Authors: Denise Townsend
When he returned, River had stopped crying. She hadn’t moved, however, except for her shivering, and she barely seemed to register when he handed her the small cup.
“Take a sip, honey,” Fen told her.
She looked up at him but her eyes were unseeing as fat tears formed anew.
“Don’t call me that,” she said, and then she was sobbing as hard as she had on the beach.
Reconsidering his original plan, Fen reclaimed her cup and set both his and hers on the coffee table before gathering River up in his arms.
“Shhh,” he soothed, rocking her as he would a child while he made quiet, comforting noises.
When she finally stopped sobbing, he lifted her chin so he could meet her red, swollen eyes.
“Tell me what happened, lass.”
And she did. It all came out in a confusing string of sentences that Fen couldn’t begin to translate.
“Rick came to the bowling alley, and he was a dick. But then I yelled at Leo and Jason was so sad about it all, and Sheriff White obviously thinks I’m some idiot woman who can’t sort herself out to save her life. And I was so mean to Leo, and all he wants to do is help…”
More tears dripped, as Fen tried to sort out River’s emotional tangle. Regret was the easiest thing to begin with, as River was attaching the emotion so obviously to this “Leo”.
“Who’s Leo?” Fen asked, gently. He was determined to get to the bottom of River’s story, tonight. The woman in his arms was so close to breaking, and he knew it all sprang from some central trauma she was determined to cover up.
“Leo found me. He saved me. And I think he loves me.”
None of that made sense to Fen, except what River was feeling.
“And you love him,” he told her, gently.
“I can’t,” was her only answer, her eyes sliding from Fen’s face in misery.
“Why not?”
“I can’t trust him.”
“That’s not what you’re feeling, River. You feel like you know that’s a lie.” Fen paused as River made a sound like a wounded animal.
“I think you know you can trust him, and that you do already trust him. But you don’t want to.”
River buried her face in her hands.
“Let’s start from the beginning. How did Leo save you?”
River looked up at Fen, and the selkie could feel her deciding whether or not to tell him. He could sense it was a big step for her to do so; that she hadn’t talked about what happened with anyone. Indeed, her trauma over the memories was so intense that he caught a flash, just a glimpse, of a red-headed woman in an official-looking uniform taking notes as River heard her own words coming from her mouth with emotionless specificity. Fen realized he was seeing the last time River talked about whatever happened to her.
She’s been closed up this entire time, Fen realized. She must have told this woman, probably the police, about what happened and then bottled it up entirely to let it fester away inside of her. No wonder she’s about to collapse.
“I told you about my parents, about how they didn’t give Jason and me a lot of stability,” River said at the same time she reached for her dram. Fen nodded, as River took a long swallow, then another, and another. When the glass was empty, River sat back on the sofa, wrapping herself up like a caterpillar in the afghan. When she spoke again her voice was throaty from the whisky.
“Well, I made a promise to myself as a girl that I would grow up to give Jason all that my parents couldn’t. I know that sounds kinda dramatic, but it really wasn’t. Jason and I have always gotten along really well, and he’s easy to live with. I think I also needed something to focus on, when I was a kid. Our parents are good people in a lot of ways, but they weren’t great parents. They liked to party, and they liked drama.”
“Did they abuse you?” Fen asked, rather bluntly.
“Oh, no, nothing like that. They were just always fighting, and running away with other people. So my brother and I moved a lot, all over the country. Jason and I went to thirteen schools, total, in eighteen years.”
“That must have been hard, for making friends and stuff.”
“Yeah, it was. We pretty much only ever had each other. So then I turned eighteen, and I took Jason to live with my dad’s relatives, down in Louisiana.”
“How’d that turn out?”
“Great, actually. My dad’s Cajun, and his family is amazing. All crazy as hell, but wonderful people. We rented a little trailer out on my grandma’s land, and we had four whole years in the same place while I went to college in Lafayette, all paid for by scholarships.”
“Why’d you leave?”
“My dad wanted to move in with us. My mom had left him again, and this time she seemed genuinely happy with her new guy. So he turned to us. And we were staying with his family, so it’s not like we could say no. But the drama started back up immediately. He started dating an alcoholic, and she crashed his truck into a tree. My dad tried to be her white knight and claim that he was driving, so his insurance went through the roof. He lost the car, and then he lost the job he’d gotten because he couldn’t get to work. And then my mom decided she wasn’t happy, and he wanted us all to move in together, again, like Jason and I were still kids.
“But then my uncle died, and left me some money. So I brought Jason up here. I figured it was as far as I could get from Louisiana, and it was far too cold for my parents to want to follow. But my brother loves the sea, and I fell in love with Eastport when I visited a boyfriend here.”
“So you moved here, and started your business, and you did what you said you were going to do: you gave Jason stability.”
“For a long time, yes. We were here about four years before everything was really secure, but then I finally figured out how to make the business work, and the house was paid for, and everything seemed golden.”
“So what happened?”
River sighed, looking longingly at the bottle of Laphroig still on the island. Fen went to fetch it, pouring her another small dram. She took a grateful sip before continuing.
“Then I met Trevor Walton. I hadn’t dated much in Eastport, except for a couple of Coast Guard guys I knew were only here for a little while. Everything was so busy for a long time, and Eastport is such a small town. I knew from watching my mom and dad’s lives how relationships-gone-sour can really ruin a person’s life in a place as tiny as Eastport, where you can’t get away from your ex, and where everyone knows your business. So I didn’t want to date loads of people until I knew the lay of the land.”
“So who is Trevor?”
“Who was Trevor,” River answered, with a pained expression. “The Waltons are Eastport’s true swanks–rich folk from bigger cities who summer in Maine. I knew they were summer folk, but that’s all I knew. I also knew they’d been here forever, if not all year round, and that everyone knew them.
“So when Trevor started coming in my store, I was intrigued. He and his family were only here in summers, so if a relationship didn’t work out, it wouldn’t be the end of the world. That he was handsome and charming didn’t hurt, and he was really nice to Jason.”
“So you started dating?”
“Eventually. He came home from graduate school to work on his thesis in January, and I finally told him I’d go out with him in February. At first it was wonderful.”
Fen could feel River’s emotions building inside of her as she talked, a dark miasma of anger, regret and residual fear.
“Turns out the Waltons weren’t just swanks, they were Swanks. They were incredibly wealthy, like the kind of wealthy that rides in helicopters and has live-in staff.
“But at first Trevor seemed down to earth. He drove his own car; he’d make his own sandwiches. I marveled at how well adjusted he was, considering. Until there came the day I first told him ‘no’.”
River took another sip of her dram before setting it down. Fen was surprised at what she did next, cuddling up next to him and resting her shoulder on his chest. He was still naked but for the sealskin draped over his shoulders, and she shared her afghan with him, letting her small hand rest on the warm skin of his hip.
“The first time he freaked out was when he asked me to take a week off, suddenly, and go with him to Paris. He wanted to do some research for something in his thesis. But I had a store to run, and Jason to take care of, and I told him that I couldn’t just take off. Trevor flipped out. It’s like I’d told him I was sleeping with somebody else. He was screaming, beating on his steering wheel. He was like another person.”
“What’d you do?”
“I got out of the car, walked home and locked my doors. He came by a couple of hours later with flowers, apologizing. Said he was under a lot of stress and that he’d never do it again.”
Fen stroked a hand over River’s silky dark hair. “And you forgave him.”
“Yes, but I was more careful. And I started to see more signs he wasn’t all there. He’d get mad at little things, or he’d expect things from people that just weren’t reasonable. Like he had a maid fired for not answering his personal cell phone once, when he’d never told her that she should do that. But he felt like he’d missed an important call because of her, so he had his dad fire her.
“And the more stuff I noticed, the more I backed off. But the more I backed off, the harder he pursued me. It became ridiculous, with him giving me all these presents I didn’t want. Plus he was basically stalking me, making sure he knew where I was at all times.”
“Sounds quite psycho, really,” Fen said, dampening his empathic output so that River wouldn’t become distracted by Fen’s own anger at this Trevor person.
“Well, turns out he was. The irony is that I always told myself I’d never be like my mom or dad, with their string of losers. So I pick the one guy in Eastport to date who seems great on the surface, but who turns out to be not a flake, no, but a violent sociopath.”
River’s emotions turned to fury, which quickly morphed into such bleak despair that Fen actually gasped. River smoothed a hand down his chest, realizing her empathic selkie must feel her own pain.
“What happened?” Fen asked, dreading the truth. For he’d seen that network of fine scars, offset only by rougher, uglier marks, crisscrossing her body.
“I broke it off with Trevor one night. I did it at the shop, figuring I’d be safer there. I told him to stop by after we closed, which was at about six. I told Jason to pick me up at seven, assuming he’d be a good excuse to leave if Trevor was trying to talk me out of something, or whatever.
“But Trevor must have figured out what I was going to do by my tone, or something. Some creepy sixth sense, who knows. When I told him I didn’t want to see him anymore, he pulled out a rope. He tied me up and beat the shit out of me for a solid hour. He had a knife with him, and a Zippo. He used it to cut me, or he’d heat it up and burn me. He was hard the whole time, sometimes masturbating on me, although he never raped me. It was when he started strangling me that Jason walked in.”
As she’d told Fen her story, River’s voice had been completely flat, her face a mask of calm Fen knew hid a blaze of emotions. He felt them washing over him—all the horror and despair of that night coupled with a guilt so profound it was crushing.
“What did Jason do?”
“He walked up to Trevor and snapped his neck. Just broke it, like he was wringing the life out of one of his chickens. There’s no doubt he saved my life; a few seconds more and Trevor would have crushed my windpipe.”
Fen didn’t respond right away. He just tightened his hold on River, hugging her close and letting her feel his acceptance of her words.
“Your brother saved your life,” the selkie said, eventually.
“Yes. And I ruined his. He’s now seen as a killer. He was in jail, for a whole week, while Trevor’s family tried to get him indicted for murder. And I couldn’t do shit, because I was in the hospital.”
With that, River sat up, extricating herself from Fen’s hug and the blankets in which she was wrapped. She stood, angrily, stalking over to peer out of the glass doors at the back of her house.
“So I did all of this,” River said, her emotions slamming into Fen. “I let someone in who betrayed us. I made Jason into a killer. I ruined his life. I…”
River’s voice faded. Fen could see tears dripping down her cheeks, reflected in the glass doors.
Fen thought through what she said, and what she felt, and he made a decision.
“River,” the selkie said, in a commanding voice that made the woman turn her head towards him. “No more of that talk. Such talk ends now.”
She turned fully, anger rising within her as she prepared to argue. But Fen was serious.
“No, River. This ends. Now.”
Chapter Eleven
River’s eyes narrowed at Fen, her Cajun temper quickly replacing all the guilt he was feeling seconds before.
“Don’t tell me what will and will not end, in my own house,” she started, but he didn’t let her finish.
Instead, he used his preternatural speed to cross the room to her, his mouth crushing against hers to stop the flow of words.
She returned his kiss, but angrily, her lust finding expression in her outpouring of temper.
When he pulled away abruptly, her expression was stormy but her eyes were dark with desire.