Authors: Antoinette Stockenberg
Katie stuck out her lower lip and said,
"
Is she coming back?
"
"
I told you—tomorrow night. C
'
mon, Rembrandt,
"
he said, lifting her in his arms.
"
Time for bed. You
'
ve had your milk; your teeth are brushed. I
'
ll read you a story and—would you like Mrs. Evett to read it to you instead?
"
he suddenly asked.
Katie, who just two days ago had sat mesmerized in the classroom circle while Helen read a tale from Beatrix Potter, decided to decline. She shook her head, lifting her arm over her eyes in the universal sign of rejection. Children did that, Helen knew; but she wasn
'
t prepared for the pain she felt when the child was Katie.
"
Well
...
good-night, then, sweetie,
"
she said with a reassuring little wave.
It was good that she hadn
'
t risked blowing Katie a kiss, because the child turned away and buried her face in her father
'
s shoulder and wouldn
'
t have seen it anyway.
She
'
s afraid of me,
Helen thought, dismayed.
"
She
'
s tired,
"
her father said, offering a more reasonable explanation. He nodded at the liquor cabinet and said,
"
Why don
'
t you pour while I
..."
He lumbered off with his cranky cargo and Helen, feeling a bit dispirited, walked over to the glass-fronted cabinet where a bottle of chablis stood uncorked and ready. She poured herself a glass, then wandered into the kitchen to see whether anything there needed tending.
It was all under control: a casserole of lobster thermidor, ready to pop into the Viking oven; two bowls of undressed salad in the Sub-Zero fridge; a crusty baguette on the Corian counter. Despite the elegant simplicity of the meal, Helen
'
s guess was that Nat had had it catered, and she was right: a canvas sack with
Christine
'
s Catering
stenciled on it lay on top of a small plastic cooler tucked away in a corner.
A note on the stove said fifteen minutes at
350
degrees. Good. They
'
d get the meal behind them in no time. Startled by her own brazenness, Helen returned to the music room to wait. She was feeling more and more restless and edgy, almost driven. She paced the width and length of the room, pausing to stare through the floor-to-ceiling casements at the damp and gloomy garden that lay beyond. The open east-facing window panels were spotted with rain; she drew the casements most of the way closed, then opened them again after she felt the air flow cease.
She wanted so much to seem in control of herself. But her nerves were jangled, her emotions on fire.
What is wrong with me?
she wondered. It couldn
'
t just be the need for sex. No, it was Katie looking at her that way—it was disconcerting. Nat was probably right about her being worn-out, but still. And he
r drawing of Peaches in a cage—
even more disconcerting. Could Peaches really have replaced Linda so soon in Katie
'
s eyes?
Why not? Wasn
'
t Helen hoping to do the same in Nat
'
s eyes?
Too soon, too soon,
she thought wildly.
He
'
s still angry at his wife, he's confused. Too soon.
The
longer
she waited for Nat to come down, the less resolve she had. She
'
d been assuming that her edginess was eagerness; in fact, it was just the opposite. She wasn
'
t ready for this.
He
wasn
'
t ready for this.
She heard a sound and whirled violently around. He was standing at the far end of the room, his hands slung across his hips. She didn
'
t understand his body language at all; was he angry?
"
You won
'
t believe this,
"
he said, walking
o
ver to the glass-fronted cabinet and picking up the glass of wine she
'
d poured for him. He came over to where Helen had been standing and listening—she now realized—for the sneezing sound of the short-eared owl.
"
Katie made me call Peaches,
"
he said, shaking his head.
"
To prove she hadn
'
t gone to heaven.
"
He stared out at the garden with Helen. Together they listened to the sound of rain dripping on the ivy that clung to the bricks around the casements.
"
It was the damndest thing,
"
he said after a moment.
"
She
'
s afraid of me,
"
Helen murmured.
He was amused by that.
"
Two days ago she wasn
'
t. She came home thrilled to have you taking care of her class. She hardly ate a thing at dinner that night; ask Peaches. No, it
'
s not so much that she
'
s afraid of you as that she
'
s afraid Peaches will go away.
"
"
She connects the two.
"
"
She doesn
'
t. Anyway, she talked with Peaches, was reassured, and is fast asleep. The night,
"
he said, taking Helen
'
s wineglass from her,
"
is ours. Finally.
"
He put the stemmed glasses down and took her in his arms. And suddenly, nothing else mattered. Helen remem
bered why it was she
'
d come; why it was she
'
d dressed with such care. She loved him, and wanted him, and nothing would be right until she felt him inside her again.
He slipped the tortoiseshell comb from her hair, letting her hair fall in a heavy slide to her shoulders, then pooled the shining black mass in his hands and inhaled deeply from it, as if it were rose petals. Smiling, pulling her close, fitting her hard against him, he said in a rueful voice,
"
Supper
.
I did promise you food
."
"
Turn off the oven,
"
she whispered.
"
My thoughts exactly.
"
They detoured through the kitchen. He
fl
ipped off the preheating oven while Helen, explaining one more time about food left out at room temperature, tucked the glass dish in the fridge for safekeeping. After that they went up the graceful curved staircase, the same staircase that generations of his people had ascended with just the same purpose in mind.
The same staircase that Linda Byrne had ascended.
For a moment Helen faltered.
Nat noticed at once.
"
What?
"
he said.
She rallied.
"
Nothing.
"
Nat had a different bedroom now, a different bed now. It would be all right.
They passed the door to Peaches
'
s room. Helen had to resist an urge to throw it open, making sure she wasn
'
t there. Then Katie
'
s room. Automatically both of them paused to listen. They heard the sweet, blissful sound of quiet.
And then, at last, they entered the room that Helen hadn
'
t been in since she fainted. It was a beautiful room, neither masculine nor feminine, but of good classic design, from the walls upholstered in chinoiserie toile to the needlepoint rug in tea-stained tones of ivory and faded red.
In place of the canopied bed where Linda had died, there was a simple bed with a padded headboard covered in the same chinoiserie as the walls. The canopied bed, she knew, was on permanent loan to a West Coast museum; Nat had told her he could not deal with the memories.
"
So. Here we are,
"
said Nat behind her.
"
Why do I feel as if it
'
s my first time?
"
Helen turned from the bed to him.
"
Because in a way,
"
she said,
"
it is.
"
He was leaning against a walnut tallboy, with his arms folded nonchalantly across his chest and an edgy smile on his lips. His dark hair had gone too long uncut—probably because he was so occup
ied with her—giving him a laid-
back air at odds with the tension in his voice. As for the look in his ocean blue eyes—it was unfathomable. Desire, yes; but bafflement, too. He was looking at her as if she were part apparition.
"
Helen of Salem,
"
he murmured.
"
You have me in your spell.
"
"
No, don
'
t,
"
she said, abashed. She went up to him quickly and put her hand over his mouth. It was a melodramatic gesture, to be sure; but she was in a heightened state.
She took her hand away almost at once, embarrassed by her response.
"
I
'
m Helen Evett,
"
she said.
"
No more, no less.
"
"
Whoever you are,
"
he said, amused by her distress,
"
I love you dearly.
"
''I—"
What could she say to that? They were the words she longed to hear, at a time she could not trust them. She put them aside, like cut flowers in water, and promised herself to arrange them later in her heart.
She bowed her head and took a deep breath, then let it out.
"
You must know how I feel, Nat,
"
she said, too overcome by emotion to tell him.
"
It would be nice to hear the words,
"
he prompted in a soft, coaxing voice.
But the words would not come. Instead, she raised her arms around his neck and lifted her face to his, inviting him to kiss her and find out.
He took up her offer, kissing her with a warmth that quickly became heat, a heat that boiled over into abandon. His hands slid up, then down the curve of her spine—and then back up, to where the zipper began. He caught hold of it and pulled it down easily; the sound was music to her ears.
The dress fell away in a puddle at her feet as Helen became another step unbound. Nat took her by her shoulders and eased her down on the bed, then, gazing down at her, said in a voice slurred with desire,
"
Stay right
... there. Don
'
t go anywhere.
"
Dazed with a sense of her own power, at the same time almost helpless with love for him, Helen watched as he jiggled a drawer in a small commode that stood alongside the bed.
"
This time I
'
m prepared,
"
he said, then let out a soft curse of exasperation and added,
"
except that the damn drawer sticks.
"
The hazy smile on Helen
'
s face sharpened into something else altogether as he finally got it open with a sharp knocking sound.
Jiggle. Knock.
Jiggle knock. Jiggle knock, jiggle knock, jiggle knock!
"
Oh no!
"
Helen cried, jumping up from the bed.
"
It can
'
t be. . . Linda, Linda! Oh
no!
"
Stiffly, blindly, Helen lunged for the drawer, slammed it shut, then tried to jiggle it open again. Yes, yes, it was the sound, the exact sound—and then the sharp
knock
as it broke free. After Linda
'
s death, she
'
d been haunted by that sound for weeks. It was the sound that the plumber couldn
'
t trace—and no wonder.