The Other Side of Silence (6 page)

“Not yet.  I’m not finished here.”

Groaning, she buried her head in her
pillow.

“Besides, I want to talk to you.”

She lifted her head up.

“About what?”

“Give me a minute.”

His tongue was an outstandingly
blistering instrument when applied and before two minutes had passed Sunny
found herself breathless and trembling, with the pillow clamped between her
teeth to deprive him of the pleasure of hearing her scream.  Spitting out the
linen case, she spoke over her shoulder again.

“Take your freakin’ pants off,
Roger.”

“Um, not yet.”

Latching onto the headboard, Sunny
yanked herself free of his grasp and onto her knees.  He let her go.

“That’s perfect,” he whispered. 
“Don’t move.”

Behind her, she heard his movements
as he yanked off his jeans and then felt the shifting of the mattress yet again
as he climbed back into the bed.  His hands settled on her hips, his bent legs
fitting between her own.   He pulled her roughly back against him, his chest
hard along the length of her spine, his breath warm across the place where her
shoulder curved into her neck.

“Take me in your hand,” he whispered
against her ear, “and guide me inside you.”

 They had been together many times
during the past weeks in ways that were wonderfully intimate, here in her house
and in his own, yet she still trembled as if it all were new, shivering at the
whipcord grip of his arms around her, the rumble of his voice, the feel of him
hard and powerful slipping into that place of darkness and heat.  Her vaginal
walls convulsed around him.

“Oh sweetheart, I love when you do
that.”

“It’s involuntary,” she said.

“I don’t care what it is.  It happens
every time I’m in you and I can’t get enough of it.”

Sunny closed her eyes.  God, she
loved this man.  The realization that she didn’t mean just sex with Roger, but
Roger himself, stunned her.

“What is it?” he asked, feeling her
tense.

“Nothing,” she whispered, grabbing
onto the headboard and moving her hips, his hands sliding up her spine to
settle against the back of her neck.  “Just don’t let go of me.”

“Never,” he said.

Never.
 Now wouldn’t that be something
perfect?  No initials in an aging window sill.  Just a promise kept.

With that thought she spiraled away
into a realm of all-sensation, of motion and fire and fizzing blood and sweat,
of passionate, strangled words, of cries echoing in her pores, of height and
tension and release, of plummeting satiation, of muscles stretched and sore, of
the sleep of the replete curled in the arms of the peace-giver.  Whatever they
needed to say, she thought as she drifted off into a dreamless slumber, could
wait until the morning.

*        *        *

“I like that dress.  It looks very
sexy on you.  I bet your boss likes it.”

Leaning against the kitchen counter,
Sunny held her steaming mug of coffee to her lips, smiling at Roger over the
rim.  “My boss is a woman,” she said.  “You know that.”

“Huh,” he responded, one brow
arching.

“Jerk,” she said affectionately.

He laughed and picked up his own mug,
looking delightfully rumpled in the clothes he had retrieved from the floor
that morning.  Despite the firmly etched lines of laughter and concentration
and old cares in his handsome face, he looked boyish, mischievous, happy, and
tired.  Running his fingers through his thick, dark hair, he set his mug down
with a thump.

“The reason I worked so late was to
complete the finish work on that last job.  Next one isn’t scheduled until
tomorrow, so I took the day off today.  I figure I’ll run over to the hardware
store when it opens and pick up a couple of new lock sets, if you’d like?”

“There’s money in the envelope,”
Sunny told him, flicking a glance toward the telephone table.  The envelope
still sat there, the one with her name on it.  He nodded, arching his back to
stretch his arms above his head.  The early morning light gleamed in the slant
of his nearly closed eyes, touched the dark stubble of his jaw—and the scar
across his throat.  Reaching back, Sunny set her mug on the counter behind her.

“May I ask you something?”

Lowering his arms, he slid his chair
back and patted his thigh, indicating she should come and sit.  “Shoot,” he
said.

She sat down, ignoring the hand on
her knee, and raised her fingers to lightly touch the scarred base of his
throat.  The hand on her knee stilled.  She felt his whole body stiffen, heard
the quick intake of breath through his nose.

The twisted tissue ran deep into his
flesh, right into his throat.  Sunny wondered if the damage might be the reason
for his gravel tones.  “What happened here?” she asked him.

Grasping her fingers, he drew them
away from his neck and set them down in her lap, holding them there.  “That’s
part of what I wanted to talk to you about last night.”

At the tone of his reply, her breath
went in, then out, and she looked him in the eye, noting with the same
cognizance she always felt when she saw what a stark contrast the amber was to
the black length of his lashes, the dark texture of his hair, that his eyes
were amazingly beautiful.  She remembered the first time she had seen them and
how she had felt as though they were gazing into her, revealing the ordinary
information of her life to him.  They didn’t look that way now, their
expression guarded, barricaded.  She felt her heart squeeze.  His mouth opened.

“Wait!” she forestalled him.  “Wait. 
Before you speak, I need to tell you something.”

“Okay,” he agreed cautiously, “go
ahead.”

She dipped her head, studying the
interlacing of their fingers, tracing the pattern with the forefinger of her
other hand.  His hands were so much larger than hers.  She liked that, felt
protected in their grasp.  “Roger…”

“Yes.”  Quiet.  Hesitant.

Lifting her head, she glanced back up
into his eyes and found for the briefest instant they were unguarded again. 
Tears started to hers, clinging to her lashes.

“I love you, Roger,” she said.  “I
just want you to know that, in case it makes a difference.”

His tee shirt expanded with an
indrawn breath.  “Holy fucking shit,” he murmured.

Sunny’s lips twisted.  “That wasn’t
exactly the response I envisioned.”

Hand darting to the back of her neck,
he drew her down against his chest, pressing his mouth to the crown of her
hair.  He spoke in a voice thick with emotion.

“I love you, too, Sunny,” he said.

*        *        *

With her bare feet tucked up on the
couch beneath her skirt, Sunny stared at her black high heels lying discarded
in the sun on the living room rug.  An unanticipated request for a day off had
been accepted without comment, as she had never asked without notice before.  Lisa
and Gracie were probably both wondering what was up, yet refrained from inquiring.
 Across the room Roger sat in the wing-backed chair
near the window.  It was not a position she wished he’d taken, but he seemed to
require some distance between them before speaking.

“You remember what it was like to be
a kid, don’t you, Sunny?” he asked suddenly, unexpectedly, his head turned
aside, his gaze intent on something out the window. 

“Yes,” she answered.

“I don’t,” he said.

“What?”

“I don’t,” he repeated.  “I have no
recollection of my life beyond fifteen years ago.”

Sunny blinked.  She shook her head a
little in confusion, as if by doing so she might rearrange the words he had
spoken in such a fashion that they would make sense.

“Fifteen years this October.  Yes, fifteen
years ago this October I regained consciousness on the side of the road not far
from here and was picked up by a passing school bus driver and driven to a
hospital.  Good thing.  I was almost dead.  My throat was crushed so severely
the damaged tissue nearly suffocated me.”

Sunny tried to visualize that and
couldn’t.  She wouldn’t let herself. 

 “How—what had happened?”

“I don’t know,” he said, still gazing
out the window.  The tulips in the garden by the walkway dipped in the breeze
and the bright sun.  Across the driveway Sunny spotted one of Ned’s seasonal
helpers walking into the barn. 

“The police investigated,” Roger
continued, “figuring someone had tried to kill me, to strangle me with a rope.”

“Oh my God,” Sunny whispered.  She
pressed her fingers to her mouth, breathing hard against the tips.

“There weren’t any clues, really,
besides some fibers embedded in the ligature marks.  No witnesses, not even my
own identity to help them.  All I remembered, the only thing I remembered, was
my name, and it was weeks before I could speak it.”

Sunny swallowed, hard, her fingers
stealing to her throat as she grappled with the knowledge.

“Didn’t that help them identify who
you were, locate your family?” she managed to ask.

“My name?  There are hundreds of
Roger Macleods hereabouts, and across the country.  Apparently the name goes
back many years.  All were present and accounted for, or dead in their graves,
except me.  I didn’t belong to any of the families unearthed.  Apparently, I
committed no crime either, because there were no fingerprints on record.”

Sunny shook her head in a wider motion
and said nothing.  He turned to look at her then, his handsome face haggard,
drawn with emotion.  She saw his chest rise and fall beneath the sage-colored
fabric of his shirt.

“I…I spent quite a while in the State
Hospital, Sunny.  I figure you should be aware of that.”

Rising from the couch, Sunny crossed
to the window near his chair, watching the blooms of the tulips, crimson red,
yellow at the center, the dark stamen heavy with pollen.  She held her hand out
to the side and he slipped his fingers into hers.

“Therapy, electric shock, meds,
physical rehabilitation,” he went on.  “I learned a trade.  I learned a lot.  I
learned I could read and did so, every day.  Mostly about history.  I have a
thing for early American history.  I don’t have any idea why.”

She felt him shrug in the length of
the arm she clasped.

“Gradually I began to recall
generalities, though nothing I could put a finger on and say to myself, ‘so
this is what I did then,’ ‘so this is who I am.’   I remembered that I worked
with my hands, but not what I did with them.  I’m not particularly comfortable
around crowds of people, but I hear that’s a common enough affliction.  I like
the land, I like the changing seasons, I like the quiet, I like the nuances of
this area’s past.  And I love you.  That’s not something I’ve ever said to
anyone before.”

Sunny sank her teeth into her lip,
the tears rolling unchecked down her cheeks.

“Oh, God, Sunny, come here.”

He pulled her down into his lap where
she curled against him, weeping salt tears into the soft, wrinkled fabric of
his shirt.  “The first day I saw you,” he whispered against her, “I thought to
myself: here is someone real.  I wasn’t wrong.”

Sunny cried harder, stifling her
outburst by shoving a fistful of his shirt against her mouth.

“Will you marry me, Sunny?  I promise
I will love you for the rest of my life.”

CHAPTER SEVEN

When Sunny told Jess the news,
several days delayed from its origination, her sister shrieked so loudly she
woke Colin up where he had fallen asleep, mid-pout, at the bottom of his
playpen.  “Sorry, buddy,” Sunny said to him when he eyed her sleepily, “your
mom’s just a little excited.” 

Jess bent to scoop her son out of the
playpen, tucking a stray lock of hair behind her ear.  “I’m a little in shock,”
she said, “but thrilled.  This is great.  I mean, you haven’t known each other
all that long obviously, but you look so happy, Sunny.”

Sunny let her babble on as she went
about the mechanics of changing Colin’s diaper.  Listening with half an ear and
a fond smile, Sunny’s gaze roved around her sister’s house, noting anew the
indications of her sibling’s lifestyle, her preferences for suburban life to
country, so different from her own.   She pictured Roger there, gathered with
the family for holiday dinners, birthdays, tall and quiet and happy.  She
understood now why he’d never made mention of his family.  He’d published his
photo, but no one had ever come forward claiming kinship.

“He wants kids, too, someday,” Sunny
added, when Jessica had taken a break to draw breath.  This sent her off into
further peals of ecstasy.  Chuckling to herself, Sunny went to get a glass of
water from the kitchen, finding an invitation to Scott and Kathy’s nuptials
propped against the napkin holder on the counter.  Sunny studied it while she
drank.

“Are you going?” she asked.

“Going where?”

“To the wedding.  Scott and Kathy’s
wedding.”

Jess looked up from nuzzling Colin’s
round, bare belly and efficiently snapped his outfit shut.  “I responded with a
yes.  Mark and I are going.  I didn’t even think—is that a problem?”

“No,” said Sunny, “it’s not.  Roger
and I are going, too.”  At least, she hoped he would attend.  As there promised
to be a crowd, she supposed there could always be a last-minute backout.  She
wasn’t sure just how far his aversion to crowds extended, or possibly, at this
point, his aversion to Scott.   She wouldn’t go without him, however, and he
knew that.  “You’ll get to meet him, then.”

“Not until then?” Jess said.  “Why
not until then?

“It’s only two weeks away, numbskull. 
We’re sort of laying low, enjoying our time together, undisturbed.”

“Ah, I see,” said Jess with a
suggestive leer, made comical by the fact she had Colin clutching both of her
cheeks in his chubby fists.

“Yes, you
do
see,” Sunny said,
making her sister laugh outright.

Jess set Colin on the rug in the
sun.  His hair stood out around his head in a halo of narrow curls.  “If you
don’t mind my asking, what does Scott think of all this?”

Sunny stood the pitcher of water
upright, her glass refilled.  “He doesn’t know.  I haven’t told him.  And Jess,
it’s none of his business until I make it his business, okay?”

Jessica’s eyebrows shot up, all
innocence.  “I wasn’t going to say anything.”

“Uh-huh.”

“I wasn’t!”

Carrying her water into the family
room, Sunny sat on the edge of the couch to watch Colin in his attempts at
getting up the momentum for a crawl.  After Scott’s ridiculously and needlessly
nasty phone message, Sunny hadn’t been inclined to speak with him about her
personal life.  She hadn’t heard from him since, either, so there’d been no
opportunity for details of her life to become a topic of discussion anyway. 

“Sunny, what happened between the two
of you?”

Sunny looked up.  She set the glass
on a coaster on the coffee table.  “I’m assuming by your tone you mean Scott
and I?”

“Well, yeah.”

“Are you asking about what broke up
our marriage?  You’ve heard it already.  Do you really want me to get into all
of that again?”

“No,” said Jessica, sitting down
beside her, “I mean recently.  You were getting along so well, considering, and
now you seem angry.  Is it because of the thing with Kathy and the baby and the
two of them getting married?”

“No,” Sunny answered.  It was because
of the thing with Sunny and the lack of baby and the divorce, followed by
Scott’s proprietary assumptions and his advances and the thing with Kathy and
the baby and the two of them getting married, not to mention the last words
she’d heard from him being directed against Roger and against her, while
apparently drunk, and him with a new baby due in less than six months.  She
didn’t say any of that, though.  She didn’t mention the fact that she believed
Scott had been in the house without telling her either.  That, at least, was
solved by the changing of the locks. And if it had been Roger in the house,
after all...well, he would have said so, wouldn’t he?  Of course he would.  She
knew he would.  She
trusted
him.  Frowning, Sunny returned her attention
to Colin. 

“No,” she repeated.  “I’m happy.  For
Kathy, at least.  She seems thrilled at the prospect of the baby and the
marriage.  I hope it all works out.”

“That’s quite magnanimous of you.”

“Not really,” said Sunny.  “What
point would there be in wishing them ill, right?  I can’t believe how big Colin
is getting,” Sunny added, changing the subject, smiling down at Colin’s
energetic attempts to propel himself across the floor.

“So we’re dropping it there, are we?”

“That we are,” Sunny agreed.

“I love you, sis,” Jessica said
softly.

“I know you do.  And for a long time,
I thought you might be the only one I’d ever hear that from again.”