No River Too Wide (36 page)

“I’m glad Jan Stoddard saved the little girl,” Philip said, “but you still need to watch her and see if the husband shows up or if she’s suddenly living the high life. Unless you think this assignment’s getting too personal? We can take you on as a full-time investigator next month here in Chicago, or maybe just put you on another freelance case someplace where you’re not emotionally involved.”

That was too close to home.

“I’ll let you know if anything else comes up,” Adam said, “but if nothing does, don’t say I didn’t warn you.”

He hung up and went back to rummaging for leftovers. After he threw out everything that was no longer edible, he salvaged half a tub of hummus, one slightly-wilted stalk of celery and a stale bagel.

He dipped the celery in the hummus and realized the hummus was moldy.

This was what his life would consist of if he stayed on his present course. Moving from place to place. Peering through a long-distance lens at the lives of others. A third-rate apartment, a rental car, pathetic leftovers.

And nightmares.

He tossed the bagel back in the refrigerator, the hummus in the garbage and opened a can of beer instead.

* * *

Taylor hadn’t been surprised when Maddie told her to go home and sleep in her own bed instead of spending the night on the fold-out sleeper in her hospital room. Another girl her age had settled in, and the two had hit it off. Maddie’s roommate had been in a car accident, and like Maddie, she was being monitored through the night in case she had suffered something more than cuts and bruises.

Taylor had quickly made her exit. If Maddie changed her mind the hospital had her cell number. And if she stayed, she might keep hammering home how serious this whole event had been. Maddie already understood that, and Taylor didn’t want to frighten her even more.

Now, as she stood at Adam’s door and considered her next move, the smell of the food cradled in her arms was more powerful than the temptation to turn around before he learned she had been here. Even more powerful? The need for human warmth.

She needed Adam.

She lifted her fist and knocked. If he wasn’t at home, she might sink to the floor, open the bag with its environmentally unfriendly containers and eat everything she’d bought all by herself. If the restaurant had forgotten to add plastic cutlery, she was hungry enough to eat with her fingers.

The door opened and Adam appeared on the threshold. “Wow.”

“Tell me you haven’t eaten.”

“So far the closest I’ve come is inhaling the chicken grease from downstairs. How did you get in? The door downstairs is always locked.”

“One of your neighbors was going out.” She held up the bag. “Rigatoni melanzane, and in case you don’t like eggplant—because not everybody does—” she knew she was babbling, but she couldn’t stop “—I also got fettuccine Alfredo. They make it with peas and mushrooms, and it’s so good.”

He took the bag out of her arms; then with his free hand he scooped her inside and closed the door, then set the bag on the floor and kissed her.

She was dizzy from hunger, desire, the need to remember the world was turning as it should again, and for a second she wasn’t sure which was more powerful.

Then he pinned her against the door with his body and let his hands travel to her waist, let his fingertips wander inside the waistband of her jeans. The snap gave way. The contest ended abruptly.

“Maddie?” he whispered.

“She’s fine. I was afraid I might smother her if I stayed. She didn’t need me.”

“That’s good, because I do.”

They probably should talk first. She knew that. Say a few things about relationships and expectations and sex in general, but she had no more words. The day had sharpened everything inside her. Loss, fear, gratitude. She was a quivering mass of emotions ready to erupt. And this time when he kissed her, she released them to flourish on their own.

But she couldn’t release need. It flourished inside her.

They undressed each other like clumsy teenagers. Arms in the way, buttons snagged in buttonholes that had been wide enough that morning. She kicked off one shoe and the other refused to follow. Adam’s shirt caught at his shoulders, and she had to tug so hard she was afraid she might hurt him.

His bed took up most of the shabby room, which under the circumstances was a good thing. The trip there was blessedly short, although long enough for her to send the second shoe flying just before she fell to the sheet.

“You’re so beautiful,” he said, “and I promise I’m going to take a long look and say all the right things. Later.”

He was beautiful, too, muscular arms and chest, long powerful legs. They were fleeting images. The rest she drank in with her hands, the length of her body against his, the drugged pleasure of hurried kisses in intimate places.

She didn’t warn him how long it had been for her, or how little she remembered. She didn’t care. She didn’t need experience to know this was special. Adam was special. He wouldn’t be gentle, but he would be controlled.

Foreplay
was a word best explored another time. Or maybe that was what the weeks leading up to this explosion had been. Whatever the answer, she wrapped her legs around him and gave herself without reserve.

* * *

“I’m having that long look I promised,” he said later, propped on one elbow and gazing down at her.

She smiled up at him. “Anything new?”

“You’re amazing. Perfect. All those hours of yoga. You could probably tie yourself into knots.”

“Didn’t we just do that to each other?”

“I think we
untied
a few.” He traced a finger down her cheek, around her lips, down her neck to her breast, where it made slow circles around her nipple. “Taylor, I didn’t use a condom. Everything just fell to pieces. I lost track of reality.”

“I’m healthy. You’re healthy?”

He nodded. “Certifiably, if that helps. I’m just thinking you might not want another unplanned pregnancy.”

“Once a decade, that’s my motto.” She lifted to kiss him. “Actually I’m on the pill. Have been for a couple of years. I was having life-altering PMS, and it helped.”

“Good. I hope I never do anything to hurt you.”

“You didn’t. You haven’t.” She looked into his eyes. “But somebody hurt you.” She let her hand travel to his chest, where a long scar streaked across it. She had expected tattoos, perhaps, but not this.

“That’s what happens when you’re in a war zone.”

She waited for him to go on, but she saw that he wasn’t going to.

She didn’t push. “Dinner’s cold.”

“I don’t care, do you?”

“I’m starving.”

“I have two plates, and they both happen to be clean. How’s that for planning?”

“Plates but no condoms?”

He bent down and let his lips follow the path of his finger. “I didn’t say I didn’t have condoms. I said I didn’t use one. You bewitched me.”

“It’s always the woman’s fault.”

“I’ll rephrase. I
let
you bewitch me.”

“We’re never going to eat, are we?”

“What do you think?”

* * *

They did eat eventually. He had two forks, too, and a tiny microwave. By the time they got to it, the food tasted as if it had come from one of Asheville’s finest restaurants instead of a pizzeria with pretensions. They shared each dish, fed each other bites, laughed, scooped up the remaining sauce with their fingers and fed that to each other, too.

“You’re not going back to the hospital?” he asked when the dishes were finally in the sink and they were back in bed.

“Maddie doesn’t want me there. She’s turning into me at that age. She’s struggling so hard to break free, and I’m her jailer. She may need rescuing a time or two more before she’s eighteen.” She leaned over and kissed him. “You know I’ll never be able to thank you enough for going into the river after her.”

“You made a good start tonight.”

She laughed. “Of course, tonight is
all
about gratitude.”

“I’m glad I was watching from the window. I just had a bad feeling when I saw Vanilla racing down the hill. Jan must have, too.”

“I called Maddie’s father and told him what happened. Once she got to her room Jeremy talked to her on my cell phone and gave her a stern lecture, or as stern as he gets. He’s a marshmallow.”

“I hope he didn’t blame you.”

“He was a rebel, too. He said that kind of behavior is inevitable for a kid with our genes.”

“She learn anything?”

“She was pretty clingy in the emergency room. She must have said she was sorry twenty times. So maybe she is, and she’ll listen better next time. But I don’t think she was trying to prove I was wrong about the river. She was just trying to save Vanilla. The instinct was good, the reality pretty disastrous. If it weren’t for Jan and you, she probably would have died. And I was the one who let that idiot dog out of my office.”

“You would have gone into the river if I hadn’t. I just got there faster than you did.”

“You’re stronger. It took a lot to get to her and haul her out with the water pushing against the tree like that. We were so lucky to have you there. And so lucky to have Jan.”

“I hope you’ll always feel lucky.”

She kissed him again, then sat up. “Maybe I ought to go home? It’s getting late.”

“Stay.”

She cocked her head and searched his face. “You’re sure?”

“My bed’s big enough for two. Get some sleep before you have to head back in the morning.”

She was surprised. Sex was one thing, a pressing, volcanic need that had eclipsed everything else. But sleeping together? That was intimacy. By now she knew him well enough to realize that asking her to stay was the larger commitment.

“I have an extra toothbrush,” he said.

“Can I sleep in your T-shirt?”

“Why don’t we both sleep in the same thing?”

“What’s that?”

“Nothing.”

* * *

The dream began as it always did. He was flying above the clouds. The freedom was heady, but even as Adam soared higher and higher, he knew the breeze that buoyed and supported him would soon disappear, and he would begin the terrifying free fall that would end where even now smoke and flames were shattering what had been a peaceful landscape below.

He could hear screaming, adult and children’s voices, women wailing, men screaming prayers that no higher power heeded, because the wailing continued, the flames shot higher and he plummeted toward them.

Moving was essential. Somehow he knew he had to move. That he had to struggle against the fall. That he had to...

“Adam!”

The voice had no meaning for him, but the name? The name was familiar.

“Adam, wake up.”

His eyelids flew open. He was sitting up in a room that wasn’t strange but wasn’t home, although he couldn’t picture anything that went with that word. The room was dark, but light trickled through a door cracked open beyond him. He concentrated on the light, and the woman’s voice. The light was steady, not the flickering of a spreading fire. The woman was not screaming.

“You’re okay,” she said, just loudly enough for him to hear. “You’re in your own bed, in Asheville, with me. Taylor. It’s only ten o’clock.”

Long moments passed as sleep faded away, inch by inch, and the nightmare crawled back into whatever hole it lived in when he was awake. He forced himself to breathe slowly. A distant memory, another woman’s voice, a much older one, teaching him how to bring himself slowly back to reality.

Finally he lay back down and stared up at the thin slice of light streaking across his ceiling.

“A nightmare?” Taylor asked.

“Yeah.”

“A really bad one.” It wasn’t a question.

“Yeah.”

“Maddie was born so early they didn’t know if she would live. For years afterward I had dreams she was flying away from me, like a baby bird with tiny feathered wings, and I couldn’t catch her. Somehow I knew if I didn’t, I would wake up and find she had really flown away forever.” She paused. “With adolescence approaching I may start having that dream again.”

“In my dream I’m the bird.” He’d spoken without thinking. The coincidence—birds, death—had seemed worthy of comment, and he was in no mood to go back to sleep.

“And you’re back in Iraq or Afghanistan.” Again, no question.

“Here’s the funny part. You name anything dangerous, and I’d probably done it in the three years before I almost died. I thought I was hot stuff, you know, invulnerable. After all, I’d made it through combat rescue training, and if I could survive that...”

She touched him for the first time since the nightmare, just took his hand and wove her fingers through his without saying a word.

He squeezed, surprised at how good the connection felt, unexpected and welcome solace. “I volunteered for missions where only half of us returned uninjured or alive. But I don’t dream about that. I dream about the day I was asked to accompany a humanitarian assistance convoy carrying necessities to an outlying village near Bagram Air Force Base.”

He turned so he could see the outline of her profile. “I wasn’t happy in my job. The thing is, I’d left security forces for combat rescue, but a month before that mission I’d been moved back to security. My commanding officer thought I needed a break, that I was getting cocky, taking risks that put others in danger.”

“Were you?”

“I took a lot of risks, but we all did. That was our job, but he said he saw something that worried him. He said sometimes an airman who’s had good luck forgets bad luck is always right behind him, and I needed time away from what I’d been doing.”

“I’m guessing that’s when you had bad luck.”

“In a war zone any time you go outside the wire it’s dangerous. But the trip had been largely uneventful. We made it to the edge of the village. There was a bazaar where whatever goods the local merchants could scrape together were on display. Villagers, mothers with their children, old men and women. They were all coming to the bazaar to watch our convoy arrive. By then I was feeling better about my job. The villagers had so little. The convoy was there to help. There was nothing in it for us except goodwill.”

He turned away to look back at the ceiling. “Then the whole place exploded. A suicide bomber had been hiding in one of the booths undetected. I remember the screaming. I smelled smoke and felt the heat of flames. I remember thinking it was all so ironic, that I was supposed to be one of the guys who rescued people like me, and then I remember floating above it all looking down and seeing the bodies of children.”