Her Last Letter (22 page)

“Gwyn, baby?”

“What?”

“Come to bed, okay?”

I crept to my doorway, stood there, snuffling back a tear.

“Please?”

I hesitated, then raised my chin and walked over. He reached up and drew me down on top of him. “I’m sorry,” he said, kissing my cheek. “I’m a dick. You forgive me?”

“No.” And then … “yes.”

He rolled me beneath him, tucked his hands into my bra and released my breasts, then eased the straps away and unlatched the bra. His breath was warm on my face, and I could catch traces of the cologne he’d worn earlier. I heaved a sigh, excited.

“Never go to bed mad,” he said, his voice low, his kisses trailing alongside my hair, my ear.

“Should we turn out the light?” I asked, shutting my eyes, wrapping my arms around him.

“No, let’s leave it on.” His mouth moved in slow hypnotic circles down the side of my neck, while his hand deftly pulled at my panties. I wiggled out of them.

“I need you,” he said, entering me, filling me completely. I thrilled to his touch, warmed to the sensual rhythm as I lifted my pelvis close, scooped him up, squeezed him. I rotated against him-stoking the fire, again and again.

He reached between my legs and touched me, and it was like an electric shock. He began to stroke softly, slowly, round and round … taking me higher … hotter, then moving faster, working me into a frenzy. I clenched with ecstasy as he brought me almost to the brink. “Do you want it?” he said. “Do you want it?”

“Yes … yes.”

“Then, take me,” he groaned. “Take me. Fuck me.”

For over an hour, he concentrated his attention on every available crevice of my body, bringing me to the edge, then back again, making my heart race, driving me crazy, as it seemed he was always, and easily able to do.

Afterwards, I lay spent, perspiring, my body limp-satisfied. I looked over to him. He lay on his back, hands behind his head, looking up at the ceiling. He turned and smiled at me. “I’m dead,” he said. “You killed me.”

“You killed me first,” I said, grinning back at him, and was suddenly struck by the depth of my love for this man. I was in deep-way, way, too deep.

The next morning, Trevor and I met Bob and Sylvia for breakfast at a quaint gourmet restaurant, one of my favorites, complete with lace curtains and delicately embossed silver coffee and teapots. I ordered coffee and a western omelet. Trevor ordered eggs Benedict, and Sylvia, thinking Trevor’s choice a wonderful idea, ordered it too. Bob chose a tall stack of pancakes.

Though Sylvia wanted to rent a car equipped with a rooftop ski rack for the trip to Snowmass, Bob insisted it would waste time and wasn’t necessary for the one day. Instead, we waited for the shuttle bus, which picked us up promptly at ten o’clock.

Sylvia had removed the bandage from her lip, and I could barely tell that she’d been injured at all. My neck was sore, but this morning’s hot shower and a large dose of ibuprofen had helped to take my mind off it.

The bus was only half filled with skiers, so the four of us were able to find seats near each other. Trevor and I sat together. Sylvia and Bob sat directly behind us. Trevor was on the aisle and turned around frequently to talk to them. I wasn’t interested in talking, but I did listen.

“I spoke with the ski school earlier,” said Sylvia, “and my instructor will meet us out in front of the building.”

“So,” asked Bob, “are you going to be able to ski with us?”

“Of course,” she said, “for the money I’ll be paying him, he should be happy to accommodate me in any way I choose.”

“How do you know it will be a
him?
“ asked Trevor.

“Because I asked. His name is Andreas.”

I heard Bob laugh softly, then some whispering, then a smack, as if Sylvia had slapped Bob on the lap.

“Stop it,” she squeaked. “If you’re going to tease me, you can move to the back of the bus.”

He laughed again, then the conversation settled down to comments about the sunny weather and the rising price of lift tickets and its effect on skiing as a whole.

The four of us met at the ski school and collected Sylvia’s instructor, a great looking guy, maybe thirty-five years old, tall and broad shouldered with a pronounced Austrian accent. His hair was a thick blond, and he wore silver Oakley sunglasses that perfectly matched his blue and silver ski suit.

As we made our introductions, Andreas removed his sunglasses and slid them atop his ski hat, revealing friendly and knowledgeable blue eyes. I decided as I looked him over that Andreas had summed up our party pretty quickly, and likely his only real concern would be how thick a wad of cash would be in his hands by the end of the day.

Sylvia gave him the game plan, and of course, he acquiesced to all she suggested.

“If one of the others wants a little help, could you do that?” she asked. “Of course, I’d compensate you.”

“Certainly,” he said, his smile as bright as the sun overhead.

He bypassed the long line to the chairlift and led our party to the front, our privilege for paying for the lesson. Sylvia had hired him for the entire day.

Bob and Trevor high-fived one another as the chair carried us up the mountain. Sylvia rode with her instructor. Bob, Trevor, and I rode up on the chair immediately behind them.

“All day it’s going to be like this,” Bob said. “What a great idea. Hire an instructor to cut the lines.”

“I know,” said Trevor. “Pay him and tell him to leave you the hell alone. Can you do that?”

“Why not?” said Bob. “He’s getting paid. Instruct him not to instruct. Tell him you just want to ski. Why would he give a damn?”

“Yeah, why would he? Unless he’s got some kind of ego problem.”

Sylvia looked back from the chair and waved. Trevor and Bob waved back. I lifted my hand, sort of, then dropped it into my lap.

We took the chair halfway up the mountain in the direction of Sam’s Knob, a peak Andreas told us would be our ultimate destination this morning. And morning was rapidly departing. My watch read eleven twenty-two.

Once we were again on the snow, Andreas took Sylvia aside, presumably to test the limits of her skiing ability. Trevor and Bob hovered nearby, while I waited not so patiently for instructions from my husband. Today I’d promised to do whatever he asked, no questions.

I watched as Andreas lead Sylvia through some kind of drill, demonstrating bending his knee into a turn, exaggerating it, helping her repeat the move. Once, he glanced over at me, and I could only surmise that Sylvia had given him her version of the near disaster the day before.
And then she purposely led me down a run I had no business on. Tried to kill me, in fact.

Andreas motioned to us, told us to go on ahead, to meet him and Sylvia at the bottom near the chair.

Finally, I could let loose. I swooped down the mountain, bypassed the beginner run and instead dropped into a blue run, Velvet Falls, waving for Trevor and Bob to follow. They did, and the three of us whooped and hollered on our way down, not stopping until we’d reached the bottom of the slope near the chair.

I was laughing, out of breath.

“Wow, you were great, Gwyn,” said Bob. “I saw that little jump, but I was afraid to take it, but not you.”

“I probably shouldn’t have. I don’t know how well these bindings are set. I could have released on the landing.”

Trevor smiled at me too, then looked up the slope. “I think that’s them over on the right.”

Sylvia and Andreas slowly made their approach. Sylvia was all smiles. They stopped and she reached up, placed her hand on her ski instructor’s shoulder. “According to Andreas, I’ll be skiing like a pro by the end of the day.”

He pointed skyward. “Ve’ll be going all da vey to da top of Sam’s Knob dis time.”

Again, Sylvia and Andreas took the first chair and we followed behind. I was glad Sylvia had hired an instructor because it looked as if she wouldn’t get an opportunity to sit near Trevor the entire afternoon.

From the top, ski runs spread out in several different directions down the face. Andreas led Sylvia off onto Max Park, another beginner run, and the three of us took Banzai Ridge, a blue run that paralleled Max Park until it turned into an easy green run, Lunch Line, and traversed the mountain. Again, we were to meet them at the bottom.

I led the way down the slope-finally having fun. I cruised at high speed, aware that Bob and Trevor were somewhere behind me. I stopped just past the Lunch Line cutoff and waited for the two men, but only Bob came into view and skied up beside me.

“What happened to Trevor?” I asked.

“Don’t know. He was behind me. Maybe he stopped for something.”

We waited for several minutes, then continued on down. I wasn’t worried. This run wasn’t difficult. Trevor could handle it easily. Maybe he was fiddling with something, or had taken a freak fall and was dusting himself off.

We waited at the bottom, and I was disgusted to see Trevor come into view skiing slowly down the mountain with Sylvia and Andreas.

Trevor and Andreas were having a conversation as they skied up, then Trevor slid over to me. “Thought I’d take advantage and get some pointers. He’s good.”

At first I didn’t say anything-then, “Thanks for telling me. I didn’t know what happened to you.”

“I ran into them at the cutoff and Andreas yelled over for me.”

“Oh, I see.”

I didn’t talk much to Trevor until lunch at the restaurant atop Sam’s Knob. Though I was pissed again, it wouldn’t do any good to express it, because I’d agreed earlier to be a good girl today and not cause trouble. Trevor would be the first to remind me of it.

After lunch, we headed to the Big Burn, the entire top of that peak covered with long wide-open cruising runs, mostly blue, intermediate, and easy. Sylvia would have room to maneuver without putting her thick skull in danger.

Even so, she appeared to be frightened, and wasn’t waving back at us from the chair as she had the entire day. She sat close to the instructor, who probably also sensed her fear, and placed his arm behind her on the chair.

This time I waited for Trevor to begin skiing first, so he couldn’t dart off and leave me. But he stayed with Bob, the two of them watching Sylvia’s slow progress down the slope.

I was impressed with Andreas. Whatever he had done, whatever he had said to her was actually working. He had brought about a change in Sylvia’s skiing. She was doing better, her turns exhibiting a fluidity of motion I wouldn’t have thought possible in so short a time. Partway down the Big Burn, Andreas instructed her to follow him, repeating his turns, slowing her down.

Sylvia was jubilant by the time we stopped for a rest near the chair. “I love him,” she said as Andreas skied over to cut the line. “I have his card. I’m never going to hire anyone else. I told him I’d pay him double, triple, what he normally gets for a lesson. I may ask him to move in with me for the winter.”

We stayed on the Big Burn for the rest of the afternoon, Sylvia more eager to continue than anyone else.

Bob had tired and was anxious to call it a day.

“Oh, one more run,” Sylvia pleaded with him. “Just one more.”

“You go,” he said. “I think the rest of us are done.”

“Are you, Trevor?” she asked.

He shrugged.

She glanced at me. “I don’t think so, Sylvia.”

“Oh, all right. Andreas and I will ski one more time and meet you down here, unless you don’t want to wait for me.”

“We’ll wait,” said Bob.

The three of us found an empty picnic table facing the slopes, and Bob and Trevor ordered beers from the slope-side café and brought them outside into the sunshine.

“It’s been a great weekend,” said Bob. “I’m glad the two of you could make it. We’ll have to do this again soon.”

“You name the day,” said Trevor.

Not in this lifetime, I thought, but said agreeably, “Yes, we had a great weekend, Bob. Thank you so much, for everything.”

“I can’t take the credit,” he admitted. “It was totally Sylvia’s idea, but she gets some great ideas, like bringing Trevor on board. That was one of her best.”

And I remembered suddenly the conversations I’d had with Trevor when the project started, only Robert Morris was mentioned. Sylvia didn’t exist as far as I knew.

I didn’t risk a look at Trevor, better to play dumb about this too.

But I wondered, later, as I packed up to leave for home, just how long Trevor had actually known Sylvia Breslin.

Feeling vulnerable, I crossed my arms as I walked into Janet’s office the following Wednesday morning. Somehow, needing to see my therapist again felt like a personal failure. But it was all so confusing now. I didn’t know whom to trust, what to believe, where to turn.

Janet stood in the corner of the room, closing a file drawer. She looked up at me and smiled. “Hi, Gwyn. Cold out there, isn’t it?”

“Yes,” I said, unfolding my arms. “And it’s snowing pretty hard.”

“Supposed to get five inches.”

“Yes, I heard that too.” I settled into my favorite chair facing the window and watched as snowflakes fell softly out in her courtyard.

She walked over and took a seat across from me.

“How are things with you, Gwyn?”

“Well, you know, just once I’d like to come in here and say, wonderful, never better. But, of course, I’d be lying.”

Janet laughed softly. “Well, maybe that day isn’t too far off. You do appear troubled, tense. Am I right?”

“If I were a coiled spring I’d be bouncing around the room.”

“That bad.”

“I suppose I should have made an appointment sooner than this. I haven’t been following your advice. I’ve been keeping things, a lot of things from you. But I really hoped to handle this on my own. Unfortunately, I can’t.”

“Oh.”

“I found a letter that my sister Kelly wrote. She must have written it shortly before she died. I’m certain she didn’t want me or Linda to find it, because it was taped to the inside of her dresser. The only reason I did find it was because it came loose and got caught as I was trying to open the drawer. She wrote that she’d been screwing her ‘sister’s boyfriend’ and was scared for her life. She also implied that this man may have killed a woman, a girlfriend possibly. That part wasn’t clear. She also said there was a box, that he may have found ‘the box.’ I have the letter in my purse if you’d like to see it.”