Julia Spencer-Fleming - I Shall Not Want

"I'm not going to stop loving her just because she's dead." His voice was harsh.

"I know that. I don't expect you to. I meant you need to love me wholly, not half want me, half blame me for Linda's death."

"I don't-" he began.

"Oh, for God's sake!" She glanced toward the stairs and continued in a lower tone. "Can't we at least be honest about that? If you hadn't stopped to get me out of trouble, if you hadn't been with me, Linda would be alive right now."

He shook his head.

"It's true!" She jumped to her feet. "Admit it! Admit it!"

"All right, dammit! Yes! If I hadn't gone into that goddam barn, my wife would still be alive." He surged to his feet and grabbed her by the upper arm. "But don't you see? You would have been dead. You would have been the one to die. And that's what's killing me. I can't regret that. I can't be sorry. Christ, I can't imagine a world without you in it, Clare. But that means Linda was an acceptable loss. It means I chose you over her." He dropped her arm and ground his fists into his temples. "If you knew how many times I've replayed that afternoon over and over and over in my head, every decision I made, every word I said… and the hell of it is, I never, ever make the right decision. Because there is no right decision. I'll never be right on this. And if I just… come to you with open arms and a big smile on my face, it's like I'm spitting on her grave."

He turned away from her. Ran his good hand over his face. It came away wet. She touched his back, pressed her palm between his shoulder blades. Skin to skin.

"Don't," he said, not sure what he was forbidding her. Don't love me? Don't comfort me? Don't touch me, because I don't know how many of your touches I can withstand before I break?

"Dear heart," she said, "you have got to see a therapist."

It was so practical, so Clare , that he almost laughed. Instead he made a noise. "I don't need a goddam therapist. I just need some time to figure things out."

Her hand dropped away. "Because you're doing such a good job of it." Her voice was dry.

He looked at the reddened flesh on his knuckles. The bruises were starting to emerge. "I have to go," he said, his voice almost inaudible. He strode toward the kitchen, pulled his shirt back over his head, and put his glasses on. The kitchen sprang into focus, cheap white fittings and warm pine. Yanking on his jacket, he kept his eyes on the calendar by the door. A bunch of men in togas stared at each other, drop-mouthed at the flames sprouting from their heads. He wondered if the fiery hairdos were a blessing or a punishment. He took hold of the brass knob. Opened it to the cooling darkness beyond her door.

Behind him, he heard a ca-chunk as she walked into the kitchen. He inhaled. He was a jerk, but he wasn't enough of a jerk to walk out without facing her. He turned around.

She looked as miserable as he felt. Great. He had come here to make sure she was all right. Instead, he had screwed with her head and kicked her in the teeth. And still-still-he wanted her. If she opened her arms, he'd take her right here on the kitchen floor, no questions asked. God, he was pond scum.

"How do you stand me?" he asked her. "Most of the time, I can't even stand me."

Her eyes filled with tears. She opened her mouth. Shut it again. Shook her head.

His throat tightened so that he wasn't sure he could get anything out. "I'm sorry. I never meant to hurt you."

She nodded. Wiped her eyes with the heels of her hands. "I knew what I was getting into, remember?" She gave him a fractured smile. "I said we were going to break our hearts."

She shouldn't have come to the parish picnic. She was behind on her reading for the criminology course. The house was an ungodly mess, and she had at least four loads of laundry to do. And to top it off, every time she turned around, there was another cheerful Episcopalian trying to get to know her. It made her miss the enormous Christian Community church she had taken the kids to in LA. It had been big enough to disappear into.

Hadley fished another Coke out of the ice-filled red-and-white cooler and rolled the dripping can over the back of her neck before popping the top. The things she did for her kids and granddad. At least the view was spectacular. The Muster Field stretched out a good quarter mile atop one of the rolling hills that characterized Cossayuharie. Across the two-lane county highway at its front and on either side, the land fell away in hillocked pastures studded with outcroppings of flinty bedrock and bouquets of nettles. Behind her, the forest that threatened to cover everything in this northern kingdom pressed against the uneven stone wall that outlined the field.

It was one of the few spots that she had seen in Washington County where the sky was huge: summer blue, piled with mountain-high cumulus clouds as bleached-white as the linen shirts worn by the other group that had come out for the Memorial Day weekend, a company of Revolutionary-era reenactors. They were marching and kneeling, loading and reloading in front of their canvas tents, authentically decked out in mid-eighteenth-century breeches and coats. How they didn't keel over in those layers of wool was a mystery to Hadley.

"They look hot, don't they?" A middle-aged woman dug through the fast-melting ice to pull out a root beer.

"Mmm-hmm." The minimum response to be polite.

"One year, they had two men pass out from sunstroke. They had to get the ambulance up here, there was a big hullabaloo, and then as soon as they'd been carted away to the hospital? The rest of them started drilling again."

Hullabaloo? What next, twenty-three skiddoo?

"I'm Betsy Young," the woman said, reaching for Hadley's hand. "I'm the music director."

Hadley shook. They both had palms as cold and damp as fish from the chest-sized cooler. "Hadley Knox," she said.

"I know. We're all so thrilled you came out from California to take care of your grandfather."

Whoa. Was that what they were saying? "Actually, he invited me before he ever had his heart attack and surgery. He was the one helping me out, not the other way around."

"Really?" Betsy Young's bright expression invited Hadley to Tell Her All About It.

"Really."

"Ah. Well. I actually wanted to speak to you about your son."

" Hudson?" Hadley scanned the area around the grumbling granite stones at the shady rear of the Muster Field. The children, bored by the authentic firearms and tactics- Hudson complained they only fired their muskets once every half hour-had converted the three-century-old memorials into a combination obstacle course and battlefield. Their reenactment had far more explosions, automatic gunfire, and light sabers than that of the reconstituted Fifth Volunteer Highlanders.

"How old is he?"

"Nine. Why?"

Betsy took a drink of root beer before answering. "I've wanted, for a long time now, to have a children's choir here at St. Alban's. When Father Hames was rector, there just wasn't any opportunity. He was a wonderful man, very learned, but he did tend to appeal to an older crowd, God rest his soul. Since we've had Reverend Clare, things have perked up quite a bit."

Hadley wondered if the music director had heard about the assault at the church Friday night. Reverend Clare hadn't mentioned it at the service this morning; hadn't shown any sign of it-except, maybe, for a kind of emotionally bruised look in her eyes. Which Hadley might never have noticed if she hadn't heard about the Christies' arrest from Deputy Chief MacAuley.

"We've had quite a few families join in the past three years, and we finally have enough children in the right age range for me to give it a go. So what do you think?"