Light Up the Night (15 page)

Taking up the soap, he began massaging her neck and shoulders. He dug into muscles until they gave way and she moaned as they loosened. He worked down her incredible body, learning each curve, investigating and memorizing every shape.

When he reached her feet, he turned her around and began working his way back up her glorious form.

She simply lay back against the wall and dug her fingers into his own hair, not to massage, but merely to hold on as he continued his investigation with soap and touch, with tongue and teeth.

By the time he'd worked his way back up to kiss her on the mouth, she was frenzied for release and finally let go rubbing against him. Now he knew each of her muscles as well as he knew any weapon he'd ever carried. Perhaps better, for he knew he'd never forget a single curve of Trisha's incredible body. He could feel every shift and change ripple through her slender frame as she heated past reason. Bill could feel the pulse of each wave as it traveled from one muscle to the next up her body to where their lips met.

He had kept his eyes open to watch the wonder of it shimmer up her length.

What he hadn't been ready for was seeing the tears that flowed from under her closed eyes.

It had been a long couple of days.

The meetings had been endless, and if not for Trisha's infinite aplomb and good manners, Bill would have probably made enemies of everyone in the town of Richmond, Vermont—and been a wreck besides. Instead, Trisha had taken the lead, applying breeding—that still didn't fit with her stories and the charm that flowed from her naturally, in sharp contrast to her normal irascible self—with everyone they had to deal with.

Most of Constance's belongings had gone to the thrift store that also hosted the local food bank, so they took her kitchen supplies too. One box of shared memories remained to be sealed and sent off to his storage locker at Little Creek Naval in Virginia. There was so little in it that it was almost impossible to believe. He'd moved them both here from Chicago in two suitcases and then he'd gone to the Navy, sleeping on the couch of her one-bedroom whenever he got leave.

But after a decade, it shouldn't be so little. Some photos, a deck of cards, and the backgammon board they used to play on. A small framed picture of her and his father at their wedding and a month later standing in front of the Round Church, not yet knowing they had just conceived a child. Totally unaware of the hardships to come. A folded flag, which showed the worn spots of the desperate clutch of a woman who had lost her one true love twenty years before. A woman with few enough skills for being in the world on her own, saddled with a very angry eight-year-old boy.

He barely recalled Trisha finally removing the box from his lap, sealing it, and taking it away to the post office.

They paid off the coroner, canceled the apartment rental, and paid someone else to come in and clean the place after they were gone. The to-do list had seemed endless.

In the apartment, he'd uncovered her will. Simplest damn document, almost made him cry because it was just like her. Even with the lawyerese, it had only covered two pages. At its core it simply said, “To my son.” The attorney that Trisha scared up assured Bill that he'd take care of filing it, not that there was anything much left to matter.

Constance Bruce must have harbored every paycheck Bill had sent her as if it were gold. Not only was there a very tidy sum in their joint bank account, joint so that he could deposit his pay there, but she'd taken out a life insurance policy in his name years before. And, as far as he could tell, she'd spent almost nothing else. The VA had covered most of her medical. She'd been content to join the local church and work at the grocery. Her big evenings out were apparently going to the Grange on Family Night to help out.

He sat on the couch now, in an apartment empty of everything that might have been hers. It had been a cheery place with bright yellow walls and some local farmers' market watercolors and weavings that had made it quite pleasant. With nothing remaining on them, the walls were now overbright, especially where the missing art had shadowed the paint from the years of sunlight fading the rest of the wall. His mother wasn't here anymore.

He'd have slept right here the last two nights if O'Malley hadn't kept dragging him back to Burlington or wherever. She'd made sure he ate room service before she tucked him in. Bless her. They hadn't even had sex, at least not that he remembered. He rather assumed he'd remember sex with Patricia O'Malley, no matter what state he was in. Not the kind of thing any man was likely to forget.

There appeared to be no man around to remember his mother, and few enough others. She'd left such a small impression upon the world.

“I knew Mom was a simple woman with simple needs,” he told Trisha who sat opposite him in the lone armchair. “Just never quite realized how true that was.”

“Everyone we spoke to liked her a lot.”

He nodded. He'd heard that too. It was about all that had sustained him beyond Trisha's endless reservoir of ability to deal with things. If he had to do one more thing on the list, though, he'd scream.

“C'mon, sailor.”

“Where to now?” Maybe he'd scream now and save the trouble later.

Trisha came up and pulled on his arm, finally dragging him to his feet before he could go fetal right there on the couch. “You aren't fit for service, so we're going to see what we can do about that.”

“How?”

“Just shut up.”

He let himself be led out. It was a relief when she placed the apartment keys on the kitchen counter and pulled the door closed, locking it behind them. So, done with that. Trisha practically manhandled him into the car. Womanhandled. Done with some skill and some force.

Right.
He reminded himself of what Michael Gibson had warned him.
Don't mess with Patricia O'Malley.
He was starting to realize that hadn't just been some overprotective idle warning. If nothing else, the woman was tenacious as hell.

***

Trisha hoped this place was as good as the clerk at the post office had said. She knew what Billy needed; now she just had to find it.

After heading through the two blocks of downtown, they drove across the steel bridge. At the Old Round Church she took a right. In a hundred yards at most they were among farms, with actual cows, plowed fields, and a farmer on a tractor who actually waved as she drove by.

“What happened?” Trisha stared back at the farmer in her mirror. “Did we fall off the edge of the Earth here or something?”

“No. Vermont is just like this. Haven't you ever lived in small towns?”

“The only time I touch nature is on training exercises, and even then I'm usually flying over it.” Again that sharp pinch, again she shoved it aside. No matter what CW3 Lola Maloney thought, CW2 Trisha O'Malley was going to be flying. It was the best thing she'd ever done, kicking ass across the sky.

They wound along a two-lane blacktop past streets with names that had “Pine” and “Hill” and “Crest” in them. Streets! Dirt tracks she'd want a Humvee for, rather than a Toyota rent-a-car.

Three miles out and she was on the edge of despair and ready to turn back when the road hit a T. Well, not really, but she was getting desperate and the post office boy had said it was like that.

“It's kind of a T but isn't one,” he'd told her, a cute kid who kept trying to not stare at her chest. He mostly succeeded. It wasn't all that much to stare at, though Billy appeared to like it. “You'll be facing a big field, I think the Jansens have beets going in.” As if she'd have any idea what that might look like. “Dugway Road cuts back to your left.”

There was indeed a road cutting back to her left, paved, thank God, though the sign was covered by yet some other tree, this one with white bark and leaves gone all golden. Kinda pretty, actually. Dugway was an even smaller two-lane that rapidly dwindled to such a tiny width that the trees met overhead, blocking the afternoon sun.

She spotted the river and knew they were most of the way there, despite their entry into the forest primeval.

Sure enough, right when she thought she was going to be lost forever—come spring, they'd find her and Billy the SEAL's corpses in a white rental car buried under great mounds of picturesque red-and-gold leaves gone brown with winter—the road widened to include a shoulder parking area just as the kid said it would. And not another car in the whole strip. They'd be alone. Excellent.

“We're here!”

“Where?”

“Stop whining, Billy, and get out of the car. This should be good.”

Fingers crossed, she led him down the footpath at the farthest end of the pull-off strip. A sign warned against swimming in the upper falls on pain of death and then listed more than a dozen names of people who had achieved that glory.

“Those fallen in the name of being stupid.”

Trisha didn't get him to laugh, but she did get a grunt of agreement.

They descended a steep little path fifty feet through the trees, and then she knew it was perfect. The sound of rushing water blocked out all else. Even a sparrow singing on a bush not far away could barely make her song heard.

A tiered waterfall almost thirty feet high poured over layers of worn rocks. From here they could see most of the cascading waterfall.

“The water is low this time of year.” The Huntington River was only twenty feet wide in the autumn and swift but not deep. “My undercover informant said it would still be pretty.”

“It's great, O'Malley.” Billy just stood there, his face up toward the cool mist rolling off the fall.

A broad pool spread before them at the base of the lowest fall, clearly the swimming hole the kid had mentioned. There was room for a dozen or more people to splash about comfortably, the last little tier of the falls feeding one end, and a stream draining the other. She considered suggesting that Billy take a go in there, but the water looked cold.

What the hell. She sidled up behind him and gave him a quick shove.

As he fell, he spun and grabbed her. His reflexes were so fast that he succeeded in catching hold and they both plunged in.

She was wrong. It wasn't cold. It was freezing. She surfaced sputtering and surged for shore.

His arm snaked about her waist and pulled her farther into the pool.

She got a mouthful of water and spit a stream at his face.

He planted a hand atop her head and shoved her under.

The water was about four feet deep at this part of the pool. She let herself be driven down until she could grab his ankles. Then she tucked into a squat and drove herself back to the surface with all of the strength of her powerful legs. With the help of the water partly floating his body, she managed to flip him into deeper water.

A fast crawl almost got her to shore again, but trying to outswim a SEAL had clearly been a waste of effort. Billy clamped a hand around her ankle. Rather than kicking against it, she used it as leverage to double over and grab his wrist with both hands. Then using a nerve pinch to free her leg, she did a flip she'd seen on the wrestling channel and scissored her legs around his throat, locking her ankles behind his neck.

He got a hand on her face and shoved her under.

Trisha considered biting his hand, but thought better of it and nibbled on his thumb instead.

He let her pop up to the surface, and when she did, he was laughing.

She was still hanging with her legs about his neck like an overlong scarf, her back floating in the water. She squeezed his throat a bit with her knee, just enough to choke off his laughter.

Casually as could be, he reached up and dug a finger into the mid-thigh nerve junction. Not hard, just enough to make her want to let go really badly to avoid a severe charley horse. He gave her legs a push over his head after she eased up and she did a backflip into the water, landing with her feet on the bottom facing him.

“What were you laughing about?”

“Michael was right. Messing with you could be dangerous.”

“You bet, sailor.” She splashed a palm's worth of water in his general direction just as he was trying to inhale, leaving him sputtering and wiping his eyes.

“You look like you're freezing.”

“I'm not a big hunk of meat like you.” The water that practically reached her shoulders barely washed around the middle of his chest. His T-shirt clung to every curve of muscle. “God, Lieutenant. You're gorgeous.”

“And you're damned cute, Irish.”

She cocked an arm back to fire another load of water in his face, but he was too quick and grabbed her. She didn't even put up a struggle as he dragged her against him and kissed her hard. Trisha wrapped her legs about his waist so that she couldn't float away.

Billy walked them to shore without breaking the kiss or showing any sign that he was carrying an extra person.

Then he lowered her to the water-smooth, sun-warmed rock and had his way with her. His need so desperate that his emotions battered at her. His hands, his big powerful hands, dug and kneaded and grasped and held. When at last he drove into her, he roared like a wounded beast. The sound echoed along the rocky walls and deep inside her.

When they woke in each other's arms, the afternoon had cooled around them. They were gentle with each other. Kind. Bill pulled on his cold, wet pants with only a minor shiver of disgust and returned with fresh clothes from their duffels in the car. They rode in comfortable silence, hadn't spoken since they had woken.

Trisha once again took care of him, getting him in the passenger seat. He felt better, but worse. He felt…
Yeah, another lousy start to another lousy sentence he'd never know how to finish.

At the edge of Richmond, just crossing the bridge, she broke the silence.

“Where is she?”

Crap! No question who Trisha was asking about. “Tenacious” was an understatement for this woman. Well, he knew by now that arguing was pointless. He waved east along Main Street and collapsed back into the passenger seat as she drove. No need for further directions—the cemetery was only a quarter mile or so out of town.

Three days earlier he'd been there. They'd held the memorial at the Congregational Church in town, placed the urn of her ashes into the ground here at Riverview Cemetery, then held the reception at the Round Church. The woman pastor at the Congregational had been great, and with the assistance of some of the church ladies, she'd taken care of most everything. He'd given them a big donation, not because of how well they'd treated his mother over the years, or that it was expected or perhaps even appropriate. He did it because if it motivated them to help even one more soul as lost as he was, it would be money well spent.

He pointed out where to turn, where to park. An unmarked grave. He'd ordered the gravestone but couldn't remember when it would be installed. After he was back on deployment probably. Didn't matter. There wouldn't be anyone to care or visit the grave or bring flowers. Crap, he hadn't even brought flowers.

Trisha parked under yet more maple trees gone the colors of the season. Reds, golds, and yellows spangled the hills in every direction. The leaves had finally started falling, losing little of their color as they landed on the grass and clumped. Some, caught in the gentle breezes, scurried across the ground like the squirrels collecting their winter's nuts. O'Malley dug into the backseat and fished out a piece of paper that she slipped into her back pocket. She took his hand, which gave him the strength to lead her between the gravestones toward his mother's final resting place.

It was a good spot, as far as cemeteries went. He'd thought of burying her in Arlington so that she could be beside her husband, but it didn't feel right. Here she had a view of the river winding through the Vermont hills and trees. He didn't know if she'd been particularly happy here, but he knew that she hadn't been sad. And she'd been at peace. For the twelve years since he'd brought her here, she'd known peace.

He almost walked past her grave, then had to blink to make sure it was there. Sod now covered the raw earth and looked almost natural. The small gravestone was in place, already. “Constance Bruce, beloved of husband and son,” and then a span of far too few years.

“I asked the engraver to kind of hustle because you were needed back overseas.”

Yet another thing she'd taken care of. Trisha went to pull her hand away, but he clamped down on it hard. This was one place he certainly didn't want to be left alone with his thoughts.

“Ow! Ease up, Billy. That hurts.”

He let go, but she didn't leave his side. Instead she dug into her back pocket.

“She liked wildflowers, right?”

“Yeah. Why?”

She handed him a small paper packet labeled “Wildflower Variety Pack” that had a picture of dozens of cheery flowers, including black-eyed Susans.

“I figured if you scattered them around the grave, I mean I know it's the wrong season for planting and all, but if you scattered them, some might make it. I don't know how soon you'll be back here and I'll bet you don't, either. Now you won't have to feel bad about it. You know, if you can't come.”

He looked at the little packet of seeds for the longest time, trying to understand the gift that had somehow come to him in this pint-sized redhead.

“What do I do?”

She knelt down, pulling him to kneel beside her. Together they scraped finger-deep furrows for several inches all around the stone.

He tore open the packet and sprinkled the tiny seeds into each one until they were all gone. Then Trisha smoothed the soil back over them and patted it into place. She took the packet from his numb fingers, folded it in half, then dug his wallet out of his pocket and slipped the packet into one of the deep corners.

Bill wrapped an arm about her and, still kneeling, looked down at what they'd done.

“I wish she could have met you.”

Then he did something he hadn't done since an eight-year-old boy lost his father. He folded his arms around Trisha O'Malley and wept.