A Dark Love (6 page)

The man held Porter’s gaze, the warmth gone from his face, and his next words came out like an order. “You have a pleasant night now, you hear?”

Porter gave a small, stiff nod.

The man turned to Caroline, his gaze softening. “I’ve got a daughter about your age. You remember what I said, young lady. You’ve got the world at your feet.”

It sounded like code for something else. Caroline pictured the man’s daughter, radiating confidence based on decades’ worth of soccer matches and ballet recitals, secure in the knowledge that her daddy was beaming approval from a seat somewhere in the audience, even if she couldn’t see his face in the crowd.

Caroline flashed the man a weak smile, ignoring the
pang she felt for the childhood she didn’t get, and followed her husband to the exit. They had almost reached the front door when Lindsay Crowley spotted them.

“Leaving so soon? We were just about to serve dinner,” she exclaimed. “Come along to the buffet and have something before you go. I insist.” She placed a hand on Porter’s arm. “I insist,” she repeated, smiling.

Porter pulled his arm away as though he had been burned.

Lindsay’s smile did a quick fade.

“We have to be going,” he said, making no effort to keep the edge from his voice.

Something flashed in Lindsay’s eyes like a light bulb. Caroline prayed she wouldn’t urge them to stay. Porter could be quite rude if he felt pressured.

After a tiny pause, Lindsay patted Porter’s arm. “We’ll just have to have you back over when you have time to stay for supper. And you”—she turned to Caroline, giving her a quick hug and a peck on the cheek—“are adorable. You are a most very welcome addition to the neighborhood. And don’t you forget it.” She gave Caroline’s hand a tight squeeze.

Porter already had one foot out the door as Caroline murmured her thanks. Her eyes locked with Lindsay’s for a moment, and her heart sank at the concern she saw in the older woman’s face. Porter had seemed to genuinely enjoy Lindsay’s company, and for much of the last hour Caroline had hoped they might become friends. But now she saw that Lindsay did not care for Porter. Because of something she, Caroline, had done. Caroline followed Porter down the front steps, knowing they would never return.

COLORADO

A
fter a day and a half, Caroline’s Amtrak train arrived in Denver.

The air was crisp, the sky an impossible blue, marked by high, puffy, racing clouds. Caroline had never been to Colorado. That was part of the attraction. She made her way through the heart of the Mile High City, marveling at its hustle and bustle against a distant backdrop of mountains that were shockingly stark, to the Greyhound station. She purchased a ticket for a local bus bound north and west. She waited to board with a group of grunge teenagers tossing a Hacky Sack. She took a seat in the back and watched, ears popping, as they left Denver’s morning rush behind and wound their way up into the small towns that dotted the Rocky Mountains.

Her tongue dried out and her heart pounded as she contemplated the alien landscape rolling past the tinted windows. At first she thought it was just plain fear that had set her heart to racing, then she recognized it as altitude sickness.

Nothing had prepared her for a wilderness of this magnitude, not any photos she’d ever seen, not the atlas Porter kept in the trunk of the Saab, not even the e-mails she’d received from her college friend Tom who had passed through here once on his way to L.A. She comforted herself with the thought that Porter would never think of searching here. He’d never think she’d have the guts to move to a place so remote. She expected to see mountain lions loping along the side of the road at any moment.

The bus rumbled north, passing through ever-smaller towns carved from the rough. Finally, when the shadows had lengthened and the sun had dipped below the thick line of trees, the bus pulled off at a tiny town that dated from the great gold rush, with a miniature main street that ended at a craggy summit. Air brakes squealed as the bus shuddered to a stop in front of the town’s only service station.

“Storm Pass!” the driver called. “Any takers?” This brought a round of laughter from the teens.

Caroline was already making her way to the front, heart in her mouth. “Yes, please,” she called breathlessly.

“Okay, young lady.” The driver opened the door and a rush of cool, crisp air rose to meet her as she stepped off. He climbed down after her, calling out a greeting to a giant bear of a man seated in a lawn chair.

“Afternoon, Gus,” the driver called.

Gus lowered his
Denver Post,
raised one gnarled hand to take the pipe out of his mouth, and grinned. “Howdy do, Ray.” He had white hair and spotless denim overalls.

“Can’t complain,” said the driver, reaching for the handle in one of the exterior panels on the bus.

“Won’t do you any good if you do,” Gus called, returning to his paper.

The driver turned to Caroline. “Any bags, miss?”

Caroline shook her head, ignoring the driver’s quizzical look. Even the giant leaping greyhound on the side of the bus seemed to watch her.

“Thanks,” she said, taking a step back. As though she had someplace she needed to be.

“Okay, little lady.” The driver paused long enough to wave good-bye to the man from the service station. “See you, Gus.” He pulled away, leaving Caroline in a rush of warm exhaust.

She freed Pippin from the tote.

The little dog emerged, shaking himself like an inmate getting his first taste of freedom after a term in prison. He shook, his collar jingling.

A loud hissing sound stopped him in his tracks.

Pippin growled.

A black cat, the largest Caroline had ever seen, appeared in the open doorway of the service station and glared, arching its back, baring white fangs.

Pippin yapped with fury.

“Midnight, where’s your manners?” The man in the lawn chair lowered his paper again. “Don’t mind her, she’s not a dog person.” He chuckled at his own joke.

Caroline leaned over and patted Pippin. “Neither is he. I mean, he’s not a cat person.”

“Well, Midnight’s not likely to change her mind any time soon.” The man smiled so that the wrinkles around his eyes and mouth bunched up into deep furrows. He looked like Santa Claus with brown eyes, minus the beard. He was about to go back to his paper but paused when Caroline cleared her throat.

“Um, which way to the inn?” she asked. Every mountain town had an inn, she reasoned.

He grinned again. “Same direction as everything else. ’Bout two hundred feet thataways.” He motioned with one hand. “Can’t miss it.”

“Thanks.” Caroline shivered in the lengthening shadows. A breeze carrying the scent of sage and pine worked its way through the thin fabric of her Capri pants, making her nostalgic for the Indian summer she’d left behind in Washington. The Capris, a size four, hung in loose folds from her hips. Her bare ankles protruded sharply above her Keds.

The man in the lawn chair pulled the pipe from his mouth and surveyed her thoughtfully. “They’ve got a decent dinner special there. Half a roast chicken with gravy and two sides. Can’t go wrong with that.”

“Thanks,” she said, turning to go.

“Maebeth makes a good pie for dessert,” Gus called after her.

“Thanks,” Caroline called back, walking quickly in the direction he had indicated.

Gus Kincaid puffed his pipe and watched her go as Midnight leaped to the top of the counter and went back to sleep.

Caroline walked along the town’s tiny Main Street, past a series of buildings that dated to Victorian times. Unlike Georgetown, however, these were not manicured restorations. The buildings in Storm Pass looked to be the real thing: clapboard facades fraying at the edges and frames warped by time and weather so they leaned at crazy angles. A former vaudeville theater now showed art house films, an ice cream parlor had a real old-fashioned soda fountain visible through waved-glass windows, and
a scruffy tavern had a plaque boasting the oldest pressed-tin ceiling in Colorado.

At the end of the road, hard in the shadow of the granite outcropping for which Storm Pass was named, was the inn. A neatly painted sign explained the place had been in continuous operation since the 1840s, and the current building had replaced an earlier one built to serve as a rooming house for the miners who came in the original gold rush.

Darkness fell as Caroline climbed the tidy wooden steps. She liked the history of the place. She felt safe here.

Maebeth Burkle eyed the young woman across the well-worn oak check-in desk and the tiny dog panting at her feet. “We don’t take pets.”

The girl had just offered cash in advance for one week in a single room. She pulled her arms across her thin chest, which did nothing to banish the goose bumps on her flesh.

City girl, Maebeth thought, not dressed for the mountains. Not many tourists found their way to Storm Pass even in summer. The place wasn’t like Aspen with its ballet festival and think tank. Nor had Storm Pass ever made it as a ski town, with its steep terrain of heavy pine forest. The only visitors the town drew were serious hunters and fishermen, or flatlanders who wished they were. They came in groups of five to ten, men who had hit their incentive targets selling bonds or stocks or real estate, outfitted head to toe in the latest Gore-Tex from Orvis, gear that nobody around here could afford. Their employers paid a king’s ransom for the privilege of spending a few days in the wilderness with
Gus Kincaid’s son, a former safety for the Kansas City Chiefs. Ken Kincaid had grown up here, and knew his way around every bend in the icy Ute River.

But the girl shivering on Maebeth’s worn braided rug had not come here for fly-fishing.

People in these parts didn’t tend to mind their neighbors’ business, and Maebeth was no exception, but the mountain didn’t take kindly to city folk. The girl would have to spend the night in someone’s woodpile if Maebeth didn’t let her a room. And that little scrap of a dog with the blue bow on its head couldn’t hold its own with Maebeth’s aging retrievers, never mind a marmot or bear.

Maebeth made a quick decision. “Okay. If he makes a mess you clean it.”

A weak smile formed beneath the girl’s too-large sunglasses. “Thank you.”

She signed in as Alice Stevens from Joplin, Missouri.

Not likely, judging by the back East accent. Maebeth accepted the registration card and passed her an old-fashioned key, asking a question she already knew the answer to. “Do you need help with your bags?”

The girl shook her head.

“Okay then,” Maebeth glanced down at the card. “Alice. Dinner will be served in the dining room. You’ve got the place to yourself tonight, ’cept for my husband and me. It’s included in the room rate. Breakfast, too.”

The girl’s face brightened. “Thanks.”

“Your dog might as well eat with my boys out back. Jasper and Wyoming. They’re old and wouldn’t hurt a fly. He’s a cute little fella. What’s his name?”

Alice Stevens hesitated. “Poppit.”

“It suits him.” Maebeth chuckled. “Not sure mine will know what to make of him but they’ll behave.”

“Thanks. He’s my best friend.”

And her only friend, by the looks of it. On impulse, Maebeth reached into a cabinet below the counter and pulled out a sweatshirt still in its plastic wrapper. On the front was a rendering of Ute Peak with the name Storm Pass stamped below it. Maebeth kept a supply in large and extra large to sell to hunters whose luggage hadn’t made the transfer at Denver. She slid the sweatshirt across the worn oak counter. “We’ve got a weekly special on these. It comes with the room. Which, by the way, is upstairs and down the hall to your right.”

“Thanks,” she murmured.

“Roast chicken tonight. You take your time, Alice, I’ll keep it warm till you come down.”

Clutching the sweatshirt like a security blanket, Alice Stevens shouldered her tote and flicked Poppie’s dainty leash.

Maebeth was certain the address and phone number were phony. No matter. Their sole guest appeared no more capable of doing harm than that scrap of a dog. And cash was cash. Later, Maebeth would remember this moment.

Caroline unpacked the tote bag, setting out Pippin’s bowls and food, before donning the sweatshirt to join Maebeth and her husband, Ted, for dinner in a dining room that was papered with Victorian-era cabbage roses. A gas-inset fire flickered, throwing off welcome heat.

The food was as good as Gus Kincaid had promised. Caroline was ravenous. If the Burkles noticed how quickly she shoveled bites of roast chicken into her mouth, or the second and third helpings she took, they made no mention of it.

Nor did they ask questions about where she was from or why she was vacationing alone, a fact she was grateful for. They chatted mostly to each other about the garden and chores around the inn.

Caroline slept a deep, dreamless sleep in the narrow, wood-paneled room. She sank into the trough at the center of the aging mattress that carried the memory of countless hunters who had slept there, tired after a day spent in the cold mountain air in the company of their comrades, and felt safe.

The wind gathered sound as it passed across the branches of trees that stretched from infinity right up against the tiny window.

She had read about the sounds a forest made at night, but had never experienced it firsthand. Neither had Porter. She had chosen Colorado for precisely this reason.

S
leep was the first element to disappear from Porter’s “new normal.”“New normal” was a catchall phrase he had used often during his treatment of patients who had suffered sudden loss.

Now Porter understood just how hateful the phrase was.

He gave up quickly on any attempt to sleep through the night. Insomnia, as Dr. Porter Moross well knew, was a symptom of post-traumatic stress syndrome. He knew that it compounded grief and contributed to a sense of social isolation, knew that it would pass in time. He had counseled many patients on this.

But it was different when it happened to him.

Porter stared at their wedding portrait on the nightstand next to their bed. “Why?” he asked. Caroline mocked him from the sterling frame in her silly white confection of a dress. It was a little girl’s fantasy, that dress, with its puffy sleeves and yards of billowing tulle. “You think you can walk away from what we had,” he whispered. “But it isn’t over between us, Caroline. I won’t allow that.”

And so he fought back on the third night, ordering up
a girl from the escort service he had used in his bachelor days. She let herself in after midnight, entering through the street door that Porter had left unlocked, and came directly upstairs to where Porter waited with his props.

She was rail-thin like Caroline, with streaky blond hair and undertaker eyes. She glanced at his wedding photo as she shrugged off her cheap overcoat. “Wife outta town?”

Porter’s hands twitched. He could knock her clear across the room before she knew what hit her. But he knew the rules. S&M was okay, but an outright beating would get him banned. Wiping his palms on his thighs, he licked his lips and eyed the place at the top of the escort’s legs near the garter belt. Her flesh was starting to hang in loose folds. In five years she’d be too old to whore herself. “Yeah,” he whispered hoarsely.

He locked eyes with Caroline’s in the photograph when he came, straddling the prostitute from behind.

He wished he could make Caroline hurt the way he hurt.

Except he knew she was not capable of empathy.

He’d hoped for it when they met. She was young and innocent and sweet, and he’d seen she had the potential for love that was pure and loyal and true, bigger than anything Porter had experienced in his entire crappy life. At least since his mother walked out when he was six and his fledgling ego was just taking shape. He’d learned in his psych studies that he’d have been okay if she’d abandoned him one year earlier or, better yet, two years later. But that had not been the case.

The day he met Caroline Hughes, the hard black box that was Porter’s heart sprang open, allowing light to shine on what was inside.

For the first time in his adult life, he felt hope that he might find redemption in the love of the girl with dark, soulful eyes and intellect to match.

But there was a problem, he surmised over time. Namely, Caroline’s psyche was marbled with veins of corruption. Hiding things came naturally to her. It was Porter’s studied professional opinion that he could cleanse her ego, given time, clearing the way to a true union of hearts and minds. She seemed open to it, at first, and the prognosis was good.

Just so long as she stayed the course.

But Caroline, like so many of his patients, was conflicted about her recovery. As time passed, she grew increasingly resistant to change. This tore at Porter’s heart. Breaking up would only deepen both their childhood wounds, he knew, and so he redoubled his efforts to help her see.

They stayed at the world-famous Martin’s Hotel in London on their honeymoon. He remembered the pleasure he took in her childlike excitement at the stock of body wash, shampoo, creams, and lotions that lined the marble counters in the giant bathroom. She tucked them away in her suitcase each night, marveling that the staff replaced them each day. She refused to let him take the wrappers off for a long time after they returned home. The hotel lobby had been crowded with foreigners, filthy businessmen who couldn’t take their eyes off Porter’s new wife.

Caroline reveled in their attention, swinging her hips as she walked through the lobby, giggling when she posed for a photo in front of the giant floral display.

The memory of his honeymoon brought a stab of jealousy to Porter’s gut, hot and sharp as a poker. Caroline had closed her mind to him for the first time, closing
him out. The memory of it even now made him wince with pain. If he’d known then that it would come to this, he would have walked away and counted himself lucky. But, as Porter knew from the patients he treated, hindsight only came on the heels of bitter experience.

That night on their honeymoon, Porter had seen for the first time just how stubborn his beautiful young bride could be. It would be their ruination, a fact he tried to explain to her over dinner in Martin’s famous chophouse restaurant and later, after they made love, in the king-sized bed.

She didn’t believe him. Her eyes, veiled and resentful, belied this fact despite her apology.

Porter’s fist tightened now, remembering his frustration. Her lie that night caught him off guard and filled him with despair. So he taught her a lesson and put her out. Wearing only a silk negligee, she whimpered through the suite door, begging to be allowed back inside.

But Porter wanted her to see the error of her ways. He asked her a series of questions about why she craved attention from other men, and she responded like a small child, with tears and denial. She was in the hall perhaps ten minutes or fifteen at most, when a maid saw her and used her passkey to unlock the door.

“My husband is a very sound sleeper,” Caroline had mumbled. “Thank you so much.”

She begged Porter’s forgiveness and he did forgive her, allowing her to sleep in the bed. But he didn’t forget.

The phone rang early the next morning. Porter was greeted by the brisk tones of the hotel’s manager.

“I do hope you’ve enjoyed your stay with us, Mr. Moross. We have you checking out early today and I wondered if you need assistance with your bags.”

Porter scowled and looked at his watch. Barely eight o’clock. “We’re not checking out. We’re here five more days. And it’s doctor, not mister.”

“I do beg your pardon. Doctor.”

There was a detectable pause between “pardon” and “doctor,” as though the hotel manager had placed imaginary brackets around the word.

Porter heard laughter in the background.

“I’m terribly sorry, Doctor, for any misunderstanding. But we’ve got you checking out this morning. The bellman is on his way up.”

There was a sharp rap on the door.

Caroline stirred in bed beside him, her eyes swollen and puffy from crying.

The rapping continued, louder now.

Porter swore.

“Please accept my apologies on behalf of the entire staff at Martin’s Hotel for the confusion, but we do have you down as checking out this morning. If you’ll open the door, sir, two of my hall porters are waiting to assist with your bags. I shall see you in the lobby shortly, Dr. Moross.”

The phone clicked off, leaving dead silence in Porter’s ear. This time there was no mistaking the note of sarcasm in the general manager’s voice.

Porter scrambled to find another place to stay, settling on a filthy tourist-class hotel in Whitehall.

That day, he slapped Caroline for the first time. His hand stung but she had it coming.

She had ruined their honeymoon with her stubborn need for attention, and now she had destroyed their marriage as well.