Wanderlust (13 page)

Yeah. It was pretty crazy. And
terribly sad. My heart ached for him, for me, for this crazy,
messed-up world where we were enemies when we could have been
friends.

“
Wanna jump again?” I
asked softly.

He turned to me,
incredulous.

“
I think I’ve got the hang
of the landing now. We can jump together.”

He answered slowly. “Yeah. I’d like
that, sunshine.”

CHAPTER TEN

Niagara is a Native
American word for "Thundering water".

A woman stood in front of a wide
porch. She was obviously pregnant, her belly rounded beneath the
loose pink sundress and her hands supporting her back. A young boy
rode a tricycle in circles on the gravel driveway. There were no
other houses in sight, just a line of trees and then open grassy
land.

The peacefulness of the scene took my
breath away. It was like a living portrait, something I’d only
imagined but never experienced. My heart began to pound as we
pulled up close. What did it mean? What would he do?

My mind spun all kinds of horrible
scenarios. Robbery and hostage situations. I silently vowed not to
let him hurt the woman or her child, though I had no idea how I
could accomplish that.

She didn’t seem concerned
that an eighteen-wheeler was pulling off the road onto the grassy
area in front of her fence.
Run,
I thought.
Get yourself
and your kid inside and lock the door.
But
she stood there, shielding her eyes from the sun with her hand.
Then she waved. Actually waved her hand in greeting though she
still didn’t move from her spot.

Then another idea came to me. Was she
possibly…his wife? Or girlfriend? Was that his child? And as messed
up as everything had been, it somehow offended me worst of all, the
idea that he would bring some random girl home to his
family.

Anger bubbled up inside me, warring
with the helplessness. “Who are these people?” I asked.

He finished shutting off the engine.
“Friends.”

I narrowed my eyes. “That’s not your
kid?”

His eyes widened. “I don’t have any
kids. I wouldn’t be driving around the country if I had a son
waiting somewhere.”

“
Oh right, because you’re
a pillar of morality.”

The words slipped out with a dry humor
before I’d thought them through. He stared at me for a moment,
clearly as shocked as I was. My heart beat a worried tattoo. What
had I done?

He threw back his head and laughed.
“Jesus. You’re a troublemaker, you know that?”

“
I’m really not,” I said
sadly.

If I had been rebellious, I never
would have stayed holed up at home for so long. And I would have
fought harder against him all this time. What did it say about me
that I hadn’t? Clearly I was too weak to stand up for
myself.

Or I secretly thought I deserved it,
but that was even more disturbing.

“
Come on,” he said.
“You’ll like them.”

He opened his door and started to
climb down from the cab.

“
Wait.”

He turned back.

“
You aren’t going to hurt
them, are you?”

Something flickered in his eyes. “No.
I understand you have no reason to believe me when I say that, but
I’d die before I hurt my friends.”

I believed him. The words settled into
place inside me like a jigsaw piece. Sometimes it felt like that,
like he was a puzzle and I had to search for every piece to put him
back together again. He wouldn’t hurt them because they were his
friends—I trusted that. What would it take for me to become his
friend?

Strange thought.

But I dutifully stepped down from the
cab and followed him up the driveway. When we’d gotten halfway
there, the little boy jumped off his trike and ran over. He hit
Hunter like a rocket, right in the stomach, and Hunter stumbled
back, laughing. I gaped a little, staring at the open, happy smile
on his face that I’d sure as heck never seen before. They wrestled
right there, while I stood off to the side, feeling oddly bereft,
as if I were missing something and only just realized
it.

The woman walked over to me, smiling.
“Good to meet you.”

I shook her hand. “Evie. Nice to meet
you too.”

Weird but also oddly nice. We were a
couple visiting friends, two lovers on a road trip. It wasn’t far
off from our actual identities if I ignored the whole kidnapping
bit, and as time passed, I was tempted to do just that. Maybe it
wasn’t even Stockholm Syndrome but simply exhaustion,
resignation—sometimes it was easier to pretend.

“
Hunter’s never brought
anyone by. You must be someone special.”

That answered one question. He didn’t
make a habit of this. Did that mean she was right, then? If I were
someone special, it was a dubious honor at best. Someone special
who let people imprison her. Someone special who imprisoned herself
with her fears, preferring to live through her dreams.

She continued. “We hope you’ll stay a
few days.”

I had no idea what Hunter would do. I
never did. I smiled. “I’d love to, but I’m not sure what our plans
are.”

“
Of course.” She waved it
away. “I’m sure you two would rather get on your way than hang
around boring married folk, but you know you’re welcome as long as
you want. And you feel free to ask me if you need anything. Any
friend of Hunter’s is a friend of ours.”

What I needed was an escape plan, but
I doubted she would be amenable to that considering her devotion to
Hunter. And I found myself strangely reticent to tell her
otherwise, to say that the man tossing a baseball with her little
boy was a monster.

The screen door squeaked, and I looked
back to see a middle-aged man emerge. He wore a sweater vest and a
friendly smile. Hunter stopped playing long enough to shake hands
and formally introduce me.

They were Laura and James Truluck with
their little boy, Billy. They’d lived in this house for the past
six years, but they seemed to know Hunter from before then. I was
introduced as simply Evie, and I knew they assumed I was Hunter’s
girlfriend. The way he curved his hand around my waist and held me
to his side seemed to endorse that. The worst part was I didn’t
even want to pull away.

CHAPTER
ELEVEN

Around 40 people are killed
each year when they go over the falls—most of which are
suicides.

We went inside, where the men broke
off to watch a football game in the basement while Billy played
with trains. I offered to help Laura with dinner, especially now
that we’d added to her load.

She set me up with the ingredients for
a large, colorful salad and I went to work chopping vegetables, a
mixture of store-bought and ones grown in their backyard. As she
cooked the steaks and prepared garlic bread, she chatted about
Billy, about the renovations they were doing on the
house.

She sent me a guilty look. “I’m just
talking your ears off, aren’t I? It’s not often we have visitors
here. It’s good to talk to another woman.”

“
Not at all.” I smiled. “I
don’t…I haven’t gotten out much, so this is nice for me
too.”

“
You know,” she said, a
smile playing at her lips. “I’m so glad you’re here. I know I said
that already, but I…I can just see how happy you make
him.”

I kept my gaze on the carrot I was
grating. “I don’t know about that.”

“
Oh, it’s right there in
his face, the way he looks at you, the way he talks about you. I
recognize that.”

My throat constricted as I imagined
him looking at some other woman, talking about her, even though by
all accounts I shouldn’t care. But maybe this would be an
opportunity to learn something new about him, to gather a new
puzzle piece.

“
Who do you recognize it
from?” I asked, and my voice came out husky.

She looked at me, surprised. “From
James. When we were together, still dating. He didn’t admit it was
love for a while, you know men, but I knew. And I just gave him
patience, you know? He came around.” She laughed a little,
gesturing toward the house. “As you can see.”

“
Oh.”

Her nose scrunched. “You thought I
meant some other woman? No, Hunter’s never been in love before. At
least, not that I’ve ever seen. In fact, I’m pretty sure he never
expected to be.” Sadness weighed down her smile, and her eyes
looked into the past. “But life can take us to crazy places. I like
to think things turn out for the best, you know? No matter how we
got here.”

“
Right,” I said, but my
voice cracked.

Her gaze met mine, her green eyes
filling with concern. “Is everything okay with you? Here I haven’t
given you a chance to get a word in edgewise. If something is
bothering you, I’d love to lend an ear.”

“
No, I…” What could I say
to that?

“
I know men can be
stubborn sometimes, always thinking they know what’s right for us.
It’s damn annoying, that’s what it is.”

I gave a watery laugh. It was a little
funny, that everything she said was so true…and yet hopelessly
irrelevant to us. Hunter and I weren’t in a real
relationship.

“
I don’t think it’s the
same,” I tried to offer by way of explanation. “As you and James.
You seem so happy together.”

“
We are.” Her gaze
darkened with remembrance. “It wasn’t always that way though. There
were some bad times.”

I was tempted to ask what they were.
Not out of morbid curiosity. I wanted to see if they were anything
like mine, either back home or with Hunter. I wanted to know if
there was hope for me.

“
How did you know?” I
asked instead. “How did you know everything would be okay when
things looked bad?”

“
I didn’t.” She thought
for a minute. “I guess at some point I found faith, in myself, in
the world. Hunter helped me with that.”

Hunter helped her
with
faith
? Shock
ran through me, but then I remembered the rosary that hung in his
truck. Was he religious at some point? Was he still? And if so, why
the
hell
was he
doing this? This wasn’t even a puzzle piece. It was the torn off
edge of one. A hint of something broken.

I opened my mouth to ask her what she
meant exactly, but just then Billy ran inside. He begged for a
snack from Laura who insisted he wait until dinner. James and
Hunter followed. James stood behind Laura and gave her a wraparound
hug that hurt my heart to see. It was like someone had taken a
picture book and made it real. Exactly the opposite of my life
right now or ever.

I stiffened when I felt Hunter come up
behind me. He slipped his arms around my waist, mimicking James’s
actions. It felt like a mockery, and tears stung my
eyes.

“
What’s wrong?” he
whispered.

“
Like you care,” I
muttered, my voice wavery.

“
Don’t be mad,” he said,
and I hated that he said that. I hated that I responded to that
inside, softening a little. The truth was, I didn’t like to be so
full of rage and fear. It was like carrying around poison inside
me, infecting me worse than the world around me. It was a relief to
loosen the valve and let a little bit out. I sank back into his
embrace.

His arms tightened on me. “That’s my
girl.”

James and Billy began to set the table
while Laura gently chastised them for their rough handling of the
dinnerware.

I shut my eyes against the wholesome
sight. “Why are you doing this?” I whispered.

I didn’t expect him to answer me. He
never had before. But I felt the tension that ran through him and
was reminded of that jagged piece of the puzzle.

A burst of laughter pulled my
attention to the family settling down at the table. Laura looked
over at us, clearly happy to see us linked this way.

“
How long are you planning
on staying?”

The question was directed at both of
us, but we all knew she was asking Hunter.

He was quiet a moment, then he said,
“I’m not sure. Not too much longer, I think.”

The phrasing was strange with a
special weight on the words. I got the idea that he wasn’t
answering her but me. Why was he doing this? He wasn’t sure. And
the one always at the tip of my tongue: how much longer would he
keep me? Not much.

Which was exactly what I wanted, so
there was no reason to feel disappointed.

Laura’s pretty face fell. “Oh, but you
two should stop by again on your way back through.”

The way back? That implied that Hunter
had a home somewhere and Laura knew where it was. It implied we
were going somewhere and would return. Hunter must have felt me
tense, because he squeezed my hips gently.

The timer went off and Laura pulled
the steaks out of the oven.