Alma Katsu - The Taker

I rushed up to Jonathan and shook him by the shoulders. “That would be a terrible thing to do, for yourself as well as poor Sophia. What good would it do to tell Jeremiah now, except to appease your conscience? All you would accomplish would be to ruin Jeremiah’s illusion of her. Let him bury Sophia thinking her a good wife who honored him.”

He looked at my small hands clasping his shoulders-it was unusual for us to touch each other now that we were no longer children-and then looked into my eyes with such sorrow that I couldn’t help myself. I collapsed against his chest and pulled him toward me, thinking only that he needed comfort from a woman at that moment, even if it wasn’t Sophia. I will not lie and say I didn’t find the feeling of his strong, warm body against mine comforting, too, though I had no right to comfort. I nearly wept with happiness at the touch of him. Holding his body against mine, I could pretend that he had forgiven me for my terrible sin against Sophia, although, of course, he knew nothing of it.

I’d kept my cheek against his chest, listening to his heart beat beneath layers of wool and linen and breathing in his scent. I didn’t want to release my hold of Jonathan, but I sensed he was looking down at me, and so I looked up at him, too, ready for him to tell me again of his love for Sophia. And if he did, if he said her name, I resolved, I would tell him what I had done. But he didn’t; instead, his mouth hovered over mine for an instant before he kissed me.

The moment for which I’d waited went by in a blur. We slipped into the protection of the woods, steps away. I remember the wonderful heat of his mouth on mine, its hunger and forcefulness. I remember his hands pulling on the ribbon that closed my blouse over my breasts. He pressed my back against a tree and bit into my neck as he fumbled with the fall of his breeches. I lifted my skirts so he could claim me, his hands on my hips. I regret that I didn’t have even a glimpse of his manhood for all the clothing between us, coats and cloaks, skirts and petticoats. But I felt him in me, suddenly, a great firm hotness pushed up inside me, and him bucking against me, grinding me into the bark of the tree. And at the end, his groan in my ear sent a shiver through me, for it meant he had found pleasure with me, and I had never been so happy and feared I would never be so again.

We rode together on his horse through the woods with me holding tight around his waist, as we had as children. We took the least-traveled trails lest we be seen together without a chaperone. We didn’t exchange a word and I kept my hot face buried in his coat, still trying to come to grips with what we’d done. I knew of plenty of other girls in town who had given themselves over to a man before marriage-with Jonathan often the recipient-and had looked down on them. Now I was one of them. A part of me felt that I had disgraced myself. But another part of me believed I’d had no choice: it might have been my only chance to capture Jonathan’s heart and prove that we were meant to be together. I couldn’t let it pass.

I slipped from the back of his horse and, after a squeeze of his hand, hiked the short distance to my family’s cabin. As I walked, however, doubts began to set in as to what our tryst had meant to him. He swived girls with no thought to any consequences: why did I imagine he would attach consequences this time? And what of his feelings for Sophia-or my obligation, for that matter, to the woman I had driven to take her own life? I had as good as murdered her and here I was fornicating with her lover. Surely a more wicked soul did not exist.

I took a few minutes before proceeding to my home, to compose myself with deep breaths of cold air. I couldn’t go to pieces in front of my family. I had no one with whom I could talk this over. I would have to keep this secret hidden inside until I was calm enough to think on it rationally. I pushed it down, all of it, the guilt, the shame, the self-hatred. And yet, at the same time, I was filled with tremulous excitement, for though I didn’t deserve as much, I’d gotten what I’d wanted. I exhaled, dusted the fresh snow from the front of my cloak, squared my shoulders, and trudged the rest of the way to my family’s cottage.

Sounds are heard out in the hall.

Luke looks at his wristwatch: 4 A.M. The hospital will come to life before long. The mornings are busy with injuries common to farm country-a rib shattered by a kick from a dairy cow, a slip on a patch of ice while lugging a bale of hay-followed at six by the shift change.

The girl looks at him the way a dog might regard an unreliable master. “Will you help me? Or are you going to let that sheriff take me to the police station?”

“What else can I do?”

Her face glows pink. “You can let me go. Close your eyes while I slip out. No one will blame you. You can tell them you went down to the lab, left me alone for just a second, and I was gone by the time you returned.”

Joe says she’s a murderer , Luke thinks. Can I let a murderer walk out the door?

Lanny reaches for his hand. “Have you ever been in love with someone so badly that you’d do anything for them? That no matter what you want, you want their happiness more?”

Luke is glad she can’t see into his heart because he has never been that selfless. He’s been dutiful, yes, but he’s never been able to give without a tug of resentment and he doesn’t like how that makes him feel.

“I’m not a threat to anyone. I told you why I… did what I did to Jonathan.”

Luke looks into those ice blue eyes filling with tears and he tingles from his scalp to his gut. The pain from loss overcomes him quickly, as it tends to since his parents’ deaths. He knows she is feeling the same sadness as he, and for a moment they are together in this bottomless grief. And he’s so tired of being imprisoned by grief-the loss of his parents, his marriage, his entire life-that he knows he must do something to break free of it, do it now or he never will. He’s not sure why he’s going to do what he’s about to do, but he knows he can’t think about it in advance or he won’t do it.

“Wait here. I’ll be right back.”

Luke slips down the narrow corridor to the doctors’ locker room. Inside his dented gray locker he finds a pair of scrubs, wadded up and forgotten. He rummages through a couple of other lockers and comes up with a white lab coat, a surgical cap, and, from the pediatrician’s locker, a pair of women’s running shoes so old that they curl at the toes. Luke brings these back to the examination room.

“Here, put these on.”

They take the shortest route to the back of the hospital, pushing through janitors’ passages to the loading dock in the service area. An orderly coming in for the day shift waves as they cross the parking lot, but when Luke waves back his arm feels rusted tight with anxiety. It isn’t until they’re in the parking lot, standing beside his pickup truck, that Luke remembers he’s left his keys in his parka back in the doctors’ lounge.

“Damn it. I have to go back. Don’t have my keys. Hide in the trees. I’ll be right back.”

Lanny says nothing but nods, hunched against the cold in her thin cotton scrubs.

The walk from the parking lot to the ambulance entrance is the longest of his life. Luke hustles because of the cold and his nerves. Judy or Clay may have already noticed he is gone. And if Clay is still asleep on the couch, Luke might wake him when he goes into the lounge to retrieve his keys and then he’d be caught. Each step gets harder and harder, until he feels like a water-skier being dragged under the surface after something has gone horribly wrong with the tow line.