Banish Misfortune (22 page)

Jessica could hear him in the shower, the steady pounding of the water on his body, the muffled thump and knock as he moved in the enclosed stall that was far too small for his lanky body. She opened her eyes cautiously, staring about her with a kind of reluctant curiosity. The sun was up, but just barely, and she was lying in a huddle beneath a pile of blankets, her body aching in places she hadn't even known existed. She could see the mute testimony of the night before, the trail of clothes from the door to the bed, the bed covers half on the floor and half covering her, the pillows every which way. She should sneak back to her bedroom while she had the chance. What in hell was she going to say to Springer when he came back in?

She had just pushed the bedclothes back when she heard the shower stop, and quickly she dived back under the tangle of sheets, pulling them over her head and feigning sleep. A moment later she heard his footsteps in the room, felt his eyes watching her rumpled form. She held her breath, waiting for him to leave. The bed sank beneath his weight, and she had no choice. She opened her eyes again, to meet his steady gaze.

He was sitting at the edge of the bed, dressed in an old pair of jeans and nothing else, and his silky black hair was still wet from the shower. He hadn't shaved yet, and the dark eyes looked bloodshot and slightly swollen. He watched her gravely, no smile on his face, no clue in those dark eyes as to what he was thinking.

He reached out a hand, gently brushing her exposed arm, and she flinched. "You've got a hell of a bruise," he said, and his voice came out slightly rusty.

The purplish mark wasn't the only sign of the night's ceaseless activities. Springer had been like a man possessed—insatiable, determined to lose himself again and again in her welcoming body, equally determined to bring her with him. Jessica no longer knew how many times they had made love, how many ways. It was all a welter of dreamlike pleasure that didn't seem quite real in the shadowy prelight of dawn. Not with him watching her so somberly.

"I've got pale skin," she said, matching his soft tone, as she pulled herself into a sitting position, the sheet still covering the multitude of her post-pregnancy body. "I bruise very easily. All you have to do is breathe on me and I turn purple."

He couldn't resist it. Slowly he leaned forward, so that his face was barely an inch away from her startled one, slowly he let his breath out, the soft, moist air bating her lips, tasting of peppermint toothpaste. And then his lips brushed hers, gently, wonderingly, for far too brief a moment before he pulled back to survey her with a clinical air. "Not purple," he said. "But a delicious shade of pink."

She'd caught her breath at his sudden kiss, and she sat there, the sheet pulled up to her neck, staring at him bemusedly. A tiny smile pulled at the corners of his mouth. "You don't really need that sheet," he murmured. "Not after last night." He reached out to give it a tiny tug, but she held fast, still staring at him wonderingly.

"I'm cold," she said stubbornly, drawing her knees up.

"It's at least seventy-five already, Jessie. It's going to be a very hot day," he said gently. A shadow crossed his already haunted face. "I didn't hurt you, did I?"

Yes, you hurt me,
she thought.
You've torn out my heart, trampled all over it, and I don't think I 'm ever going to feel whole again.
Smiling slightly, she shook her head. "I'm fine."

He didn't look convinced. "We need to talk, Jessie."

"If you want." It was an irresistibly dangerous idea, but then, when had she been cautious where Springer was concerned? She could always run away if things got too close for comfort.

"Look, I've got a million things to do. I have to talk to... to my father's lawyer about his will. I'm executor, and I don't have the slightest idea what's in it. Probably bequests to all his boyfriends." There was a mocking note to his voice, but a light one, no longer condemning. "That'll keep me busy this morning, and I really need to talk to my mother. I've been so angry with her, for keeping his condition from me, that I haven't been able to give her any of the comfort she needs. You've done all that, and I'm grateful, but it's about time I faced up to things."

"She'd like that," Jessica said gently, still holding on to her knees.

His hands caught hers, prying them from their clinging grip and holding them, his long fingers kneading the rigid muscles. "And then we could go out for dinner. Some place quiet, and small, where we could talk. Would you do that for me?" That voice of his was seducing her all over again. With most of her New York defenses gone, she was helpless to resist him, and she found herself smiling dazedly up at him.

"Yes," she promised rashly, and meant it. "Yes."

It was a strange morning
for her. For the first time in years, in decades, perhaps, Jessica allowed herself to hope. She was going to risk it tonight, she was going to open herself up to Springer MacDowell and see what happened. They needed to talk, he said, and he was right. If they could even begin to communicate as well with words as they did with their bodies, then there was more than a chance that they might... they might...

She didn't allow her
fantasies to go any further. Half of her wanted to run away back to Vermont before her world could come crashing down around her, half of her wanted to push him away before he could reject her. But she stayed, keeping Elyssa company, talking with gentle fondness about Ham and his foibles, while they waited for Springer to return from the lawyer's office.

"Springer looked better this morning," Elyssa observed from her perch on the sofa. She herself looked a marvel of calm acceptance. But then, she'd had more than enough time to prepare herself for the inevitable—she'd spent the past six months grieving.

"You saw him before he went out?"

"He stopped in on his way downtown," Elyssa replied. "We talked for just a bit—I think he might find it possible to forgive me not telling him about Ham sooner. I wanted to, but it was terribly important to Ham not to play on Springer's guilt."

"And instead he added to it," Jessica said in a low voice.

Elyssa's fine dark eyes met hers for a pregnant moment. "I'm afraid he did." She sighed. "But I think Springer can handle it. He looked like holy hell this morning: bloodshot eyes, shaking hands, circles under his eyes. He looked like he'd been on a three-day drunk."

"And you think that was looking better?" Jessie questioned curiously.

"I do. Yesterday and the days before he had everything bottled up inside. Somehow he was able to release it last night, and once he starts to let it out he'll be able to deal with it. He always had trouble accepting the fact that he still loved Ham, despite everything."

"What was everything?"

Elyssa hesitated. "I suppose you may as well know. We never talked much about it, and perhaps that was wrong. Springer came home from school one day when he was fifteen and found his father on the couch with one of his friends."

"Oh, no." A sudden, horrifying flash of memory streaked through Jessica's mind like a bolt of lightning—a couch in a middle-class living room in Minnesota, rough, horrible hands pawing, pawing... "No," she said again, banishing the image.

"Yes. He knew about his friend. But he didn't know about his father."

"Did you?"

"Hamilton had always been completely honest with me. I was only seventeen when I married him, naive and very much in love. He told me about himself, and he tried very hard to change. But he simply couldn't, no matter how much he loved both me and Springer. I could accept that, Springer couldn't. But I couldn't accept how much he'd hurt Springer. I think subconsciously he knew Springer would come home that day and find them, had set it up on purpose. He just couldn't cope with living a lie anymore. But it couldn't have happened at a worse time for Springer, just when he was becoming a man."

"What happened?"

"Oh, I left Hamilton, of course. I really had no choice. In the sixties, arrangements such as Ham's and mine only worked if they were kept secret. And Springer was completely out of control. He had worshiped his father, you see, and he felt betrayed in the most elemental way." Elyssa leaned back, her eyes distant. "We tried sharing custody for a while, but that didn't work. At first Springer would refuse to go, and then every time he had to spend the weekend he'd bring a girl and make love to her on that damned sofa, making sure Ham would know what he was doing. I hated that sofa."

"You aren't sitting on it, are you?"
Jessica couldn't help but ask, and Elyssa managed a wry smile.

"Thank goodness, no. I talked Ham into throwing it out years ago. I have no idea whether this one has seen any illicit sex, and I don't really care. Nor, do I think, does Springer anymore." She sighed. "Maybe now he'll finally learn to let go of the pain and grief his father caused him. If he can admit he loved him, even as he hated him, then there's hope for him. If he can't, I don't know if he'll ever be able to make any kind of commitment to anybody. And that's such a lonely, wasted life."

"Yes, it can be," Jessica said noncommittally.

Elyssa looked up sharply. "Did you love your father, Jessie? How did you deal with your parents' deaths?"

"Of course I loved my father," she said instinctively. "And I don't remember much about their deaths—it was so long ago."

"How long?" Elyssa persisted.

"Many years ago. I don't really want to talk about it, Elyssa. I've dealt with it, it's over."

"How long did it take you to come to terms with it?"

Jessica closed her eyes as the tension washed over her. Slowly she unclenched her hands, opening her blue eyes to meet Elyssa's troubled dark ones. "I'd say about thirty-two years," she said roughly.

Elyssa was very still. "I'm sorry, Jessie."

Jessica was proud of herself; she managed a shaky smile. "I'm sorry, too. Don't worry about Springer, Elyssa. He'll make it. He's tough, and he doesn't hide from things the way I do. He's going to be fine."

"So are you, you know," Elyssa said gently.

"I know," she said. She stretched, barely swallowing the exhausted yawn that convulsed her body. "I'm tired."

"You look it. You don't look as if you got any more sleep than Springer did." Elyssa watched with complete fascination as Jessica turned a deep crimson. "That's the curse of pale skin," she observed. "You blush so easily."

"I wasn't blushing, Lyss, I was just..."

Her words trailed off as they heard the slam of the front door. He didn't bother with the myriad of locks and double locks, didn't pause as he headed unerringly for the living room. Jessica sat motionless in her chair, watching him out of stricken eyes.

She had hoped he'd never look like that again. His eyes were black with rage, his face pale, his entire body vibrating in barely controlled fury. He threw down the blue-backed sheaves of paper that had to be Hamilton's will, ignoring his mother's shocked witness.

"Who the hell," he demanded thickly, "is Matthew Decker Hansen?"

The Slaughterer, vol. 90: The Death of Rocco

Matt Decker surveyed the carnage around him. The great Rocco had finally been brought down in a spray of bullets from his trusty Lambretta. Decker had stitched a row of blood around the room, impartial in his justice-dealing. The two lovers were entwined in the corner, rigid in death, and Decker casually slipped the still smoking Lambretta into his sharkskin pants, flinching as the hot metal touched his skin. His job was done for the day. Rocco dead, the two lovers following him to the hell where Decker decided he belonged.

It felt good to have the job finished, he thought, picking his way over the corpse-littered Brasilia street. He wondered where he'd be called next.

Jessica could never think back
to that moment without a shudder of pure horror. She had sat there, motionless, dumb, staring up at Springer out of stricken eyes, unable to say a word.

It had been Elyssa who'd saved the situation, if sav-ing it was. "That's Jessie's son," she'd said calmly. "And I'd like to know what's put you in such a temper? Sit down and have some tea and tell us about the will. And how did you happen to hear about Matthew?"

Springer didn't move from his stance by the door, and Jessica couldn't bring herself to look anywhere but just beyond his left shoulder. "I came across Matthew in the will, of course," he snapped, "Who's his father?"

Still Jessica said nothing. Elyssa cast her a sympathetic look before answering for her. "Peter Kinsey, of course. Though what right do you have, cross-examining Jessie about her life?"

"Why didn't you marry him, then?" The words came out like Matt Decker's bullets, and Jessica flinched.

This was one Elyssa couldn't answer. "I didn't want to," Jessica said finally. "And he didn't want to marry me.

"Does he support his son?"

"None of your damned business." She did look at him then, anger banishing the last of her panic. "It doesn't have a thing to do with you."

"No? I was just curious why my father would leave the Vermont house and a trust fund of a hundred thousand dollars to Peter Kinsey's son when the Kinseys have more money than
The Slaughterer
ever brought in."