Chapter Twenty-Two #3
“Without a towel?” It didn’t quite fit, he decided. “I wonder if anyone’s asked him if he knows what she was wearing when she left the house. I’m going down to talk to him.”
“I don’t think we should intrude.”
“He’s alone and he’s worried.” Nathan kept her hand in his as he started down. “Or he had a fight with his wife, killed her, and disposed of her body.”
“That’s horrid and ridiculous. He’s a perfectly decent, normal man.”
“Sometimes perfectly decent, normal men do the unthinkable.”
Nathan studied Tom Peters as they approached.
Late twenties, he decided, about five ten.
He looked fit in wrinkled camp shorts and a plain white T-shirt.
Probably worked out at the gym three or four mornings a week, Nathan thought.
He had a good start on his vacation tan, and though the stubble on his chin gave him an unkempt appearance, his dark blond hair had been cut recently, and cut well.
When he raised his head and Nathan saw his eyes, he saw only sick fear.
“Mr. Peters. Tom.”
“I don’t know where else to look. I don’t know what to do.” Saying the words out loud brought tears swimming into his eyes. He blinked them back, breathing rapidly. “My friends, they went to the other side of the island to look. I had to come back here. To come back here, just in case.”
“You need to sit down.” Gently Jo took his arm. “Why don’t we go back up to your cottage and you can sit down for a while? I’ll make you some coffee.”
“No, I can’t leave here. She came down here. She came down last night. We had a fight. We had a fight, oh, God, it’s so stupid. Why did we have a fight?”
He covered his face with his hands, pressing his fingers against his burning eyes.
“She wants to buy a house. We can’t afford it yet.
I tried to explain to her, tried to show her how impractical it is, but she wouldn’t listen.
When she stormed out I was relieved. I was actually relieved and thought, Well, now, at least I can get some sleep while she goes out and sulks. ”
“Maybe she took a swim to cool off,” Nathan prompted.
“Susan?” Tom let out a short laugh. “Swim alone, at night? Not hardly. She’d never go in water past her knees anyway. She doesn’t like to swim in the ocean. She always says she hears cello music the minute it hits her knees. You know,” he said with a faint smile, “Jaws.”
Then he turned back, staring out at the water.
“I know people are thinking she might have gone swimming, she might have drowned. It’s just not possible.
She loves to sit and look at the ocean. She loves to listen to it, to smell it, but she won’t go in.
Where the hell is she? Goddamn it, Susan, this is a hell of a way to scare me into buying a house.
I’ve got to go somewhere, look somewhere. I can’t just stand here.”
He raced back toward the dunes and sent sand avalanching down as he rushed up and over them.
“Do you think that’s what she’s doing, Nathan? Putting a scare into him because she’s angry?”
“We can hope so. Come on.” He slipped an arm around her waist. “We’ll take the long way back to the cottage, keep our eyes peeled. Then we’ll take a break from this.”
“I could use a break. From just about everything.”
The wind was rising as they headed through the trough between the surfside dune hummocks and the higher, inland dunes where beach elders and bayberry stabilized the sand.
Tracks scored the ground, the scratches from scudding ghost crabs, the three-toed prints from parading wild turkeys, the spots where deer had meandered to feed on seeds and berries.
Human tracks had churned up the sand as well, and the wind would take them all.
Despite the grazing, thousands of white star rush and fragile marsh pinks spread their color.
Would she have walked this way, Jo wondered, alone, at night?
It had been a clear evening, and a lonely beach drew troubled hearts as well as contented ones.
The wind would have been stiff and fresh.
And even after the tide receded, leaving the sand wet, the wind would have chased it along in streamers that scratched at the ankles.
“She could have left her shoes down there,” Jo considered. “If she’d wanted to walk. She was angry, upset, wanted to be alone. It was a warm night. She might have headed down the shoreline, just following the water. That’s more likely than anything else.”
She turned, looking out over the low hillocks to the sea. The wind lifted sand and salt spray, sending the sea oats waving, sifting a fresh coat over the pennywort and railroad vines that tangled.
“Maybe they’ve found her by now.” Nathan laid a hand on her shoulder. “We’ll call and check when we get to the cottage.”
“Where else would she have gone?” Jo shifted, to stare inland where the dunes crept slowly, relentlessly, toward the trees in smooth curves.
“It would have been foolish to wander into the forest. She’d have lost the moonlight—and she’d have wanted her shoes.
Would she be angry enough with her husband to stay away, to worry him like this because of a house? ”
“I don’t know. People do unaccountable things to each other when they’re married. Things that seem cruel or indifferent or foolish to outsiders.”
“Did you?” She turned her head to study his face. “Did you do cruel, indifferent, and foolish things when you were married?”
“Probably.” He tucked the hair blowing across her face behind her ear. “I’m sure my ex-wife has a litany of them.”
“Marriage is most often a mistake. You depend on someone, you inevitably lean too hard or take them for granted or find them irritating because they’re always there.”
“That’s remarkably cynical for someone who’s never been married.”
“I’ve observed marriage. Observing’s what I do.”
“Because it’s less risky than participating.”
She turned away again. “Because it’s what I do. If she’s out somewhere, walking, avoiding coming back, letting her husband suffer like this, how could he ever forgive her?”
Suddenly she was angry, deeply, bitterly angry. “But he will, won’t he?” she demanded, whirling back to him. “He’ll forgive her, he’ll fall at her feet sobbing in relief, and he’ll buy her the fucking house she wants. All she had to do to get her way was put him through hell for a few hours.”
Nathan studied her glinting eyes, the high color that temper had slapped into her cheeks. “You may be right.” He spoke mildly, fascinated that she could shift from concern to condemnation in the blink of an eye. “But you’re heaping a lot of blame and calculation on a woman you don’t even know.”
“I’ve known others like her. My mother, Ginny, people who do exactly what they choose without giving a damn for the consequences or what they do to others. I’m sick to death of people. Their selfish agendas, their unrelenting self-concern.”
There was such pain in her voice. The echo of it rolled through him, leaving his stomach raw and edgy. He had to tell her, he thought. He couldn’t keep blocking it out, couldn’t continue to shove it aside, no matter how hard he’d worked to convince himself it was best for both of them.
Maybe Susan Peters’s disappearance was a sign, an omen. If he believed in such things. Whatever he believed, and whatever it was he wanted, eventually he would have to tell her what he knew.
Was she strong enough to stand up to it? Or would it break her?
“Jo Ellen, let’s go inside.”
“Yeah.” She folded her arms as clouds rolled over the sun and the wind kicked into a warning howl. “Why the hell are we out here, worrying ourselves over a stranger who has the bitchiness to put her husband and friends through this?”
“Because she’s lost, Jo. One way or another.”
“Who isn’t?” she murmured.
It would wait another day, he told himself. It would wait until Susan Peters had been found. If he was daring the gods by taking another day, stealing another few hours before he shattered both their lives, then he’d pay the price.
How much heavier could it be than the one he’d already paid?
When he was sure she was strong, when he was sure she could bear it, he would tell her the hideous secret that only he knew.
Annabelle had never left Desire. She had been murdered in the forest just west of Sanctuary on a night in high summer, under a full white moon. David Delaney, the father he had grown up loving, admiring, respecting, had been her killer.
Jo saw lightning flash and the shimmering curtain of rain form far out to sea. “Storm’s coming,” she said.
“I know.”