A Dark Love (11 page)

Something about the expression on his face told Caroline the man in black knew all too well the pain of not being appreciated. She nodded. “Nobody had ever used light in this way.”

“True,” the man murmured. “But that wasn’t the reason.” He turned back to the painting, lost in his own thoughts. “It was his style, his use of space. It gives the landscape the feeling of floating, not being anchored. Almost as though he wasn’t certain he wanted to be present in the work himself. It poses a challenge to the viewer. Upsetting for most people.”

Caroline was anxious to show him she was not Most People. “You have to work to know Turner.”

She was rewarded with a smile that revealed two tiny rows of perfectly spaced teeth.

“Most people don’t get Turner,” he said sadly. “Even at the Tate, few people take the time to understand him.”

The Tate Gallery was located on the banks of the River Thames in London, a fact he hadn’t felt the need to explain. Caroline was flattered. She liked the long pauses he took, considering things she said before opening his mouth to reply, giving weight to each word they uttered. As though Caroline’s contribution to the conversation held deep meaning. She felt listened to, not just simply heard. They chatted, quickly discovering a shared love for the visual arts. He had traveled to Florence many times. He was a Freudian psychoanalyst with a medical degree from an Ivy League school.

He invited her to dinner Saturday night at a French restaurant she had heard of but never dreamed of dining in.

Caroline skipped pizza and beer in the rathskeller that night, dressed with care in a twin set and borrowed pearls, and headed out in pumps for her first date with an older man.

A security alert had all but shut the city down. Caroline arrived at the restaurant twenty-five minutes late.

Porter Moross was seated at the bar, dressed head to toe again in black, nursing a whiskey on ice. He did not smile when she rushed in, breathless and apologetic.

“Sorry I’m late. They shut down the whole block around the Old Executive Office Building. It took forever.”

Porter took another sip without looking at her, and Caroline wondered whether he had heard.

“Porter?”

He set the glass down, hurt etched around the corners of his mouth. “I was about to leave.”

“Leave?” Caroline was caught off guard and laid a hand on his arm. “Look, I’m really sorry. I couldn’t help it.”

His arm was stiff, unyielding.

She drew her hand away.

His voice was tight. “If you had taken a cab, you would have gotten here in time. I assumed you had changed your mind and decided not to come.”

Caroline felt her cheeks color. Her budget didn’t allow for cabs, a fact she was too embarrassed to admit. “I’m so sorry,” she said, putting her hand back and squeezing his arm a little.

She felt his arm muscles tighten inside his sports jacket. Somewhere deep inside, her mind registered the
fact that Porter Moross was a complicated man. But at the moment, she was too preoccupied to notice. At the moment, she was concerned with wiping the sad look off his face. She threw her arms around him in the sort of casual hug she’d bestow on a roommate. “I’m usually never late. I’m so sorry.” She shrugged, helpless now that she’d said all she could.

He was visibly moved by the hug, and it occurred to Caroline that Porter Moross was in need of simple physical affection. This fact was captivating to her. Caroline Hughes collected wounded people in much the same way that some people collected stray animals.

“Okay,” Porter said after a long pause. “I accept your apology. Our table is ready. I’ll tell the maitre d’ that you’ve arrived.”

He took her coat and motioned her to sit. “Shall I order you a glass of wine?”

Caroline slid onto the tall, smooth bar stool and nodded as he signaled the bartender before excusing himself to check her coat.

Something none of the boys from GW would have done.

Porter’s steady gaze on her at dinner, combined with the way he leaned forward to listen when she spoke, made Caroline feel for the first time in her life like she was at the center of someone’s universe. Porter did everything with a careful deliberation that, she decided, was the hallmark of a genius.

Porter asked the waiter to explain each of the main selections in detail. Then he asked if the waiter would choose their entrees.

“Excuse me?” The waiter spoke with a heavy French accent.

Porter repeated his request.

Frowning, the waiter shifted his weight onto one leg. “I don’t know what you and the young lady would like to eat. You should order what you think she would like.” He shrugged.

Porter was undeterred. “But I have asked for your help. I want you to suggest something.”

It was somewhat odd. Caroline felt her spirits flag and her cheeks redden, even as she carefully arranged her features into a smooth, reassuring smile. Porter was, after all, only trying to ensure that they would have the best possible dining experience.

The waiter glanced around the crowded dining room, letting his impatience show on his face. “They are all good, sir.”

Porter said nothing.

The waiter sighed.

Porter glared.

Caroline squirmed in her seat, searching for some way to end the standoff. She wound up blurting out a request for the only dish whose name she could remember.

She had no idea until the sweetbreads arrived that they were brains.

And so that night over dinner in Washington’s best restaurant, frequented by senators and heads of state, known the world over for its menu that featured the meat of rare and endangered species, Caroline adopted her mission in life. It was one that had its roots planted long ago with the little girl on the bed. Caroline would dedicate her life to doing whatever was required to please Porter.

P
orter stared at the computer screen glowing grayish green in the darkened office, throwing bits of dust on the keyboard into bas-relief. His office at this late hour was silent as a grave.

He should turn the computer off. It could be hours or days before he got a response from tf_activewearmodesto. Perhaps longer.

But Porter’s gut told him otherwise.

And so he sat, waiting. Each time the second hand on his watch swept past twelve, he aimed his mouse at the refresh button and clicked.

He was rewarded before many minutes had passed.

“Wassup? Re: Re:”
popped into Caroline’s inbox.

Hardly daring to believe his eyes, Porter double-clicked on the header. He was in.

Porter stared at the screen.

The flirtation between tf_activewearmodesto and Porter’s wife had progressed, edging ever closer to the line between fantasy and reality. Left to their own devices, that line would be crossed because both of them wanted it.

That realization filled Porter with sorrow. Caroline had failed him. Because somehow he had failed her.

As he reached for the phone, Porter uttered a silent wish that he would get to Caroline in time, before she found some other way to act out her fantasies of betrayal.

He listened carefully to the after-hours message from Beltway Security Investigations, directing callers with business of an urgent nature to a beeper for immediate callback. Porter dialed the number, making note of it for future reference in his leather-bound folio.

He busied himself waiting for a callback by printing out hard copies of Caroline’s e-mail correspondence with Tom Fielding. These he ordered by date and stapled. He reached for a FedEx mailer at first but thought better of it. The end result would be further enhanced, he realized, if the recipient had no way to trace the origins of the package. This realization made Porter smile.

He slid the packet into a plain manila envelope and applied postage stamps in an amount he judged to be double what was required. Using his customary neat handwriting, he carefully wrote out the name and address of the sportswear firm in Modesto. When he was
done he reviewed his efforts carefully. The devil, Dr. Porter Moross knew, lay in the details. Satisfied the address was perfectly legible, he sealed the envelope and wrote across the bottom in large block letters: FOR THE PERSONAL ATTENTION OF MRS. TOM FIELDING.

He stowed the envelope in his leather portfolio, ready to drop in any mailbox at such time that he judged to be to his best advantage.

The callback from Beltway Security Investigations was prompt, as promised, and within minutes Porter had contracted for surveillance in Storm Pass, Colorado, to be dispatched from Denver within twenty-four hours.

Porter hung up. Mixed in with everything else, he felt a small measure of satisfaction. He had regained some control. His limbo had ended.

The hunt for his wife had begun.

Two thousand, eight hundred miles away, Tom Fielding hit the send button and sat staring at his computer screen. Something wasn’t right. Caroline Hughes knew the name of the town Storm Pass, for one thing. He had told her the story many times about some locals who had turned him on to peyote while soaking in a hot springs there, in what he and his friends had jokingly referred to as Tom’s spiritual awakening, his “Rocky Mountain High.”

Tom Fielding was not an airy-fairy kind of guy. Which was why the weird vibe he was getting right now caught him off guard, and creeped him out enough to make him turn a deaf ear to repeated buzzing of his office intercom.

Over the last year and a half, his e-mails with Caroline had gotten more intense. They had even toyed with
the idea of meeting up in Storm Pass, if Tom could sell his wife on the idea he had business prospects there. Yeah, right.

If Caroline Hughes needed a break and wanted to head out West, why wouldn’t she check with Tom first to see if he could get away and meet her? And why, for the love of God, would she plan a trip with that asshole husband of hers?

Almost all of their communication since Caroline’s marriage had been via e-mail, but she made sure Tom always knew her latest cell phone number. He lifted his desk blotter now to where he kept it hidden on a sticky note.

“You coming?” His wife stood in his office doorway, arms akimbo. “I’ve been buzzing you for, like, the last ten minutes.”

Tom dropped the blotter. “Just finishing up.”

Lisa’s eyes narrowed.

He knew that look. “Sorry,” he muttered, powering off the computer and switching off the desk lamp. He stood. “Let’s go.”

She threw him a look, and Tom knew that look. Even though she was justified, she had no way of knowing she was justified, and this fact irritated Tom Fielding. So he picked a fight. “You wanna go, so let’s go. I was ready fifteen minutes ago but you weren’t.”

Lisa glared but did not take the bait. She shrugged. “So, let’s go.”

This was so out of character for her that it had the effect of amping up the volume on Tom’s weird vibe. He had never given much thought to ESP, but the hairs on the back of his neck were telling him loud and clear that Caroline Hughes was in trouble.

He wanted to call her but Lisa was hanging back, waiting for him to walk out first, and so he did, but not before he noticed Lisa took one last hard look at the blotter on top of his desk. It had been sitting there, undisturbed, since his father-in-law promoted him and he moved into this office.

“We’re late,” Lisa said. “The sitter will be pissed.”

Tom Fielding made a mental note to hide that sticky note somewhere else first thing tomorrow.

T
he day turned out sharp and clear, the coldest since Caroline’s arrival in Storm Pass almost a week ago. High, puffy clouds skittered across the sky and around the peak like distant gray smoke. Wind gusted off the mountain. The dogs were inside, preferring to nap where the sun warmed the oak floorboards.

Caroline tracked the source of the banging she’d heard in the night to an overgrown branch from an Austrian pine near the garage.

Nan gave a knowing smile when Caroline told her she planned to trim the tree. “It took me a long time to get used to the noises this place makes at night. There’s nothing here to harm you, nothing to worry about.”

Caroline considered this in silence.

“If it’s bothering you I’ll have one of the ranch hands come out and trim it.” Onions and peppers sizzled in a cast-iron skillet. Nan was cooking a batch of sirloin chili, her first of the season. The secret to good chili was to let it sit for several hours, she explained, giving the contents a stir.

“If it’s all the same to you, I’ll trim the tree myself. I don’t want you to bother any of the men,” Caroline
said. The truth was she’d be embarrassed to have any of the ranch hands come. The branch was small and didn’t really make much noise. Just enough to make Caroline wonder what the sound would be if someone attempted to break in through the back door.

“But Federico usually takes care of these things. I’ll call him now.” Nan set her spoon down and reached for the portable phone. One look at Caroline’s face stopped her. “Well, if you want to, suit yourself. There’s a saw and some gloves in the garage.”

“Great.”

“The rest of the day is yours, though. Take a hike.” With a soft chuckle to indicate her suggestion was serious, Nan turned her attention back to the cloves of fresh garlic waiting to be peeled and chopped.

Caroline found the gloves where Nan said they’d be, hanging from a peg among an orderly collection of tools on the wall at the back of the four-car garage. The workbench was shipshape except for a thin film of dust.

The gloves were meant for a hand much larger than Caroline’s, but she managed. The branch causing the problem was crossed with another. Caroline had read once in a gardening book that the lower of two crossed branches should be pruned back at its base. She’d had to satisfy her interest in gardening with books. Porter did not want to live in a house with a yard in the suburbs.

The memory brought an ache so strong she placed a hand on her stomach, remembering the old hurt. She’d wanted, expected, to bear Porter’s children. She had imagined playing with them in a sun-drenched yard, maybe Falls Church or even Bethesda, making an event out of Porter’s return from the city each night.

A shadow had crossed Porter’s face when she raised
the possibility of a house in the suburbs, and Caroline realized too late she had said something wrong.

“The suburbs? Tell me something, Caroline. Where are the bookstores? Where are the museums? Where is the culture? Can you tell me that?”

Caroline stared at him, feeling her heart sink. She didn’t know her way around any of the towns outside the Beltway. In fact, she hadn’t ventured much beyond the reach of the Metro during her four years on a scholarship at GW. She shrugged. “I don’t know.”

The dark look on his face intensified, as tension mounted inside.

It was a look Caroline was beginning to recognize. Most of the time their life together was what she had always wanted. Porter was attentive and loving, in bed and out. He always took time to compliment her when she dressed nice, always made sure to walk ahead to open doors for her, and cooked a roast with all the trimmings every Sunday. He was always leaving small gifts for her to find around the house, just to please her and, he said, to make his princess smile. Caroline learned they were happiest in private, when they were on their own with nobody else around.

But sometimes, even when they were alone, Porter’s temper rose up out of nowhere. As now. A shiver of fear rippled through her. She tensed. “You’re right,” she said quickly, hoping to head things off. “We don’t need to live in the suburbs.”

Porter blew air from his nostrils and gave a quick shake of his head. “Correct. The suburbs are a place for men with too little money and not enough brains. And do you know what their wives do out there all day, Caroline?”

He leaned in close to her so she could see each individual white lash around his eyes, close to the vein that was throbbing bluish gray under the thin skin of his forehead.

She swallowed and tried not to let him see her wince. She felt her shoulders hunch up around her neck and drew her arms in close.

He noticed.

She read it in the flicker of his eyes.

Her heart sank. They were slipping down again into a vortex. No matter how she tried, once it started there was nothing she could do. They were sucked down, down, down. No matter how their arguments began or how she tried to stop them, once that spiral began there was no pulling out. It always ended the same.

Caroline’s mind raced. If she could find the right thing to say or do, maybe this time would be different. “No,” she whispered. “I have no idea what wives do.”

His lips tightened, and he shook his head as though he was weary of her and sighed. “They cheat on their husbands.” His lips curled around the word “cheat” and he watched, gauging her reaction.

She shook her head, stalling while she reached for the right words. So much would depend on how she answered. “That’s terrible.”

“Terrible?” He leaned in close, his nostrils flaring. “You say it’s terrible? Yes, Caroline, a wife who cheats on her husband commits a terrible crime. On so many levels, it is a violation.”

He was so close she felt his breath on her face. A faint ringing sounded in her ears. The room began to spin slowly around them. It was their downward spiral. Their dance.

She closed her eyes now in an attempt to block out the memory of what followed, events that were typical of their routine of betrayal and punishment.

Things didn’t start out that way. The change had come gradually, an inch at a time, so that at first she wasn’t aware of how much her life was changing. She moved into Porter’s apartment after they were married while they looked for a bigger place. She was lonely, lonelier than she had ever been in her life. Her school friends had graduated and gone off in search of jobs at art galleries in New York, Miami, and even London. Caroline was alone with her new husband.

Many days, she met Porter for lunch. She got to know the waiters at the small café near his office, and soon realized Porter was more relaxed when they were seated at a table served by the café’s sole female waitress. Caroline learned to ask to sit in the woman’s section, pretending to be especially fond of her, even bringing her a small bouquet of flowers one time.

At night, they stayed in. They didn’t entertain. Their wedding china sat in boxes, unused.

By July, they found a house. It was a historic townhouse on an immaculate street in the heart of Georgetown, in a row of homes dating from Colonial times. Porter designed an office on the ground floor for his psychotherapy practice. The upper floor would house their residence.

Caroline was giddy at the prospect of living with her brand-new husband on a street of million-dollar homes while her college chums were crammed into group rentals in places like Astoria and Adams Morgan.

Porter rose each day at six-thirty, showered, and brewed coffee while Caroline slept. He collected his
Washington Post
from the front stoop and skimmed it in his office before returning to wake Caroline at eight.

He would stand soundlessly in the doorway until she woke. At first she wouldn’t stir until he took a seat on the edge of their bed, but as time passed she learned to waken when he stood in the door. The idea that she sensed his presence in her sleep pleased him. She yawned and stretched, knowing he enjoyed watching her while her defenses were down. “You’re like a teenager,” he would tease. These were the happy times.

He would ask what she had planned for the day. At night, over dinner, he would ask about her comings and goings. If she forgot something, he would point it out.

“Smile at me when you pass my office window,” he told her. “Not a big smile. Just a small one that only I can see.” They practiced until she got it right.

Gradually, she stayed inside more and more often except to walk her dog, the one vestige of her single life that she refused to surrender. She had inherited Pippin from one of her suitemates, and never quite believed Porter’s claim that he was allergic to animals. Pippin came to represent Caroline’s only diversion; she spent most of her time with Porter. They did the major grocery shopping at a Safeway on weekends together, and if she needed something during the week Caroline did without or waited until Porter could accompany her. Finally, they agreed that two walks per day for Pippin was enough. Twenty minutes was enough, unless she explained it ahead of time. Too late, Caroline realized the folly of living above her husband’s workplace. The townhouse in Georgetown had become her prison.

Those days were gone and best forgotten, Caroline told herself. She would never let it happen again. Never.
Tightening her grip on the wood saw, she clenched her teeth and attacked the Austrian pine as though she could set right her part in the wrongs that had been committed back in that townhouse.

The saw bit deeper into the wood, releasing a fresh pine scent with each pass. Caroline worked the tool until she was breathless and sweat stung her eyes. She was rewarded for her efforts when at last the branch dropped to the ground with a satisfying thud. She grunted with satisfaction.

A car door slammed close by and she jumped. She wheeled around and heard Pippin and Scout inside the house, barking.

She saw a familiar Jeep.

Ken Kincaid stopped and flashed her a peace sign. “Hold your fire. I mean no harm.”

She realized she was brandishing the saw like a weapon.

He grinned.

She lowered the saw, feeling her cheeks redden. “Sorry. I didn’t hear you pull up.”

“Don’t mention it,” Ken said easily. “I should know better than to interrupt someone working in the yard.” After a moment he added, “Especially a woman with a saw in her hand.”

“I decided the tree needed a trim.”

“Nice job,” Ken said, eyeing the trunk’s fresh cut. “Like a pro. I got some at my place that need pruning, if you’re interested.”

She was. Embarrassed, she swallowed and looked away.

“That was a joke there, Alice. Not a very good one, I might add.”

She looked at him, all happy grin and big white teeth and plaid shirt. She couldn’t help but smile back.

“I came to ask a favor. If you’re done cuttin’ down trees, that is.”

She couldn’t imagine what favor he might ask of her. “Sure.”

“Will you come into town with me to pick up my other car? I need to lend it to Nan. Gus is laid up and can’t finish the repairs on the Buick today.”

Caroline thought of big Gus and his kind face. She frowned. “I hope everything’s okay.”

“It’s just his arthritis acting up. He’ll bounce back in a day or two. He always does,” Ken said lightly. But there were small lines of worry around his eyes.

“Sure,” Caroline said. “And thanks for lending your car.” It was a generous offer, the sort of thing nobody would offer to do in a big city or the hardscrabble exurb in Baltimore where she’d grown up. Or maybe they did all the time, but she didn’t know it because she and Porter didn’t have any friends.

Inside, Nan was ready with a covered pot to go. “Put this on the stove and let it simmer for an hour or two before you serve it to Gus.”

Ken lifted the cover and sniffed. “Mmmmm. Gus is going to be one happy man.” He winked at Caroline. “Nan makes the best chili in the county. Probably the world.”

“I don’t know about that,” Nan said with a laugh. “But it’ll tide Gus over for tonight. And there’s plenty more where that came from. You tell Gus I said not to lollygag in bed too long. I want him to fix my old boat.”

Caroline donned her jacket, hat, and sunglasses and followed Ken out to the Jeep.

He held the passenger door and waited till she was settled inside before closing it.

The small act made Caroline feel as though they were out on a date. Which, she reminded herself, was not the case. But a small thrill came over her like sunshine on the cool mountain breeze. It felt good just to sit next to him with the windows rolled down as they drove along the county road.

Ken steered with his left hand and looked at her often, his smile bigger than ever beneath his aviator shades. At one point, he slowed the car to a stop and leaned over, pointing up into the tops of the trees.

“We’re in luck,” he said in a low voice, shifting so close on the seat beside her that she could feel the muscles in his broad back. His scent filled her nostrils.

She breathed deep.

“Look there.” His voice dropped to a whisper, low and close and way too intimate, until she practically squirmed in her seat. But what she saw next made her forget her discomfort.

“Look.” He pointed straight up. “An American bald eagle.”

Caroline ducked her head through the open window. There, some fifty feet up, atop a towering pine, was a big messy nest. Peering over the edge was the largest bird she’d ever seen.

Ken pulled binoculars from the glove compartment and pressed them into Caroline’s hands.

She focused on an enormous brown bird with a crown of snow white and a mighty yellow beak. It moved its head, and she glimpsed the fierce expression she had seen only in textbooks.

“Ooh,” she murmured. The bird was noble, just as
she had imagined. But nothing had prepared her for the real thing, and the thrill that swept over her now.

She looked at Ken, and he smiled like he was a teacher and she was his star pupil. “No matter how many times I see her, she takes my breath away.”

Caroline ducked her head out the window for another look. Without the aid of the powerful field glasses, she would have mistaken it for a hawk, if she had bothered to notice the bird at all. “Wow,” she breathed.