Fire and Rain (30 page)

“I see.” Carmen wasn’t certain how to respond to that particular piece of information. “What else can you tell me?”

“Well, I remember this friend of his—a boy—who was always hanging around. Felt like we’d taken in two kids, sometimes. He was another brainy type.”

“Was his name Kent?”

“Yes! That’s it. Kent Reed. Real tall. Bad skin. Had a few fingers missing on one hand. He and Rob could scare the living daylights out of you when they got together. One of those brains that was always cooking up something was enough. Put two of them together and you could have a real catastrophe on your hands. You never knew what they were going to do next.” Walter Hunt paused for a moment. “Anyway, Kent gave the other kids at the house the willies. He was always over, always wanting to be with Rob—even Rob would get annoyed with him. So, the wife and I made some rules about when he could come over, how long he could stay, that sort of thing.”

Carmen had written the name Kent Reed down on her notepad and drawn three circles around it.

“Do you have any idea at all where Kent Reed might be now?” she asked.

Mr. Hunt yawned again. “Interesting question. I’d guess either a top secret government agency where they cook up futuristic weapons, or an insane asylum. Take your pick.”

“How about Rob? Do you know where he ended up?”

“Can’t say that I do. When he graduated, though, the schools were falling all over each other to get him. Don’t remember which one he picked. MIT, might have been. One of those technology schools.”

She jotted ‘MIT?’ down on her notepad. “Well, thank you, Mr. Hunt. You’ve been very helpful.”

“Sure.” He didn’t sound ready to say good-bye. “I’ll tell you something,” he said. “I remember Rob as one of the most difficult kids we had, though that’s odd in a way. We had kids who got high or who didn’t know right from wrong. We had ones who were borderline retarded, others who broke the law. Robbie wasn’t any of those things, but he was sad and angry and hard to reach, and none of our rules mattered to him if he wanted to break them. He wasn’t a mean boy, just single-minded. When he left for college, the wife and I thought, good riddance. We told the county we didn’t want any more kids with genius IQ’s.”

Carmen got off the phone. She poured herself a glass of iced tea, then sat at the table again, tapping the tip of her pen on the notepad. Where the hell was she going with this? She felt like disregarding Tom Forrest’s advice to move slowly. She wanted to call the FBI to see if Jeff was wanted for something. She was tired of working in the dark, tired of trying to decide what was significant and what wasn’t. Lately, she’d found herself studying the wanted posters in the post office, examining the features of the shifty-looking men for some resemblance to the man living on her property.

She thought back to her conversation from the day before with Tom Forrest. He was proud of the way she was handling the Cabrio story, he said. “You’re incredible, Carmen!” he’d told her. “They’re eating it up. Keep those tidbits flowing.”

She had hesitated in her response, not certain how to word it, not certain how it would be received.

“Sometimes I feel like I’m using him,” she said softly. “Exploiting him.”

There was dead silence on the line.

“Tom?”

“I can’t believe what I’m hearing.” Tom’s voice conveyed something like disgust. “This is your
job
, Carmen, and there was a time you were better at it than anyone else I know.”

“Right,” she said. “I’ll be fine.”

There was no point in trying to explain her feelings to him. Tom’s skin had grown thick and calloused over the years. He didn’t know what it was like to suddenly wake up one morning with your skin full of tender spots. He wouldn’t be able to understand how easily she bruised.

She thought of Mia’s allusions to her cruelty, Jeff’s complete disdain for her. Only Chris seemed to understand.

He always had.

THE MOMENT CARMEN APPEARED
on the television screen, Mia set down the wire cutters and stood to turn up the volume. Carmen was wearing an aquamarine dress tonight. Every night this week, she’d worn something new, something bright and bold. There had definitely been a change in her on-screen presence lately. She held her head a little higher; her smile was sure and confident. Tonight, though, Carmen wasn’t smiling. Her demeanor was serious and Mia guessed she was about to divulge some piece of information about Jeff to her audience, undoubtedly something Jeff would rather the world not know. Mia sat down again behind the wire armature for the fountain and waited, tense and frowning, for Carmen’s first words.

“
News Nine
has learned that Jeff Cabrio’s stepfather was arrested during Jeff’s senior year of high school,” Carmen said. “The charge was a murder committed several years earlier related to a drug deal. Jeff was then placed in foster care. I had the opportunity today to speak with his foster father in New Jersey. He stated that Jeff had been one of the most difficult youngsters he and his wife had ever taken in, a genius whose tumultuous family life made it hard for him to find happiness. He described Jeff as single-minded, sad, angry and unreachable.”

Mia’s eyes were drawn to the coffee table, where the unfinished sculpture of Jeff rested under a sheet of plastic. He hadn’t changed much over the years, she thought. He hadn’t changed at all.

SHE WAS GETTING OUT
of the tub a few hours later when she heard Jeff calling the kitten. Wrapping a towel around herself, she peered out the bathroom window. She couldn’t see him, but she heard that high-pitched questioning whistle he always used with the cat.

“Hey cat!” he called. “Come here, kitty.”

She put on her underwear and the sundress she’d worn that day and went outside.

He stood on the rim of the canyon, hands on his hips.

“Jeff?”

He turned to watch her walking toward him. “The cat’s missing,” he said, when she was standing next to him. “He was gone this morning. You know how he loves to play ‘watch cat’ and sit on the window sill in my living room?”

She nodded.

“Well, he must have slipped out the side of the screen where it isn’t fastened to anything. I was hoping he’d come home sometime during the day.”

He looked away from her, probably reading her thoughts. Surely he’d heard it too last night—the too-close howling of the coyotes.

She began calling for the kitten, walking a few yards down into the canyon to join Jeff in a search she felt certain was futile, sensing his desperate need of the ruse. She listened in vain for the squawky little meow. Darkness was falling rapidly over the canyon. The chaparral and scrub oak sent long shadows across the earth, every shadow as dark and black as the cat.

Suddenly, Jeff turned and stalked out of the canyon, walking toward his cottage. Mia heard him step onto the porch, but continued her search. Most likely, he was coming up with some wonderful Jeff-like solution to the problem. He would emerge from the cottage with a whistle carved from the limb of a tree or some magical piece of equipment designed to pinpoint the cat’s whereabouts. At the very least, she expected him to bring out the box of kibble, which they could shake in the hope of luring the kitten home.

When he didn’t return after several minutes, however, Mia left the canyon herself and walked to his cottage. The front door was open. He wasn’t in the living room, where his usual stacks of papers rested on the coffee table, nor was he in the kitchen.

“Jeff?” She walked slowly down the hallway toward the one bedroom, where she found him lying on the bed, staring at the ceiling. The back of his arm rested across his forehead, and she thought of how Carmen had described him on television earlier that evening: sad, angry, and unreachable.

She leaned against the doorjamb. “Maybe he’s okay,” she said. “Maybe someone found him and took him in.”

He looked at her from under his arm. “Did you see the dragon lady on the news tonight?” he asked as if he hadn’t heard her words of consolation.

“Yes.” Mia hesitated, but Jeff seemed to want her to continue. “It made me very sad,” she said. “Growing up was so difficult for you.”

He nearly smiled at her. “I wish Carmen Perez had a fraction of your compassion.” He patted the bed next to him and, against her better judgment, Mia stepped into the room and lowered herself to the mattress. Jeff took her hand, but let go quickly. Since that night in her cottage, he hadn’t touched her. Right now, though, Mia wanted the warmth of his fingers on hers. She pulled his hand to her lap, locking both of her own hands around it.

“I’m jinxed, Mia.” Jeff tightened his lips, the smile gone. “People should avoid me. I’m a danger to everyone. I can’t even take care of a goddamned cat. You should go back to your cottage and stay there. Lock the door and don’t let me in no matter how long or how hard I beg.”

“You’re talking nonsense.”

“I wish I were.”

There was a rustling noise from outside. “Shh.” She let go of his hand and turned off the lamp next to the bed. Raising herself to her knees, she leaned close to the window screen, searching the darkness outside for the sleek black kitten.

“Do you see anything?”

“No,” she whispered, pressing her forehead to the screen. “But it would be hard to see a black cat out there.”

At first, Jeff’s touch on the back of her thigh was so light she barely noticed it. It might have been accidental, a random pass of his fingers across the skirt of her sundress. But she knew it was no accident. He didn’t even feign subtlety as he circled the back of her thigh with his palm. Mia froze. She had to stop him, but there was no part of her willing to lose the delicious sensation of his touch.

He rolled toward her, raising the skirt of her dress just enough to let him press his mouth against her knee, and she closed her eyes and gripped the headboard of the bed in her hands. She was safe, she calculated quickly. He was lying down; he couldn’t possibly reach the left side of her chest. So, she surrendered to the pleasure as he stroked her thighs through her cotton dress, surrendered to it as his touch grew more probing and intimate. From the canyon, she heard the hum of crickets on the soft summer air. Other than that, the only sound was her breathing. It was deep and quick by the time Jeff slipped his hand beneath her dress, jagged when he touched her between her bare thighs.

Was he watching her? Could he see the need in her face in the darkness? He stroked her through the wet silk, then inside, and she lost track of what he was doing to her body. His fingers seemed everywhere at once, and she rocked against them, abandoning any last remnant of inhibition. She clutched his shoulder as she came and heard her own voice slip out into the canyon in a moan of pleasure.

Jeff sat up then, quickly drawing her into his arms and kissing her hard as he reached for the top button of her dress.

“No.” She held him away from her, her hands flat on his chest. The muscles in her thighs quivered.

“Mia, for Christ’s sake!” He leaned away from her. “What’s with you?”

She held her arms in her usual protective position across her chest, her fingers locked over the top button of her dress. He was so close, his eyes so piercing. She looked down into her lap, while he smoothed his fingertips over her cheeks, cupped her face in his palm.

“You’ve got to tell me,” he insisted. “What are you afraid of?”

She hesitated only a second or two, then looked him squarely in the eye. “I had cancer,” she said. “I’ve had a mastectomy.”

His face registered stunned surprise, then he shut his eyes, pulling her into his arms again. “
Too young
,” he said.

She savored the way he was holding her, tightly, with no fear of her or her body. It was a moment before she realized he was rocking her, and another before she became aware of her tears. She leaned hard against him and let herself cry like a child.

“Suddenly everything makes sense,” Jeff said.

She wiped her cheek with the back of her hand. “What do you mean?”

“Why you’ve frozen up on me every other time I’ve touched you, but now, when I was touching you far more intimately than I ever have before, you were completely receptive. I didn’t expect that response out of you.”

Mia colored at the memory.

“I liked it a lot,” he said. “Your response.”

“Me too.”

“And the mastectomy explains why you’re out here in Valle Rosa, doesn’t it? It explains what you’re running away from.”

She lifted her head to look at him. “In October I can have reconstructive surgery. I’m hibernating.”

“Your left side, am I right?”

She frowned, alarmed. “How could you tell?”

“You’re protective of your left side.” He lowered his head to kiss her slowly, but suddenly pulled away.

“
Glen
,” he said. “How does he fit into this?”

She sighed. “He was repulsed. He said I was grotesque.”

“Cad.”

“He was right, though. It’s hideous.”

He pulled away from her, reaching for the top button of her dress.

She caught his hand. “No, Jeff, please.”

He looked her in the eye. “Do you want to be friends or lovers?” he asked.

“Both,” she whispered.

“Then you have to let me do this.”

“But I’m afraid once you do, we won’t be
able
to be lovers. After he saw my scar, Glen said that he couldn’t get”—she hunted for a word—”he couldn’t get aroused around me.”

Jeff was unbuttoning her dress as she spoke, but when she’d finished speaking he stilled his fingers and looked thoughtful for a moment. Then he leaned back on his elbow to unbuckle his belt, unzip his jeans. He took her hand and drew it inside, pressing it around his erection, and she sucked in her breath at his brazenness.

“Our litmus test,” he said, nodding southward. “Let’s see what happens.” He finished unbuttoning her dress. “Raise your arms.”

She had to let go of him to do so, but after he had lifted the dress over her head and dropped it behind him on the bed, she returned her hand to the steely warmth inside his jeans, smiling to herself as he responded with a groan.

He reached behind her to unfasten her bra, and she held her breath as he slipped it from her shoulders. It fell onto her wrist, heavy with the weight of the prosthesis, but she wasn’t about to let go of him now. The image of her body as it had looked in the mirror the other day flashed through her mind and she shut her eyes in distress, fighting the urge to cover herself from his gaze.