High Country Nocturne - [24]

This is where I should have stopped it. Diffuse the situation. Go to bed, safe in our cocoon, you and me against the world, babe. But the alcohol truth serum was still in my bloodstream.

I said quietly, “Maybe he was misinformed. When you came home, you told me that your security clearance had been revoked and they confiscated your laptop. Can’t you understand why I was concerned after what Melton said? Somebody could be out to get you. Blame you for something that went wrong. I’m not so naïve that I don’t know how shit rolls downhill in government agencies.”

“You don’t know anything,” she said, her voice rising uncharacteristically. “Jesus, David…”

It was the first time I could recall her ever using my full given name.

“Lindsey, please sit down. Let’s work this out together. I only mention the security clearance because…”

“Oh, now you want to work it out together. Why didn’t you tell Meltdown to stick it and come home so we could work it out together then? But, no, you believed what he told you about me and you rolled over like a coward. Where else do you think I’m a liar?”

“Hang on.”

“Fuck you, David! You were screwing my sister right in our home.” She shook her head. “You must have felt like quite the stud.”

I slowly shook my head. “It wasn’t like that.”

She dropped to her haunches and stared at me.

“Really? Tell me what it was like? Tell me everything. All the details. What it felt like. Then tell me what it felt like when Robin died.”

I turned away from her glare, felt my cheeks burning.

“It felt like hell.”

There was no avoiding it.

Robin. Lindsey’s half-sister was a curator for the art collection of a rich man in Paradise Valley. The job went away with the real-estate collapse, when his empire proved to be built on nothing but debt and promises, and he used a revolver to blow his brains all over a Frida Kahlo original hanging in his living room.

The collection went to his creditors and Lindsey insisted Robin move into the garage apartment.

Then a family tragedy estranged us and Lindsey fled to D.C. For months, I was sure I had lost her.

Robin. She was a fairly close match for the actress Robin Wright with long hair, when she was younger and not anorexic. But this Robin had no glamour. She was a storm child. She always called her older sister by her first and middle names, Lindsey Faith.

There was no excusing my part in what happened next, not Robin’s aggressiveness, not the fact that Lindsey insisted she stay here, rebuffing my suggestion that Robin move.

Robin and I happened.

Whatever Lindsey did in her personal life during those months, I had no right to whine or pry. I had never judged her.

My offenses became unpardonable the night that Robin and I were in the backyard and she took a bullet intended for me. She died in my arms. The vengeance I took, on that last case as a deputy sheriff, didn’t bring her back. For a time, I wondered if Lindsey would leave me, not for having an affair with Robin but for losing her.

Now I said, “Every day, I wish that bullet had hit me.” My voice was too loud.

She sprang up and turned away. “Oh, please, quit feeling sorry for yourself. You did what you did, feeling like the big stud. Now you have the balls to question my integrity? To believe that badged ego telling you I’m a traitor!”

“I don’t believe it!”

“She loved you.”

“What?”

“Are you a stupid person, David? Did you not hear what I said? Robin fell in love with you. She told me. I thought I’d lost you.”

“You would barely take my phone calls then,” I said. “This is not about Robin. This is about whatever it is that Melton thinks he knows and how it could hurt us.”

“It hurt us that you believed him.”

“I don’t!”

She muttered another profanity and strode across the hardwood floor to the desk, opened a drawer, and produced her blue pack of Gauloises Blondes cigarettes and lighter. Some people smoke after a meal or sex. Lindsey mostly smoked when she was under great stress.

She said, “I don’t have to explain myself…”

“I didn’t ask you to. I’m not the enemy.”

“Then why are you willing to lie down with the devil!”

We were both shouting now. Shouting fights were very rare in our marriage.

“Now you know national security secrets I swore not to divulge. I had to tell you because you don’t trust me!”

Re-crossing the room, she stood before me, one hand on her hip, her eyes now wide and full-on angry violet.

“I’m going for a walk. I need to take a break from this.”

Lindsey was almost always preternaturally calm. Not now. The tone in her voice was boiling.

She quickly slipped on her shoes and headed to the door.

“I never doubted you. Not for a second.”

“Right.” A sardonic half-shout.

“Lindsey, please. Please don’t…”

The door closed and I spoke the last word of the sentence to myself.

“…leave.”

Chapter Eleven

Later, I reflected on how a lover’s quarrel never takes a logical course and for each of us, a perilous combination of fissile materials-shame, jealousy, and regret-was waiting to create a destructive chain reaction. Later, I would wonder why, why I agreed to accept the star from Chris Melton, and boil it down to one prime motivation: fear. Unreasoning fear for Lindsey. I was ambushed and made the bad call. I was usually good under pressure. Not this time.