I followed her out of the car and down a dusty path that wound around sharp rock outcroppings and dodged rugged ponderosa pines.
An old-timer had once told me that Boulder had been named by the first pioneer who ever tried to put a shovel into the dirt. The old-timer then laughed and said he knew the story was apocryphal because if it had really happened that way, the town would be called Oh Shit.
He hadn't actually said "apocryphal." He'd said "bullcrap."
I joined Lucy as she scrambled across a rough slab of granite and perched on the edge of a boulder the size of a two-car garage. As she lowered herself to a squat, I examined the position she'd assumed and knew that I hadn't managed that particular posture in about ten years. Maybe fifteen. I sat on my butt and side-by-side we gazed at the oasis that the city of Boulder forms on the border of the endless prairie. We were a little too close to the edge of the cliff for my comfort. My thoughts were rarely far from my daughter anymore, and I was thinking that I wouldn't allow Grace to sit as close to the edge as we were.
That's when Lucy began to tell me about Sam's lack of imagination.
Remember what you told me about intimacy?" she asked me.
"Of course," I said, but my radar was tweaked and I was wary of where we were going.
"There are natural limits, aren't there? With some people, I mean. Like with Sammy, he doesn't really want me to open up to him. He doesn't really want to know my secrets. He gives me lots of signals that tell me when to stop."
I shot a quick glance toward Lucy. She was looking east. A split second before, I'd been looking in the same direction, busy imagining that I could perceive the gentle curvature of the earth on the horizon.
I replied, "In a relationship, intimacy can be restricted, or enhanced, by either person." My words sounded banal. "Sorry, Lucy. That sounds trite. I don't mean it to. What you're saying is true. At least it is about Sam. He draws lines in the sand sometimes. We all do."
She waved a hand, dismissing my apology. "No, it's fine."
Wind whistled through the pines in a short burst. It wasn't a melodic tune-it was more acid than sugar. The sound reminded me of the first gasp of gas escaping the green cylinders on the back of Ramp's truck. Though the day was warm, I felt a chill as the memory hissed at me.
Lucy stood. She towered over me. From our precipice she appeared to be a diver contemplating the degree of difficulty of her next jump. The image troubled me. I didn't stand beside her.
I wondered about Lucy's recklessness, about what despair could have fueled her compulsion to be taunting fate. I knew I wouldn't have let Grace stand there-when she could stand, anyway. I got lost temporarily contemplating how many more weeks that might be and wished I'd paid more attention during the human development class I'd taken as an undergraduate.
"I told Ramp I was sleeping with Royal," she said. "He asked me, so I told him. I spent much of the rest of the time I was with him wondering whether or not it was an act of intimacy on my part."
At Lucy's admission about her relationship with Royal, I felt my breath catch just a little in my chest. The hesitation was not over learning that she'd slept with him, but rather at hearing her admit it. My mind flashed back to Lucy's oddly provocative behavior the night I visited her home, and I tried to put her confession about Royal in that context. Ever since I'd learned about the wet spot, I'd been preparing myself for the likelihood that Lucy had been intimate with the DA. Still, hearing her confirm the fact was far from comforting.
I asked, "Whether what was an act of intimacy? The sex with Royal? Or telling Ramp?"
"Good question. The telling. The sex with Royal wasn't intimacy. I don't have any doubts about that now." She kicked at something on the granite boulder. "How do you do that so easily? You didn't even hiccup when I told you that I'd slept with Royal. Weren't you surprised?"
Although I hadn't really been surprised by Lucy's revelation, at some level I knew that my sensibilities were offended, but years of clinical work had left me practiced at not revealing that kind of reaction. I said, "I suspected, and the truth is, I don't surprise easily anyway. Maybe I'm not as innocent as Sam. Maybe it's the work I do-I hear a lot of things."
"You don't care that I was sleeping with Royal?"
I chose my reply with care. "You mean do I judge you?"
"I guess that's what I mean."
"I'm in no position to do that. Knowing you slept with him is like skipping to the back of a book to find out how it ends. It's dangerous to make assumptions from there. I don't know what came before. What your motivations were."
"Are you curious?"
Good question. "We're both in difficult positions, Lucy."
"Does it make sense why I wouldn't tell Lauren and Cozy?"
"Sure. If you were having an affair with Royal, it wouldn't be hard for someone to extrapolate that maybe you had a motive to kill him." I, for instance, was having no trouble making that precise extrapolation. None. I added, "But they are your lawyers, Lucy."
Almost coyly, she asked, "Do you want to know about it? What happened between Royal and me?"
"I'm not sure. I don't want to be in a position to compromise your position."
"You mean legally?"
"Yes."
"It's not like that. With what I'd like to tell you, you could hurt me, but not legally."
I finally guessed where she was going. "But you would be vulnerable? Psychologically?"
"Yes. I would be very, very vulnerable. To you, certainly." She spread her arms to the side and closed her eyes. She held her position with the assurance of a yogi. "Stand up with me," she said.
Reluctantly, I did. Inches from my toes, the canyon dropped at least a hundred yards-okay, maybe fifty-almost straight down. If I fell, I counted at least two or three sharp outcroppings of rock that would crack my skull and my bones on the way to the bottom.
Lucy looked at me. I turned my head to her slowly, afraid that a more rapid motion would disturb my precarious balance.
She said, "I think Susan wanted me to."
I said, "What?"
"I think she wanted me to be… involved with Royal. It served her purposes."
Fortunately, she caught me before I keeled over.
"A little less than a year ago-it was early last summer-she called me one day, out of the blue, and asked me to come over to her house. I thought it was odd, but I did. I went. She said her illness had finally taken its toll on Royal, and that he was planning on leaving her. He wasn't going to run for DA in the next election. He didn't love her anymore and he was going to divorce her and move on with his life.
"She blamed the illness, of course. It never crossed her mind that Royal might have grown to despise her even had she been healthy."
I opened my mouth to speak but reconsidered. I needed to listen, not talk. Lucy had just admitted that she'd been sleeping with her mother's husband, and yet she was choosing to talk not about her own behavior but about her mother's. My antennae were twitching.
Lucy continued. "She said she'd need someone to care for her." I watched as Lucy lifted her right foot from the uneven stone and bent that leg ninety degrees at the knee, finally resting the foot against the inside of her left thigh. "She meant me, of course."
She maintained the position for a count of about twenty. I held my breath until she lowered her leg again. Both feet firmly on the rock, she reached out and grabbed my hand. The breezes were shoving insistently at our backs, nudging us toward something.