Thorns of Truth (18 page)

Isn’t that what you’ve been doing? What got you here in the first place?

Each day, telling himself it would get better; that the Rachel he’d fallen in love with all those years ago, and married instead of Rose—that tender-tough girl brimming with a passion to save the world, but passionate about him, too—would return to him.

Now he wasn’t so sure.

Like ripples in a pond, something had changed for him with Max’s death. It had brought home to him how easily it could all be snatched away. Now, tonight, with Rose, he’d been reminded of something else as well: how wondrous it had been with her. His first love. The memory of their time together unspoiled and undiminished, like some delicious fruit he could bite into again and again.

He’d believed it back then, when she told him she would have died for him.

He believed her capable of such depth of emotion even now.

The Rose who’d clung to him their last night together before Nam, naked and weeping, hadn’t changed. Though tempered by the years, and by loss, she had a streak of midnight in her that reminded him of the one and only time he’d attempted sky-diving, that first lurching moment of finding himself free-falling in midair—exciting, and at the same time mind-numbingly terrifying. Yet he’d never felt so alive.

What most people didn’t get was how rare it was, he thought. And how fleeting. The irony was that even those lucky enough to experience that kind of love seldom appreciated it until it was too late. They left it to wither. Or allowed it to be snatched away.

He found himself thinking about his second novel, which, after the sensation of Double Eagle, had been a bit of a disappointment to some. Kings Highway was a quieter book in many ways, the autobiographical story of a kid growing up in Midwood, the son of a large Irish Catholic family, who befriends the lonely girl next door. A misfit who grows into a beauty … and whom he ends up nearly destroying through circumstances beyond his control.

Rachel, when she read it, had said very little. She had to have known who his model for Rowena had been, but whatever jealousy she might have felt, she’d kept it to herself. He’d admired her for that. She was smart enough to know a wedding ring didn’t buy you all the shares of your partner’s thoughts and feelings.

Now he wondered if Rachel’s silence had been merely a sign that she ran slightly cooler at her core than he’d come to expect. Rose, under those same circumstances, would have yelled and cried … and then made fierce love to him. The things left unspoken in a marriage, he realized, didn’t just melt away. They accumulated, like ice on a roof, until tiny leaks began to appear … and then, finally, the whole ceiling caved in.

Tonight, his daughter’s engagement party, had reminded him of more than he wanted to remember. A time when, like Drew, he’d been too young to appreciate fully the gift he’d been given—a gift that comes only once in a lifetime.

Brian walked on. The huge marquees on either side of the avenue grayed into those of smaller storefronts as he turned east, toward Park, navigating his way around the small lakes left by clogged sewer drains. He passed the Barnes & Noble where he’d had the publication party for his last book. Two hundred people had shown up that night. Incredible. The memory warmed him … but only for an instant. Then the tide of emptiness came surging back in.

Turning onto Gramercy Park, he found himself thinking about his friend Eric Sandstrom … and felt more than a twinge of envy. Eric and Rose were dating, he’d heard. For some reason, the news had affected him more than Rose’s being married to Max all those years. For one thing, Max had been older. Eric, though roughly his own age, made Brian feel over the hill—the father of a grown daughter, soon to be a father-in-law. His shot at the joys of youth long past.

But was that true? His life with Rachel was frustrating, not because he was past caring, but because he loved her, and wanted more. He’d believed his patience would eventually pay off. Now he wanted it all—everything that had been stored up for a rainy day.

Face it, man. You wouldn’t be feeling this way if you had a wife who’d miss you half as much as Rose misses Max. Rachel, if he died, would mourn, he knew. But in the end, would his absence leave the kind of yawning gap Rose was experiencing? No, probably not.

It was close to eleven-thirty by the time Brian let himself into their apartment. He was surprised to find Rachel waiting up for him, curled on the sofa in her bathrobe.

She looked drawn, her eyes red, as if she’d been crying.

“I won’t ask what took you so long. I won’t stoop to that.” Her voice came at him, hard and low, a bullet that caught him unawares.

“I walked home.” Not an apology, merely an explanation. He tugged off his Docksiders at the door, realizing as he did so that they were soaked all the way through to his socks.

He could see the struggle in Rachel’s face as she rose to greet him with crossed arms. “You might have called at least. Or, better yet, given me some warning before you walked off and left me with a houseful of guests. What was I supposed to tell them? That you cared more about seeing your dear friend Rose home than about your own wife and daughter?”

“I’m surprised you even noticed.” He walked over to the bar that was still set up, waiting for the caterer to take it down in the morning. A nearly empty fifth of Scotch was about all that was left; he helped himself from it—just enough to thaw the lump of ice forming in his belly.

“Damn you,” she swore. “I will not let you make this about me.”

“Who said anything about you?” He turned slowly to face her, too tired to argue. “Rachel, believe it or not, I wasn’t doing this to punish you. Or take sides. As incredible as it might seem, I had a good time tonight.”

“I don’t doubt that.” She stalked over to where he stood, her reflection flashing in the mirrored panels on either side of the fireplace. “God, Brian. Do you think I’m stupid? Do you think I don’t know what this is all about?”

“You tell me.”

“Rose. The lonely widow. Reaching out. Needing someone to fill the void. It’s like every tear-jerker movie I’ve ever seen.” She paused before flinging at him, “I can’t believe you fell for it.”

She was hurt, he could see. It was one of the things he found most maddening about her … and, at the same time, oddly endearing. The more vulnerable she felt, the tougher she tried to appear.

It’s her toughness that saved your life, asshole. The memory jumped out at him. Waking up to find himself on an iron army cot in a whitewashed room, with the most vivid pair of blue eyes gazing down at him. The eyes of an angel, he’d thought in that first drugged moment … until he learned from one of the nurses how Dr. Rosenthal had fought like hell to keep him from being triaged onto the sidelines and into a body bag. Corralling everyone in sight to assist her in repairing his ruptured gut. Besides, angels didn’t wear mud-clotted huaraches, and have fingernails that were bitten to the quick.

But this wasn’t Nam. And he wasn’t dying. Even if it felt like it sometimes.

Brian shrugged and turned away, knowing his coolness would only hurt her more. He wanted to hurt her, damnit.

“I’d almost forgotten what it felt like,” he said. “To be needed.”

Rachel fixed him with an unflinching stare, as if she could see right through him and knew what had almost happened tonight. Would have happened, if he hadn’t stopped himself. And the worst part was, he felt no shame about it. Only regret.

Taking a step backwards, Rachel demanded anxiously, “What are you saying? What happened that you’re not telling me?”

Brian didn’t answer at first. It was a moment before he could muster the energy to shake his head. “Nothing,” he answered truthfully. “Nothing happened. We talked. That’s all.”

Her gaze remained on him a moment or two longer, searching his face. She sighed. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to accuse you.” She pushed her hands through her hair. “It’s been a long night. I’m upset, but I know you wouldn’t … well … with Rose.”

She couldn’t even say the words. Suddenly he wanted her to say them. Make love. Fuck. Whatever you want to call it. Anything that might show she still wanted him in the same way—enough to get angry at the thought of another woman, Rose, especially Rose.

Something in him snapped, and he strode over, grabbed Rachel by the shoulders, his fingers sinking into the soft terry of her robe as if into sand that might slip between his fingers.

“Nothing happened,” he repeated.

What came next surprised the hell out of him. Rachel burst into tears, clutching at him with an abruptness that nearly knocked him off balance. “Brian, what’s happening to us?”

Despite himself. Brian’s arms were lifting to soothe her—a gesture that comforted him, too, by virtue of its familiarity, if nothing else. He stroked her hair, pushing his hand up underneath, and running it along her scalp the way she liked.

When she tipped her head back to be kissed, he found himself responding with a need that was like some tremendous force of gravity. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d felt this way about his wife. And that was because it wasn’t his wife he was thinking of right now. Rose. He was on fire with Rose. Remembering her mouth, her heat. Not just tonight, but from years ago. Her touch on the back of his neck. The taut smoothness of her legs wrapped around his. The way she’d looked, naked in the half-light, all dark hair and dark eyes with those long golden limbs like melted butter. Looking wondrously pagan, like some sort of wicked sacrilege, in her white Catholic underpants with the tiny gold crucifix he’d given her gleaming in the hollow of her throat.

Filled with Rose, he drew his wife to him, roughly. He heard her whimper in pain, and tasted blood. It dawned on him, in some hazy recess of his brain, that he must have bitten her lip.

Brian didn’t care. He was beyond caring. Beyond merely wanting. He needed this. Christ. More than anything in his whole life.

He tugged at the sash on her robe, but Rachel gently pushed him away. “Iris,” she whispered. “She might hear us.” She took his hand, and led him down the hall.

In the bedroom where they’d spent so many companionable nights, spooned back to front, he took her. With an urgency that was fierce and hard … and unlike anything he and Rachel had ever experienced. Even on their wedding night, in that hole-in-the-wall hotel with its drunken wooden shutters overlooking the Saigon River, he hadn’t touched her this way. Pushing up between her legs with his hand. Sucking hard on her breast, as she arched up against him. She moaned, whether in pain or pleasure he couldn’t tell, but it didn’t matter. Because she was excited, too.

Wet. Not just down there. But moist all over with sweat. Christ, she was burning up.

On the candlewick spread that had been his Irish grandmother’s, he drove into her. And felt her quicken almost against her will, every muscle contracted, as if part of her was resisting … but, at the same time, she desperately wanted it, too.

Images skated through his mind like scenes half glimpsed from a speeding train: Rose, at seventeen, going down on him for the first time. A little shocked by it all, but so willing … wanting to please him …

And a memory of Rachel, too. When they were first married, in Vermont, hiking up a ski slope laid barren by summer. At the top, where the deserted lift stood like some giant abandoned toy, they’d made love. The sun beating down on his bare back. Rachel’s moist skin sticking to his. Her eyes blazing up at him like the sky reflected in the still surface of a mountain lake.

He came hard, as if something was being torn from him. A searing rush in which the trembling of Rachel’s climax was all but lost.

Then it was over, and he lay panting beside her. Several minutes passed before Brian realized she was crying. Softly, almost soundlessly, into the pillow she held to her face.

Brian felt jolted. She knows.

How could she not? Never, in all the years they’d been married, had he made love to her like that.

“Don’t.” She flinched when he tried to put his arm around her.

He wanted to say. It’s not what you’re thinking. But that would have been a lie.

She closed her eyes so she wouldn’t have to look at him, tears squeezing out from under her clenched eyelids.

He felt an odd mixture of emotion—four parts shame, one part bitterness. He’d never cheated on Rachel, not in twenty-odd years, but what had just happened came about as close to that as you could get. The thought made him a little sick.

He willed Rachel to look at him, to give him one good reason to stay in this marriage. To keep from wanting to take Rose … and next time, not just in his fantasies.

But she remained balled up, her eyes squeezed shut, her body like a great fist closed against him.

The worst of it was, he couldn’t stop seeing Rose in his mind. How he would have felt had Rose been lying beside him now. The thought of her sleeping with Eric sent a low pain ratcheting through his gut. Had she slept with him?

Not yet, maybe, but she would. Soon. If Brian wanted her—if she would even have him—he would have to act quickly.

He rolled onto his back, shocked by the enormity of what he was contemplating. Not just an affair. No, he wouldn’t do that to Rose or Rachel.

Divorce?

The thought struck him like a sandbag hurled at his chest, but for the first time he wasn’t pushing it away. Instead, he lay perfectly still, measuring its weight, testing his reaction. He found that he wasn’t paralyzed by the thought, as he had been on previous forays into that wilderness. That he could actually bear to imagine such a thing, however terrifying and awful.

At the same time, he yearned to snatch Rachel up, shake her until it sank in: she was what he wanted. Not the pale version of a marriage they had now. But the way it had been in the beginning. Just the two of them.

He’d have gone to the ends of the earth for Rachel. Just like in Nam, when he’d risked his life to go back into the jungle—to the occupied hospital where Rachel was being held prisoner.

Brian would never forget how Rachel had looked when he walked through the door, the lightning play of emotions on a face stretched nearly transparent with exhaustion. Shock, recognition, disbelief … then absolute, incredulous joy.