Lie Still Read Free Page A

bought. I could tell it bugged him, this worry that he, the caped crusader, was selling out. That maybe he wasn’t hearing the whole story.
    When the mayor told him the job came with a brand-new, fully loaded, armored Hummer, Mike thought he was joking. He asked if most Clairmonters carried grenades and ran from crime scenes on foot, in which case the Hummer would be fine. When nobody in the room laughed, he said he preferred a basic high-speed cruiser.
    I didn’t press him too hard on his doubts.
    “It’s not forever,” he said, shrugging, and my relief flowed, a swift river.
    Because, at that point, I wanted to go.
    I wanted to run
.
    Two months ago, my past had snaked its way into our New York apartment on a rainy afternoon while Mike was hunkered down on a case somewhere. He could have been a hundred miles or two minutes away, dodging bullets or playing cards in a safe room, I never knew.
    There was so much he never told me about the details of what he did for a living and so much I didn’t tell him about what lay at the core of me. On the bad days of our marriage, our secrets circled us like ghosts, blowing an icy draft between us. Would we love each other the same if we knew what the other was capable of?
    I remember holding the violent message in shaking fingers, as the soft rain turned to hail, a thousand fingernails tapping on the living room windows, wishing Mike were there so I could finally tell him everything. He showed up at the apartment ten hours later, exhausted and bruised, after I’d tucked the piece of paper away in a shoebox with all of the others.
    That is the short story of how we ended up here in the Southern hemisphere, seeking warmth. Mike turned in his resignation and I quit the gallery, promising to take it easy until the baby was born, with the idea that I’d take up my painting again. Life was suddenly an open, blank canvas that we could sketch with careful hands.
    “Go away,” I said now, as Mike’s fingers began to roam again. “Go make out with yourself. It’s acceptable in the second trimester.”
    He stood, his large frame blocking my view of the couple in the mirror. Not budging.
    Now it was just us. The
real
us.
    Flesh and blood and flaws.
    I fought a sudden urge to cry, which seemed to be happening about every fifteen minutes these days. Losing this man would kill me. I pulled his head down and traced my tongue along his mouth. I felt the rush of familiar heat that had sustained us through everything. He drew away for a second, grinning.
    “Is this hello or goodbye?”
    I pushed him back onto the bed.
    Maybe I could help him out a little.

    F ourteen minutes later, adjusting the seat in my newly purchased, pre-owned Volvo station wagon, I tipped down white wraparound sunglasses picked up off the streets of New York for ten bucks, and took one last pass at myself in the rearview mirror. Not too bad. My green eyes were made less weary by dark blue eyeliner, the splash of gold in the center of the iris more noticeable than usual.
    I’d opted for a bold New York/Texas compromise: a body-hugging black cotton-Lycra dress that left no doubt about my state of maternity and over-the-top, gem-studded gold flats bought at a Barneys sale two years ago.
    My body buzzed pleasantly. It seemed wrong to love the thing that had ripped my life apart. But sex set me free in a way nothing else did.
    I plugged Caroline Warwick’s address into the navigation system that Mike insisted I’d need as a person born without directional ability. He’d bought the GPS from a friend setting up an online business of British paraphernalia, so my guide ordered me around like a bored Hugh Grant.
    As the sun slid down in an orange halo, I found myself on the outskirts of Clairmont, driving for 2.3 miles on a farm road, a field of rising corn on one side and a rolling stone wall on the other. When Hugh crisply ordered me to turn, I did so with relief, away from the corn and toward the façade of a