The Concealers Read Free

subconsciously as she recalled the excitement of the evening, Beth moved her body languorously across Wilson’s. What had come over her? She reached for the switch to the window. “Jimmy, please take the long way home.”
    Sitting crossways to Wilson, Beth took his face in her hands and murmured, “This has been wonderful.” She turned her head toward the gentleman who’d been her patient only a few hours earlier and locked his gaze in hers. She could smell his well-groomed hair, breathe in the earthy scent of peanuts and beer on his breath, and feel the smoothness of his skin. He was taller than Larry though not as muscular. She found his trim good looks and urbane manner intoxicating.
    â€œBy the way,” she said, “in all this time, I forgot to ask your first name.”
    Suddenly she found herself doing something she could hardly have imagined that very morning: she kissed him deeply—and he responded in kind. Somewhere in there she heard him say, “Preston. It’s Preston.”
    Beth’s head was still filled with the piercing, pulsating music as she felt Wilson unzip the back of her dress, and she yielded to the freedom from its release. She felt the cool leather on her skin and the heat rising from his body. She knew this was having sex, not making love, but right now she didn’t care. She felt appreciated, and it felt good. She would deal with the rest of it in the morning.

 
CHAPTER ONE
April 1, 2012
A s she lined up for check-in, helmet cradled under her arm, Katherine’s thoughts were not on the race as she knew they should be, nor were they about some academic question or multiple intertwined facts in a research project. This time it was personal, her mind wrestling with an old dilemma, one she’d come to think of as
Incomplete Reconciliation
. In her heart she felt a hole. It stemmed from her phantom father, killed while serving in the U.S. Air Force before she was born.
    April Fools’ Day? The irony was not lost on her. What kind of fool had she been, to get herself into this sort of commitment? But there was no time for second-guessing now.
    Instead she compartmentalized, counting the things she was certain of: number one, that she had more questions than answers; two, that her mother’s love was unconditional; and three, well, that nothing in life was certain.
    Most questions were easy,
thought Katherine. Others plagued her, crying out for answers, particularly the big ones. She always worked hard to find the answers, applied herself, did her homework. But to do so meant asking more questions, including finding the right ones to ask. And some answers simply eluded her—chief among them, to get to the heart of it, was
what would her life have been with a father?
    Nothing like facing your own mortality to bring up the big questions. As to the second certainty, of course, she was grateful and felt blessed. Her mom loved her, had raised her while working long hours as a nurse, and had been there for her every step of the way.
    As to the third, Katherine had learned that some things happen—good and bad—no matter what she did; they were beyond her control. She accepted that reality.
    Another, timelier, question. Had she lost her mind? As she approached the check-in stand, her New York driver’s license showing her motorcycle endorsement in hand, Katherine counted her blessings, prepared for the worst, and hoped for the best.
    After check-in, Katherine struggled to straddle-walk her CRF-450X Honda trail bike into position. That Sunday morning the spring clouds hung low, spreading a thick fog over the Berkshire range, and she could make out little of the trail ahead.
    She checked out the racers, the words of her motorcycle coach circling through her mind:
Find your man—the right Class A rider—and follow him
. Katherine settled on 6A. She sized him up at about six-foot-two, with broad shoulders and sandy-blond hair