Escape (19 page)

“It’s about time you got here,” he griped, like we had a date.

Not in the best mood myself, I was short. “Weren’t you in Concord?”

“Oh yeah. Same old people, same old pitch. Some things never change.”

“Thank goodness for that,” I declared, because those “same old people” were the ones who kept the Refuge in the black.

But Jude had his own agenda. “I need to talk with you. Where can we go?”

“Here’s fine.” I didn’t want to spend a long time with him.

“This is personal. I need your advice.”

“Here’s fine,” I repeated, to which he paused and tipped his head.

“Afraid to be alone with me? Afraid of the old wild passion?”

“Actually not,” I said. Of the many things I still felt for Jude, that old wild passion wasn’t one. Or, if it was, it was buried under all my thoughts of James. “This may surprise you, Jude,” I said, “but I have known passion since you.”

“As good?” he asked, teasing but not.

“Better. My husband is a great lover.”

Seeming not to want to go
there
, he looked at my car. “If you’d been with me, you’d never have driven anything foreign.”

“This from the guy who’s been pocketing foreign money for years?”

He held up his hands in a truce. “Okay, but you’re still my conscience, and I have a serious issue here. I need to know what to do about the boy.”

“His name is Noah,” and I didn’t want to talk about him or any other of Jude’s serious issues not right now. But the word “conscience” gave me power. “I saw Jenna at the Refuge.”

“That must have been interesting.”

“Very.” I felt a passion rise in spite of myself. “She said
you
told her I wasn’t seriously interested in you. You lie, Jude. You use people.”

“Well, I’m trying not to”—he actually looked remorseful—“so
help me out here. My mother thinks I should go for custody of Noah. What do you think?”

I didn’t have to give it much thought. “I think it’s a bad idea.”

“Why?”

“Have you met him yet?” I asked on a hunch.

“No.”

“That’s why. If you’d wanted to be a father, you’d have already been in touch. But fathering isn’t your thing. Your own father was a wimp—your words, many times—so what role model do you have? Besides, you’re a narcissist. Your world is about you. There’s no room for a little boy who may have needs of his own.”

Jude sputtered. “You don’t pull punches.”

No. Not with Jude. Anyone else, and I’d have been more diplomatic, but Jude evoked drama.

That said, I felt a little bad. So more gently I asked, “Should I? What good is your conscience if it doesn’t tell you what you don’t want to hear? Only you do want to hear this, Jude. Be honest for once. Custody must have been Amelia’s idea. You don’t want it. You don’t want to be tied down.”

“I want what’s best for the boy.”

“Your jumping in and out of his life is not it.”

“Even if I can add things?”

“Like what?”

“The Refuge.”

I leveled him a stare. “Hello. Amelia is already grooming him for that. She doesn’t need you to have custody. She just wants what
she
wants, which is for you to stay here. But you won’t.”

“How do you know?”

“Just a guess.”

He looked at me for a long moment. “Are you always this tough on people?”

I actually smiled. “No. Just you.”

“Ahh. Payback time.”

I couldn’t totally deny it. “Maybe.”

His eyes sparked. “Good.” He held out both hands, fingers beckoning. “Bring it on, Emily. Gimme me what you got. I can handle it.”

But I couldn’t. Not now.

Still smiling, I shook my head. “Sorry, but I have more important things on my mind.”

His arms were slow to fall, his eyes to settle. I wasn’t sure if he seriously felt I’d insulted his manhood, but he finally shrugged. “Cool. I have a date anyway.”

“Anyone I know?” I asked.

“Why? Would you warn her if you did? Sorry, honey, but she lives in Hanover and I’m looking forward to an uninterrupted night. So think of me when you’re alone in your bed. I’m outta here.”

He strolled off, leaving me watching, much as I had left him yesterday in the woods. But I felt I was the one who’d scored points.

Not that it was a game.

Unless it was. If the challenge was to compare James and Jude, Jude was falling behind. Take passion, which he had raised himself just now. There had been chemistry between James and me from the start. It might have suffered a little in the battle to conceive, but it was still hot. So maybe I was just remembering the best—missing James, even feeling recharged now that I’d had sleep, food, and quiet—but the best was really good. James had definitely made me forget Jude.

He was doing it now, too, because rather than imagining Jude in Hanover, I was focused on the details of James, wondering whether he was wearing slacks or a suit, whether his BlackBerry was on his desk or in his pocket, whether his coffee was hot or cold. All week I had avoided seeing him in living color, fearing that I would either wallow in guilt for having run off or, worse, succumb to nostalgia. Oh, yes, absence made the heart grow fonder, but that kind of fondness didn’t last. It wouldn’t help me move forward.

Right now, though, with our date looming, how could I
not
think of James? I wondered if he was at work, worrying his forehead with his fingers as he always did when he was sorting through a case.
If he was as nervous as me, he might be home gearing up for my call. Or he could be catching a quick bite with Naida.

He had denied having an affair, and I believed him at the time, but suspicion died hard.

So here was another negative twist that could pop up in our talk. He could tell me he loved her.

Seven crept closer. I wasn’t able to eat much dinner, though Vicki plied me with grilled chicken in the kitchen with Charlotte and Rob. Wasting time, I showered away the day’s sweat, then negated the effort with a vigorous arm-swinging, leg-lengthening walk through town. In place of the gray SUV was a dark blue car, but knowing that the guy inside wasn’t after me made me bolder. Or maybe it was pure escapism. The faster I walked and the deeper I breathed, the less I focused on James.

By seven I was behind the Red Fox on what I was coming to think of as “my” bench facing the woods. I turned on my BlackBerry, got a signal, hit James’s speed dial. His phone rang once, twice, three times. Unsettled, I clicked off before voice mail could kick in.

Thinking that my speed dial had gotten messed up while the phone was off for so long—an improbable thought, but James wouldn’t have stood me up—I dialed his cell by hand.

The phone rang and rang. This time I did let it go to voice mail, thinking that if I heard a stranger’s message, I would know that the glitch was with the network.

But there was his throaty baritone apologizing for not being able to talk just then and promising a callback ASAP.

Puzzled, I pressed
END
.

I sat for a minute, sorting through possibilities. There still might be something wrong with his line, but he knew I’d be calling at seven, so if his cell was down, wouldn’t he call me from a line that worked? Unless he was meeting with a senior partner. Or on a conference call. In which case he would text.

I quickly checked, but there was no text from James. In fact there were few texts, period. Amazing what one week could do—amazing how quickly a person could fall off the radar screens of so-called friends. I didn’t care about most, but I did care about James, which was why my stomach had begun to knot.

Clutching the BlackBerry, I sat for several minutes, waiting. This evening was warmer and more humid than the last few had been; the mosquito that hummed around me seemed drugged. I was already wearing cut-offs but, feeling hot, pulled off my sweater. Even in a tee alone, I was clammy—nerves, for sure.

The BlackBerry remained silent.
Be careful what you wish for
, I thought with a brief spurt of hysteria as I hit the buttons again. There were plenty of possible explanations for why James wasn’t picking up, like he was passing through a dead zone or even in the bathroom. The explanation that haunted me, of course, was that he was ignoring the phone, knowing it was me and not wanting to talk.

One ring, two, three. Again, I pressed
END
, but the knots in my stomach had tightened. I knew James. His PDA was his right hand. If he wasn’t answering, it was by choice.

Hurt would come. First, though, because I was his wife and we’d had a date, I was furious.

Maybe I deserved this, an eye for an eye, since I had been the one to walk out on him. Only I hadn’t walked out for the fun of it. I hadn’t left town on a lark. I was having a personal crisis, and if my husband couldn’t see that, couldn’t find it in his heart to work through it with me, we were sunk.

As the minutes passed and my phone didn’t ring, that was the thought that lingered. It appeared that James was either too angry at me to be fair, or had decided I wasn’t worth the grief. Either way, our future together looked bleak.

The finality of it paralyzed me. Seven-thirty came and went, along with a pair of guests from the Red Fox, and still I didn’t leave the bench. Empty inside, I sat holding my cruelly radiant BlackBerry, which had nothing to mark but the time and nothing to say that I
didn’t already know, and all the while, in front of me were the woods, growing more shadowed and murky and
alluring
by the minute.

With the pull came the old fear—like the woods were an addiction I couldn’t control.

I had always equated the larger forest with Jude. But he preferred the great falls to the north, where the scrambling required all fours and a willingness to get wet. This stretch behind the inn had always been mine. I used to come here without him, feeling a totally separate attraction for it.

Was this proof, then, of a wildness in me? If so, it was as eerie as the purple of dusk. The lower the sun sank and the deeper those purples, the more reckless I felt. And the darkness only enhanced it. In the silence from James, I felt unwanted and unloved. If these woods were opaque, maybe even dangerous, so what? I had nothing to lose.

Defying dusk, I crossed the grass to the old wood gate behind the gardener’s shed. Climbing over a rotted post, I waded through ferns and started up. Anything more than this gentle incline might have challenged my flip-flops, and I did feel the brush of ground cover on my open feet, but it wasn’t hurtful, simply … real. There were no blazes on trees to mark the way, only a low stone wall, but what I couldn’t see in the waning light, I remembered—a grandfather oak here, the arch of a boulder there.

A pair of mosquitoes buzzed. I was waving my arms to shoo them off when I heard a sound behind me and stopped. Cautious, I turned and, holding my breath, studied the woods for a creature that might be watching, but I saw nothing.

Telling myself not to be spooked, I started forward again, but I hadn’t taken two steps when, with a heavy thrum of wings, something large crossed my path. Instinctively, I ducked.

But it was an owl. Just an owl.

I walked on. When I passed birch or beech, the path was strewn with leaves compressed by winter snows; when I passed pine or spruce, it was slick with needles. My footing was less sure here. Sneakers would have been better, but I wasn’t going back.

At another sound, I stopped, but even before I could look back, I spotted a deer through the limbless lower trunks of the trees. Wearing a pelt that was a rich cinnamon in the dusk, it held me in its frozen gaze for several long moments before resuming its graceful flight.

The tree trunks were darker in the last of the light, and the stone wall was harder to see, covered as it was with growth, even broken down at spots. Every minute or two, I had to climb over a fallen tree, stepping through branches that overspread the path. Here was nature’s pruning, the weak giving way for the strong to survive.

Desperate to be strong, wanting to survive, too, I ignored the eeriness of the encroaching dark and kept going. The smells grew stronger, a pervasive earthiness made more intense by the humid air that tamped it down. There was no direct sun now, only a pale ochre glow beyond the trees to the west.

I tripped once, making a noise that echoed with the scurry of small creatures unseen. The humidity should have absorbed the sounds, but in these deserted woods it did not. Rather, they were amplified—the snap of a stick underfoot, the whisper of a fern as I passed.

At another rustle I stopped again, turned again. Uneasy, I searched the woods behind me, but if a threat was there, the shadows hid it well. I told myself that I was imagining things. But Jude wasn’t the only predator around. There were hikers, perverts,
bears
.

I had the uncanny feeling that something was out there. Following me? I didn’t know.

But I couldn’t go back. If there was evil here, I was feeling reckless enough to tempt it. Or maybe I was just starved for comfort, because these woods did offer that. The pull. Absolutely. I was headed for a magical spot, and I desperately needed it now.

The stone wall was suddenly gone, stopped where an ancient squatter had ended his claim to the land. But I didn’t need visuals. From here, I could proceed by sound alone. I’ve heard the brook rush after a storm or make barely a sound in the dry days of August, but this being June, after a damp spring, the water bubbled gently over its bed of stones, a chorus of tidy bells guiding me there.

Twilight had turned the water to aubergine and soot, while saplings morphed with their elders on its banks. The air was thick with pine resin, but something else as well. I stood still, listening, smelling, knowing I was being smelled, too.

I had always felt magic here. Now I felt relief when I found my favorite pine. Night had stolen its texture, but its width couldn’t be missed. I leaned against it, feeling better with something at my back, and looked across the brook. The coyotes used to hang out here ten years ago, and the howls I’d heard this week came from this direction. Though I couldn’t see them now, I smelled the feral musk that hung in the humid air. They were definitely around.