And so he waited in the fog for his one true love to come.
He didn’t hear the other car arrive over the roar of the falls. Or hear the quick, sure footsteps until they were very close to him. He couldn’t see the shimmer of golden hair or the shiny, trusting blue eyes. He didn’t need to. He could see everything with his own eyes shut, just as his lips knew the achingly soft, sweet lips that were now kissing him, kissing him.
“Hey, baby,” he said as they sat there in each other’s arms. They didn’t have to raise their voices as long as they stayed very close.
“God, I’m so glad you’re here. I wasn’t even sure you’d make it tonight.”
“I said I’d be here, didn’t I?” he responded lightly, hearing the quaver of insincerity in his own voice. “Want some peppermint schnapps?”
“Ugh, no.”
“Why wouldn’t I be here?”
“You sounded funny on the phone. Was she standing there?”
“Not really.” He groped in the darkness for a hand, clutching it tightly, knowing that once he said the words he had to say that he would never, ever feel its caresses again. “But I do have something kind of heavy to lay on you… about you and me.”
“What about us?”
“We can’t do this anymore,” he blurted out.
“W-What are you saying to me?” They were no longer holdinghands. They were apart, now and forever. “You don’t want to be with me anymore?”
“No, I do want to be with you. That’s not the point.”
“Then what is?”
“That it’s over. That it… it has to be over.”
“Just like that? You’re insane!”
“I know this,” he admitted, hearing only the roar of the falls for a moment.
Until he heard a gut-wrenching sob. “My God, do you actually think that you can just snap your fingers and the love’s not there anymore? Like it’s some kind of a-a choice? Paper or plastic? Smooth or chunky?”
“Look, it’s not you, okay?” he said, his own voice rising helplessly. “It’s me. I can’t keep doing this. It’s not going to be easy to stop. In fact, I think this is the hardest thing I’ve ever had to do in my whole life. But I have to do it.”
“But how? We’ll still see each other every day. How can we pretend that nothing’s happened?”
“We’ve been pretending that ever since we got involved.”
“You mean, ever since you came after me, don’t you?”
“I warned you about me from the very start,” he shot back, growing defensive now. “I told you what would happen.”
“You told me you’d break my poor little heart. You didn’t tell me you’d stab me in the chest with a dull knife and… and why are you doing this to me?” Now he heard another sob in the darkness. “God, listen to me. I sound like a pathetic old lady.”
“No, you don’t. You sound great. You are great. And I wish we could go on like this forever. I swear, I’ve never been this happy in my whole life.”
“Only because your whole life is a lie. You are living a lie.”
“Hey, your marriage is just as dead as mine.”
“This isn’t about me. It’s about you.”
“I know, I know…” He breathed in and out, his chest beginning to ache. “I just can’t keep chancing it like this. Not in Dorset. Peopleare bound to find out, and when they do they’ll talk. It’s what they live for-to talk about people like us.”
“So let them. Who cares? I don’t.”
“Well, I can’t risk it. I won’t risk it.”
“Every day you get out of bed there’s risk. Without risk, you’re as good as dead.”
“Right now, I wish I was,” he confessed.
“Screw you and your self-pity. You’re not the one who’s getting hurt here-I am. And I hate you. Do you hear me? I hate you!”
“Look, this doesn’t have to end badly,” he said soothingly. “It just has to end.” He drained the schnapps bottle and set it down on the stone next to him, climbing unsteadily to his feet. He’d said what he had to say. Now all that was left was the ugliness, the words that hurt.
“Wait, where do you think you’re going?”
“Home.”
“What about me?” They were both standing now. “Don’t you realize how much I’ve risked?”
“Yes, I do,” he said, even though it was not nearly the same. Not even close. “And, believe me, this is better for you, too.”
“God, you are so totally full of shit. Our lives were dead until we found each other. We’ve got something special together. How can you turn your back on that. How can you walk away?”
Now the sob was coming from his own throat. “I have to. You know I do.”
“I don’t know anything-except that I won’t let you walk away from me. I’ll… I’ll tell her about us. I swear I will.”
He stood there in choked silence, realizing that he was trapped in a love he could not get out of. No way out. No good way, anyhow. And now it began to creep into his mind-the terrible thing he had been trying not to think about. Which was that this secret place of theirs, this private, perfect perch where they made love, was also a private, perfect place to kill. And, worse, that he was totally capable of doing it.
I am one of them. I am one of the Bad People.
Maybe he had known this all along. Maybe that was why he’d been so freaked out all evening. Because he was coming here to murder the great love of his life and he damned well knew it.
He stood clenching and unclenching his fists, preparing himself for what he was about to do. “I have to think about my future,” he explained.
“You say that as if you have one.”
Which he didn’t.
“No, don’t!” he cried out as he felt himself suddenly being shoved toward the edge of the cliff.
And it was all so unexpected, so ferocious, so unthinkable that he had no chance to hold his ground. He did try, in that desperate last fraction of a second, to cling to the slick stone, digging at it with his fingers and his toes like a wild, desperate animal. But now he was pitching over backward into the blackness with his arms waving wildly and the roar of the falls growing louder and now the roar was coming from out of him as his head smacked into something hard. And everything went from black to red.
As he lay there on the rocks, he thought he heard a sob coming from somewhere far away, but that may have been his own last groans he was hearing. He felt no pain, no fear, no regret-only a powerful rush of relief.
I am free of them. I am free of the Bad People. They can go torment someone else now, because they can’t have me. Not anymore. Because I am free… I am free… I am…
EIGHTEEN HOURS EARLIER
CHAPTER 1
There was no lollygagging in the feathers on Big Sister Island. Not in July. Not when the sun came beaming through the skylights in Mitch’s sleeping loft at five-thirty in the morning. Not a chance. These days, Mitch Berger, creature of the darkness, got up when the sun got up.
And he loved every glorious minute.
He loved the cool, fresh breezes off Long Island Sound that wafted through his antique post-and-beam carriage house no matter how hot and sticky the day was. He loved the blackberries that grew wild all over the island and the fresh vegetables that he had brought to life in his own garden. He loved mowing his little patch of lawn with an old-fashioned push mower, which had to be one of the great lost pleasures of the modern age. He loved parking his pudgy self in a shell-backed aluminum garden chair at sunset, cold beer in hand, waiting for Des to come thumping across the rickety wooden causeway in her cruiser. He loved the bracing dips in the Sound they would take together. He even-and this was the truly amazing part-loved those disgustingly healthy dinners of grilled fish, brown rice and steamed vegetables she would cook for them.