Sandra Field - Second Honeymoon

An image he hated with all his soul.

WHEN the bell chimed for breakfast the next morning, Troy had just finished shaving. He gazed at himself in the mirror, dabbing at the small cut on his chin. He looked exactly like a man who’d had about three hours’ sleep. Although three was probably an exaggeration.

His eyes, deepset at the best of times, were now bruised by the remnants of a night trapped between nightmares and the raging hunger of his sexuality. To know that Lucy was so near and yet so far had been torture. Worse, perhaps, had been the extinguishing of any hope that he no longer cared for her. He loved her—heart, soul and body. He’d probably, he thought gloomily, running a comb through his hair, love her forever.

For all the good it would do him.

His mother had once compared the color of his eyes to the rock from the quarry near where he’d grown up. Maybe chains were that same unrevealing, stony gray. If he stayed here, would he be treating Lucy like some medieval prisoner? Manacling her to him by force?

His cut appeared to have stopped bleeding; he should go down to breakfast. He straightened the mirror, remembering how Lucy had used to love tracing the strong line of his nose and the curve of his lips down to the cleft in his chin with her fingertip. She had used to find him irresistible.

Not any more.

If he were smart he’d take her advice and get on the first flight out of here. And then he’d accept the job in Arizona. If she did come back to him they could live just as well in Arizona as in Vancouver; with her at his side, he didn’t care where he lived.

She was afraid of love. Afraid of its costs and penalties.

Or else she hated his guts; that didn’t seem too unlikely either.

He adjusted the collar of his blue open-necked shirt and then, as though he couldn’t help himself, he replaced his wedding-ring on his left hand.

When he went downstairs only his place was empty at the trestle table; the birders had all been up at dawn and were now ravenously tucking into heaped blueberry pancakes and jugs of hot maple syrup. The buff-breasted sandpiper had been usurped by the long-billed dowitcher as the main topic of discussion. Troy drained his orange juice and helped himself to a pancake.

“Would you like coffee?”

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