Custody (28 page)

Jason’s smile was crooked. Pointedly, he said, “I hope
we
don’t, either, my darling.”

“How’s your veal?” Donna asked brightly.

“I like Eric,” Jason said once they were tucked inside his car and on their way through the summer night to Kelly’s apartment.

Kelly didn’t respond. Leaning her head against the backrest, she closed her eyes.

“Don’t you?” Jason prodded.

“Yes. He seems very nice.”

“The food was great.”

“Mmmm.”

At the long stoplight on Mass Ave and Rindge, Jason fixed Kelly with a look she could sense through her closed eyes. “I don’t understand what I’ve done wrong.” His voice was controlled, very quiet.

Kelly sighed. “You haven’t done anything wrong, Jason.”

“I must have. You’ve treated me as an adversary all night.”

“That’s not true. Besides, we all enjoy being adversaries. We were a quartet of lawyers, for heaven’s sake, discussing difficult issues. We argue for sport. It wasn’t anything personal.”

The light changed. Jason gunned the engine. Putting his hand on her knee, he said, “So we’re okay?”

His hand felt possessive. Restrictive. “Of course we’re okay.”

He moved his hand up her thigh toward her crotch.

“Don’t, Jason.”

“Why not?”

“We’re in a convertible. People can see.”

“It’s never bothered you before.” He didn’t move his hand. “Besides, no one can see.”

“Look, Jason. If I ask you to stop, you should stop.”

“Fine.” He pulled his hand away.

They rode in uncomfortable silence through Harvard Square. When he parked on Memorial Drive, he turned toward her. “Hey.”

She didn’t want to open her eyes. She was being evasive; she knew that. But she felt cranky. Backed into a corner. “I’m sorry, Jason.” Opening her eyes, she forced a smile. “I know I’m being terrible tonight.”

“You premenstrual?”

Relief washed over her. “As a matter of fact, I am.” It was true—she was.

“Maybe you need Dr. Gray’s magic massage to make you feel better.” He rubbed her shoulders lightly.

She shrugged him away. “I really think I need a good night’s sleep,” she said. “Alone.”

“You don’t want me even to spend the night?”

She couldn’t think how to answer this.

“You’ve changed, Kelly.” His voice was sad.

“I know it seems that way. It’s just—” Should she say it? Could she say: I’m in love with someone else?

“It’s this judicial responsibility, isn’t it?”

Gratefully she agreed. “Yes. Yes, Jason. I feel so overwhelmed. I have so much to
process
. My brain feels like an overheated engine.”

“Maybe you need to forget about all that for a while.” He pressed toward her again. “Go with your body.”

“Jason, I just want to sleep. I just need to be alone. Okay?”

“What about tomorrow?”

“Here’s what I’m going to do tomorrow,” she announced. “I’m going to take my phone off the hook and sleep until tomorrow afternoon if I can. I’m going to organize my desk—it’s a mess—and pay bills and get packed for next week.”

“Where will you be then?”

“On the Cape.”

“Are you staying down there?”

“I am. At the Daniel Webster Inn.”

“Barnstable’s only an hour and a half away.”

“I know. But after these sessions, Jason, I don’t have the energy to do anything but collapse in the nearest bed.”

“I’ll tell you what. I could come down some night. We could get Buster and Muffy to
meet us for dinner.”

She would have agreed to anything then, just to get the evening over with. “All right. Maybe. Let me call you.” She opened the passenger door and swung her legs out.

“I’ll walk you up.”

“No. No, I’ll be fine, Jason.” Twisting around, she kissed him. He tried to prolong it, but she pulled away. “Bye.”

She raced away, to the refuge of her apartment.

Seven

S
UNDAY MORNING WHEN SHE ARRIVED AT THE CEMETERY
, he was there.

He was standing outside in the terrible heat, leaning against his Jeep, his arms crossed over his chest. Even now on this day with a temperature in the nineties and the humidity sticking the heat to the skin like glue, he wore khakis, a blue-and-white-striped button-down shirt, and a blue tie, but his shirt collar was open and the tie yanked down.

At the sight of him, something deep within Kelly kicked. Something parted. Men were not called beautiful, but to her eyes he was beautiful. He took her breath away.

She parked her car next to his and stepped outside into the heat.

She walked toward him. “Hello, Ernest.”

He walked toward her. “Hello, Morgan. That’s quite a dress you’ve got on.”

Flustered, she laughed. “I can’t imagine what I was thinking when I bought it.” She’d bought it in Pittsfield, in a fit of madness, stopped dead in her tracks by the sight of it in the shop window, this brief halter dress in red, a color she never wore, perfect for the heat, completely inappropriate for a cemetery.

“I can tell you what it makes me think.” His gaze was intense.

“What does it make you think?” She stood in front of him, not quite touching him, knowing all at once what this dress was. It was an invitation.

“It makes me think we should go to my apartment. Or a hotel. Now.”

“All right.”

“You’re sure?”

“Yes.”

“Well, then.”

He put his hand on her arm and ushered her quite gently around the gleaming hot green metal of his Jeep and into its steaming interior.

By the time he’d gotten in and switched on the air-conditioning, sweat was prickling along her scalp and beneath her arms and between her legs.

He turned toward her, his gaze intense. “Morgan.”

“A car,” she told him, nodding toward the entrance.

Without another word, he set the Jeep in motion, carefully checking the traffic before pulling out into the road. He looked over at her then and reached across the console between them to put his hand on her thigh.

She touched his hand. Wide, massive, the nails were blunt and clean, the skin near the wrist sprinkled with delicate golden hair that grew more coarsely on his arm. His shirtsleeves were rolled up, exposing the swell of muscle and cord of vein sheathed beneath his skin.

“We should talk about protection,” he said.

“I’m on the pill.”

“And I’ll use a condom. I’ve had an AIDS test as well as some others done recently. I’m clean.”

She swallowed. “I’ve only been with Jason for the past year or so, and we both were cleared before we slept together.”

“That’s good, then.”

She studied his profile as he drove, very seriously, checking his rearview mirror, his side mirrors, flicking the turn indicator before making sharp exact turns. He was a responsible man. She saw in his profile the consequences of his generous, professional dedication: the white lines streaking out from his blue eyes, the slight pouches beneath those eyes, a looseness at the jaw that spoke of passing years and the weariness from those years. She could imagine him in a white coat, in an office, touching with infinite gentleness, with a kind of tactile listening, those patients who brought their aging bodies to him not for the purposes of growing into the future as a healthy child or making love and making babies, but for simply living out their years in the best health they could manage. She thought of her grandparents, Grandfather and Grandmother MacLeod, with their dignity, their somehow heartbreaking formality, and she wished, she hoped, that as they were dying they had had a physician as courteous and careful as the man next to her.

They came to Route 9 toward Natick and joined the stream of traffic flying westward until, through a series of complicated lefts and rights, they crossed the congested highway and drove into the parking lot of the Holiday Inn.

“I’ll just be a minute.”

Ernest stopped the Jeep and went through the electric doors, past a bellboy wheeling out a metal rack hung with several garment bags, into the hotel lobby.

Kelly flipped down the visor and looked in the mirror. Her eyes had gotten wide and rather idiotic-looking, like those in the ridiculous portraits painted on velvet of Victorian waifs holding kittens. And her hair, which she’d fastened in a kind of high fall, had frizzed in the humidity into something resembling a bouquet of angel’s breath. Her skin was flushed—not just from the heat. She decided she looked just fine, in an insane kind of way, and then the door opened and Ernest got back into the Jeep.

“Room 304.” He handed the plastic key card to her.

They drove to the side of the hotel, and she jumped out of the Jeep, too eager to wait for him to come open the door for her, and they went up the concrete sidewalk toward the brick building and out of the glare and oppression of the sun into the dim coolness.

Side by side they stood at the back of the elevator, not speaking or touching, as a towel-draped, chlorine-smelling father and his teenage son crowded in next to them, talking and laughing and dripping water on Kelly’s shoes. The elevator hummed, then dinged.

“Excuse us,” Ernest said politely. “This is our floor.”

Father and son squelched to one side, allowing Kelly and Ernest to step out onto the third floor, onto the ornate arabesques of the red-and-gold carpet.

“This way,” Ernest said, and taking her hand, pulled her along with him down the corridor.

The doors were numbered backwards, or so it seemed, as they went past 320 and 314 and 308, past trays with half-eaten rolls waiting beneath wadded white linen napkins to be fetched by room service.

They came to 304. Kelly slid the card down into the electronic lock. A green light blinked at them. Ernest pulled down the door handle, held the door open, and together they went into the tidy anonymous room.

The mauve curtains were drawn against the sun. The room smelled of dust and air freshener. Ernest locked the door and pulled the brass chain across while Kelly stood watching him, and then he turned and looked at her with such honest, unguarded desire that her knees went weak. She sagged a bit, and put her hand out to his chest. He caught her by her elbows, braced her against the door, and brought his mouth to hers.

“I’ll only be about an hour,” Anne promised Tessa.

“Fine.”

“Remember. Don’t open—”

“—the door while you’re gone. You’ve only told me that a billion times.”

Anne’s mouth tightened. “I’m trying to protect you.”

“I know.” Tessa stared at her mother, and with a kind of decision, changed the subject. “You look pretty, Mom. I like that dress.”

Guilt and gratitude flushed Anne with an uncomfortable heat. “Thank you, sweetie.” She sat down on the side of Tessa’s bed. “I know this campaign business is a terrible bore.”

“It’s not. I think it’s cool.”

“Really?”

“Really.”

“You are such a good girl.” Anne leaned over to kiss her daughter’s forehead. “I’ll be home soon.”

“And we don’t have to go to church today, right?”

Anne sighed. “Do you hate church so much?”

Tessa squirmed. “It’s summer. I just like to be lazy sometimes.”

“Well, you can be lazy all morning, then.” At the doorway she turned back hopefully. “You don’t
have
to go out with your father today, either, if you’d rather just be a perfect slug all day. I could phone him and tell him not to come.”

“No, Mom. I want to see Dad.”

Anne sniffed eloquently. “All right, then. I’ll be back soon.”

Tessa waited until she heard the door close. She waited some more. When ten minutes had gone by, she got out of bed. The house was silent. Sometimes when it was this quiet, it spooked her, especially at night. She knew there were no such things as ghosts, but there were serial killers and rapists—her mother had warned her about them—and sometimes scenes from the movies she caught glimpses of at her friends’ homes came flashing into her mind. Maybe there was a maniac hiding in the back hall.

Hunger made her bold. She slid from the bed. It was cold in the house—her mother kept the air-conditioning too high—so Tessa pulled on thick white cotton socks and a sweatshirt. Her
father was taking her to the farm today, and Grandfather always had great food for her there, but her stomach was demanding food right this minute. Her socks were slick against the stairs as, hanging on to the banister, she slithered down.