If he had not been twice spent, David might have been aroused by her performance, but he was weary, and sleep outbid libido. As he closed his eyes, allowing his mind to fade into dreams, her whisper grew more intense, so that for the first time he clearly could hear the words she spoke to herself.
“This is who you are. This is who you are and who you always will be . . .”
| 28 |
Sunlight slashed through the gaps between the blades of the shutters, and the bedroom was striped with light and shadow when David woke alone shortly after dawn.
He didn’t for an instant think the lovemaking had occurred in a dream. The sensation had been too intense and the emotion too overwhelming to have transpired in sleep, where fragmented fantasies of the unconscious mind lacked the continuity and nuance to turn the heart inside out, as his had been turned.
The robe he’d left on the chair was gone. Naked, he got another robe from the closet and put it on and went in search of Maddison.
He found her in the kitchen, barefoot, wearing his robe. Her clothes were scattered across a counter, where perhaps she had left them the previous night, before she’d come into his bed. She stood at the sink, treating her dress with a clear fluid that she squirted in a stream from a squeeze bottle that she had evidently removed from a nearby tote bag.
She was muttering angrily. “Take it, take it, take it, quick and sharp. Damn it, let go, damn it, be done. You want some more? I got more. Take it, be done.”
When David arrived at her side, he saw that the pliable plastic bottle contained something called Perky Spotter. Large areas of the pale-yellow dress were wet with it. A protein-eating ingredient in the spot remover metabolized a final stain the size of a hand, instantly sluicing away the color, a moment of alchemical magic so quick and complete in its effect that he could not be certain that the stain he’d seen had been blood.
She didn’t look at him. She didn’t seem to be aware of him.
“That’s better.” She was still red-faced though her anger had abated. “That’s the way it ought to be.” She shuddered violently. “Everything will be so much better now.”
“Maddison?”
She stared at the dress. She set aside the spot remover.
“Maddison?” he repeated.
As if returning from some fugue state or mesmerizing memory, she looked at him and blinked, blinked. “Davey. I . . . I love this dress. I’ll be just sick if it’s not all right when it dries.”
She hadn’t been merely distressed about the dress. She’d been racked by strong emotion.
As the flush of anger faded from her face, she turned to him and embraced him and held him tightly as she pressed her face to his chest.
Even in these unsettling circumstances, putting his arms around her was as natural as breathing. “What is all this? What’s wrong?”
“All the bad that’s ever happened,” she said, “was made right with you last night.”
“It’s not just a game you’ve been playing. I’ve known it’s not. You’re in some kind of trouble, and I need to know what it is.”
She looked at him. Her stare was direct, her eyes as deep as oceans. “It’s not as bad as you might think. Anyway, I’ll tell you everything in time. I promise. I swear. Every last little thing.”
“Sit down with me here, now. Tell me now.”
“Be patient, Davey. Give me breathing room. So very much is happening so very fast. I’m overwhelmed. Give me a few days, and I’ll explain everything.” She snatched the yellow dress from the counter, where it trailed into the sink. “I’ve got to hang this in the bathroom while I shower, keep it from wrinkling, let the spot remover evaporate. It’s all I’ve got to wear.” She plucked her undergarments from the counter and dropped them into the tote bag, which already contained a pair of white sling-back heels and other items he could not identify. “We belong together, and we will be together, and there won’t be any secrets between us.”
She looked exactly like Emily, sounded like her, had her vivid personality, possessed that powerful presence he had never known anyone else to have. And though there had been nothing mysterious about Emily, who was always open and direct, Maddison’s secrets only confirmed for him that, if she were not Emily herself, she offered him a way back to Emily. He didn’t even know what he meant by that, but he felt it profoundly, knew it intuitively. Therefore, arguing with her would be like arguing with Emily, which he had never done, which he could not do, not while still living in the long shadow of the guilt he’d earned by failing her ten years earlier.