Hudson finished his lemonade. There was a heavy pause as they swayed gently on the swing and the sun slanted late-afternoon heat waves at them. A breeze ruffled her hair and pushed a few dry leaves across the walkway. Hudson was silent. Not moody, just not really there, his mind somewhere far away. He stared into the middle distance and Becca had the feeling he’d forgotten she was sitting next to him, just a hairsbreadth from his body. How, when she was so aware of him, wanted to kiss him and hold him and tell him she loved him, could he act as if she were invisible?
It hurt and, in truth, it bugged her.
They were having a child together!
“What’s wrong?” she asked him, when she finally found her courage.
Before he could answer a car bounced down the long lane, its engine thrumming, his sister behind the wheel. Renee slammed on the brakes and the sedan, screeching, jerked to a stop a few feet away, dust from its tires wafting in a cloud their way. Renee stepped out of the car and tossed her short, dark hair. A small notebook stuck out of her purse and Becca remembered she was taking some kind of journalism classes. Probably acing them. She flew up the walk and scarcely looked at Becca as she hurried up the porch steps. But then she’d acted as if she’d barely noticed Becca all summer. They hadn’t been great friends in high school, but when they were classmates at St. Lizzie’s, Becca hadn’t felt quite the resentment she now sensed.
Or was this feeling of dismissal, of invisibility, just her overactive imagination?
A product of her crumbling relationship with Hudson?
“Goddamned brakes,” she muttered, almost to herself. “Hey,” she said, spying Hudson. “You think you could fix them?”
He shook his head. “You’d better call Mitch.”
“Bellotti? That moron?”
“He’s pretty good with cars.”
“Yeah, he’d probably think I’d go out with him or make out with him or—” She gave a mock shiver.
“He’s engaged.”
“Send the girl my condolences. No, I’m not talking to Mitch. Great idea, Hud. Real helpful.”
“You asked.”
“Well, forget it. I’m not owing that fat-ass, has-been jock any favors. I heard he already flunked out of OSU. Big surprise.” She opened the screen door and nodded toward Hudson’s glass and the few remaining drops of lemonade settling near the bottom. “Any more of that left?”
“I think so.”
She brushed inside, never once acknowledging Becca. But then Renee always had been a bitch. An ambitious bitch.
Hudson set his empty glass on a table beside the swing. He gazed at her through the shadows but she couldn’t read his expression. Finally, he said, “You know, you remind me a little of Jessie.”
Becca stared. “What?” she demanded, her voice shaking. The comparison stung, and it hurt far more than Becca wanted it to. Obviously she’d been kidding herself about her affair with Hudson, wrapping it up in love and romance when he’d been harboring feelings for Jessie all along. She understood instinctively that there was no way to fight Jessie’s memory. Jessie Brentwood had been missing for over three years, but she was still very much here.
“I’m not Jessie,” she said carefully.
“I know.”
“Do you? Why would you say…?” Her throat closed and her face grew hot with embarrassment. Who had she been kidding? She’d suspected, no, make that known Hudson had never gotten over Jessie, but to compare Becca to the missing girl…or even worse, fantasizing and pretending Becca was like Jessie was just sick.
Her stomach, not great anyway, began to roil and she thought she might throw up.
Hudson said, “I don’t know. Sometimes I think…”
“I don’t think I want to hear this,” she whispered, all her dreams turning to dust.
“Look, Becca, I’m leaving for school in a couple of weeks. I was talking to Zeke and we’re heading down together.” She felt a flash of rage at Zeke, sensing he’d been instrumental in Hudson’s current, sober self-reflection but couldn’t say so. “We talked about Jessie, the other day. We never really have much.” He leaned forward and sighed, his hands on his thighs, his foot stopping the swing’s arc. “I’m just wondering…”
Becca pressed her trembling lips together. A long pause ensued while she waited, dying inside.
“I just think we should take things slower. Work through some stuff. What do you think?”
What I think is that I’m pregnant with your child and you’re sitting here next to me grieving over the love of another girl, one you can never have. So now you’ve somehow twisted everything around. What I think, Hudson, is that I’m a fool, a damned, stupid fool who fell in love with the wrong man. She gazed into his blue eyes, seeing herself reflected. A lonely girl clinging to a dream. Pathetic. She squared her shoulders, refused to cry, and managed to say in a calm voice, “Maybe you’re right. It has been a whirlwind.”
He nodded. “I don’t want to rush this.”
“No.” Her voice was brittle. She was furious; at herself, mostly. But she couldn’t help saying, “We could see each other next time you’re home.”
“Right.”
Misery. Bone-deep sadness and despair. It dragged her down inside, but she managed to make up some excuse about having to get home. Holding her dignity intact, she didn’t remember the drive, not one second of it, but somehow she got home that night. Only later, when she was in the bathroom with the shower running to hide the noise, did she break down. As Fritter sat on the ledge of the small window over the toilet, Becca cried and cried and cried. Tears poured from her eyes. Sobs wrenched from her gut. She was sick…sick…sick…Pregnant and shatteringly sad.
Yet, there was hope.
There was a life inside her, waiting to be born. She couldn’t tell Hudson now. But maybe next time they saw each other. In a few weeks. When he came home, or called. Until then, she’d pull herself together. She refused to be one of those weepy, wimpy, weak girls she’d always detested.
But he didn’t call. And time passed. And Becca was overwhelmed by a feeling of impending disaster, a dark cloud that resolved itself into her final vision, her last one until she’d passed out at the mall this afternoon.
It had been the November following their breakup, as she was driving home from Seaside, her car buffeted by strong, blustering winds. As she gripped the wheel, trying to keep the car in her lane, she was suddenly blinded by an image of thundering surf pounding a rocky bluff. It was all she could do to herd her car to the side of the road before the pain in her head exploded and the vision overtook her completely.
Once the car was idling on the narrow gravel shoulder, she saw an image of an angry, storm-tossed sea and above it, perched high in a tower, loomed a dark, malevolent force without figure or form, the embodiment of pure evil that caused her skin to crawl. She couldn’t see the monster’s face, didn’t know if it had one, but she was certain to the bottom of her soul that whoever it was, whatever it was, it surely meant to do her harm.
And her baby’s life was in jeopardy.
She heard nothing save the rush of the wind and the roar of the surf pounding against a rain-washed shore, but the threat came to her, echoing through her mind. A warning to her and her baby.
I am here.
And I will destroy you both; make certain the unholy chain is broken.
I smell you, Rebecca.
You are so near…