He rolled over when she told him to, and decided she could solve all the problems of wars, economy, bitter battles, by just getting the key players on her table for an hour.
“You’ve been working out.”
Her voice stroked as expertly as her hands.
“Yeah, some.”
“I can feel it. But your back’s a maze of tension, sweetie.”
He tried to think of the last time anyone, including his mother, had called him sweetie.
“It’s been an interesting few days.”
“
Mmm.
I’m going to show you some stretches, some tension relievers. You can take a couple of minutes to do them whenever you get up from the keyboard.”
She pulled, pressed, twisted, tugged, ground, then rubbed every little shock away until he lay limp as water.
“How’re you doing?” she asked when she smoothed the sheet over him.
“I think I saw God.”
“How did she look?”
He let out a muffled laugh. “Pretty hot, actually.”
“I always suspected that. Take your time getting up. I’ll be back in a couple minutes.”
He’d managed to sit up, mostly wrap the sheet around the important parts, when she walked back in with a glass of water.
“Drink it all.” She cupped his hands around it, then brushed his hair away from his forehead. “You look relaxed.”
“There’s a word between ‘relaxed’ and ‘unconscious.’ I can’t think of it now, but that’s where I am.”
“It’s a good place. I’ll be in the kitchen.”
“Abra.” He took her hand. “It sounds weak and clichéd, but I’m going to say it anyway. You have a gift.”
She smiled, beautifully. “It doesn’t sound weak and clichéd to me. Take your time.”
When he came in she had the soup warming on the stove, and a glass of wine in her hand. “Hungry?”
“I wasn’t, but that smells pretty damn good.”
“Are you up for another walk on the beach first?”
“I could be.”
“Good. The light’s so soft and pretty this time of day. We’ll work up an appetite.” She led the way into the laundry for jackets, zipped up her own hoodie.
“I used the telescope earlier,” she told him as they stepped outside. “It’s a good spot for it.”
“I saw some crime-scene techs poking around by the lighthouse.”
“We don’t have murder as a rule in Whiskey Beach, and fatal accidents don’t draw tourists. It’s important to be thorough. And the more thorough they are, the better it is for you.”
“Maybe so, but I’m connected. Somehow. The local cop asked if there were guns in the house. I hedged because I had this sudden thought that maybe whoever broke in took something out of the gun collection to shoot Duncan.”
“God. I never thought of that.”
“You’ve never been the prime suspect in a murder investigation. Anyway, they’re all there, in place, locked in their cases. When they get the search warrant, and they will, they may take them in for testing. But they’ll already know none of the weapons in Bluff House killed Duncan.”
“Because they’ll know what kind of caliber was used, and maybe even what kind of gun. I’ve watched my share of
CSI
-type TV,” she added. “They’re all antique-type guns in there. I doubt Duncan was shot with a musket or a dueling pistol.”
“Odds are low.”
“Regardless, we’re undoing our earlier work talking about cops and murder.” She shook her hair back when they reached the base of the beach steps, lifted her face to the softening blue of the evening sky. “Do you want to know why I moved to Whiskey Beach? Why it’s my place?”
“Yeah, I do.”
“I’m going to tell you. It’s a good beach-walking story, though I have to start back a ways, to give you the background.”
“One question first, because I’ve been trying to figure it out. What did you do before you came here and started your massage/yoga/jewelry-making/housecleaning business?”
“You mean professionally? I was the marketing director for a nonprofit out of D.C.”
He looked at her—rings on her fingers, hair flying everywhere. “Okay, that one didn’t make the top ten on my list.”
She gave him an elbow poke. “I have an MBA from Northwestern.”
“Seriously?”
“Deadly serious, and I’m jumping ahead. My mother is an amazing woman. An incredibly smart, dedicated, brave,
involved
woman. She had me while she was in grad school, and my father decided it was all more than he signed on for, so they split when I was about two. He’s not really a part of my life.”
“I’m sorry.”
“So was I for a while, but I got over it. My mother’s a human rights attorney. We traveled a lot. She took me with her whenever she could. When she couldn’t, I stayed with my aunt—her sister—or my maternal grandparents. But for the most part I went with her. I got a hell of an education and worldview.”
“Wait a minute. Wait.” The sudden flash had him gaping at her. “Is your mother Jane Walsh?”
“Yes. You know her?”
“Of. Jesus Christ, Jane Walsh? She won the Nobel Peace Prize.”
“I said she was an amazing woman. I wanted to be her when I grew up, but who wouldn’t?” Abra lifted her arms high for a moment, closed her eyes to welcome the wind. “She’s one in a million. One in tens of millions from my point of view. She taught me love and compassion, courage and justice. Initially I thought to follow directly in her footsteps, get a law degree, but God, it so wasn’t for me.”
“Was she disappointed?”
“No. Another very essential lesson she taught me was to follow your own mind and heart.” As they walked, she wound her arm with his. “Was your father disappointed you didn’t follow his?”
“No. We’re both lucky there.”
“Yes, we are. So I went for the MBA, tailored toward working in the nonprofit sector. I was good at it.”
“I bet you were.”
“I felt I was making a contribution, and maybe it didn’t always feel like the perfect fit, but close enough. I liked the work, I liked my life, my circle of friends. I met Derrick at a fund-raiser I spearheaded. Another lawyer. I must be drawn to the field.”
She paused to look out over the sea. “God, it’s beautiful here. I look at the sea every day and think how lucky I am to be here, to see this, to feel it. My mother’s in Afghanistan right now, working with and for Afghani women. And I know we’re both exactly where we’re meant to be, doing what we’re meant to do. But a few years ago, I was in D.C., with a closetful of professional suits, an overloaded desk, a crowded appointment book, and Derrick seemed like the right choice at the right time.”
“But he wasn’t.”
“In some strange way, he was. Smart, charming, intense, ambitious. He understood my work, I understood his. The sex was satisfying, the conversations interesting. The first time he hit me, I let myself believe it was a terrible mistake, an aberration, just a bad moment resulting from stress.”
Because she felt Eli stiffen, she rubbed her free hand on the arm wound with hers. “I saw his temper as passion, and his possessiveness as a kind of flattery. The second time he hit me, I left because once might be a terrible mistake, but twice is the start of a pattern.”
Reaching over, he closed his hand over the one she’d laid on his arm. “Some people don’t see the pattern when they’re in it.”
“I know. I talked to a lot of women in support groups, and understand how you can be persuaded to accept the apology, or begin to believe you deserve the abuse. I got out, and quickly.”
“You didn’t report it.”
Now she sighed. “No, I didn’t. I wanted the leaving to be enough. Why damage his career or put myself into a scandal? I took a short leave of absence rather than explain the black eye to coworkers and friends, and I came here for a week.”
“To Whiskey Beach?”
“Yeah. I’d come here with my mother years ago, then again with my aunt and her family. I had good memories here, so I rented a cottage and walked the beach, gave myself the time, I thought, to heal.”
“You didn’t tell anyone?”
“Not then. I’d made a mistake, and told myself I’d fixed the mistake and to get on with my life. And, as foolish as it was, I was embarrassed. After my leave, I went back to work, but nothing seemed exactly right. Friends started asking what was going on, that Derrick had contacted them, told them I’d had a breakdown, which put me in what I considered the humiliating position of telling them he’d hit me, and I’d left him.”
“But he’d planted seeds.”
She glanced up at him. “It’s another pattern, isn’t it? Yes, he’d planted seeds, enough some sprouted. He knew a lot of people, and he was smart, and he was angry. He dropped little hints here and there about me being unstable. And he stalked me. The thing about being a stalkee is not always knowing it’s happening. I didn’t. Not until I started dating again, casually. Very casually. Look.”
She pointed to a pelican, soaring out over the water, then his fast dive for his evening meal.
“I try to feel sorry for the fish, but I just love watching the pelicans. They have the oddest shape, and it strikes me as ungainly—like a moose—then they compact that way and dive down like a spear.”
Eli turned her to face him. “He hurt you again.”
“Oh God, yes. In more ways than one. I should finish it. No need for all the minute details. My boss got anonymous notes about my behavior, my supposed abuse of drugs, alcohol, sex, my using sex to influence donors. Enough of them he eventually called me in, questioned me. And again I had to humiliate myself—or so it felt at the time—by telling him about Derrick. My superior spoke with his superior, and all hell broke loose.”
Now she took a long, careful breath. “Nasty little things at first. Having my tires slashed, my car keyed. My phone ringing in the middle of the night, repeatedly, with hang ups, finding someone canceled my reservations for lunch or dinner. My computers, work and home, were hacked. The man I was seeing casually had his car windows smashed, and anonymous complaints—ugly ones—sent to his boss. We stopped seeing each other. It wasn’t serious, and it seemed easier.”
“What did the cops do?”
“They talked to him, and he denied everything. He’s very convincing. He told them he’d ended things with me because I was too possessive and had gotten violent. He claimed to be worried about me and hoped I’d get help.”
“A decent cop should’ve seen through that.”
“I think they did, but they couldn’t prove he’d done any of it. It kept going, little things, bigger things, for over three months. I was on edge all the time, and my work was suffering. He started to show up at restaurants where I’d be having lunch or dinner. Or I’d look out my apartment window and see his car drive by, or think I did. We ran in similar circles, lived and worked in the same general area, so because he never approached me the police couldn’t do anything about it.
“I snapped one day when he strolled into the place where I was having lunch with a coworker. I marched over, told him to leave me the hell alone, called him names, created a terrible scene until the woman I worked with got me out.”
“He broke you down,” Eli stated.
“Completely. He stayed absolutely calm through it, or I thought he did. And that night he broke into my apartment. He was waiting for me when I came home. He was out of control, completely out of control. I fought back, but he was stronger. He had a knife—one of mine from my kitchen—and I thought he’d kill me. I tried to get out, but he caught me, and we struggled. He cut me.”
Eli stopped walking, turned to take both of her hands.
“Along my ribs. I still don’t know if it was an accident or he meant to, but I thought I’d be dead, any second, and started screaming. Instead of the knife, he used his fists. He beat me, he choked me, and he was raping me when my neighbors broke in. They’d heard me screaming and called the police, but thank God they didn’t wait for the cops. I think he might’ve killed me, with his bare hands, if they hadn’t stopped him when they did.”
His arms came around her, and she leaned into him. She thought a lot of men backed off when they heard the word “rape.” But not Eli.
She turned to walk again, comforted by his arm around her waist. “I had more than a black eye this time. My mother had been in Africa and came straight back. You’d know all about the process—the tests, the interviews with the police, the counselors, the lawyers. It’s horrible, that reliving of it, and I was angry to be viewed as a victim. Until I learned to accept I was a victim, but I didn’t have to stay one. In the end I was grateful they worked out a plea so I didn’t have to go through it all again in a trial. He went to prison, and my mother took me to this place in the country—a friend’s summer house in the Laurel Highlands. She gave me space, but not too much. She gave me time—long quiet walks, long crying jags, midnight baking sessions with tequila shots. God, oh God, she’s the most wonderful woman.”
“I’d like to meet her.”
“Maybe you will. She gave me a month, and then she asked me what I wanted to do with my life. The stars are coming out. We should walk back.”
They turned, walking now with the evening breeze at their backs. “What did you tell her?”
“I told her I wanted to live at the beach. I wanted to see the ocean every day. I told her I wanted to help people, but I couldn’t face going back to an office, going back to appointments and meetings and strategy sessions. I blubbered because I was sure she’d be disappointed in me. I had the education, the skills, the experience to make a difference. I had been making a difference, and now I just wanted to see the ocean every day.”
“You were wrong. About her being disappointed.”
“I was wrong. She said I should find my place, and I should live my life in a way that satisfied me, that made me happy. So I came here, and I found ways to make myself happy and satisfied. I might not be here, doing what I really love, if Derrick hadn’t broken me.”
“He didn’t break you. I don’t believe in fate, in destiny, in absolutes, but sometimes it smacks you in the face. You’re where you’re meant to be because you’re meant to be here. I think you’d have found your way.”
“That’s a nice thought.” She stood on the bottom beach step, turned to him, laid her hands on his shoulders. “I have been happy here, and more open here than I ever was before. I made a very deliberate decision a year or so ago to go on my sexual fast because, though I’d met some very nice men, none of them fulfilled that part of me that may have been damaged more than I admitted. It’s a lot to lay on you, Eli, but I’d really appreciate it if you’d help me break my fast.”