The year She Fell (24 page)

Just as well. In the time that I’d glanced over at
Jackson
, Tom had gotten back into his car and was starting to drive away.

I tried not to make it too obvious that I was, well, pursuing
Jackson
. After all, I told myself, my tax dollars, or at least my mother’s tax dollars, partly paid for that fancy new jail lockup, and it was practically my civic duty to inspect it. This got my shoulders straight and my head high, and I walked down the old sidewalk regally, my mother’s representative. Her ambassador. I entered the old police headquarters just a few yards behind
Jackson
, and, as my heels clicked on the marble floor, he turned and saw me.

He made it easy. “Come for a tour?”

I nodded. My civic duty. “The mayor made it sound like quite a commodious place.”

Jackson
nodded to the sergeant manning the desk. “I’ll just be showing
Wakefield
’s most famous citizen the lockup.”

“Sure, Chief, whatever you say.” The desk sergeant’s expression indicated he had no idea who I was or why I was famous.

Not everyone we passed in the narrow hallway to the annex was similarly clueless. I felt the gaze of a policewoman on me and wondered if she thought I was poaching on her territory.

But then we burst into a light-filled room with windows high along the ceiling and walls painted a soothing blue-green. No doubt this was meant to calm down the angry patrons. Along the wall, near a battleship-gray armored door, was a bank of TV monitors and an empty desk.

“No guests yet.”
Jackson
punched a code into the keypad by the door. “But the day is young.” The door opened with a whisper, and
Jackson
gestured for me to enter.

I hesitated, gazing into the dim space beyond. “You first.”

With a grin he pushed through the door, and stood on the other side of the threshold, holding it open for me. “I told you—the cells are empty.”

He was right, of course. The four little cells were virginal—as clean and shiny as a new car. Even so, the bars gave me a chill.

Jackson
was regarding me with a slight, challenging smile. He opened one cell door, and walked in. I remembered a dozen times when we were teenaged lovers, when he would look at me that way, challenging me to ride his motorcycle, to sneak out with him, to run away . . .

I responded as I did all those other times. Took him up on it. I stepped across the threshold into the little cell. “Hmm, vinyl tiling. I was expecting concrete floors,” I said, as if I were all-too-familiar with the dreary decorating of most jails.

“On concrete, it’s too easy for an inmate to bash his cellmate’s head open like a cantaloupe.”
Jackson
pointed to the cot. “Try the bed. It’s bolted down, but it’s got a five-inch mattress.”

“Also bolted down,” I observed, gingerly testing it with my hand. It wouldn’t come away from the bed frame. “Don’t tell me. That’s so the inmate can’t use it to smother his cellmate.”

“You’re catching on. Notice all the video.”

I looked up to the ceiling outside the bars. Three tiny videocams were poised, one on each cell. I was used to cameras, to say the least, but it gave me a shiver. I supposed they would record anything, even the inmate’s use of the steel toilet in the corner. “Are they recording now?”

“Nope. So I guess I’m in trouble, huh?”

It wasn’t quite flirting. But it was enough like it to give me hope. And we were alone, and no one was spying through those little cameras. I could tell—there were no red lights. And, of course, I trusted
Jackson
to tell me the truth.

So I sat down on the bed and patted the bare but fortunately pristine mattress beside me. After a pause, he sat down a few inches away. “Ready to move in?”

“Absolutely. At least it’s finished. My cottage is still in the midst of reconstruction. And my room here in
Wakefield
— the walls are now maroon. Classy and depressing.”

“Your mother must have found the graffiti.”

I remembered it suddenly, that night he climbed up the oak tree and into my window, and with Theresa only a few yards away, we had to made love in absolute silence. At dawn I woke to find him gone, and on the wall a red heart with our initials drawn in permanent marker. I had to move the dresser to hide this evidence of our forbidden love.

Just the memory quickened me. This was an odd place to mount a seduction. But we were alone now. And we could move the actual act elsewhere.

I reached out. I felt strong, for a change. I took his hand.

He looked startled. Not a good sign. I realized that his thoughts hadn’t been going along the same path as mine. But—but I was strong. I didn’t let go.

And then he smiled and gripped my hand. “It’s good to see you again, Laurie.”

That was better. I looked down at our clasped hands and took a deep breath. “Me too. I’ve never forgotten.”

“I know.” He gave my hand a last quick grip and rose. “Let me show you—”

He was going to get away. “Jack, wait.”

He turned, his hand on the cell door.

“I have a favor to ask.”

Jack hesitated only an instant. “Anything, babe.”

“Sleep with me.”

CHAPTER TWELVE

“Here?”

“No. I mean, later.”

I have to confess, I expected an immediate affirmative. I remembered those nights. Didn’t he?

But he was a man now, and wary of surprises. He didn’t say yes. He didn’t say no. He just gripped the iron bar like it would crunch in his hand like a beer can, and said, “Why?”

I didn’t want to answer. I wanted either to sink through the floor or grab him and have him right there on the bare mattress. Instead, I told him what I’d never told anyone, not my best friends, not my sister, not my agent.

“So, see, something bad happened. And I . . . I kind of shut down. I just couldn’t let myself . . . trust anyone that way again.” I couldn’t look at him. “Do you know what I mean?”

He’d been leaning against the closed cell door, but now he stood up straight and came to me. Dropping to his knees in front of me, he took both my hands hard in his. “Laurie, I’m a cop. You know what I’m going to say. If you’ve been hurt the way I think you mean, I got to tell you—you need to report it.”

“I can’t. It’s been too long. Almost a year. It would be hard to prove even if it had just happened. And you see, it would be the end of my career. It was a man I was dating. Someone—famous.” Real famous. “It’s still a man’s industry, you know. He’d probably find some way out of it, because—well, the way it happened.”

“What? He used drugs?”

I didn’t to think about it. “Yes. I don’t remember much. Just . . . the aftermath. But he’d get out of it. And he’d come out the victim, at least among his friends. And he has a lot of friends. Oh, I guess I could play the victim role, you know, go on the talk shows and play it up, but—but I couldn’t. And that’s the only way I could . . . report it and still get work, and then I’d only get disease of the week roles.”

“You have to remember,” he said carefully, “that it could happen again. Not to you, but to someone else.”

I didn’t want to hear that. I’d heard enough in my own head the last year. “That’s not what I want to talk about. I want to talk about—” I couldn’t say it. “Look, I want a life, you know? I’m thirty-five, and I want a child before it’s too late, and that’s not going to happen unless I . . . get over this.”

He drew back, just slightly, enough to let me know he was wary again. “Laurie, honey, I’d do a lot for you. But I already have a child I can’t have with me all the time, and it’s tearing me apart, and I’m not going to father a child only to give it away.”

“I didn’t mean that!” For a moment I thought about it. A child with
Jackson
. But I hastened past that stupid thought. “I just want to get back in the game. To break the ice.”

He shook his head. “You’ve lost me.”

The heat of humiliation spread over my face. “
Jackson
, I mean, I haven’t been able to let a man . . . touch me. Since then. I don’t trust anyone.”

His face hardened. “Laurie, give me his name. I’ll take care of him for you. No one will ever know.”

“That’s not what I want from you!” I took a deep breath and let it out slowly. “It’s just when I saw you again, I realized. I trust you. I always did. No matter what’s happened the last twenty years, you I still trust.”

He smiled slightly. “You ought to. You know I’d never hurt you.”

Something melted inside of me. That calm certainty of his, the plain old easy rightness of him . . . I wasn’t used to that. No one I knew anymore was like that, so entirely sure of his own values. The realization emboldened me. “Well, I was thinking that maybe you could help me get over this. We were good together, back then.”

Understanding dawned on his face. Then interest. Then something else. “Laurie, it’s not that I don’t want to. I do.” He added, “I really do. But—”

When he paused, I said hastily, “Look, I don’t mean that I’m aiming my lasso at you. There’s someone else, not a boyfriend or anyone.” I reminded myself of the man back in the
Hamptons
. A good man. Not in show business. Stable and sensible and . . . and I couldn’t quite remember what he looked like. “Just the architect who is remodeling my house. But he’s someone I might want to marry if I can . . . just get over this.” I added, “I’m okay, I really am. I’ve been tested and all that.” I managed a shaky laugh. “And I’m on the pill, though there’s been no real reason for that for a long time.”

“I’m not worried about that. But—”

I waited, my heart sinking.

“But Michelle and I talked last night on the phone, and we’re going to try again. For Carrie’s sake. We think maybe we didn’t try the long-distance relationship long enough. And—”

Flatly I said, “You’re getting married again.”

“I’m going down there tomorrow. We’ll talk about it. I don’t know yet. If it works. But—” he pressed the heels of his hands against his temples as if he had a headache. “But I know it won’t work, if I don’t commit myself to the attempt. And that means no one else.”

“But—” But I wouldn’t tell, I wanted to say. But it’s just for tonight. I would let you go back to her right in the morning. All I want is your sweet body and a few hours of your time.

But I didn’t say any of that. He looked so honestly anguished about it all. I let that soothe my wounded ego. At least he seemed to
want
to help me.

And I wanted him. Even if that desire seemed destined to go unfulfilled, it felt good just to feel again, to want to touch a man . . .

I didn’t want to tempt him. I didn’t want to tempt me to tempt him. I got up. “Okay. Sorry. Never mind.”

He let me past him, through the cell door, back out through the armored door. “If it weren’t for this, Laurie, you know—”