Sleeping in Eden (9 page)

Lucas could almost imagine that Jenna was breathing beside him. She moaned in her sleep—a soft, unconscious sigh that he had fallen in love with long ago. He missed listening to the gentle protest in each exhale, the sweet familiarity of her night sounds, and even the way she curled away from him, her backbone pressing lightly against his arm as he lay facing the ceiling.

But his bed was cold and empty. Silent as a tomb.

When Jenna had told him that she was moving out, he begged her to stay. She said she needed time and space, a place where she could untangle the mess that her life had become.

“We can do that together,” Lucas said, his voice low and husky, desperate.

“No, Lucas, we can't. I think the last several years have proven that.”

“Why don't we try counseling again?”

Jenna suppressed a little shudder.

“It wasn't that bad.”

“Look, I don't want to go there. I don't want to dredge up everything that happened and try to come to terms with it all. I just want to move on.”

Without me, Lucas thought. But he said, “Stay. Please. I'll move into the attic room. You'll hardly know I'm here. Just please don't go.”

Jenna had shrugged, and the conversation was over. For an entire week Lucas hoped that she had abandoned her plan entirely, that somehow in a stunted, brittle conversation he had managed to convince her that their marriage was worth fighting for. But when he replayed their dialogue again and again, he realized that there were no fighting words contained in their exchange at all. He hadn't shouted a battle cry, a bold declaration of the war he was willing to wage in the campaign for his wife. He had whimpered a plea.

It had unnerved Lucas not to know what to do. He was the sensible one, strong and levelheaded and dependable. At work and at home, he specialized in doling out solutions, answers to problems both simple and sophisticated. But losing Jenna had crept up on him in the night. Her gradual disentanglement from their relationship, from their life together, had come on so slowly and stealthily, he didn't realize it was happening until the day she walked into the attic and became little more than the woman who shared a house with him.

One night almost exactly a week after she told him she was going to move out, Jenna brushed her teeth in the
bathroom like normal, but instead of crossing the hall into the bedroom they shared, she mounted the steps to the attic. Lucas hadn't even noticed that she had moved her clothes out of the closet and taken her favorite pillow. Or that the wall between them had been mortared with an extra layer of bricks. He couldn't even form a single coherent thought as he watched her walk straight-backed up the stairs and out of sight, and when the slim curve of her ankle finally disappeared, he stood in the hallway, watching the spot where it had been, heartbroken and longing. He was bereft, holding all the frayed edges of the ties that bound them to the house, to each other, to all that they had shared and known, and hoping he could somehow weave them back together. He didn't know how to begin.

Lucas knew that he should have called after her. He should have at least tried to make her take the master bedroom. Better yet, he should have marched up those stairs and carried her back down like a child. Laid her on their bed. Made love to her.

Or just held her.

He did none of those things.

And in the murky light of a fall morning, he wished for nothing more than that he had done something. Anything.

I took the ring, Lucas thought. It was too little, too late, and maybe not the right gesture at all. But he had done it, and now he had to live with the ramifications.

Lucas both wanted and didn't want to give Jenna the ring. He leaned over the side of the bed and took it from the nightstand where he had placed it the night before. It felt warm in the palm of his hand, the coil of gold an obvious and almost painful sphere pressing against his skin. Tell her, he thought. Go upstairs, lift her from sleep, and look into her eyes. Tell her what you saw. But now that he was home, away from the crime scene, the bustle of DCI agents, and all the questions, he was speechless. Maybe Jenna wouldn't understand his gift. Maybe it would hurt her more than it helped. And although he believed with all his heart that the body beneath the floor of the barn
was Angela Sparks—and that DCI would quickly and easily determine that fact—it didn't erase what he had done.

Sane, trustworthy, respectable men didn't steal evidence from a crime scene. And straitlaced, idealistic, reliable Lucas Hudson didn't either. At least, not until he saw the glint of the ring.

The telephone was far enough away that when it rang, it was more a dream than reality. Lucas finally turned his head so that his ear was angled at the door, and after a moment of lying perfectly still, he heard it. Quickly, he swung his feet to the floor and slithered out, grabbing his robe off the chair and gliding to the bedroom door on the balls of his feet. The door made the tiniest creak at his touch, but when he looked back to see if he had disturbed Jenna, he remembered that he slept alone. He flung the door open.

Taking the stairs two at a time, Lucas reasoned that he had probably already missed the call. The answering machine would get it. He should have stayed in bed. But it was too late to turn back. He had committed himself to the chore and now he wanted to make it worth his while—no lousy hang-up. The kitchen tile bit his bare feet as he sprinted across the floor, but Lucas did reach the phone in time. The answering machine clicked on just as he swept the phone out of its cradle.

“Hello?” His voice was groggy with sleep and accompanied by a tinny, mechanical voice insisting that the Hudsons were not able to take the call. “Hang on a second, let me turn that off.”

“Lucas? You're such a slacker—were you still in bed?” Alex was loud enough that Lucas had to yank the phone away from his ear.

“No,” Lucas lied. “Jenna and I were just having a lazy morning.” He spun around to look at the clock on the stove, which read 8:30. Surprised, he used his free hand to massage his face and ended up hiding a wide yawn, even though he knew Alex couldn't see him through the telephone.

“You're a bad liar, Lucas. Always have been,” Alex ribbed.

“Okay, caught me.” Lucas yawned again. “I can't remember the last time I've done that—slept so late, I mean.” He lowered himself into one of the kitchen chairs.

“Hey, I'm glad you did. Kids wouldn't let me—Lily jumped into our bed at five freakin' thirty this morning, ungodly—but I envy you. Do it every day if I could.”

Lucas held his tongue. People often didn't realize how seemingly benign comments like that cut Jenna to the quick. Him, too. Five freakin' thirty sounded pretty fantastic if it meant that a child had been the alarm clock. Lucas couldn't help wondering how different his whole life would be if he could laugh with Alex about the so-called chore of children.

“We're starting with interviews this morning,” Alex went on. “We've been calling since seven o'clock, and have a few appointments lined up already.”

“On Sunday? I'm surprised the fine residents of Blackhawk are willing to part with their Sunday-morning routine.”

“Oh, everything has to be before or after church, but not during dinner with Grandma or anytime in the three-hour afternoon nap slot.”

Lucas laughed in spite of himself.

“When can I count on you?”

“Me?”

“You need to give an official statement, Lucas.”

“With you?”

“DCI will interview you.”

Massaging his face with his free hand, Lucas thought about the ring that he'd left on the nightstand when he ran to catch the phone. Did they suspect that he'd taken something? Were there imprints of the ring on the paper of Jim's suicide note? Could the naked eye determine that sort of thing?

“You there?”

“Nine o' clock,” Lucas said. “I can be there at nine.”

“We're set up at the station. Just park around back and let yourself in the back door.” Alex hung up without saying good-bye.

Upstairs, Lucas plucked his jeans from the floor where he had discarded them and pulled a fresh T-shirt from the dresser drawer. He tucked the ring in his pocket, stabbed with a moment of guilt so intense that he almost convinced himself he would turn the ring over to DCI as soon as he saw them. But then he heard the creak of Jenna's feet on the floor above him. She was probably pulling the curtains tight, trying to eliminate any gaps where the light creeped in. Jenna wasn't a morning person, and she liked to be gentled into her day. It killed him to think of her up there. Without him.

Grabbing his keys from the kitchen counter, Lucas consoled himself with plans for their afternoon. When he got back he'd talk Jenna into going for a drive; they'd get out of Blackhawk and maybe even go to Intermission, her favorite restaurant. Sioux Falls was a good forty-five minutes away, but nothing was open in Blackhawk on Sunday. Besides, it would be good for them to get out of town for a few hours at least. He just couldn't bring himself to give her the ring so close to the crime scene.

The interview was brief and to the point. Though Lucas had worried about being faced with questions that he didn't know how to answer, the DCI team appeared almost disinterested in his testimony beyond the specifics of his short-lived role as coroner. It seemed his profession placed him above suspicion in their book. The thought both comforted him and compounded his guilt as they rehashed his discovery of the note. But that, too, seemed perfunctory. He was in and out in half an hour.

Standing in the gravel lot behind the police station, Lucas took out his cell phone and dialed home.

“Where are you?” Jenna answered, relying on caller ID to negate the need for a proper hello.

“Good morning,” Lucas countered. He could imagine the sleep-tousled explosion of her dark hair, the pillow creases in her cheek. “Are you dressed?”

“I asked you a question.”

“Sorry. I'm at the police station.” He sucked in a quick breath. “It's a long story, and I'd like to tell you about it over breakfast. Are you dressed?”

“Yes.”

“Can I pick you up?”

“I don't think so, Lucas.”

“Please. I promise, I won't say a word about you moving out. I just want to talk.”

Lucas could tell that Jenna wasn't happy about it, but she consented to breakfast all the same. He was quietly hopeful.

When he pulled into their long driveway, Jenna was already letting herself out of the house. She let the screen door slam behind her and made her way across the grass, stepping high to avoid soaking the hem of her khakis in the icy morning dew. He smiled at her as she came, but her eyes were downcast, and when she dropped into the car beside him, she fiddled with the heater controls instead of looking at him.

“It's chilly,” she said, turning on the heat.

“Good morning,” Lucas said for a second time, determined to coax even a little cheer out of his wife. He leaned over the console and dared to give her a kiss on the cheek. Her eyes fluttered closed, but Lucas couldn't tell if it was because she secretly relished the brief contact, or if she was merely allowing it for his sake. He hoped for the former.

“Good morning,” Jenna finally said back. “Where are we going?”

“Fairfield? I think that little family restaurant is open on Sundays. Or we could go to Sioux Falls. Do a little shopping . . . ?”

She shook her head. “Pancakes. Coffee. No shopping.”

“Fairfield it is.”

The drive was quiet, the roads all but deserted. Partway there, Jenna turned off the heater and cracked her window an inch. She stuck her fingers out above the glass and tasted the wind with her fingertips. When she pulled them back in, the ivory tone of her pale skin had faded to wool white. She
laid her hand against her neck as if to absorb the cold and shivered.

The air between them was thick with things unsaid, and Lucas considered jumping into the deep end and bringing up just one of the roadblocks between them. But what good would it do? He had learned long ago that Jenna's grief was something she liked to shoulder alone. It seemed like every time he tried to enter the dark hall of her private sorrow, he ended up pushing her further away. He wanted to fix things, to rationalize the hurt away, to help her see that there was always a glimmer of light at the end—even if it was faint and flickering. But she didn't want to hear it.

Within twenty minutes they were parked outside Miss Penny's, a greasy spoon on the outskirts of Fairfield. It was exactly the sort of unattractive building that Lucas scorned when they first moved to northwest Iowa. But in the years of his slow conversion from city boy to country lover, he grew in appreciation for the no-frills attitude that shaped small-town, Midwestern culture. Everything was about function and frugality, and even if he didn't always agree, he couldn't help but respect the understated aversion to affluence.