M Sellars - Perfect Trust

“How long before you think you’ll be completely over it?” I asked.

“Aye, that’s going to depend on you.”

My truck was parked nose first beyond the gated fence that hemmed in our back yard. Felicity pulled her vehicle up to the chain-link barrier and popped the stick into neutral.

We sat in silence for a long moment, simply listening to the world continuing about its business around us. The Doppler-affected sound of tires against wet pavement grew in the distance, achieved its peak as they made their way past us, and then faded into oblivion on the opposite side. The Jeep’s engine idled softly in the background. The on-again, off-again mechanical whirr of the windshield wipers kept time in a widely spaced rhythm, setting a languid tempo that kept you waiting expectantly for the next beat. In a half bare tree next to us, a raven punctuated all of it with a trio of forlorn caws, leaving the moment to hang in the moist air before falling silent once again.

Even with the heater running, the damp chill was working its way into my bones. On top of that, I was still dying for a cigarette and didn’t have any of the nicotine gum with me that had thus far been my only barrier between abstinence and re-kindling the habit.

“So you think maybe we should go inside?” I asked.

“I’d love to, but I have a shoot to do and I’ve already rescheduled it once,” my wife told me. “I’d rather not lose the account.”

“Supermodels?” I asked jokingly.

“Sure,” she replied, her own tenor lightened somewhat. “Super new models of anodized cookware for a catalog. Want to come along?”

“I think I’ll pass.” I gave her a weak grin.

“I thought you might.”

“Actually, I could really use some sleep.”

“That makes the two of us,” she returned. “But I’ll have to wait for mine.”

“Sorry,” I apologized for something I could do nothing about.

“Maybe yours should too, then…” she added, voice trailing off at the end.

“Why? Jealous?”

“No.” She shook her head to punctuate the reply. “I just don’t want you wandering again. And since I won’t be here…”

“I see.” I nodded. “I’ll try to stay in one place until you get back. Deal?”

“Aye.”

“Okay. Since I don’t have my keys, any chance you could unlock the house for me before you go?”

“Oh,” she replied, “Ben said he’d have them put your keys in the mailbox.”

“Good enough.” I leaned over and gave her a kiss then unlatched my door.

“Row,” Felicity called after me as I climbed out. “Speaking of deals…”

I turned back to see there was still a hint of concern in her eyes. Her hand was extended toward me, and in it was the business card Ben had given her.

“Promise me you’ll call for an appointment.” She made the statement more as a gentle command than a request.

I’d almost escaped, for another few hours at least. I should have known better though, as this was something she perceived as far too important to wait. I sighed heavily and nodded as I reached back in and took the card from her. She was correct, I’d made a deal with both of them, and my own principles wouldn’t allow me to back out.

“Promise,” she softly demanded again.

“I promise,” I told her.

I stood in the driveway and watched her back out then followed with my eyes as she headed off down the street in the direction of Highway 40. When she was no longer in sight, I made my way along the flagstone walkway and then climbed the stairs to our front porch.

My keys had been exactly where Ben had said they would be. After retrieving them I had unlocked the door and tripped my way across the room as our English setter and Australian cattle dog expressed their great relief that someone had finally come home after being gone, in their doggish perception of time, forever. I punched in my alarm code and followed with a second series of key presses. A prerecorded female voice issued from the panel announcing that it had switched from the away mode to the stay-at-home setting. Basically, switching off the motion sensors but resetting and rearming the doors and windows.

I’d never really thought all that much about the household alarm system. It was something we had really only used whenever we were out of the house, and then only to protect “stuff.” It had always been there for the express purpose of guarding our possessions. These days, however, it had served yet another purpose. Protecting us.

In the month following the incident on the Old Chain of Rocks Bridge, I’d had the system upgraded. Every window in the house had been equipped with sensors and cell technology had been added to avoid the alarm being disabled by simply cutting the phone lines. There were additional motion detectors and even secondary panels added to main rooms to allow for quick access to panic buttons. It all seemed so terribly paranoid to me at times, and Felicity had definitely thought it to be overkill, which she had told me in no uncertain terms. But I did it anyway. I wasn’t going to take any chances. I knew that Eldon Andrew Porter was still out there no matter what anyone else believed, and I had no doubt that he would eventually be coming for me.

Now that I was inside and secure, my first order of business was to go in search of a piece of nicotine gum. I hadn’t even tried to hide my withdrawal-like symptoms from Felicity since I had at one time been a smoker. Of course, I’d recently discovered that I hadn’t succeeded in hiding anything else anyway, so it wouldn’t have mattered. At any rate, I didn’t have to get the gum from a secreted stash. However, I did have to remember where I’d last put it. Once I found the box and quelled the immediate crisis level desire for a cigarette, I set about finding anything I possibly could do in order to waste time.

After a round of behind the ear scratches for the boisterous canines I disabled the back door sensor long enough to let them out-then back in once they’d discovered that the weather was not what they’d expected. Our three felines, Emily, Dickens, and Salinger, were nowhere to be seen, so I simply filled their food bowls and moved on to something else.

There were a few dishes in the sink, left over from the night before, so I took my time washing, drying, and putting them away. I could have simply loaded them into the dishwasher, but that wouldn’t have taken near as long.

I thumbed through the mail that had occupied the box along with my keys, discarding several pieces of poorly targeted direct market advertising in the process. After extracting those items pertinent to my consulting business, I tossed the remainder into the basket next to the front door.

Before starting up the stairs to my office, I took a moment to listen to the messages on our personal answering machine. Two hang-ups and one quick hello from a friend who was inquiring about what to bring to the Yule ritual we’d planned for a few days hence. I started to jot a note down as a reminder to call him but found that the notepad, which normally lived by the phone, had apparently gone AWOL. A quick search through my pockets for a scrap to write on rewarded me with two things-the pad containing the repetitious morbid rhyme and the business card of Doctor Helen Storm.

I rubbed my bearded chin absently with the back of my free hand while I stared at the simple calling card. I’d very consciously been putting this moment off, but I’d made a promise, and there definitely wasn’t anything pressing at the moment that should keep me from making the call. Nothing I hadn’t purposely produced for that very reason at least.

With a resigned sigh I snatched up the handset and punched in the phone number from the upper right corner of the card. Even in my tired fog, my mind began calculating, and I latched on to the idea that it was probably going to be at least a week or two before she’d be able to get me in. That might very well give me enough time to prove I was correct about Paige Lawson, although even I wasn’t entirely sure what I was being correct about.