looked as if he had a bad taste in his mouth.
"Lily, by the time I came to town, Thea had run through the few locals she felt were worthy of her. She could tell, I think, that people were starting to wonder why pretty, sweet Thea couldn't seem to form a lasting relationship with anyone, so she dated me and married me quickly. I didn't go to bed with Thea before I married her. She said she wanted to wait and I respected that, but I found out after maybe a month, that was just because she didn't want me to back out like other men had."
"She doesn't like sex?" I asked hesitantly. I should be the last one to criticize a woman who had problems dealing with men.
Marshall laughed in an unamused way. "Oh, no. She likes it. But she doesn't like it like we do it," and his hand ran down my back, caressed my hips. "She likes to do ... sick things, things that hurt. Because I loved her, I tried to oblige, but it ended up making me feel bad. Sad."
Degraded, I thought.
"Then she decided she wanted a baby, and I wondered if that might save our marriage, so I tried to oblige. But I'd lost my interest by then, and ... I couldn't." This cost Marshall a great deal to say. "So she called me names and taunted me, only in private, only when no one else could hear. Not because she cared about me, but because she didn't want anyone else to know she was capable of saying those things. Going home was like going to hell. I couldn't stand it anymore. I haven't had sex in six months, Lily, but that wasn't the worst of it, not by a long shot. So here I am, in this dump, wondering how to file for divorce without Thea taking my business away from me."
I had no response to his money worries. I have very little available cash myself because I am saving strenuously against the day when I have to have a new car, or a new roof, or any of the sudden catastrophic expenses that can wipe out a one-income household. But at least all my finances, good or bad, are dependent on me and me only. I can't imagine how I'd feel if I had to give half of my business away to someone who had found pleasure in degrading and humiliating me.
"Tom David Meiklejohn."
His eyes had been focused far away, staring past my shoulder at a bleak vista. Now he looked at me.
"The cop." His dark eyes stared into mine. I gave a tiny nod. "I'll bet she loves the handcuffs," he said.
I tried not to shrink at the thought of a woman handcuffed, but my breath came out in a little whine that drew Marshall's attention to me instantly. "Don't think of it, Lily," he said quietly. "Don't think of it; think of this." And his hand slid gently between my legs, his mouth found my breast, and I did indeed think of other things.
"Marshall," I said afterward, "if you hadn't noticed, I wanted to tell you I have absolutely no complaints about your virility." He laughed a little, breathlessly, and for a while we dozed together.
But I woke soon, anxious and ill at ease. Moving as quietly as I could, I got up and began pulling on my clothes. Marshall's breathing was still heavy and even and he shifted position, taking up more of the bed now that I wasn't in it. For a moment, I bent over the bed, my hand an inch from his shoulder. Then I drew back. I hated to wake him: I felt compelled to leave.
I eased out of the back door, punching in the button on the knob so it would lock behind me.
I'd begun thinking, as Marshall talked about Thea, of the dead rat someone had left on Thea's kitchen table in that neat white house on Celia. When I'd woken, the rat had worried me more and more.
The Ken doll, the toy handcuffs, the dead rat. Obviously, the tokens left for me referred to my past. The dead rat seemed cut from an entirely different pattern. A thought trailed through my mind like a slug: Had Thea perhaps tortured animals in her childhood? Was the rat also from Thea's past? I grimaced as I moved through the darkness. I could not bear cruelty to a helpless thing.
At this time of night, the