Bill Pronzini - The Hidden

The cold and damp were in the cottage, too. Jay had turned on the baseboard heater when he got up and it had been going for half an hour now, but the moist chill was still in the air. How could that happen overnight in a place as well built as this one? One of the joys of oceanfront living in the dead of winter, she thought. Goose bumps and sniffles to go with the whitewater views and invigorating sea breezes.

The place was already beginning to give her cabin fever.

Jay made buttermilk pancakes for breakfast, his special recipe that included bananas and nutmeg and some other kind of spice. They were good but she only picked at the ones on her plate; she didn’t have much appetite. For the food or for the conversation he tried to make. Small talk as usual. Not a word about the nightmare, or about anything else that mattered to either of them.

Finally she said, “I don’t think I can just sit around here another day. Let’s go for a drive.”

“Where?”

“I don’t know. Fort Bragg’s not far, is it?”

“Twenty miles or so.”

“You sound hesitant.”

“No, it’s just that …”

“Just that what?”

“There’s another storm coming,” he said.

“Surprise.”

“No, I mean a big storm, worse than the one on the way up. High winds, heavy rain.”

“How do you know? The car radio?”

“The woman in the Seacrest grocery store.”

“And you didn’t tell me until now?”

“I guess I just forgot.”

You guess you just forgot. Bullshit, Jay.

She said, “When is this big storm supposed to get here?”

“Sometime this afternoon.”

“Then there’s still time for a drive to Fort Bragg.”

“If you really want to go.”

“I really want to go.”

“Okay, then.” He reached across to touch her hand; she resisted an impulse to pull it away. “We’ll leave right after I clean up.”

“Cleaning up can wait until we get back. I’ll do it. You don’t always have to be maid as well as cook.”

“Just trying to make things a little easier for you.”

Five minutes later they were in the car. She felt better being out of the cottage, moving again. The highway to the north was full of loops and twists, but she had to admit the scenery was impressive. Ocean views, wooded areas, a long sweep around the mouth of a river, hamlets and rustic inns and B&Bs. Wind gusts buffeted the car and the sky was a sullen chiaroscuro, but the windshield stayed dry.

Jay kept trying to make conversation, but it was all small talk and she was sick of small talk. They were passing by the picturesque bluff-top town of Mendocino when he said something about it looking so much like villages in Maine, the producers of the TV show Murder, She Wrote had passed it off as Cabot Cove for the duration of the series. More small talk, trivial and meaningless.

Enough, she thought.

“Jay,” she said, “talk to me.”

“I am talking to you. I said—”

“You didn’t say anything. You haven’t said anything I really wanted to hear in so long I can’t remember the last time.”

She saw the muscles along his jaw clench. “That’s not fair, Shel.”

“Fair? My God, fair ?”

“What do you want me to say?”

“What you’re thinking, what you’re feeling.”

“You know how I feel about you. I love you.”

“That’s not what I mean and you know it. Half the time you talk to me as if I’m a casual acquaintance instead of your wife. Never about anything that really matters to you. Stop hiding from me.”

“I’m not hiding from you,” he said, “I’m … I can’t always express what I’m thinking or feeling …”

“Can’t or won’t?”

“It’s hard, that’s all. I’m just not wired the way you are, I’m … I have this … oh Jesus, do we have to get into this now?”

“If not now, then when?”

“When we’re back home. There’re some things … I’ll tell you then.”

“Why can’t you tell me now?”

“I just … I don’t want to spoil our last couple of days up here.”

“Spoil them by clearing the air?”

“When we get home—that’s a promise.”

“Another promise you won’t keep. You’ll go right on hiding in that private cocoon of yours.”

“No, I won’t. Not this time.”

Useless. Like beating her head against a stone wall.

The fantasy came over her again. He seemed to waver in her vision, turn shimmery, lose definition; for a second or two it was as if she could look right through him. The illusion was almost frightening this time.

She closed her eyes to shut it out, shifted over close against the door and laid her head against the seat back. The silence that rebuilt between them was like a weight. A frustrated anger simmered in her, but it didn’t last. In its place was a small, cold emptiness.

And she thought again: Enough.

T H I R T E E N

MACKLIN’S MOOD MATCHED THE sullen, cloud-heavy morning as they approached Fort Bragg. Little confrontational scenes like the one he’d just had with Shelby always left him feeling depressed. Powerless, too. Not against her, but against himself and the intractable compulsion to hold back. She didn’t ask much of him, and the one important thing she did ask he seemed incapable of giving her. It made him dislike himself all the more.

Scared him all the more.

The thought of what lay ahead fretted him again, brought that closed-fist feeling back into his chest. The coming year would likely make the last few seem happy by comparison. He was pretty sure he knew how Shelby would take the news and just what she’d say, the same thing she’d said at the other crisis points in their life together: “We’ll get through it.” But would they this time? He didn’t see how it was possible, not in the long run. This was so much harder to take than the other setbacks, ongoing and irreversible.

The prospect of life without her scared the hell out of him. Barren. Lonely. Yet even if she was willing to put up with him over the long haul, he wasn’t willing to become any more of a burden to her than he already was. If the situation grew unbearable, as it was liable to pretty quickly, he’d be the one to do the walking. He’d promised himself that and he wouldn’t renege. His gift to her, the best gift he could ever give her—her freedom.

He didn’t know where he’d go or what he’d do if it came to that. Except to get the hell out of Cupertino, put as much distance between them as he could. Head for Tucson, maybe. Tom would take him in, at least for a while; they weren’t close anymore, but his younger brother was a strong believer in family values, family support. But Tom and Jenna had three kids and a mortgage and bills to pay—they couldn’t afford to shelter him for long, even if he could find some kind of work to pay for temporary room and board. He’d be a burden on them, and he couldn’t allow that to happen either. Better to spare Tom and his family and not go to Tucson at all.

What, then? Crawl into a warm little private hole somewhere? He’d be able to manage alone if circumstances allowed him to earn a living wage, but the one thing he’d never do was to go on welfare. If things got that bad, if there was no longer any hope and he was of no use to himself or anyone else, he’d take himself out. There were ways, painless ways, and he’d done enough soul-searching to know that he was capable of it.

Quality of life. A phrase people used a lot nowadays, one that was absolutely true. No quality, no point to living. Simple as that.

They were in Fort Bragg now, crossing a long bridge that spanned the entrance to the harbor. Small seaside town, population seven or eight thousand, that had once been the home base for Georgia Pacific, the largest lumber mill on the north coast; now it was the fishing industry and tourism that supported it. There wasn’t much of either this time of year. Under that dark, threatening sky it, too, had a bleak aspect that an array of lighted holiday decorations failed to alleviate.