Chapter
13
Bolting up, I whipped around, searching, but he had left nothing to show he’d been here. I might have doubted it myself, if it hadn’t been for the ache between my legs.
My BlackBerry said it was nine. Appalled that I’d slept so late—that I’d apparently slept right through his leaving—I tried his phone.
He picked up after one ring, his “Hey” husky and deep.
My toes curled. Sitting on the bed, I tucked them under me. “Tell me you’re downstairs having coffee.”
There was a pause, then a guilty “I’m not.”
“You’re on the highway.”
“Since four. I’m almost at the Tappan Zee Bridge. I have to work.” No guilt here. Just fact. Which brought my problem home again.
“It’s Saturday.” I hated this about our lives. “Don’t you deserve a break?”
“I took a break. Two days to chase after my wayward wife.”
If he wanted me to feel guilty, I refused. “You didn’t spend two days driving here.”
“Not directly. I tried other places first.”
“What places?
“Where you had a history.”
Lake George? Acadia? Both had been the site of childhood vacations in the days when my family was innocent and intact. James had heard many stories of those trips; we Scotts clung to happy memories. “But how did you end up here? I’ve never talked about Bell Valley.”
“No,” he said, considering. “That was telling.”
“But how did you even know the name of this place?”
He was slow to answer, then reluctant, as though confessing to something that did not make him proud. “You have dreams, babe. You talk in your sleep.”
I caught a breath. “About what?”
“Coyotes. And a guy named Jude.”
My silence was incriminating. Finally, I said, “You never asked me about that.”
“I figured that what you didn’t tell me, I didn’t want to know. That’s why I didn’t head there—there first. We all delude ourselves sometimes. We tell ourselves everything is great when it really isn’t.”
Here was my insightful James, apparently still alive under the raucous treadmill of our lives. That gave me hope.
“You have nothing to fear from Bell Valley,” I assured him softly.
“Not Jude?”
“Not Jude.”
I hated cell phones. If I’d been able to see his darkening face, I might have been prepared for his anger. Instead, his lower, sharper voice hit me flat out.
“I found letters, Emily. They were under the bed, where I wouldn’t have looked unless I was desperate. I’d already searched your drawers, feeling like a total scumbag, thank you. JBB.” Jude’s typical sign-off. “He must have been pretty important if you kept his letters. But the postmarks weren’t old. Like the dreams.”
“If you read the letters, you know he was in Alaska,” I reasoned. The only mention of his return had been in the letter I’d taken with me. “I did not come here for him.”
“So what was he to you?”
“He’s the brother of my college roommate. I’ve mentioned Vicki Bell.”
“You never mentioned a brother.”
“Because it ended badly. Jude cheated on me, so I left. End of story.”
“Not end of story if you’re dreaming about him.”
“It’s not him, it’s the coyote. Jude was just the one who introduced me to it.”
“My rival is a coyote? Come on, Em.”
“The coyote isn’t about you. It’s a she, and she’s about me—about being wild and free. I mean,” I tried to soften it, “think about last night. Was that incredible or what?”
He wasn’t being sidetracked. “You still don’t want to talk about Jude.”
“He doesn’t matter, James. What I had with him was over before you and I met.”
“Like, days before? How many—two? Three? You were on the rebound.”
“Excuse me. Did you ever sense anything—even the slightest instant in those first days after we met when I wasn’t obsessed with you?”
“On the rebound,” he repeated. “I’ve known you almost ten years—been married to you for seven—and still here’s a big part of you that you never shared.”
“When do we talk?” I cried.
“We used to. You had opportunity. Hell, Emily, I knew you weren’t a virgin. Neither was I. Sure, there was a guy before me, but it wouldn’t have mattered if I hadn’t learned about it this way.” He swore, annoyed. “I sat there yesterday in my car, waiting to see you with him. I followed you into the woods, thinking you were meeting him there.”
I was chastened, but only to a point. Something was missing. Come to think of it, it was a pretty important piece. I didn’t dream about Jude. Coyotes, yes. But not Jude, and I don’t recall Jude’s name or the name of Bell Valley appearing in any of those letters.
“Did you hire a detective?” I asked. Though the guy in the charcoal SUV was legit, he might have distracted me from seeing someone else.
“No.” His anger faded then, the spine in his voice dissolved. “Christ, Em,” he said with a frustrated sigh, “I’m too tired to argue. It doesn’t matter how—how I found you, only that I did. Did you not enjoy last night?”
“I loved last night, but it was only half right. We didn’t talk.”
“We connected.”
“We didn’t talk. We need to talk, James.”
“No phone date,” he warned, but when he went on, his husky voice held an element of pleading. “Come back. I need you here.”
The pleading nearly did it. I remembered his mussed hair and stubbled face. I pictured him driving those two days, searching, worrying, imagining me with a man I had never told him about, and feeling alone. And now, exhausted, he was heading back to work.
I cared what he felt—cared more than I wanted to. But I couldn’t live my life for James. I couldn’t return because he wanted me to. I had to want it myself, and I didn’t. Not yet.
My silence must have told him that, because he said a defeated “Well, at least I know where you are. Take care, sweetie,” and ended the call.
At the “sweetie,” my pulse skittered. Without breathing, I pressed redial.
He didn’t pick up. Which was probably a good thing. Because I might have given in. Which would have been bad. Despite what Vicki had said about my being the bolder of us two, I had spent ten years following the party line. If there had been any point to my rebellion, it would be mocked if I returned now.
“He was here?” Vicki asked, startled. She was in the kitchen, finishing a breakfast muffin.
I joined her at the table, close as could be, and looked her in the eye. “Briefly. Did you tell him where I was, Vicki Bell?”
She recoiled. “Me? No way. Your marriage is your business. I wouldn’t interfere. When did he get here?”
I knew Vicki. If she was lying, she would fidget or blink. But she looked curious, perhaps excited for me, but nothing more—all exculpatory evidence.
“Sometime yesterday.” I sat there in my car, waiting. “Omigod,” I suddenly realized, “that must have been the blue car I saw. I thought it was Lee’s guard.” I didn’t see her now. “Is she off for the weekend?”
“No. She works right through. She’s having her hair trimmed. She’ll be along.”
“I don’t have any news,” I apologized. “James and I didn’t have much time to talk.”
Vicki snickered.
“What?”
“You have whisker burns on your face.”
Too much sun, I might have said. My breasts were red, too. Not that she could see those. But denial seemed pointless. James was my husband. What did she think we’d be doing after a week apart?
“Are you blushing?” Vicki asked sweetly, resting her chin on her hand.
With a snort, I helped myself to coffee, taking my time, knowing she would wait. Women loved talking about sex when the opportunity presented itself, and I did trust my friend Vicki.
“Isn’t he usually clean-shaven?” she asked when I was sitting again.
Hidden by steam that rose from the mug, I sipped my coffee for a minute, before lowering the mug. “He hadn’t shaved in the two days it took him to track me here. He was”—I groped for the right words—“a different James, and not only the scruff on his face. He hadn’t shaved, hadn’t showered—”
Vicki crinkled her nose.
“No. It was amazing, actually. Raw. Real.” I described my walk in the woods, which was part of it, too. “I kept hearing noises behind me, but I couldn’t see him, and lots of things make noise in the woods. So I just sat there watching my coyote—”
“Your coyote?” Vicki cried in alarm.
I hadn’t meant to tell her. About James, yes, but not the coyote. She was mine. I felt protective. “She ran off. I’m not even sure if James saw her, or if he waited just long enough to know I wasn’t meeting a man. I didn’t even believe it was him at first. He was wild.” My voice said that this hadn’t been a bad thing.
“He was jealous,” Vicki decided. “Skipped two days of work for you, ravaged you in the woods, carried you back, then got up in the middle of the night to drive six hours to work. That’s totally romantic.”
“It’s slightly crazy,” I corrected, though I ignored the “carried you back” part, which was overly dramatic but did sound good.
In an abrupt turnaround, Vicki scowled. “I hope you put up a fight.”
“Fight James? Why?”
“Because you had good reason for leaving, and a strong woman wouldn’t cave.”
“I wasn’t exactly submissive,” I said, knowing I was blushing again, but how to remember our lovemaking and not blush?
“What did you tell him about Jude?”
“I assured him Jude and I are done.”
“He’ll still be nervous, y’know, knowing Jude’s here.”
I started to speak, but stopped.
“Oh boy. You didn’t tell him that part? How could you not, Emmie? That’s major important.”
“Not in terms of who I love.”
“But you still feel something for Jude. You told me yourself.”
“It isn’t romantic. It isn’t sexual. It’s spiritual.”
Vicki sat back. “You need to tell James.”
“I can’t,” I argued. “He wants me back in New York, and I’m not ready to go. If he knows Jude is here, he’ll insist.”
“He’ll find out anyway.”
“Like he found out Jude is from Bell Valley?” I puzzled. “How did he know?”
James hadn’t answered that. As I helped Vicki clean rooms a short time later, with the vacuum preventing talk, I brooded about it. I was still convinced that I hadn’t mentioned Jude in my sleep. He wasn’t the reason I loved James, and as for law school, I had been accepted there long before Jude and I were a thing. I don’t recall thinking of him when I said “I do” to James, signed on with Lane Lavash, or bought my fourth BlackBerry in succession, each a newer generation than the one before. I couldn’t blame Jude for any of that. I had gone overboard all by myself.
One thing I did know as the minutes passed was that I felt better this morning. Was it the sex? A reaffirmation of what James and I had done and could do again? Or was it simply the fact that he had cared enough to come?
Whatever, I still wondered how he had known about Jude. It had to be one of three people. But I wasn’t about to start making calls to the suspects, because that would get me into other discussions, and I wanted to focus on James.
So I drove to the Refuge. Since the weekend volunteers were everywhere, I was able to slip past the main desk, and once I was in Rehab, my shaky kitty quickly found me. Needing to nurture, I hand-fed her, though she ate little and seemed more frail than ever. I told myself I was imagining it, that any kitten would be tiny compared to the massive Maine coon that had plopped down by my thigh, minus a leg but sturdy. Still, I was worried. Had the regulars been around, I’d have asked, but they were off for the weekend, leaving the routine care to those weekend warriors. Some came for the day, making regular pilgrimages from places like Concord and Portsmouth. Others were headed elsewhere and simply stopped along the way.
There were enough of them to pick up the slack when I slid back to the wall with Precious on my lap, pulled out my BlackBerry, and tried calling James. I had four bars, so I knew my call went through. He just wasn’t picking up.
I had no right to be hurt. But I was. I knew he was working. But I wanted him to be thinking of me, too.
No phone, I had told him when I first left. My rule. So this was payback.
Or he had gotten what he wanted last night and was satisfied. Or he was so exhausted that he just couldn’t talk. Or he was sleeping, dead to the world with his head on his desk.
Most likely, I decided, resigned, he was just working, buried in it to make up for the billable hours he’d lost chasing me. I wondered if he was enjoying the actual work. I hadn’t asked him that in a while. Our usual conversation ran more along the lines of complaints—an associate who wasn’t doing his share, a partner pointing fingers at the wrong people, a client whose sense of entitlement was as big as the money he shelled out. I hadn’t associated work with enjoyment in years.
I didn’t miss Lane Lavash. But I did miss law. After sitting with the kitten a while longer, stroking her head while she slept, I set her carefully in a little fleece bed and returned to the Red Fox. Using Vicki’s personal computer, in an out-of-the-way office that was piled with coloring books, littered with Legos, and smelling of a Play-Doh worm that lay near the mouse, I accessed my e-mail and sent one to James. In the subject line I typed Legal Question, hoping he wouldn’t be able to resist.
Hey, I began. How are you? I’ve wanted to talk, but you’re not answering your phone. I don’t blame you, James. I’ve rocked the boat big-time. Trust me, it’s hard for me, too. I stopped. Self-pity was wrong. Deleting the last sentence, I wrote, I know I’ve hurt you. I’m sorry for that. I would have told you in person if you hadn’t run off so fast. Oops. I couldn’t be critical. Deleting again, I typed, I would have told you in person if we’d had more time, and I loved what we did do with that time, but I really need to talk. My mind is clearing. I’m starting to understand me more, but it doesn’t mean much if I can’t share it with you.
My fingers paused, suspended over the keyboard. Legal Question. That was all I’d planned to write him about, not matters of the heart. Hadn’t I sworn off machines as a means of personal communication? Wasn’t I rebelling against a life of relationship-by-remote?
But technology wasn’t going away. It would only get faster, easier, more common. And here was a fact: Right now, for me and James, it was e-mail or nothing.
Besides, was sending my husband personal thoughts in an e-mail any different from my grandmother’s handwriting a love letter and sending it to my grandfather when he was fighting in Korea? Face-to-face might be ideal, but it wasn’t always possible.
My using a computer now was a concession to practicality—or so I reasoned as I left these personal thoughts on the screen.
But I needed to get to the point. James’s patience with me might be limited, and I wanted something to give Lee.
So I typed, There’s a situation here where I could use your advice. It involves an employee at the inn. She’s a sweet person who bakes amazing cookies, but to her dead husband’s family, she’s a nobody, and because of that, she’s being screwed. The immediate problem involves a physical threat, but the larger case is interesting.
I stopped. I knew what James would be thinking. Don’t worry, I wrote. I’m not setting up shop here. My job at Lane Lavash is waiting. I didn’t say if I wanted it. That would only stir him up.
But the James I’d fallen in love with had a soft spot for nobodies, and even if that James was diminished, the one that remained was a sucker for a good case. Last year, he had worked with warring branches of a family corporation, and though they had settled prior to trial, he had been energized. In comparison, Lee’s case was tiny, but not entirely different.
She was hiding out here, I typed, so maybe that’s why I feel for her, but she’s been found out, and not in a good way. I typed a summary of her situation—felony barmaid turned heiress, dwindling trust fund, threats—and followed it up with the possibilities I had tossed out in the kitchen with Vicki and Lee. Money isn’t an issue, I concluded. She has a relative who will pay, but the problem is jurisdiction. You know more than I do about Massachusetts law, and you have a contact there. Do you think Sean Alexander could handle this? Or someone else in his firm?
I paused to consider how to close, then typed, I know I’m asking a lot, James. You may still be angry enough at me to not want any part of this. But we used to talk about helping the underdog, and you were way better at it than I was. I was thinking of law school again, comparing the promise of James versus how he’d turned out and wondering whether, like me, the turned-out side was simply what we saw because of our jobs. I wanted to believe the other was there, hidden but alive. I keep thinking back to moot court. Why is it that I feel some of my best work was done then? Resting the heel of my hands on the edge of the desk, I sighed. Then, as I anticipated his reading these words, I typed, I can see you pressing your forehead, thinking that you need to get back to work and don’t have time for my rambling. But maybe something will come to you that will help my friend. If you think of anything, will you pass it on?
My hands hovered. I wanted to sign off with I love you, but feared he would think I was saying it only because I wanted something from him. Instead, as a greater act of contrition, I wrote, I’ll leave my BlackBerry on.
The problem with that was twofold. First, when James didn’t instantly reply, I was discouraged. I told myself that he would be two days behind in work and couldn’t drop everything for this, and that there was no legal action to be taken on the weekend anyway. I reminded myself that Sean might be gone from the office, gone from his firm, or simply not answering his cell. I assured myself that it was fine if James sent me his thoughts later today or tomorrow.
Second, though, in leaving my BlackBerry on, I saw other e-mail. My mom wrote saying that she wanted to talk, and my dad wrote saying I was being irresponsible and was upsetting Mom. On the plus side, my sister sent a surprisingly sympathetic note of envy, while Tessa, my cubicle-mate, said she missed me.
Here’s the good news, Emily. You were betrayed by one of your fellow associates, who was so pissed at my giving you a four-week leave that he crabbed about it to the managing partner, who complained to enough of the equity partners that I’m now in deep shit. I’ve played the corporate compassion card, but they’re not buying. Tell me you’re in therapy. Tell me you’re thinking clearly and will be at your desk Monday morning. Tell me something. You promised to stay in touch, but I haven’t heard a word. Break your promise, and I may break mine.
I was sorry I’d read it. My hands were suddenly tense, my ears ringing with the old hums and dings. In that instant, Walter Burbridge embodied everything I hated about my work. I tried to turn it off, but no matter how loudly I reminded myself that I had three more weeks of leave, I kept hearing Walter’s words. Break your promise, and I may break mine. The threat was a thundercloud marring the clarity of my blue summer sky.
Desperate to get it out of my head, I took a walk in the woods. There was no fear now. I hadn’t been eaten by a squirrel or attacked by a moose. I hadn’t been ravished by Jude, but by James, who was warm-blooded and real. Knowing that he had walked this path, that we had walked it together, gave it a new feel. Besides, it struck me that if what I had so feared before was the power of the lure, I was already hooked. It was done.
Besides, it was broad daylight. I waded through the ferns and along the old stone wall that was my GPS. And there was a snake. Lying on top in a patch of sun. I hated snakes. In utter revulsion, I stopped.
It was a garter snake. How did I know? Jude. Each time we had come upon one, he had dangled it in front of my face, his manner of teasing—or teaching, which was the interpretation he chose. What I had learned first was not to gag.
I had also learned that garter snakes are harmless, which was why I walked past now, leaving the snake to its rock and my feet to the dirt. Picking up the trickle of the brook, I followed it in. The air was less humid than it had been, hence that clear blue sky, but I had built up a sweat by the time I reached my coyote—or rather, the spot where I’d seen her last night.
She wasn’t there now. I didn’t have to search the other bank to know. I didn’t sense her, didn’t smell her. As I stood on a small rock, inches from the shallow water, minnows darted by, flashes of silver heading downstream. I knelt to let my hand trail in the cool water, remembering how James and I had bathed here. My eye slid to the tree against which he had propped me that first time, then to the bed of dirt beneath. The pine needles looked rumpled, as a bed sheet might have been. I blushed, smiled as the memory played in my mind, rocked back on my heels.
Then I went still, listening. I wasn’t sure I’d heard anything. She would have moved silently through the woods, any whisper of sounds masked by the gurgling brook. I did smell her now, though, a tiny wild something intermingling with pine. My eyes rose.
She wasn’t at the water’s edge, but a dozen feet in, watching me from atop a boulder. Sitting erect in the dappled sunlight, she was stunning. Her pelt was gray and white, her forelegs as creamy as the pointed muzzle I had spotted last night. Now I saw apricot as well, touching the top of her head, her ear tufts, the upper part of her ruff.
I used to think coyotes were nocturnal, since their howls came at night. Not so, Jude had said. They were around during the day but knew the danger of being seen, so they took care. Darkness was the only time they dared speak aloud without drawing unwanted attention. Flying under the radar was how they survived.
Yet there she was, watching me in full view, trusting that I wouldn’t raise a rifle and shoot. That said, she wasn’t lolling on her back in the sun, but sat with her inordinately large ears pricked. Had I stood, her eyes would have still been higher than mine. But I didn’t stand. She was alert, her nose twitching almost imperceptibly as she sniffed the air.
For a split second, I had the fanciful notion that James had come again. Only James didn’t walk on silent coyote paws. Today I heard no thrashing through the woods behind me.
Before me, though, I caught movement at the base of the boulder on which she sat. I looked down when she did, expecting to see her lunch scamper by. But the creature in action was as roly-poly as my sister’s bichon, if pale gray, and there was not only one but a second then a third and a fourth.
Her pups. I had wanted to think she had brought them to show me, but I guessed that her den was nearby.
Backing up to the fat pine to give them space, I watched the pups tossing something around. Belatedly I realized that I’d been half right. They were playing with a chipmunk, though whether they planned to eat it for lunch, I didn’t know.
The chipmunk escaped, which surprised me. I’d have thought that if the pups didn’t want it, the mom would. But she continued to watch me watch them, her gold eyes filled with pride.
It occurred to me that a coyote was too wild to communicate pride—that I was reading fantasy thoughts into those anchored eyes, that narrow muzzle, those pointy ears, simply because I needed a connection to these woods—that the tears in my eyes were my relating to her and wanting a baby so badly myself. The yearning. Isn’t that what my dream left me with?
In the next breath, I realized that her stare might be a warning. Take one step toward my pups, she was saying, and I’ll attack.
Moreover, if I needed a connection to these woods, I had no idea why. Wanting is something else. Wildness in animals is a curious thing to us humans. Isn’t that why people watch Animal Planet?
Escape. Maybe that’s why we watch. Animal behavior is elemental. It takes us back to a simpler time.
So maybe escape is why I’m hooked on these woods, which are the total opposite of where I’ve been, and I don’t only mean New York. Ten years ago, it was New Haven, nowhere near as large as New York, but congested for me, with students milling everywhere, standing room only in some of my classes, and three roommates crammed into a small apartment, and though I spent most of my nights at James’s place, the city locked us in.
These woods are primal. They are as they were hundreds of years ago and, in that, stable and calm. There is a peace here that I don’t feel elsewhere. I can think clearly here. I can breathe.
I stayed by the tree for a time, watching the coyote pups tumble over each other. Occasionally one spotted me, drawn perhaps by my scent, and held my gaze for a minute before resuming its play—and it did occur to me that, in letting me stand unchallenged, their mother might be teaching them the wrong lesson. Humans were to be feared.
But not me. I swear she knew I wouldn’t hurt her pups. She sensed the protectiveness I felt, perhaps even sensed my envy. I saw four pups. The average female coyote birthed six, though—according to Jude—a single litter could produce eighteen.
Ouch.
I smiled. Four was fine. I’d settle for one. Thinking about that, I felt an ache deep inside.
I didn’t ache for law in quite the same way. I missed the intellectual challenge. I missed the emotional satisfaction of helping someone who couldn’t help himself. But it wasn’t like wanting a baby. And it wasn’t like missing James.
Hey, Walter, I typed when I returned to the inn. I’m sorry. Next week is out. I’m healing, but it’s a process. Thanks for your patience.
I sent the e-mail and walked away from Vicki’s computer.