Sure, you can sleep with my wife, because she really loves you, not me.' Because, if you didn't, then, pretty soon, you're going to be even less welcome there than you are already. And, frankly, you're currently about as welcome as a dead man's feet in summertime."
"I didn't sleep with her," I said.
"She come on to you?"
"You ever hear of sensitivity?"
"It's overrated, but I'll take that as a yes and assume that you didn't respond. Jeez, Bird, you got the self-restraint of a saint."
"Let it go, Angel. Please."
I sat on the edge of the second bed, and put my head in my hands. I breathed deeply and closed my eyes tightly. When I looked up again, Angel was almost beside me. I lifted my hand to let him know that I was okay. I went to the bathroom and soaked my face with cold water before returning to them.
"As for the chief, I haven't been run out of town yet," I said, picking up the conversation where we had left off. "I'm a witness-cum-suspect in the unsolved murder of an unidentified man in the Maine woods. Jennings asked me to stick around, shoot the breeze. He did tell me something else as welclass="underline" the ME hasn't officially delivered his report yet, but it's likely to confirm that Chute was beaten badly before he was killed. From the marks on his wrists, it looked like someone hung him from a tree to do it." The investigation into the death would be conducted out of CID III's headquarters in Bangor, Jennings had told me, but Dark Hollow itself was likely to be crawling with cops by the following morning.
"Louis made some calls, touched base with a few of his associates," said Angel. "He found out that Al Z and a contingent of Palermo irregulars flew into Bangor last night. Seems like Tony Celli just ran out of time."
So they were closing in. There was a reckoning coming. I could feel it. I went to the door and looked out on the quietness of the India Hill Mall, at the tourist information office and the deserted parking lot. Louis came over and stood beside me.
"You called that boy's name in the bar last night, just before you saw Stritch," he said.
I nodded. "I saw something, but I don't even know what it was." I opened the door and stepped outside. He didn't pursue the subject.
"So what now?" said Louis. "You dressed up like you ready for an Arctic adventure."