Stephen White - Warning Signs

"I told Ramp I was sleeping with Royal," she said. "He asked me, so I told him. I spent much of the rest of the time I was with him wondering whether or not it was an act of intimacy on my part."

At Lucy's admission about her relationship with Royal, I felt my breath catch just a little in my chest. The hesitation was not over learning that she'd slept with him, but rather at hearing her admit it. My mind flashed back to Lucy's oddly provocative behavior the night I visited her home, and I tried to put her confession about Royal in that context. Ever since I'd learned about the wet spot, I'd been preparing myself for the likelihood that Lucy had been intimate with the DA. Still, hearing her confirm the fact was far from comforting.

I asked, "Whether what was an act of intimacy? The sex with Royal? Or telling Ramp?"

"Good question. The telling. The sex with Royal wasn't intimacy. I don't have any doubts about that now." She kicked at something on the granite boulder. "How do you do that so easily? You didn't even hiccup when I told you that I'd slept with Royal. Weren't you surprised?"

Although I hadn't really been surprised by Lucy's revelation, at some level I knew that my sensibilities were offended, but years of clinical work had left me practiced at not revealing that kind of reaction. I said, "I suspected, and the truth is, I don't surprise easily anyway. Maybe I'm not as innocent as Sam. Maybe it's the work I do-I hear a lot of things."

"You don't care that I was sleeping with Royal?"

I chose my reply with care. "You mean do I judge you?"

"I guess that's what I mean."

"I'm in no position to do that. Knowing you slept with him is like skipping to the back of a book to find out how it ends. It's dangerous to make assumptions from there. I don't know what came before. What your motivations were."

"Are you curious?"

Good question. "We're both in difficult positions, Lucy."

"Does it make sense why I wouldn't tell Lauren and Cozy?"

"Sure. If you were having an affair with Royal, it wouldn't be hard for someone to extrapolate that maybe you had a motive to kill him." I, for instance, was having no trouble making that precise extrapolation. None. I added, "But they are your lawyers, Lucy."

Almost coyly, she asked, "Do you want to know about it? What happened between Royal and me?"

"I'm not sure. I don't want to be in a position to compromise your position."

"You mean legally?"

"Yes."

"It's not like that. With what I'd like to tell you, you could hurt me, but not legally."

I finally guessed where she was going. "But you would be vulnerable? Psychologically?"

"Yes. I would be very, very vulnerable. To you, certainly." She spread her arms to the side and closed her eyes. She held her position with the assurance of a yogi. "Stand up with me," she said.

Reluctantly, I did. Inches from my toes, the canyon dropped at least a hundred yards-okay, maybe fifty-almost straight down. If I fell, I counted at least two or three sharp outcroppings of rock that would crack my skull and my bones on the way to the bottom.

Lucy looked at me. I turned my head to her slowly, afraid that a more rapid motion would disturb my precarious balance.

She said, "I think Susan wanted me to."

I said, "What?"

"I think she wanted me to be… involved with Royal. It served her purposes."

Fortunately, she caught me before I keeled over.

" A little lessthan a year ago-it was early last summer-she called me one day, out of the blue, and asked me to come over to her house. I thought it was odd, but I did. I went. She said her illness had finally taken its toll on Royal, and that he was planning on leaving her. He wasn't going to run for DA in the next election. He didn't love her anymore and he was going to divorce her and move on with his life.

"She blamed the illness, of course. It never crossed her mind that Royal might have grown to despise her even had she been healthy."

I opened my mouth to speak but reconsidered. I needed to listen, not talk. Lucy had just admitted that she'd been sleeping with her mother's husband, and yet she was choosing to talk not about her own behavior but about her mother's. My antennae were twitching.

Lucy continued. "She said she'd need someone to care for her." I watched as Lucy lifted her right foot from the uneven stone and bent that leg ninety degrees at the knee, finally resting the foot against the inside of her left thigh. "She meant me, of course."

She maintained the position for a count of about twenty. I held my breath until she lowered her leg again. Both feet firmly on the rock, she reached out and grabbed my hand. The breezes were shoving insistently at our backs, nudging us toward something.

"I didn't even let her ask. I told her no, that I wouldn't take care of her. No way. Not a chance."

Lucy grew silent for a while. I was aware that we'd started to sway in unison. I really wanted to sit down.

"She acted surprised, almost offended, that I could think she would ask me to take care of her. But I knew where she was going before she got there. I don't know why, or how, but I just did. Sitting with her then, I felt like you feel right now. On the edge of something dangerous. Unsure of my balance, what I should do next."

She knew I was nervous.

"And she… I thought she was kind of threatening me. She was subtle, but I got the message anyway. She told me that she always thought that she could count on her daughters for help if circumstances… demanded. Me, I was one of her daughters. What she was doing was she was letting me know she'd be willing to tell people that she was my mother. She actually said she was beyond humiliation. She didn't care if the whole town knew she'd abandoned her daughter."

"She said all that?"

"She didn't have to say it all."

"But it felt like a threat to you?"

"It felt pitiful. It made me despise her more."

"So what do you think she was doing? Why did she invite you over?"

"I don't know. Maybe she was trying to play on my guilt. She knew I didn't want to have anything to do with her. And I'm sure she knew I didn't even want to be associated with her publicly. She was letting me know that she could make living in Boulder uncomfortable for me, and she was offering me an alternative."

"Taking care of her?"

She nodded. The wind stilled temporarily and Lucy seemed to be pondering her next words. I told myself to wait her out. The wait was prolonged. She didn't speak until the wind returned to accompany her tale.

"A week or two later Royal called and asked me to come over to discuss 'things.' That's what he said-'things.' But I didn't want to go to Susan's house, so I asked him to meet me at my place. It was a Saturday afternoon that he came over. The Broncos were playing a preseason game. I don't even remember against who." Her voice brightened as she asked, "Did you ever get a chance to spend time alone with him?"

"With Royal?"

She nodded.

"I only knew him socially, Lucy. The smallest group I ever saw him in was probably a dinner party."

Her gaze seemed to fall out of focus. "You missed something special. Royal was charming when you got him alone. Truly charming. That day he came over to my house I liked him right away. He was nothing like what I'd expected based on seeing him on the news."

Lucy liked Royal. I tried to process that data.

"Nothing happened that day. We talked about life with Susan. He told me about his plans, what life might bring after he left the DA's office. We talked about the Broncos and cars and being a cop."

And, I wondered, what bridges to intimacy did you cross?

"The next move was mine. I called him a week later, asking if we could talk again. Neither of us wanted to be seen out together in public, so he suggested I come by his house after Susan was in bed.