Married to a Stranger (18 page)

Emma stuck one arm out from under the covers and groped around with her cold hand until she located the edge of the mattress. Sticking her hand tentatively between the mattress and the box spring, she carefully felt around until her fingers touched the metal blade. Her fingers traveled down to the handle and she gripped it, wresting it from its hiding place and drawing it under the covers.

Now that she was armed, part of her just wanted to stay there, as if the bed were her fortress. But reluctantly she swung her legs out and, still clutching the knife, swooped up her robe, pulling it on, snagging one sleeve on the tip of the blade. When she had the robe belted, she searched with her feet for her slippers and, shivering, slid them on. She thought about snapping on the bedside light but then decided against it. Darkness could be an advantage. If the worst had happened, if her enemy was here in the house and had somehow subdued her husband, she was better off in darkness. She knew this house better than any stranger could. She could glide through it without the aid of light. Another person might make a misstep. Might fall.

She tiptoed across the room and out to the upstairs hallway. Easing her way down the hall, knife in hand, she looked over the railing into the living room. She did not see her husband. Where are you, David? she thought. You promised not to leave me alone. For one moment she regretted that she had not stayed with Stephanie.

Stop it, she thought. You’re letting your imagination run away with you. David is here, in the house. Maybe he was hungry and went back downstairs to get something in the kitchen. Or maybe he couldn’t sleep and decided to do a little work in his office. Just go down there and look.

But the thought of descending those stairs, alone, in the dark, was terrifying. She stood at the top of the staircase, torn between the desire to go downstairs, or to rush back to her room, lock the door, and call Lieutenant Atkins. Joan Atkins wouldn’t be angry at her. She would understand. As Emma hesitated, holding her breath like someone about to leap into a deep ravine, her eye caught a movement in the unfinished nursery across the hall.

Only a corner of the room was visible, but her eyes had adapted to the darkness. She saw something move across the patch of moonlight on the floor. Gripping the knife in her sweaty hand, she took a few steps closer to the door. As a little more of the room came into view, she saw what had caused the movement. The curved rockers on the chair had moved slightly as the barefoot man sitting in it shifted his weight. Though his back was to her, and the rocking chair was facing out the back windows, she recognized her husband right away. Wearing a T-shirt and his pajama bottoms, he was bent forward, his elbows resting on the rounded arms of the chair, the palms of his hands pressed against his eye sockets, his fingers curved up over his forehead into his scalp. He looked as if he was trying to keep his head from exploding.

Emma took a step into the room and slipped the knife into the pocket of her bathrobe. “David?” she said.

He uttered a strangled cry and dropped his hands, turning on her.

“Honey, what’s the matter?” she asked. She approched the chair and sank down carefully, aware of the knife in her pocket, onto the rug beside the chair, laying her forearm across his knees. “You look terrible.”

“Nothing,” he said. “I couldn’t sleep.”

“You looked like you were in pain,” she said.

He patted her arm in the soft bathrobe. “I’m fine.”

“Why are you sitting in this room?”

“I didn’t want to go downstairs and leave you alone up here.”

Emma nodded, pretending to accept his explanation, but her mind was racing. She had not been mistaken about what she saw. He had obviously been in terrible distress, and now he was denying it, trying to reassure her. It’s not so strange, she tried to tell herself. Not after the events of the last week. “So much has happened,” she said. “I’ve been so focused on myself I haven’t been thinking about you. Are you worried about your mother?”

For a moment, he looked at her blankly. Then he shrugged. “Well, sure. But unless she gets that transplant…this kind of thing is inevitable. She’s only hanging on by a thread. She made it this time. Next time, who knows? Look, I don’t want to think about my mother. Or talk about her.”

“Okay,” she said. “It’s just that you looked so…despairing.”

“Well, you weren’t meant to see me,” he said in a mild, placating tone. “You were supposed to be sleeping.”

“Don’t do that,” she pleaded. “Don’t shut me out like that. Talk to me. It scares me to see you looking so…hopeless. Tell me what you’re thinking. We need to say what we feel. Whatever it is, just tell me.”

David stared at her face, half illumined by moonlight. In the dark room, his eyes were glittering holes in his head. “You don’t want to know.”

“Yes,” she said, but her stomach did a sickening flip at his words. “I do.”

He looked out the back windows. Then he sighed, reached out, and took her hands, kneading them absently in his. “You’re such a good person,” he said. “The kind of woman any man would be proud to call his wife.”

The compliments alarmed her. They sounded strangely…impersonal. She withdrew her hands from his and sat back on her heels. “What’s this all about?”

He shook his head. “Emma, you should never have married me. I know it was my idea for us to get married, but I’m not meant to be a husband. Or a parent,” he said.

She felt as if he had slammed her in her heart. “Don’t say that,” she protested. “Why would you say that?”

She hoped he would smile or tell her it was a passing bad mood that was making him talk that way, but he turned his head back and stared at her, his expression not changing. “You asked me to tell you what I was thinking,” he said.

“It’s not true,” she cried. “You’re a wonderful husband. It’s just all this…horrible stuff that’s happened. Anybody would feel…overwhelmed,” she said. But even to her own ears her words sounded…panicky. Was this depression talking? she wondered. And, if it was, how severe? She hadn’t seen the signs before. But it had to be depression. And it had come on so suddenly. Or he had been masking it so well. “When did you start to feel this way?” she asked.

David shook his head and seemed to stare into the past. “Always,” he said. “Having kids was too much for my father. He walked out on us when I was two. And my mother never seemed to be there. She had no choice, of course. She did the best she could, but she had to work. My brother had to take care of me a lot of the time, and he hated it. He used to play this game where he would throw lighted matches at me. Or he would take me places with him like the movies and then just…leave me behind,” he said.

“Oh, David,” she said.

“I’m not…fishing for sympathy. It’s not that. It’s just that I…I saw myself as a burden to people. Maybe I would treat a child the same way,” he said.

She felt a terror in her heart that equalled the fear she had felt earlier in the day, teetering over the abyss of the train tracks. Maybe this threat was even worse. He was threatening, not her life, but her happiness. Her hopes, her dreams. Stop, she thought. Depression is not the end of the world. It can be cured. Things can get better.

“David, once this mess is behind us, once they catch whoever is doing these horrible things, you’re going to start to feel better. And, in the meantime, there’s all kinds of medication these days that can help. I know I’m talking like a shrink, but this is my turf. I know a lot about depression. You have to trust me. You and I are going to have a wonderful life together. As for kids, lots of people with unhappy childhoods end up being excellent with their own children. They try harder. It matters more to them.”

He regarded her silently.

Please God, she thought, needing faith more than expertise. Don’t let him desert me. Help him to see how much I need him. “Come back to bed,” she said. “Right now what you need is rest. We both do. Tomorrow things will look better.”

She leaned up to embrace him and felt the point of the knife pierce through her bathrobe pocket and nick her in the thigh. She stifled a yelp. She didn’t want him to know that she had the knife in her pocket. Didn’t want him to know she was afraid.

L
ONG AFTER
D
AVID
was breathing peacefully, Emma lay awake, thinking about her husband and her marriage. He seemed to have changed in the short time they had been married. Of course their experience had been nightmarish, but maybe, she thought, maybe it was her very vulnerability that was alarming him. Maybe all her injuries, her feebleness, her fears were reminding him of the difficult role that he was taking on. After all, as a father, he would be responsible for a small, vulnerable human being. The idea of having a wife who was also weak and dependent might be overwhelming to him.

There was nothing she could do about his anxieties about fatherhood, she thought. But she could try to face her own fear. Her fear was not some flight of the imagination. Her fear was real. Yes, someone was trying to kill her. Although she went over it and over it in her mind, she could not imagine who might hate her that much or want her dead. She knew that Lyle Devlin was angry at her, but was he mad enough to murder? Or could it be the person, whoever it was, who had sent her those anonymous notes? Someone who might be angry about her marriage? She tried to imagine hate like that, tried in vain to put a face to that disturbed person, but came up with a blank.

She took some consolation from the fact that the police were after this killer and surely they would catch him. In the meantime, she told herself, she was not alone. And she was not a weak person. She would prove it to David. Besides, she could not stand this sense of helplessness that was running her life. A change might salvage their brand-new marriage. If she lived through all this turmoil and lost her marriage, she would be completely miserable. She had to try. This determination, however fleeting, calmed her turbulent heart, and she was finally able to sleep.

She awoke the next morning with a sickening feeling of fear and apprehension in her heart, and before she had even opened her eyes, she remembered why. But when she finally forced herself to admit she was awake, and looked at her husband, she saw that he was propped up on one elbow, gazing at her.

“Hi,” she whispered.

“Hi.”

“How are you feeling?” she said.

“Better. Sorry about last night,” he said.

“It’s all right. I’m glad you’re feeling better.”

“I am. Except that I’m worried sick about you. I’m supposed to go to New York again today. Another assignment,” he said. “But I’m going to cancel it. We can do it on the telephone.”

“Maybe you should go. It might get your mind off…all this.”

“No. I can’t leave you here alone,” he said.

“What are you going to do?’ she teased him gently. “Go to work with me?”

“You can’t go to work,” he said.

“David, I want to,” she said. “I can’t just sit around here, waiting for…I don’t know what. I need to be busy. Especially after what happened yesterday. I need to do something useful.”

“You need to rest,” he insisted.

Emma smiled. “Being occupied will be the best medicine.”

He shook his head. “I might as well be talking to the wall.” He frowned at her. “You look lost in thought. What are you thinking about?”

Emma pressed her lips together. “Something I should have thought about sooner,” she said.

“What’s that?”

“Now that we know that I am the actual…target of this…maniac, I have to live in a different way. I can’t rely on other people to take care of me all the time. I don’t want you avoiding doing your job because of me. And I can’t be looking over my shoulder every minute. I’m going to get a gun,” she said.

“A gun?” he cried. “That’s crazy. I thought we were talking about a bodyguard.”

“Well, maybe the police will provide one,” Emma said.

David shook his head. “Nothing doing. I asked them about protection for you when they cut me loose last night, but the Clarenceville police chief said that there was no money in his budget for private bodyguards. Do you believe that? What do we pay taxes for? Anyway, I’m going to call a few places and inquire about bodyguards. I think it’s something we have to do.”

“That’s fine,” said Emma. “I think you should. But meanwhile, I want to carry a gun.”

“I don’t believe this. Do you even know how to use a gun?”

“Hey, I shot at the guy who tried to kill me in the cabin, didn’t I?”

“Somehow you managed to discharge a weapon, yes,” David said. “That’s not the same as knowing how to shoot.”

Emma made a pretend pistol out of her hand and blew on the index finger. “Well, as a matter of fact, I do,” she said. “My dad taught me how to use a gun when I was a kid and we’d go camping together. We used to shoot our empty plastic bottles and cans. What’s the matter? You look sick.”

“Emma, I don’t like it,” he said.

“David, there’s a man trying to kill me. I know that, for a fact. What is to prevent him from trying again?”

“Don’t even say it,” he insisted

“I can’t stick my head in the ground, David. I have to face facts.”

David took her wrists gently in his hands and shook them. “I know that, honey. But shooting tin cans is a lot different from shooting at another person. Could you actually do that if you had to?” he asked.

Emma looked squarely into his eyes. “That’s exactly what I did at the cabin.”

David shook his head. “They say if you aren’t an expert with a gun, it can easily be turned against you.”

“I think it will all come back to me. Like riding a bicycle.” It sounded like a joke, but she did not smile.

“But it takes time to get a gun,” he protested. “You can’t just walk in the store, plunk down your money, and walk out with a gun.”

“I don’t have to,” she said. “I own one.”

David stared at her. Then he looked around the walls of their bedroom as if he were seeing them for the first time. “You have a gun here? In this house?”

Emma shook her head. “No. You know that storage area that I keep? It’s still half full of stuff from home. Stuff of my father’s that my mother cleaned out when she and Rory were moving to the city.”

“The gun is in there?” he said.

“I’m pretty sure it is. It’s a pistol that belonged to my dad. It hasn’t been fired in—I don’t know how long. But a little WD-40 and I’ll be in business.”

“Emma, I just don’t know.”

Emma swung her legs slowly, painfully, over the side of the bed. “I do,” she said.

“What are you doing?” he asked.

“Getting ready,” she said. “I can’t sit here and wait for this maniac to come and find me. I have to keep my mind occupied. I told you. I’m going to work. And then I’m going to get my gun.”

D
AVID DROVE HER
to the Wrightsman Youth Center and accompanied her up to her office, helping her take off the blue-green alpaca cape. He hung it on the clothes tree in her waiting room, and although she normally kept her coat in her office closet, Emma appreciated the fact that he was being so solicitous. Beneath the cape she wore a long, camel-colored skirt in a soft, merino wool, and a matching high-necked sweater. Her shiny hair hung in a french braid with soft tendrils loose around her face. David put his arms around her and kissed her repeatedly. “You look beautiful,” he said. “Now listen. Do not leave these premises alone. Not for lunch. Not for anything. Call me when you need me to come and get you. I’ll pick you up and we’ll head over to the…you know…storage place.”

“Okay,” she assured him.

“Don’t let any strangers into your office.” He brushed the tendrils of hair gently away from her face. “On my way out I’ll ask Burke to have somebody from security follow you wherever you go today, until we can hire our own protection.”

Emma was about to protest, but then she thought better of it. It was a reflex to say she was all right, that she could handle whatever might happen. The reflex of a girl, then a woman, who had always felt confident and in control of her destiny. But that just wasn’t true right now, and it didn’t help to pretend it was. Her life was in danger. That was the truth. “All right,” she said. “Go ahead.”

Emma gave David a last kiss good-bye. He turned to leave her office and let out a sudden cry.

“What is it?” she said.

She heard a deep voice say, “Is Dr. Webster here?”

David stood back, and Kieran Foster, clad in black, with his magenta-topped hair and three eyes, appeared in the doorway, wielding a guitar.

“Kieran,” said Emma. “Good to see you.”

David frowned and waved as the boy edged past him and seated himself in the chair next to Emma’s desk. Emma blew her husband a kiss as he disappeared from view. Kieran did not seem to notice. “I wanted you to hear a song I wrote,” Kieran said.

Emma smiled. She knew that Natalie, at Burke’s behest, sometimes used to critique the creative writings of the center’s teenaged patients. Emma had heard Natalie say once that Kieran’s lyrics showed promise, and Kieran had been, by all accounts, on top of the world for a short time. But then again, Natalie was a published poet, so her opinion had a certain amount of heft. “I’m not much of a judge,” said Emma, toying absently with her gold teardrop earring. “But I’d love to hear it.”

T
HE SHRILL BELL
announcing the end of fourth period rang just as Stephanie was yelling out the textbook pages for the homework. “And leave your composition books on your desk so I can grade your essays tonight.”

A chorus of groans greeted the prospect of an essay grade and the news of an assignment, when they had hoped to escape without one.

There was the usual flurry of shouted insults and good-natured shoving that always accompanied the changing of classes. Stephanie walked over to a slight, blond-haired girl who was gathering up her books and placing her composition book on the corner of the desk.

“Alida?” she said. “Can I talk to you for a minute?”

Alida Devlin looked at Stephanie warily. Her lips and cheeks were painted in shades of pink that matched a gauzy shirt, which appeared to be fashionably shredded. Her push-up bra was visible through the fabric. Her blond hair was twisted into a shiny coil with a brushy end, and long, straight bangs curved down one side of her face and across her smudged, mascaraed eyes.

“I have to go to health,” the girl said.

“That’s all right. I’ll give you a pass,” said Stephanie. “Sit down for a minute.”

Alida sighed and sat down at the desk she was about to vacate, a Formica, blond wood top with a seat bolted to it. Alida piled her books in front of her and took out a purple marking pen from her purse. She slumped across the desktop and began to doodle on the brown cardboard cover of one of her notebooks, avoiding Stephanie’s gaze. “What’d I do?” Alida asked.

“Nothing,” said Stephanie, sitting down at the desk in front of her and twisting around so she could speak to her over the back of the chair. “You didn’t do anything.”

“So why do I have to stay?”

Stephanie hesitated. Now that her opportunity was here, she didn’t know how she was going to approach the problem. She had thought about it all night and was determined to say something, anything, that might get through to Devlin’s daughter. If she was her father’s victim, somebody had to try to help her. “Look,” said Stephanie, “I know that you…that this year has been very tough for you. I know about your sister.”

Stephanie could see the girl blanch, even under the layers of pink makeup.

“I don’t mean to bring up a painful subject, but that’s a very tough thing to have to deal with. I was wondering if you were seeing anybody. You know, a psychologist or a counselor.”

Alida’s heart-shaped face hardened, and she continued to doodle. “My dad says that shrinks are full of it.”

“I’m surprised,” said Stephanie. “Your father’s a very…educated person. He has to know that psychologists can really help us when we have a problem.”

“He said it was the shrink’s fault about Ivy…” Her voice trailed away.

“He blamed the shrink for Ivy’s death?” Stephanie exclaimed.

Alida shrank back. “I didn’t say that,” she said.

Stephanie realized she had overreacted. “No, of course not. It’s just that when something like this happens in a family, sometimes the adults are too…upset to be much help to the kids. That’s why it can be helpful to go outside the family.”

“For what?” Alida said.

“Well, for someone to talk to,” said Stephanie. “Especially if things are out of hand at home. In any way.”

“What do you mean?” the girl asked, keeping her eyes focused on the scribblings of the purple pen.

Stephanie realized that she had to tread carefully. “Sometimes losing a child—parents can blame each other. It’s not rational, but it happens.”

Alida twisted her lips and concentrated on her doodling.

“Sometimes they turn to their children. When parents…depend on their children for…you know…comfort and such, it can become a…an unhealthy situation.”

Alida stopped doodling and stared at Stephanie as if she did not understand one word of what Stephanie was suggesting. Stephanie realized that the girl was not going to confide in her. In fact, Stephanie had the distinct feeling that if she didn’t stop talking, she might be jeopardizing her own job.

“Look, Alida, all I’m trying to say is, if you need an adult to talk to, you can always talk to me. About anything. I’m here and…I have time to talk if you want to talk. Just so you know that.”