Like a Knife (26 page)

It was deep and long, and full of promise. She shivered at the touch of his lips, lost in sensations she never thought she'd feel again. His mouth mesmerized her, seduced her, made her forget. She opened herself to him and he came inside, his tongue soft and warm, possessing her lips and every other part of her. His wild hands combed her hair, skated over her back, under her dress, and rubbed hot, so hot on her belly. Beneath her, the ridge of his erection seared through her panties. The feel of his hard, remembered length spiraled her higher and higher, so she arced and sizzled with every electric touch.

"Rachel. God, I love you."

Everything was wet. Mouth, tongue, her dress where he washed the nipples on her breast right through the material. She groaned against his mouth and rubbed herself over him. His hands on her hips held her steady while she clung to him, desperate to reclaim everything they had lost. He kissed her and rocked her and she felt him beneath her, through their clothes, every move an exquisite agony. And the feeling blossomed and grew, billowing out and enveloping her with heat and power until she couldn't stop it, and with a cry that he swallowed with his mouth, she shattered.

And then she collapsed, sobbing against him.

"Shh." He held her, stroking her. "It's all right. Everything's going to be all right now."

"I thought I'd never... God, never feel you again..." She wrapped her arms around him, holding onto him like precious cargo.

"I know. Shh." He kissed her cheeks and her forehead. "Don't think about it. It's over."

A rap on the door interrupted them. "What's going on in there?"

He kissed her softly. "Should we tell him?"

She gave him a don't-you-dare look, wiping her eyes with the heels of her hand. "Just a minute!"

Hastily, she straightened her clothes and ran to open the door. Her face heated as the agent, looking suspicious, checked the room. His eyes lingered on Nick, and Rachel only hoped her face didn't give too much away.

"He's. .. he's ready now."

With a snap of his wrist, the agent signaled to the medics, who transferred Nick to the gurney. In ten seconds, he was out the door, Rachel running after them.

"Wait! Wait a fucking minute! She's pregnant, for crissakes." He reached up and grabbed one of the medics by the front of his shirt to slow him down.

The soldier pulled the material out of Nick's hand. "Relax, pal. We'll let you say good-bye." They stopped at the open doors of the van, and Rachel caught up.

She grabbed his hand, holding on to him with everything she had. "I don't want you to go."

He kissed the back of her hand. "It's all right. We have a deal, remember? And don't forget our date in a couple of months." He rubbed her belly.

She smiled, laughing through tears that seemed to come all too easily, whether she was miserable or happy. God, pregnant women were a messy lot. "Three, months. You have three months, and then I'm afraid I'll have to go without you."

"You do, and I'll hunt you down." He pulled her toward him and kissed her hard.

Then the medics swung him into the ambulance and closed the doors. She heard the slam, as final as any she'd heard her whole life. Another car taking away another man she loved.

But as she watched the taillights fade into the distance, she knew this time was different.

Because this man would be coming back.

Rachel stood on the Carolina shore and let the November breeze caress her face. She thought she'd never be able to face the tide again, but now that the government had relocated them nearby, she found its rhythms peaceful. Funny what time could do. How it dulled the edge
of
pain.

Isaac squealed as the waves chased him back, and she smiled at him. His small dark face, so like Nick in coloring, blazed with excitement as he ran toward the ocean again, daring it to catch him.

He'd adjusted well to their new home. And to the new last name and the new relationships in his life. Father, sister. So many changes for a little boy to absorb.

So many changes for her as well. The new bond with her aunt and uncle remained strong, and she'd spent the last three months of her pregnancy helping Dana Ger-shon with her book on David Goodman. The work had brought Rachel close to her father at a time when she needed all her family around her. Now the first draft was almost done; preliminary chapters had sent the publisher into paroxysms of praise. They'd predicted a big hit, which meant money for her institute.

She strolled along the water's edge, inhaling the sharp, fresh scent. She was almost ready to start thinking about that money. And her work.

Although it was nearly winter, the day was surprisingly warm. The sun shone bright in a pale blue sky and she raised her face, closing her eyes to absorb the heat When she opened them again, Isaac was waving to someone in the distance. She turned away from the hypnotic spell of the sea to watch the figure who stood on the deck overlooking the beach.

Adam Newman waved back. His stiff leg ached, and he massaged it, leaning against the railing to take some of the weight off. As he braced his forearm against the wood, the dull sheen of a wedding band stared back at him from the third finger of his left hand.

At his feet, Nicole sat in her carrier, kicking and babbling up to the sun. As always, disbelief coursed through him when he looked at her. That new life could spring out of
all that death... It was nothing short of a miracle, a rainbow after a terrible storm.

He heard a distant shout and turned back to the water. His wife and son danced in and out of the tide. Warmth blossomed inside as he watched them, grateful beyond words for the new life they shared.

As for the rest, he was learning to live with it. Though he remembered nothing of the explosion, the nameless boy from the alley in Panama still haunted him. But now when he bolted awake at night, sweating and icy cold with fear, knowing bone-deep that nothing he did could entirely atone for the past, Rachel's warm body comforted him.

Isaac still dreamed, too. But when he screamed into the darkness, Adam huddled with him. Night after night they came together, the dreams a terrible bond, but a bond nonetheless. And while they waited together for the light, or for sleep, to claim them once more, the boy grew to trust him.

Him. Adam.

The bomb had burned away his old self, leaving the rest bare and stark, but pure. Strong. He felt the goodness inside him now-a small spark, but burning brighter every day. He could never compensate for what he'd done; nothing could bring back the dead. But he could do his part to ease the suffering of the living.

He watched Rachel sweep up Isaac's hand and felt the safety-deposit-box key inside his pocket. For the first time since he'd put it away seven years ago, he was thankful for all that money. Not for himself, but for all the nameless kids in all the alleys who ever needed help. Someday soon, Rachel would want her school back, and he was going to give it to her. She didn't know it yet, but he'd already established an endowment to get it started.

Now he watched Isaac run toward him, while Rachel tried in vain to catch up. They had all lost a lot. But they had much, so very much, to be grateful for.

Isaac and Rachel pounded up the steps, stopping breathless in front of him.

"I won!" Isaac cried.

"You didn't have to carry this." Rachel handed him a pail full of driftwood and broken shells.

"I would have won anyway," Isaac insisted, "wouldn't I?" He turned to his father for support.

Adam smiled. "Yeah, Ike, I think you would have."

"Well, the prize for winning is dinner." Rachel laughed, and stooped down to smile at Nicole. "I'll bet you're hungry, too!" She lifted the baby out of her seat and clucked at her in that high, silly voice adults always use with infants.

"Hey," Isaac cried, "she smiled!" And everyone had to have a turn trying to make her smile again.

As Rachel played with the baby, Adam watched the wind play with her braid. Short wisps of honey-brown hair danced around her face. He brushed them back, thankful to the center of Ins being for her love. And her trust.

Now she leaned into his hand, rubbing against him like a cat. "If you want to eat this Thanksgiving, we'd better go in. The turkey's done, but there's still potatoes to mash."

Isaac raced ahead, leaving the pail just-outside the door. Rachel waited for Adam to take up his cane, matching her steps to his slow, uneven gait.

A newspaper sat on a chair just inside the door. He threw it onto the couch, barely glancing at it. For months now, he'd been watching the papers for some sign that his information had started an in-depth investigation of the arms trade. He'd been bled dry by every bureaucrat and Pentagon flunky in Washington; Rennie's organization and the whole black-market arms industry had been picked clean. The disk Rachel had given Danny had been a big help, too.

A lot of what he'd divulged had been potentially explosive, but the powerful protect their own. So far, nothing had come of any of it.

Only one news item had caught his attention in the year since Nick Raine had died-a small story on the second page of the local section that Rachel had saved for Isaac in case he ever wanted to know what had happened to his mother. She'd shown it to Adam over the summer, and with the sound of children playing in the background, he'd sat on the wooden swing he'd built for the backyard maple tree and read about the arrest of one Harris Mape for the vehicular homicide of Shelley Spier. An alcoholic with seventy-eight DUIs to his name, Mape had been driving without a license, blind drunk, the night he ran down Shelley.

So Rennie hadn't killed his wife after all.

But of course, he had. Shelley wouldn't have been caught in the path of a drunken madman if she hadn't been running from Rennie.

All during that long July afternoon, Adam had sat in the swing, staring off into the distance, trying to come to terms with the truth, and his own responsibility for it. Toward evening, Rachel had come outside to stand behind him. He could still feel the comforting weight of her hand on his shoulder, as if her touch could absorb his lingering guilt over not helping Shelley.

"You're helping her now," Rachel had said. "Isaac is safe from Rennie, and that's what she wanted."

A burst of laughter brought him back to the present. He saw that Isaac had gone into the bathroom, and under cover of washing his hands and face was making an unholy mess.

"Someone better get in there and supervise," Rachel said, with a pointed look that clearly said that "someone" was him.

She handed him the baby and went into the kitchen while he hobbled into the bathroom.

"Hey, Ike, what are you doing in here?" He gave his son a mock frown.

"Cleaning up." Isaac grinned, and the sight made Adam's throat tighten. The smiles came more easily now; still, every one was a precious gift.

"Looks like you're doing a better job making a mess than cleaning up."

The boy giggled. "I know."

He helped Isaac dry his hands, and in the process Adam caught a glimpse of his face in the mirror over the sink. For the thousandth time, he wondered why Rachel wanted to tie herself to a stiff-legged, scarred-up hulk.

It doesn't matter why. It only matters that she does.

While the gravy simmered and the potatoes bubbled on top of the stove, Rachel set the table. It stood in front of the big bay window of the beach house they'd rented for the weekend. She laid out the plates and the silverware and watched the ocean moving ceaselessly over the shore. Over and over the tide took away the land, then gave it back.

She had lost Nick and found him again. Been loved and abandoned and loved again. Would she ever understand why? Would she ever truly understand the miracle that had kept them all alive, and in the end given Nick back to them?

No more than she could understand the tide. She could only trust that it would continue. That whatever love she lost would be returned. Reshaped into something unexpected, perhaps, reformed and renamed, but returned nevertheless.

Whea everything was ready, they put the baby in her high chair. Adam and Isaac sat down, and Rachel brought out the turkey on a big platter. Isaac's eyes bulged at the size of it, and Rachel laughed at his.expression as she set the plate down.

Adam smiled at Isaac, too, but it was an odd smile, tinged with awe.

Rachel understood that look. It was an expression of surprise and profound gratitude, as if every tiny moment of happiness was an unexpected blessing.

Sitting down, she found her husband's hand and slipped her other around her son's. In turn, Isaac reached over and held onto Nicole. Adam put a finger into his daughter's other hand, and as always, she curled her own around it

For a few brief moments they sat quietly, all four of them holding hands as if in prayer, framed by the window and the silver gray sea.

Then Adam picked up the knife Rachel had laid at his plate and began to carve the bird.

* * * THE END * * *

A native New Yorker, Annie Solomon has been dreaming up stories since she was ten. After a twelve-year career in advertising, where she rose to Vice President and Head Writer at a mid-size agency, she abandoned the air conditioners, furnaces, and heat pumps of her professional life for her first love-romance, An avid knitter, she now lives in Nashville with her husband and daughter.