weather in daylight is bad enough. Why didn’t you wake me sooner?”
“Three straight night shifts. You needed the rest.”
“Five whole days off. I could’ve slept in the car.”
“Okay, I’m sorry. You’re right, we should’ve left earlier.”
Silence for a time. Then, “I still think this is a bad idea. I don’t see why you’re so set on it.”
You will soon enough, he thought. “We needed to get away.”
“Oh, we did?”
“Just the two of us. We haven’t been anywhere alone together in almost two years.”
“We’re alone together at home. A four-hundred-mile round-trip in the dead of winter just to spend four days in an isolated seaside cottage—it just doesn’t make a lot of sense to me.”
“Four days free of charge, don’t forget that.”
“Holiday charity from good old Ben Coulter.”
“You know Ben’s not that way. He’s only owned the cottage a year and a half and he likes having people stay there when he’s not using it.”
“Must be nice to be rich,” Shelby said.
“Ben’s not rich, not by today’s standards.”
“A successful software business, a house in Los Altos Hills, a second home on the Mendocino coast, a daughter in a private school—that’s rich by my standards.”
“Well, anyway, we’ll have these next few days to ourselves. At home … distractions, interruptions, another dull New Year’s party somewhere, friends showing up unannounced—”
“What friends, besides Mary Ellen and John, Ben and Kate?”
“Come on, we have more than that.”
“Acquaintances, yes, not what I call friends.”
The distinction wasn’t worth arguing. “Besides,” he said, “we didn’t really enjoy Christmas.”
“It was all right.”
“But not very festive.”
“How could it be, the way things have gone this year?”
It wasn’t meant as a jab at him, but it might as well have been. The way things had gone this year. Losing his office manager’s job when the recession forced Conray Foods to downsize. Not being able to find another, even something blue collar that paid decent wages, because he was overqualified—six months now and counting. Even Ben couldn’t help him; he knew nothing about software technology and there were no office staff openings at Coulter, Inc. And now this other thing … what would Shelby say if he just blurted it out, right here in the dark car? But he wouldn’t. Couldn’t. That was why this time alone together was so important, to help soften the blow. Maybe soften it, if the next four days went better than this one had so far.
He said, trying to sound cheerful, “Even if the weather’s bad, it’ll be nice at the cottage.”
“Will it?”
“You’ve seen the photos. Oceanfront, all the amenities.”
“In the middle of nowhere.”
“Three miles to the nearest town—hardly the middle of nowhere.”
“Town, Jay? With a population of ninety-seven? That’s not even a hamlet.”
“Remember the driving trip to Oregon? We came back down the coast and you liked the area then, you said it was beautiful up here.”
“That was ten years ago. And in the summer, with the sun shining.”
He didn’t want to argue; that was the last thing he wanted. Best to keep his mouth shut. Shelby’s mood was prickly enough as it was.
“You’d better turn the wipers on full,” she said. “Your drizzle is turning into a downpour.”
The wind-driven rain pelted down with increasing velocity the farther north they traveled. The serpentine coast highway grew slick, runoff puddles forming in low-lying areas along its verges. Macklin lowered his speed to fifty, to half that on some of the sharper curves. The road remained deserted for long intervals; the few cars he saw seemed to be mostly highway patrol and county sheriff’s cruisers.
His neck and shoulders had begun to ache a bit. Once he thought of asking Shelby to take over; she was a better driver than him, not so overly cautious in conditions like these. But he didn’t do it.