When She Was Bad: A Thriller (30 page)

He hopped out of bed, crossed the room without a trace of a limp, on an artifical leg so natural he could hardly even remember which leg it was, and opened the door. Lil (that’s what she wanted to be called, to signify the consolidation of her two identities) was standing there with both arms so full of kindling she couldn’t manage the door latch.

Lyssy stepped back, ushered her in with a gallant sweep of his arm, then stepped out onto the porch. The clearing too was bathed in a roseate light. “You feel like going down to the rock?”

She joined him, brushing leaves and twigs from the front of her sweater. She was wearing that soft brown cashmere number—without a bra, Lyssy couldn’t help but notice as they negotiated the rocky path around the side of the cabin and down to the flat rock overhanging the creek.

But he wasn’t in a sexy mood—just mellow. Mellow as the sunset as he followed Lil onto the rock. She took off her sandals and dangled her legs over the side, her bare toes idly stirring the silvery clear, slow-moving current. Lyssy stood over her, looking down into the water. “See those waterbugs there, right on the surface?” she said, pointing to a few tiny, nearly transparent insects with two wide round paddles, larger than their bodies, for feet. “You know why they have those big feet? It’s so when fish look up, they think, ‘Duh-uh, those must belong to some really humongous bug, no way I could swallow that.’”

Lyssy laughed. “Maybe that’s what Bigfoot is—some monkey three or four feet high, with
really big feet.
” He lowered himself easily, even gracefully—his new leg was
amazing,
it felt like it was becoming
part
of him—and stretched out athwart the sun-warmed rock with his head in her lap. You couldn’t actually see the sun from here, but the sky was a melting rainbow of colors and the creek a fiery red-gold ribbon. “I probably asked you this before, but I can’t remember. How long did you say we get to stay here?”

“Forever,” she said without hesitation.

“And is it…real?”

She smiled down at him, her face in shadow, curtained by her dark brown hair. “You can have forever, or you can have real,” she told him, “but honey, you can’t have ’em both.”

Lyssy smiled back at her. “Forever,” he said dreamily. “I’ll take forever.”