“That’s nonsense. You’re talking about post-traumatic stress – it’s something soldiers get-”
“You’ve never been this wrapped up in a coroner’s inquiry before, have you?”
“Well, no-”
“I think you’re tangled up in 1974, both chained and drawn to whatever happened back then. I also get the feeling you don’t know if you’re stuck in this place, mired in some compulsion, or it’s really where you want to be, doing what you do so well.”
He tried to pull his hand away from hers, but she tightened her grip. Its strength surprised him.
“No, you don’t. I’m the best friend you could have right now, Mark Roper, because I’m not afraid to say what you need to hear. Face it! After all these years, you can’t afford to let much more time slide before you shake off whatever has sunk its teeth into you.”
He felt himself grow sweaty, and the images he’d fought against for a lifetime began to reappear.
He’d jumped off his bike, run up to those people standing in the circle, and pushed through their legs – No he wouldn’t do this. He pulled his hand away. “What do you want to hear, Lucy? That I cried, that I felt terrified, that since then I’ve never stopped feeling there’s this cavity inside me I can’t fill, and the only way to numb the hurt is to keep busy. Holding hands isn’t going to help. There, I’ve talked about it. You want to know how this let-it-all-hang-out crap makes me feel? Angry as hell!”
She grabbed his hand again, her grip even stronger than before. “Fine. Of course you’re angry. Now tell me your nightmare.”
Jesus, is there no stopping her? “You really want to hear this? Fine!” Let her have the story with both barrels, he thought, then watch her run for the hills. “I was riding my bike around town one evening, when there was a big explosion. I raced toward the sound, and saw smoke and flames from his office-”
She silenced him with a finger again. “Lose the anger, Mark.” Her pupils pulsed wide, filling her gaze with a soft darkness that sucked the fight right out of him.
He took a breath and continued. “I skidded to a stop, jumped off, and ran toward a crowd standing in a circle. They were looking at something. No one saw me or barred the way, and I managed to push between somebody’s legs. At first I didn’t even realize the black thing in front of me was a body. But then his eyes opened, and they looked right at me. At that instant someone grabbed me, tried to put their arms around me so I couldn’t see, and kept saying it would be all right. I think they started to take me away, and I don’t know what else I actually saw or only thought I did. But I could still hear. The sounds coming out his throat were the same high-pitched squeaks we heard tonight, except they went on and on, and no one did anything about it. I kept looking around for my dad, expecting him to run up and help. It was only when he didn’t come that I realized who…” He felt his throat constrict.
“Go on.”
Her voice came from somewhere outside what he was seeing. He could never tell if he’d actually witnessed this part, or he’d built it up over the years in his imagination, his mind, his nightmares. In front of him lay his father, straining to breathe. Enough of his clothing had burned off that the underlying skin of his chest, already laid raw with the heat, rippled, then split open to the muscle with the effort. The man arched forward and reached toward him, the whites of his eyes bulging out of his carbon face, imploring him for help.
“Go on,” he heard her say again.
“… I started to scream, broke free, and ran. They found me hiding in the basement of this house. I’ve been trying to erase that sound, that smell, those eyes ever since. Tonight just…” He couldn’t talk anymore. The tears he’d fought back while working on Nell met no resistance this time, and a sob, raw and loud as an animal’s bellow, broke free from deep within his chest.
Her arms were around him in a flash.
“No one helped,” he gasped when he got his breath. “They just stood around and watched him die.” He tried to wipe his eyes and stifle his crying, but she kept telling him that it was okay, and her cool fingers stroked the side of his face. She cradled his head so closely that her hair fell around him in a sheltering bower, and the soothing sound of her heartbeat filled his ears.
He looked up and gently cupped his palm over her cheek. She turned her head slightly, brought her lips to his fingertips, and softly kissed them, keeping her eyes locked on his, not allowing him to evade the truth of these seconds. They remained huddled side by side, cocooned in each other’s embrace, straddling a distance far greater than the reach of their arms.
He lay back and drew her on top of him, and kissed her, and was kissed by her, a fearless gentle kiss.
A mile down the road a red car stood parked under a grove of poplar trees, its windows well frosted by the breathing of the three men who waited inside.
A fourth carrying night goggles walked up to the passenger side and got in the front seat. The driver finished talking on his cellular and snapped it shut. “No phone calls, neither on the land line nor his cellular. They may have figured out we’re listening,” he said to the newcomer.
“It doesn’t matter. Roper loaded up the Jeep with shovels. Looks like they’re going digging.”
“He’s coming now?” the man behind him asked, sounding surprised.
“All I can tell you is he’s ready to break ground. That means we need to get there and wait for him to show up.”
The other man in the backseat muttered, “Well, god damn. I didn’t think he’d take the bait to that extent.”
The driver started the motor and turned the defroster on full blast. “I guess this time we played him just about perfectly.”
Chapter 18
Saturday, November 24, 2:30 A.M.
Hampton Junction
The beam from Lucy’s headlamp sliced through snowflakes big as polka dots as she followed the road in through the woods. Barely a foot had accumulated on the ground, but the stickiness of it made the trek hard going and transformed the branches overhead into a giant corridor of curved white ribs. It was her first time on the grounds, but Mark had pointed out the entrance several times.
She had awakened about an hour ago, languidly stretched, and left Mark sleeping in their bed – she paused. Their bed. She liked the sound of that, and savored the memory of his naked body against hers.
Her feelings for Mark confused her. She’d had lovers before. It had been a way to keep sane at the front of a war zone, losing herself in the embrace of a man she liked and respected, with no illusions about the future. Before that, in medical school, she’d had little time for sweethearts, though sex with the right friend on occasion had been comforting during that ordeal as well. Yet with every man she’d shared her bed, she always knew how ephemeral their affair would be even as they first began to make love.
She’d hadn’t felt that with Mark. Nor did his evident experience as a lover remind her of the other women he’d had. Rather the way he gave himself to her so wantonly let her respond in kind and made their lovemaking all the more special, as if it erased all the times before.
She even liked the edginess she felt in him as he wavered between wanting to bolt from Hampton Junction or staying to practice in his father’s footsteps. It excited her, because as he stood torn by those two extremes, he still exuded the aura of a man with a spine of steel in him, and a moral compass that would point true north no matter what.
And when he was ready, they would talk more about his father’s death. She’d already decided not to raise the possibility Cam Roper had been murdered until Mark could bring it up himself.