Tell Me When It Hurts (13 page)

She cried quietly into his shoulder. “They didn’t call me. Nobody called me. I got to the school to pick up Annie and Sophie, and then they took me aside and told me. Nobody called us. I could have been there.”

“
Oh, Archer, I am so sorry. So sorry. My God . . .” He released her, and she sat back on the sofa. He shook his head, eyes stinging. “Did they ever get the guy?”

“
Oh, yeah, they got the guy. An accountant for the Justice Department. How’s that for irony? And there was even an eyewitness to the actual attack—an old woman who lived in a rooming house that overlooked the alley—and they had DNA matches. They had his clothes from that night, with Annie’s blood and hair all over them. But when the trial came up, the old lady couldn’t be found, and the police had no search warrant when they seized the guy’s clothing, so all that evidence was worthless. The monster’s wife had signed a consent to search the house while he was at work, but the house was in
his
name and
he
hadn’t consented to the search. The wife thought there was just some big mistake, and a search would clear her husband, but when the detectives got to the laundry room, they found what they were looking for—his clothes from that night.

“
Adam and I lived in D.C. for almost two months after it happened. I went down a few times every month after that, following every move, every lead. Then, when they had us in and said there had been a screw-up, that the appellate court said the search was illegal, that they couldn’t believe the wife’s consent hadn’t held up, that they had to let him go, that they couldn’t hold him any longer, it was too much.

“
My sanity had been hanging by a thread, and I mean a thread. I had been so focused on getting that horror of a human being that it was my sole reason for getting up in the morning. That was how I got through each day. Then when they let him go—the man who everyone knew did it—I just lost it. Knives, scissors, anything sharp, I began to cut on myself. Day after day, sometimes several times a day, I’d cut. At first, I cut where no one could see—you know, my legs, my upper arms, and then any part of my arm. I began wearing long sleeves all the time, even in ninety-degree heat. Soon I didn’t care. When I began to cut my face, Adam did begin to notice.

“
Adam tried to understand. He tried to be patient; he really did. I know he did. He’s a good man, and he hurt as much as I did, but we handled all of it differently. He needed to get back to work, back to a routine, or he would have gone crazy. That helped him not think about it twenty-four hours a day. For me, I guess I would have gone mad getting back to a routine. I mean,
what
routine? Without Annie, I was lost. I became obsessed with getting the guy. I plotted all day; I went over the evidence all night; I stopped seeing family, friends. While I wasn’t exactly
fired
from my firm, it was suggested I might want to take a leave of absence. That was no sacrifice, since I hadn’t been to the office in nine months.”

Archer paused to rub her eyes with the damp tissue, tossed it on the table, and continued. “Daddy was the only one who really seemed to understand me in those days. He could always find something to say that I could accept or that helped, at least a little. I think he stayed strong for me. We had always been close, and I felt terrible burdening him with this. He was almost seventy years old when it happened, and he was getting frailer each year. But we sagged—he and I—almost in unison after they let the guy go. We were diminished by . . . well, we were just diminished.

“
Adam and I tried to keep the marriage together—you know, sometimes a tragedy brings people closer. Maybe if we’d had other kids . . . but for us, every time we looked at each other, there was no Annie.

“
We never blamed each other, but . . . but I was so ill mentally that I had nothing to give Adam or the marriage. And everything I did reminded me she was gone. That there would be no more Christmas mornings, no more Easter egg hunts, no more pancake breakfasts, no more Halloween skits. Adam could take only so much. I resented that he could go on, and he resented—no, that’s not right—he, he ached for me that I couldn’t go on. Our marriage ended that day in Washington, with Annie.

“
And so, we quietly divorced. I got my fair share of the assets, and my father, my dear father, left me—and Sharon, my sister—money in a trust that sends me a check every month. So much for independence,” she said ruefully.

“
So you don’t do any legal work at all now?” Connor asked.

“
Well, I do a little work for an international firm once in a while, some research and writing, you know, but it’s sporadic. Sometimes I have to go out of town to see the client in person, you know,” she said quickly.

They sat quietly for a minute. Then Connor got up to make tea. “Want some?” he asked.

“
Sure.”

As he filled the kettle with water and put it on the stove, he asked, “Did you ever want more children?”

“
No, not really. I’m not exactly a well-balanced person, in case you hadn’t noticed.” Archer started drying her tears with her T-shirt sleeve now. “I worry all the time, and I need to be in control all the time. I thought, with only one child to worry about, I could handle it and actually be a good mother. One daughter was perfect for me, just perfect, and I felt so lucky to have her. I’m not a religious person, but I thanked God every night for Annie. When she would ask us if she was ever going to have a brother or sister, we would say we’d done so well the first time, we didn’t want to tempt the gods. You know, bad rice and all that.”

Connor nodded, acknowledging the reference to
Love Is a Many-Splendored Thing.
The kettle began to sing, and he poured the hot water into two mugs. He dipped the bags up and down a few times, then brought the mugs to the living room, where he set one in front of Archer and kept one for himself.

Archer continued, “Annie would laugh, but I knew she was pleased, you know, that she was enough for us.”

“
Did your ex-husband stay around Connecticut?”

“
No, he looked for a job out west and got one with a firm in Denver. He moved a year after our divorce, met another lawyer in his firm that same year, got married, and now has two boys—they’re around two and three years old, I think.”

Connor was quiet for a while, just sipping his tea. Then he said, “I wish I had something really pithy to say now, Arch, but I don’t. And I’m sure you’ve heard every cliché in the book: ‘life is for the living’; ‘this too shall pass’; ‘she would want you to go on.’ How does anyone
know
what she would want? But I will say this. Unless you’re going to kill yourself, you have no real choice but to go on. And given that you have to keep going, I wish I could help you think of a way to keep something of Annie alive in a happy way, incorporate it into your day-to-day life and kind of, somehow, just strip the horror from what happened—sift through it and let the bad parts filter out and be left with only the good parts at the bottom of the colander.”

“
Good trick if you can pull it off,” said Archer. “I could barely eat for almost a year, and when I did, nothing stayed down. Between that and the cutting, I was not a lot of fun to be around. It’s just that I’ve always had this thing about fairness. Things should be fair. If you follow the rules, you should be rewarded, or at least not punished. I mean, I return library books on time; I drive the speed limit; I wait my turn in lines. I always figured you couldn’t come to any harm if you colored inside the lines, you know.

“
We taught Annie to be responsible, not talk to strangers, but in one instant, one slight mistake, which in most circumstances would have been fine, but in this one freak instance wasn’t fine . . . it’s just so
unfair
. . .” Archer’s voice trailed off.

“
You bet it is,” Connor affirmed.

They both were quiet for a few minutes. Connor glanced down at his watch. It was nine—his usual time to head to his camp.

“
About time for me to go,” he said, looking at his watch. He stood up. “So what did Annie like?”

Archer paused, then said quietly and firmly, “Horses. She liked horses. No, she loved horses.”

“
Oh, yeah? Did she take riding lessons?” Connor asked, interested.

“
Yeah. She had her own horse. I did, too. We thought . . . I mean, we always meant for it to be our thing together. We always said that when she graduated from high school we would take a riding vacation in England.”

“
You mean you ride, too?” Connor asked.

“
Yes, I ride, too.”

“
No wonder you were interested in old Millie. How well do you ride?”

Pause.

“
Pretty well, McCall.”

Connor grinned. “Coming from you, that means you’re probably practically an Olympian, I reckon.”

Archer’s mouth made a little cryptic smile, but she said nothing.

“
So come over tomorrow and ride Millie. She’s getting fat and lazy.”

“
Maybe,” Archer said, smiling a little and downing the last dram of bourbon, chased with a sip of tea. “But I don’t think Millie would like you talking about her that way.”

“
I better get going—it’s late,” said Connor, smiling, too, and picking up his lantern. “I’ll see you tomorrow for your ride. Let’s go, Alice.”

The Bouvier jumped up, showing a lot of agility for a big dog. Connor opened the door, turned to tip his hat, and set off for his camp.

Archer watched until he disappeared into the woods. She got up to pour herself another drink, then stopped. Maybe she didn’t need a second drink—or a third—to sleep tonight. She’d thought she would feel wretched after talking about Annie. Usually, when someone asked if she had children, she just said,
No, I haven’t been that lucky,
thus avoiding the obvious next question that would follow a “yes” answer.

Still, Archer slept soundly without the second dose of Maker’s Mark’s helping hand, with no shrieking banshees tearing after her in her dreams for one night.

CHAPTER 13

Archer showed up at Connor’s camp at midmorning, just as he was trudging up the path from the road, returning from the motel.

“
Hey, you live pretty rugged, McCall,” Archer commented. Despite her observations during her morning trysts with Millie, she had never thought through the logistics of living in a tent. Today she did.

He shrugged. “No worse than when we bring in the herd from the far pastures at the end of the summer, and it’s a lot warmer here. Plus, I do have my little arrangement with the innkeeper down the road.”

Archer plopped down on the big, lichen-speckled granite boulder next to the tent and began eating the apple she had brought for Millie. She watched Connor soap up Millie’s bridle and polish it with a clean, dry cloth.

Munching on the apple and watching him, Archer was reminded what a damned attractive man this was: tall, broad-shouldered, lean, with a great smile, dark hair with just a hint of gray at the edges, clean-shaven, dark blue eyes . . . and beautiful
forearms
. It was crazy, but she loved strong, sinewy forearms, tan from a day’s work. And he was clean, always squeaky clean.

As Connor worked on the saddle, she thought of yesterday, when they went swimming at a pond not far from Connor’s campsite. She had christened the pond “tiny tempest,” in dubious tribute to Connor’s Wyoming hometown, Little Tempest.

It had been a hot day for October. Archer had felt Connor’s eyes on her as she emerged from under the little waterfall, sputtering and laughing, in her white T-shirt and denim shorts. He had steadied her as she stumbled on the rocky bottom. He’d held her hand, his left hand on her hip, her wet shirt clinging to her, concealing nothing.

Connor gazed at her not so much lustfully as admiringly, she thought. Or maybe it was just her imagination. He’d become almost shy for a moment, then bridged the awkwardness with a lame joke about it being a good thing he was there, lest she drown and leave Hadley orphaned.

She had laughed and shoveled water at him as he ducked and weaved out of her way. Finally he succumbed to her grabs as she pulled him with her under the waterfall. No question, Archer had felt the heat of desire.

Connor had clowned a little as they walked back to the cabin, hair dripping, towels draped over their shoulders. Not that she wanted things to escalate—God, no, that would just complicate things.

Snapping back to the present, Archer asked, “So, how long do you think you’ll be staying here?”

After closing the can of saddle soap, he looked up. “Don’t know. I have to be back at the farm by lambing time . . . maybe sooner.”

“
When’s that?”

“
Oh, end of February, early March, I’d say. But by rights, I should get back before Christmas to prep the ranch for spring shearing and then lambing.”

“
Oh,” Archer replied, still munching on the apple. “But don’t you miss Boston? I mean, do you
really
like Wyoming?”

“
Really
like Wyoming?” Connor mimicked, laughing. “Sometimes you do talk like a girl, Archer. Yeah, I do
really
like Wyoming, but I’ve gotta say, it took a while. There’s a vastness to everything out there that can be exhilarating or bleak, depending. And then the winters—they were even colder than I expected.” He shook his head. “But then, spring suddenly comes on you, and the sky gets real high and as blue as blue gets, and then I wonder how anyone could live anywhere else.”