The Ghost of a Chance (14 page)

My heartbeat quickens, and a blush steals over my
body, head to toe.
 
Does Marjorie know
how I feel about Alis?
 
Could she
tell?
 
Was I obvious at the party?
 
Does
everyone
know—

"Come back to the library, Darcy."

Oh.

I breathe out, petting Portia until my nerves relax
enough to permit me to speak.
 
"You
know," I begin, seriously considering the thought of returning to work for
the first time, "I might do just that.
 
I could use…"
 
My eyes flick
from the typewriter to the open bathroom door, and my fingers graze my lips—the
lips that kissed Alis’ cheek the night before.
 
"A distraction."
 
I
sigh. "Yeah.
 
A distraction would
be…wise."

Chapter Fifteen

At midmorning, when I stroll back through the
falling snow to the house, the unopened package clutched in my arms, there are
no cars in the driveway besides Alis’ and mine, but I notice a fresh trail of
footprints pointed first toward the house and then away—aiming for the back of the
house.
 
For the back door.

And then Alis screams.

My spiked heels trip over the snowy porch boards and
then slip on the tiled entryway as I rush back into the house and fling open
the dining room door.
 
Alis isn’t there,
though, so I wheel around the table to reach the door to the kitchen.

"I told you I’d kill you if you touched
her."
 
Jason’s nostrils flare as he
clutches Alis against him, her face buried in his shoulder.
 
The palms of her hands push against his
chest, but his arms around her are too strong, and, as he glares at me from
across the kitchen, his eyes spark with madness.

"She didn’t touch me," Alis whispers, and
Jason tosses her down to the floor.

"Liar.
 
I
saw
you in the woods."

I fall to Alis’ side, cradling her head in my
arms.
 
She turns toward me, her body
wracked with sobs.
 
My eyes rise to
pierce Jason through.
 
"Last
night?"
 
My voice surprises me:
it’s steady, low, and furious.
 
"You were there
last night
?
 
You followed us into the woods?"

Jason scoffs, leering, spittle streaming from his
mouth.
 
"You stupid cows were too
doe-eyed
over each other to notice I was there.
 
I could’ve run around screaming and you wouldn’t have heard me."

"That’s trespassing."
 
I move Alis gently so that she’s resting
against the cupboard below the sink, and then, with a barely suppressed growl,
I rise to confront Jason eye to eye.
 
He’s a small man, for all of his menace, and I stare at him until his
gaze narrows with discomfort.
 
"You’re trespassing
now
.
 
You are not welcome in my home, and you’re frightening Alis.
 
I’m calling the police."

He grabs hold of my wrists and squeezes, positioning
his body near enough for me to smell the beer on his breath.
 
"I wouldn’t do that if I were you, Miss
Librarian."

"And I wouldn’t threaten me if I were
you."
 
I jerk my arms away from him
and then push hard against his shoulders, shoving him back toward the
door.
 
While he’s stumbling, I throw
open the silverware drawer and scrabble for a knife.

When Jason comes for me again, I hold up the long,
sharp blade, and it catches the sunlight streaming through the windows,
flashing bright silver.

His mouth curves into a sneer, and he almost laughs,
but then his eyelids flutter with uncertainty.
 
"Well…" he says, voice shaking.
 
"Look at the tough lady with the knife.
 
Hey, I never pulled any weapons on
you—"

"And you never will.
 
Get out."
 

"Alis, all I wanted was to talk—"

"You call that
talking
?" Alis
hisses, scrubbing at her face before rising slowly, with a small cry of pain,
to stand beside me.
 
"No,
Jason.
 
We’re through talking.
 
You had your chance with me, and you blew
it.
 
You
blew it."

"If this lesbo hadn’t seduced you—"

"Stop."
 
As she glares at him, Alis’ blue eyes are steely and cold.
 
"You can’t fix this.
 
And you can’t blame anyone for our divorce
but yourself.
 
Darcy never
seduced
me.
 
If anything,
I—
"
 
Flushed, she draws her mouth closed and
regards me with a complicated expression.
 
She looks so hurt, so exhausted; all I want to do is hold her, whisper
soothing words into her ear…

With a sigh, she faces Jason again.
 
He’s poised near the door, his hands fisting
and unfisting at his sides.
 
"Just
go.
 
This whole thing is painful enough
without you—"

"
Me
?
 
I’m not the one who moved in with a wife-stealing lesbian before the
divorce papers were even final.
 
I’m not
the one who—"

"You’ve been cheating on me for years, and I
was a fool to let you get away with it for so long."
 
She begins to move forward, toward Jason,
but I reach for her arm, take her hand, willing her with a gentle pressure to
remain by my side.
 
If Jason grabs her
again, I’m afraid of what I might do to him.

Alis smiles softly at me, breathing deep.
 
"Listen," she says, her voice
quiet but firm.
 
"I’m taking
control of my life, Jason, and my life no longer has any room for you.
 
What I
choose
to do with my life is
not
your concern, is none of your
business
, just as your life now has
nothing to do with me."
 
She shakes
her head and places a shaky hand upon her chest.
 
"You broke my heart.
 
Again and again, you broke my heart.
 
And when you break something, Jason, you lose all claim to it, because
you didn’t cherish it.
 
You didn’t treat
it— You didn’t treat
me
with the respect I deserved."

I watch, stunned, as Jason swings his arms out to
fling the toaster and coffeemaker onto the floor.
 
They crash with startling volume, shards of glass bouncing all
around us.
 
He crunches some of the
glass beneath his boots as he breathes through his nose loudly, too quickly,
his mouth set in a determined frown.
 
"You’ll get what you deserve," he whispers then, holding
himself disturbingly still.
 
His eyes
flick from me to Alis, and back to me again.
 
They darken, narrow.
 
"Both
of you."

"Get.
 
Out," I seethe, clutching the knife in my sweating hand.

Jason hurls the back door open and rages through it,
slamming the door hard enough behind him to crack one of the panes.

"Oh, Darcy…"
 
Alis begins to crumple to the floor, but I catch her in my arms,
guide her out of the kitchen, away from the broken glass, and into the dim
dining room—messy with last night’s leftovers, every surface cluttered with
empty wine bottles.
 
We sit down at the
table side by side.

"I was about to walk out to the cabin to see
you, to see if you’d opened my gift yet—"

"You
left that box for me?"

She nods her head slightly, fingering a napkin and
taking deep breaths.
 
"I thought it
might be a nice surprise, not quite like a gift under the tree but…I didn’t
want to trigger painful memories for you.
 
A plain brown box on a doorstep is a mystery, not a cause for
reminiscing, for missing…her."

"You’re a dream, Alis."
 
I cover her fidgeting hand with both of my
hands, stroking her skin softly, rhythmically, keeping my voice low and, I
hope, at a soothing timbre.
 
"You’re
so thoughtful—"

"He wanted to kill you."
 
Her chest rises and falls with alarming rapidity,
and her breaths are loud, ragged.
 
"It’s stupid, so stupid.
 
You haven’t done—I mean, I didn’t leave him because of
you.
 
I left him because he’s a selfish,
violent human being who may have loved me once but…"
 
Sinking back into her chair, she closes her
eyes, deflating.
 
"But now he just
wants to own me, like a thing."

I release her hand and encircle her shoulders with
my arm.
 
"We’ll file a report at
the station in town.
 
We’ll get a
restraining order."

Alis nods her head vaguely, leaning against my
side.
 
When the tears begin to slip from
her too-blue eyes, I dab at them with a clean napkin and gently smooth her
hair, pressing a kiss to her forehead.

"I won’t let him hurt you," I whisper, and
I feel the truth of those words at my deepest core.
 

"I know you won’t," she whispers back,
tilting her head to gaze at me with a red-rimmed, watery gaze and a small, sad
smile.
 
"I’m not afraid for myself,
Darcy."
 
She swallows a sob.
 
"I’m afraid for you."

---

Portia meows and leaps down from the sofa as Alis
and I enter the cabin, stomping fluffy snow from our boots.
 
I turn on a yellow lamp as we fling our
coats over the back of the desk chair and stand for a moment on the rug,
basking in the room’s warmth and listening to the soft exhalations of the sleeping
kittens.

"Much cozier," Alis whispers, removing her
gloves slowly, casting her eyes—dimmed from the morning’s brutality but
brilliant blue still—around the small space, lingering upon the windows and
doorways, and after a moment, I realize that she’s searching for signs of
intrusion, for signs of
Jason
.

I take her gloves and place them on the desk, along
with the box, the gift she gave me, which I carried through the woods when we
left the house.
 
After we called the
police and were instructed to stop in at the station in the morning, we spent a
few hours of uneasy reading and Christmas special-watching before Alis stood up
and announced, "I think we need a change of scenery."
 
I couldn’t help but agree.
 
The weight of Jason’s rage hung heavy in the
house; neither of us could concentrate or relax or even maintain a simple
conversation.

But now I breathe out, and I feel the knots of
tension loosen, ease away.
 
When Alis
sits down on the sofa, I sit beside her, drawing a small package from the
pocket of my jeans.
 

She glances down at the silver-wrapped box
curiously, a soft smile on her lips.
 
"What’s that, Darcy?"

"Oh, just something I found lying around.
 
Funny—it’s addressed to you.
 
Probably from one of your secret
admirers."

She shakes her head, still smiling, her ocean-wide
eyes gazing deeply into mine.
 
"I
don’t
have
any secret admirers."

"Don’t you?"
 
I lick my dry lips and, swallowing, suddenly nervous, look away,
pressing the box into her hands.
 

"I thought you said no gifts—"

"Exhibit A."
 
I point toward the box Alis gave me, poised, and still unopened,
on the edge of the desk.
 
"You’ve
already broken our Christmas presents pact.
 
And, to be honest, I had every intention of breaking it, anyway.
 
I’m dishonest like that."

"I think you’re confusing
dishonest
with
sweet.
 
But what—"

"Please open it, Alis."

She watches me for a moment, lips parted, her eyes
large and questioning, searching mine; I tremble a little, wondering what she
sees, what she could possibly see, when she looks at me…

Her mouth curves into the most fantastic,
illuminating smile, brighter than any Christmas tree or garish display of
holiday lights.
 
"Well, if you
insist."
 
With a small laugh, she
tears into the paper, making short order of my careful wrapping.
 
She holds the black box in her hands,
smoothing her fingertips over its velvety surface.
 
"No one’s given me jewelry since…"
 
Her mouth quirks as she holds up her left
hand, naked now of rings.
 
"Not for
a very long time," she whispers.

"Go on, then," I urge her, swallowing again
and drawing in a deep breath, though that does little to calm my fluttering
heart.
 
I hadn’t been decided until this
morning as to whether I should give her the gift: I couldn’t bear the thought
of her Christmas being spoiled by that idiot—at least, not completely.
 
And, besides, when I saw the necklace in the
jewelry shop case, after I asked the woman behind the counter to hang one of my
kitten flyers in her window, my heart stopped and the hairs on my neck stood on
end, because I actually
heard
Alis’ name, as if it were whispered in my
ear.
 
No matter the appropriateness, no
matter the cost, I knew, absolutely, that the necklace had to be hers.