might grill Italian sausage outside,” I say to the cat. “Yes, it’s cold and wet, but that wouldn’t stop me. Don’t look worried. I won’t. Not out there in the dark all alone.”
It enters my mind that Machado hopefully has left, and I remember to reset the alarm, and I boil salted water. I set the coffee table in the living room and turn on the fire, and I drink more wine and try Benton several more times. His phone instantly goes to voicemail. It’s now close to one a.m. I could call Machado, but I don’t want to ask him where my husband is. I could call Douglas Burke, but hell would have to freeze over first, and I turn off the stove. I sit in front of the gas fire with Shaw in my lap and Sock snuggled next to me, both of them sleeping, and I drink, and when I’ve drunk enough I call my niece.
“Are you awake?” I ask, when Lucy answers.
“No.”
“No?”
“This is voicemail. How can I help you?” she says.
“I know it’s late.” I hear someone in the background, or I think I do. “Is that your TV?”
“What’s going on, Aunt Kay?” She’s not alone, and she’s not going to tell me.
twenty-seven
I WAKE UP WITHOUT THE ALARM AND FOR AN INSTANT don’t know where I am or who’s in bed with me. Moving my hand under the covers, I feel Benton’s warm slender wrist and tapered fingers, and I go hollow inside as I feel what I was feeling in my dream. It was Luke I was with.
A dream so vivid, sensations linger where his hands and mouth had been, nerves alive and wanting, and I slide close to Benton and stroke the lean muscles of his bare chest and belly, and when I have roused him we do what we want and we don’t talk.
When nothing is left we shower and start again, hot water coming down hard, and he is hard, almost angry, our lust the way it was when we cheated and lied, desperate to satisfy what raged beneath our outward calm, and relief never lasted long. We could not stay away from each other and could not get enough, and I want it back.
“Where have you been?” I say into his mouth, and he moves me against the wet tile wall, and water is loud, and I ask him again.
He tells me he’s here without saying it, and I’m here and belong to him and there can be no denying it. We make love the way we did when it was wrong, when he had a wife he was unhappy with and daughters who had little use for him, and then for a long time he was gone.
He was nowhere and back, with me but not, and Marino made it worse, and touching felt different after that. Nothing was the same until betrayal and jealousy reset us like a bone mending badly that needed to be broken again. We had to hurt.
“Stay this time,” I say into his mouth, steamy water pouring over us. “Stay this time, Benton.”
When we are dressing he asks me what I was dreaming.
“What makes you think I dreamed anything?” I go through suits hanging in my closet, and it reminds me of looking through Peggy Stanton’s clothes.
“Doesn’t matter.” He stands in front of the full-length mirror, tying his tie.
“It matters or you wouldn’t ask.”
“Dreams are dreams unless they become something else.” He watches my reflection as I decide on unstylish pants and a sweater and practical ankle boots that are warm.
It will be a long day, hopefully not as long as yesterday, but I’m going to be comfortable in corduroys and a cable-knit cardigan, and it’s very cold, the temperature below freezing.
Ice has formed on bare trees and evergreens, as if they’ve been varnished or glazed with sugar, and as I move the shade to see the street below and imagine what driving might be like, Benton walks across hardwood and the rug and puts his arms around me and kisses my neck.
His hands rediscover what was all his moments ago, and he pushes under everything I’ve just put on.
“Don’t forget,” he says.
“I’ve never forgotten.”
“Lately you’ve forgotten. Yesterday you did.”
“Go ahead and say it.” I want him to say what he saw, to just go ahead and say it.
His hands are where he wants them.
“Did you?” he asks.
“Did I what?” I’m not going to make it easy for him. “You need to ask me what you