“If it makes you feel any better, I had my annual physical four months ago, including the standard blood tests. I’m depressingly healthy. And I’ve been on The Pill for irregular cycles since I was seventeen.”
“I was married to the last woman I had sex with,” he told her quietly. “We only used protection because we didn’t want to start a family right away. When she died, something in me did too.”
“I’m sorry, Camp. I didn’t mean to bring up unpleasant memories. I didn’t mean to rush into anything…to take advantage of the situation. Of you.”
He smiled a little and ran the ball of this thumb gently down her cheek. “Isn’t the man supposed to say that at a time like this?”
“I’m the one who came at you, remember? I think on some level I’ve been attracted to you from the beginning. I tend to be willful and, as Sheila puts it so delicately, damned bullheaded. That, combined with your attitude towards my writing…well, I guess the sparks flew but in the wrong direction.”
Harm stared past her again and she had the feeling that he’d gone somewhere else; somewhere she couldn’t follow. For long moments, she lay beside him, silently speaking to him with her body. At long last, he looked at her again, the sadness in his face, eyes, whole body, making her heart suddenly ache.
“Jeanne was seventeen when I first met her. She was the oldest daughter of my first partner after I got out of the police academy. Bill invited me to a barbecue one weekend. We’d only been partnering about three months. I rang the bell and she answered. Five foot four, red hair, blue eyes, a body to make a man fall on his face at her feet. I loved her before I even knew her name.
“We waited two years. A lot of necking, a lot of petting, a lot of cold showers, but she wanted our first time to be ‘special.’ A celebration.” Harm paused and Elgin thought he might cry but he managed to go on.
“Our wedding night was beautiful. We spent hours playing and fondling and arousing each other. I wanted her to be happy, as fulfilled emotionally as physically. When she climaxed the first time, I almost came myself, she was so enraptured, so high. From then on, all I wanted was to make this woman happy. Explore all the ways there are for two people in love to show it. Make her body sing and be glad we were together.”
“It sounds wonderful.”
“It was. For a while. But in those days, I wanted a career as much as I wanted a home. I worked all the overtime I could get. I told her it was so we could save money and buy a house and start a family and I meant it. But I also wanted to make rank, get ahead. When I wasn’t working or studying for the next exam, I was asleep.”
“One day I got a chance to try out for the FBI. When I was accepted, it meant uprooting to Quantico, Virginia. She didn’t want to leave her family and friends but I told her that as soon as I graduated and got a permanent assignment, we’d buy a house. Have kids. And I’d put in for a transfer back ‘home’ as soon as I could.”
“And that never happened?”
He shook his head and bit his lip. “The training took every hour of the day, every ounce of strength I had. It made my police days seem like a paid vacation. I don’t even remember when we stopped making love. It just seemed to…to sort of dry up and…”
“That happens in long term relationships,” she offered. “It’s called ‘reality’ and afflicts lots of couples.”
“I don’t know,” Harm sighed. “All I know is that I spent a lot more time with my career than my wife. It wasn’t that I didn’t love her…didn’t want to be with her. I did. I even told myself I was doing it for us. That as soon as I got ‘ahead,’ I’d slow down and we’d do all the things we planned. We never got the chance.”
“It wasn’t your fault she died.”
“I didn’t shoot her or push her off a cliff, if that’s what you mean,” he answered bitterly. “But I might just as well have. I just stopped being there for her. I killed her and I didn’t even know it. Hell, I didn’t even know she was going out. I was never home at night and when I was home in the daytime, I was usually asleep.
“I came home from an undercover operation. I’d been gone the best part of three months. I found her lying in our bed.” Tears pooled in his eyes and slid down his face. “She was in labor.”
The word hit Elgin like a physical blow and she felt herself flinch.
“The sheets were soaked and she was barely conscious. I called an ambulance and we drove to the hospital. All the way there, I couldn’t understand why she hadn’t told me. I would have been happy to have a child. A piece of us.
“She didn’t make it to the hospital. The baby came in the ambulance and the paramedics rushed both of them into emergency. After a while, this teenage kid in a white coat came out, told me he was Dr. Such-and-Such and how sorry he was but that Jeanne hadn’t survived. He told me the baby was in a bad way and needed an emergency operation to survive. Said the baby had a fairly rare blood type and that if I could give blood, it would save time trying to locate some. Asked me if I wanted to donate blood.
“My wife had just died…of course I wanted to do anything I could to save our child so I said of course. At that moment I was so shook up, I totally forgot that I’m A positive. Only after the blood work came back that I wasn’t a suitable donor did it dawn on me. The reason she hadn’t told me about the baby was because it wasn’t mine. She’d been too ashamed even to get pre-natal treatment.”
“Oh Camp…”
“Turned out it didn’t really make any difference. He died on the operating table.”
Harm wiped his face on the corner of the pillowcase.
“I don’t remember very much about the days after that. I buried Jeanne and the baby and everyone told me what a tragedy it was. I asked for a transfer. Told people I couldn’t bear to be in the same apartment, the same town…While I was cleaning out Jeanne’s things, I found a whole box full of paperback romance novels. The kind you write with lots of hot sex and happy endings. Most of them looked like they’d been read and re-read. I couldn’t believe it. My wife’s stash of porn. Flipping through them, I got angrier and angrier as I skimmed the passages. People like you had made her dissatisfied, filled her head with a lot of romantic nonsense about forbidden love affairs and steamy passion. I blamed you for her death.”
“I can understand that, Camp. Really, I can.”
“Don’t be understanding, Elgin. I don’t deserve it. Jeanne was a beautiful, healthy woman with all the needs and wants a woman has. Should have. I gave her the gift of sex. I showed her the power and the pleasure of that gift and then I took it away from her. Blaming you and the sexy books was easier than facing the truth. If it was your fault, it didn’t have to be mine. Somehow, you’d seduced her away from me. I hadn’t let her go. And it worked very well until I met you. Now I understand, about a lot of things.”
“Then let it rest, Camp. Jeanne did what she did. If she’d loved you…really loved you…she would have talked to you. Tried to work it out. Maybe you couldn’t have stayed together. No one can know that now. But I know that if she loved you…if she ever loved you, she wouldn’t want you to stop living, to be alone.”
“I don’t know…”
“Yes, you do. You know that if you’d have been killed in the line of duty, you wouldn’t have wanted her to grow old by herself. Nothing but memories to keep her warm. You’d have wanted her to get on with her life, including someone else to share it with. Wouldn’t you?”