Alafair Burke: Long Gone

He snapped his Montblanc into his coat pocket and tapped the contract against the steering wheel. “Excellent question, Alice.” Stepping out of the car, he glanced back at her. “I guess we’ll find out, won’t we?”

J oann Stevenson felt a tongue between her toes and jerked her leg back, letting out a high-pitched squeal.

“Sebastian!”

Her shih tzu matched her yelp as he leaped to the floor, then back onto the bed near her head. She couldn’t help but giggle as his fluffy nine pounds bounced around her pillow.

“I thought you said we had to be quiet.”

She felt a warm mouth against the back of her neck. This time, the kisses were definitely not Sebastian’s.

“We do have to be quiet.”

“Mmm, you sure about that?”

She felt Mark’s bare skin against hers beneath the sheets. Felt his knee rub against the back of hers. She turned to face him. Saw him smile before he kissed her.

“Very sure.”

“Absolutely certain?”

She raised a finger to his lips. “Be very, very quiet.”

She fumbled for one of Sebastian’s smooshy toys from the top of the nightstand and tossed it across the room. He happily followed.

“Good dog,” Mark whispered.

She hadn’t been kidding about the need for silence. They stifled their giggles and adjusted their bodies as necessary with each squeak of the mattress, each knock of the headboard against the bedroom wall. She struggled to choke back her own sounds at that crucial moment. Bit her lip so hard she thought she might bleed.

Afterward, they shared silly, silent, sweat-soaked grins. She nestled her way into the crook of his right arm and placed her head on his chest.

“I don’t want to move.”

“Me neither.”

“You’re a scientist. Can’t you invent a machine that lets us hit pause and stay here naked for a week while the rest of the world remains still?”

“I adore you, Joann, but I don’t think either one of us would be faring very well if we kept this up for a week straight.”

“We could pause for showers and nourishment.”

“Now that sounds like a plan.”

A monotone beeping erupted beside her, and she let out a pained groan as she slapped the top of the alarm clock.

“Do I even want to know what time it is?”

She gave herself twenty minutes between snooze alerts, and the latest round of beeping marked the end of the third respite. “Eight o’clock.”

“Crap. I need to be on campus by nine. So how are we sneaking me out of here?”

After fifteen years as a single mother, Joann had never-not once, not ever-allowed a man to spend the night in her bed while Becca was home. Sleepovers in front of her kid were a strict no-no on Joann’s list of self-imposed rules. But she’d known the previous night that Becca would be out with her friends until ten. And things with Mark had heated up when she’d asked him inside after the restaurant. She’d known him for two months now. Had hit double digits in dates. And he was-well, he was different.

So she’d broken her own rules. As if she were the high-schooler and Becca the parent, Joann had sneaked Mark into her bedroom before Becca returned home. Left Becca a note in the kitchen: “Decided to hit the hay early. Knock if you need anything. Apples and really tasty cheddar in the fridge if you want a snack. Love, Mom.”

Now she had to sneak the boy out.

She climbed from bed and pulled on her dog-walking sweat suit. Sebastian hopped excitedly at her feet. She cracked open the bedroom door, listening for the usual household sounds. Becca’s sleep schedule was unpredictable. Sometimes she sprung from bed at the crack of dawn to surf the Net or to catch up on whatever TiVo’d show she wanted to kibitz about with her friends at school. Other times, she was truly her mother’s daughter, hitting the snooze button until Joann had to drag her from bed.

The house was silent.

“Coast is clear,” she whispered.

She admired the leanness of Mark’s body as he pulled on the jeans and striped shirt he’d worn the previous night. Forty-five years old, but the man looked good. She waved him into the hallway, past her daughter’s room. At the top of the stairs, he took her hand and pointed to the first step. They took each step in synchronicity, walking with a single gait. She gave him a quick good-bye kiss at the door, then watched him through the living room window, making his way to the Subaru he’d parked on the street, two houses down.

She heard a low growl and looked down to see Sebastian with one of her UGGs in tow.

“Hold your horses, little man.” She leashed him up, then paused at the bottom of the staircase, wondering whether to wake Becca before their walk. Becca could get dressed in ten minutes flat when necessary, and it was good to see the girl get some much-needed sleep.

She and Sebastian kept their usual pace on the usual route around the usual block. Most people-and dogs for that matter-would have tired of this morning routine long ago, but she liked to think that both she and Sebastian appreciated this ten-minute ritual as “their” time. Between raising a kid and working full-time as a records clerk at the hospital, life tended toward chaos. At least she and Seb could count on their walks.

Unlike too many of her mornings, Joann found her thoughts during this particular jaunt to be peaceful. In the fifteen years she’d been trying to build a life for Becca, Joann had been lonely. She had a few friends at the hospital, but they were married with younger children and didn’t have the need for friendships that extended past working hours. She had met some men along the way, but none of them ever stuck. She had a kid, after all. She had all of her rules as a result. Not many men were willing to abide. And the few who had? None had ever turned out to be worth what felt, to Joann at least, like an awful lot of effort.

Until Mark. She’d met him at the prospective-students reception she had forced Becca to attend. Becca fostered fantasies of attending design school at Parsons in New York City, but Joann certainly couldn’t afford the tuition, and the last thing she wanted for her kid was to be unemployed and saddled with debt at the age of twenty-two. She was hell-bent on getting her into a state four-year college.

Even with her single-mother status hanging out there for all to see, given the nature of the event, she’d been certain Mark was interested. He’d gone out of his way to catch up to her and Becca after the panel discussion to speak to her about the university’s physics department. Becca barely hid her indifference, but Joann feigned a deep interest in the school’s brand-new lab facilities. When she finally said good-bye, she was disappointed he didn’t ask for her number. But two days later, there he was, roaming the hallways of St. Clare’s Dover General Hospital in search of the records department.

“Are you lost?” she’d asked.

“Not anymore. Call me old-fashioned, but I just couldn’t hit on you in front of your daughter. It’s okay I’m here, right? If not, if I read things wrong the other night, I can-I don’t know, awkwardly excuse myself with some ridiculous cover story?”

“As curious as I am to hear what you’d come up with, no, a cover story is definitely not necessary.”

They were two months in, and nothing about Mark had once felt like work. They talked, dined, walked, kissed, and made love effortlessly. She kept reminding herself to take it day by day, but she found herself imagining a future with him.

And it wasn’t only her love life that was falling into place. After a few rough teenage months, Becca seemed to be back to her normal self. No more skipped classes. No more missed curfews. She’d even set aside some of her more rebellious ways, hanging out with a few of the popular kids at school.