Perri O’Shaughnessy - Breach Of Promise

“What?” Rachel said, stepping back. “No. You’re lying. Mike?”

“Let’s go back inside,” he said, taking her arm and casting a furious look back at Lindy. “We’ll talk there.” He tugged her arm but she shook him off.

“No, we’ll talk now,” Rachel said. “Is it true?”

“Yes, it’s true.”

Mike had been standing almost exactly between the two women, but now stepped up to stand closer to Rachel. At the same moment, Sammy took his place beside Lindy. She put a hand down to pet him, but even Sammy’s warm fur was no solace. She watched Mike with Rachel. She saw by the way he looked at Rachel he was lost to her, enchanted.

Mike took Rachel’s hand. “Rachel, for as long as we’re together, I swear I’ll never touch another woman. This was…” His mouth moved, but he couldn’t articulate whatever it was he was thinking.

During the pause that followed, Rachel seemed to calm down. She appeared to be thinking. “I know what it was,” she said finally, breaking into a terrible smile. “A consolation prize, right, Mike? It’s only fair to offer a cheap consolation prize to the pathetic loser.”

“Now, Rachel, let’s just go. Don’t start something,” Mike said calmly, trying to pull her up the path to the house.

“He loves me,” Lindy said. “He has always loved me.”

“If he loves you so much,” Rachel said, “what’s he doing over here with me? No, wait. Don’t say anything. Let me answer that for you.

“He’s over here with me because he knows we’re just about to climb right back into that big bed upstairs for the kind of really hot sex you’re too worn out to give him these days. Yeah,” she said looking hard at Lindy. “My suggestion is you stick to dark beaches and rooms without lamps from here on out. The light is not your friend.”

“Don’t speak to me like that! Mike?”

But Mike had no control over Rachel. “Oh, come on,” she said. “I’m not saying anything you don’t notice every morning when you look in the mirror at those icky crowfeet and run for the makeup bag.”

“Stop this!” Mike tugged hard on Rachel’s arm, but she did not budge.

“If Mike didn’t have money you’d be out of here so fast we wouldn’t even have to smell the stink of your exhaust fumes!” Lindy said.

“Temper, temper, Lindy. I understand you get… kind of crazy when you’re upset. Mike warned me about you,” Rachel said.

“I…” Lindy said, unable to frame a sentence, the anger in her welling up so high and so deep it threatened to drown her.

“I have an idea!” Rachel said excitedly. “Let’s be friends. Let bygones be bygones. That’s the civilized way to go about this, isn’t it? And as a token of our new relationship, I’m gonna invite you up to the house right now. Isn’t that a good idea, Mike?” she said eagerly. “Don’t you think that would be just lovely?”

“Well…” Mike said. He shuffled his feet clumsily on the ground as if he were trying to establish a foothold in quicksand.

“Really, how about that for fair?” She took Mike’s arm. “C’mon Mike. Let’s invite her right upstairs with us. Remind the old sow how it’s done.”

Lindy ran toward her and wrenched her away from Mike. “You wouldn’t know love if it bit you right in your bony ass!” She pummeled Rachel with her fists all too briefly before Mike flew up behind her, pinning her arms to her side.

“Sammy, get her!” she shouted, fighting frantically to free herself from Mike’s iron clench.

Sammy jumped. Rachel screamed as he knocked her flat to the ground.

“Get her!” Lindy cried.

Rachel continued to scream.

“Sammy, down! Down boy!” Mike roared at the same moment.

“Go Sammy! Bite her face off! Tear her eyes out! Sammy, go!” Mike’s hands gripped her. “Ow! Mike, that hurts!”

“Down, Sammy!” Mike commanded.

The dog, who had listened to this garble of incoherent commands with increasing agitation, looked at them. Confounded into paralysis, he stepped slowly off Rachel.

Rachel scrambled up. Bursting into hysterical tears she ran for the house. Sammy walked up to Mike and Lindy, wagging his tail tentatively. “Good boy,” Mike said. “What a good boy.”

He held on to Lindy until Rachel had made it back inside, then he dropped his hands from Lindy’s arms. “Don’t come around again,” he said. “Next time, we’ll press charges.”

“Mike,” she said. “Wait. Talk to me.”

Without another word, he turned and followed Rachel up to the house.

“He won’t marry her,” Lindy said to herself, brushing the sand off of her clothes and watching his back as he melted into the bright background of morning’s first sun. “One day he’ll wake up, and the devil that’s holding him will let go. He’ll feel his power again. And then he’ll want me back.”

On November 12, a week and a half before Thanksgiving, Nina woke to a cold house. Bob was stirring downstairs. During the night, Hitchcock had evidently decided against the hooked rug on the frigid floor and joined her in bed. She was spooning with her dog! Was this the fate of a single woman?

Shoving the dog to one side, she jumped out of bed, ran downstairs, turned on the heater, then ran back up and pulled the feather bed around herself while the heater roared to life. While she lay there in delicious comfort she thought of Paul, missing him. Other than a few brief telephoned hellos, she hadn’t heard much from him since the Markov party.

She never seemed to find the time to call him. She needed him to help her come up with a detailed and impartial history of Markov Enterprises and to carry out preliminary interviews with anyone Lindy might suggest could be a favorable witness.

She needed him in her bed.

The house warmed up and soon she saw Bob’s head peeking around the bedroom door. Seeing that her eyes were open, he ran to the window and pulled the curtain, saying, “It’s snowing! Mom, you have to see this.”

Outside the air had turned white and wispy. The snow was so heavy she could barely see out, but the whiteness moved, drifting downward.

Pulling aside the covers, she threw on her robe and accompanied Bob downstairs. “Get your clothes on, Bob. I’ll drive you to school. We missed the bus.”

“Hey, maybe they’ll call a snow day!”

“I’ll find out.” While Bob started up their new CD of African ska music, she got the coffee going and laid out bowls for the oatmeal, then called the school to find out that, thank God, they hadn’t canceled the school day.

Bob sat down at the kitchen table to wolf down a couple of bowls of oatmeal, and Nina headed back upstairs to put on her warmest wool suit. To keep her hair dry under her hat, she knotted it, pinning it to the back of her head. “Bob! Don’t forget to put your lunch in the pack!”

Overnight, fall had given way to winter. Nina felt a rush of exhilaration bundling up in the parka and gloves and boots and pushing open the door to a foot of fresh snow. Transfigured overnight, the neighbors’ old junk car next door had become an ice sculpture, and the trees were festooned with white. Not a breath of wind blew to stir the airy, cool flakes melting on her cheeks.

They got into the Bronco and she put it into four-wheel-drive, hoping they wouldn’t have to get out again and shovel the hilly driveway, but it trundled up without a problem.

“What’s the big rush, Mom?” Bob asked as they skidded slightly on a curve.