Page 5 of Cut Off from Sky and Earth
I lean back against him. “What did I do to deserve you?” I murmur, more to myself than to him.
Three
Tristan
* * *
I’m prepared to have to convince my wife that a writing retreat is a good idea. But the ease with which she agrees to consider the trip proves how much she needs it. She must be in serious trouble on her manuscript to even entertain the idea of spending a week apart from me.
I’m not saying Emily is clingy. Although, in truth, she is. She tries not to be. She takes the train into the city alone to have the occasional lunch with Sam, her agent. And she visits her brother in Colorado once or twice a year, now.
These independent steps are encouraging. Early in our marriage, she wouldn’t fly to see Joey without me. But now, while she definitely prefers if we travel together, she’s willing—able—to go by herself. And, of course, she makes her annual pilgrimage to Cassie Baughman’s grave alone.
But I’m not supposed to know about that tradition. I’m not supposed to know anything about Cassie, including the fact that she ever lived and died.
I watch Emily comb her wet hair. Her hair is her most distinctive feature. It’s long, reaching the bottom of her shoulder blades, thick, and a luminous light red, almost pink, color—strawberry blonde, my mom calls it, marveling at the way it catches the Arizona sunlight whenever we visit Scottsdale to see her. Before he died, my mother’s second husband, Jon, used to tell Emily she looked like Ann-Margret. She’d laugh and assure him she could neither sing nor act.
Although Emily’s gorgeous, she either doesn’t know it or doesn’t care. She’ll dry her hair and twist it up in a bun at the back of her head. Then she’ll moisturize her fair skin and swipe on a tinted lip balm, but that’s the extent of her beauty routine. No makeup to cover the constellation of freckles dotting her high cheekbones or to draw attention to her clear, startling blue eyes. I told her once that she’s literally one in a million. Fewer than 0.2 percent of the population has the combination of genes that produces a blue-eyed redhead. She blushed furiously and called me a genetics nerd in a fond, laughing tone.
Now those bright blue eyes lock on me in the mirror. “You could come, too. To the cabin, I mean.”
She makes the suggestion lightly, but I hear the anxiety beneath it.
I keep my voice gentle when I reject the idea. “We’re backed up at the lab. I can’t get the time off. Besides, the whole point is for you to work without interruption.”
And for me to work without interruption, I think.
She nods and drops her gaze, hurt. Or maybe just disappointed. I caress her cheek, and she turns slightly to press her face into my palm.
“And trust me,” I growl, “if I were there, you’d be interrupted. A lot.”
It’s not a lie. My appetite for her is damn near insatiable, even after five-and-a-half years of marriage. She mewls, and the small, soft sound of her desire is like a magnet, pulling me towards her.
It’s always been this way with us, ever since I purposely arranged to meet her by accident outside Dr. Wilde’s office–another secret.
Emily doesn’t know I’m his patient, and she also doesn’t know I know she is. These secrets are easier to protect, now that he’s moved to a teletherapy model and we don’t both have to find excuses to vanish for half a day twice a year to travel back to Ohio to see him.
I wonder if we have time for an encore performance. Then I glance at my phone to check the time and groan. “I gotta go.”
The lab truly is backed up. I have piles of cases waiting for me. Crime is always a growth business, I guess.
In larger crime labs, forensic geneticists specialize in DNA analysis. But in a small community like Little Sweetwater, everybody’s a generalist. Crime scene technicians gather all the evidence, and we analyze it. All of it. Everything from DNA samples to blood spatter to toxicology to ballistics makes its way across my laboratory bench. The saying ‘jack of all trades, master of none’ loops through my mind when I’m at work.
While I do have a heavy case load, the real reason I want her to leave town is this homicide I’m working. I rarely talk to her about my work under any circumstances, but the Giselle Ward murder is definitely off-limits for several very good reasons.
She stretches up on her toes to drop a kiss near the corner of my mouth and murmurs her standard goodbye. “Be safe.”
I caress her shoulders and give her my standard response before I head out of the room. “Always. Write all the words.”
As soon as I close the bathroom door behind me, I hear the telltale rattle of the pill bottle from the other side as she digs it out of her toiletry bag. She’ll swallow her anxiety meds with a gulp of lukewarm coffee. It’s probably not a great idea to store SSRI medication in the bathroom—too much moisture. But since I’m not supposed to know she takes them, I can’t exactly point this out.
Her meds seem to be working okay despite her storage choices. Aside from her daily panicked wake-up just before five a.m., she’s been doing pretty well. Keeping to a schedule, eating well, staying hydrated. These simple routines help her immensely, along with her yoga practice, meditation, and medication.
The book deadline is a problem, though. She’s fraying at the edges, falling out of her good habits as her writer’s block persists. And we’re coming up on the anniversary of Cassie’s murder, which throws her off-balance every spring. I see the telltale signs that she’s about to start a downward spiral. All the more reason to get her up to that cabin, and soon.
Four
Emily
