Page 83 of The Shape of Night

“Everyone has secrets.”

“Then let me guess yours.” He presses a playful kiss to my lips. “You sing opera off-key in the shower.”

“Secrets are what youdon’ttell people.”

“There’s something worse? Lied about your age? Ran a red light?”

I turn my face to avoid looking at him. “Please. I don’t want to talk about this.”

I feel him staring at me, trying to penetrate the wall I’ve put up against him. I twist away and sit up on the side of the bed. Look down at my bare thighs, splayed apart like a hooker’s.Oh no, Ben, you do not want to know my secrets. You don’t want to know all the sins I have committed.

“Ava?” I flinch as he places his hand on my shoulder.

“I’m sorry, but this isn’t going to work. You and me.”

“Why are you saying this after we just made love?”

“We’re too different.”

“That’s not really the problem, is it?” he says. His voice has changed, and I don’t like the sound of it. “You’re just trying to find a way to tell me I’m not good enough for you.”

“That’s not at all what I’m saying.”

“But that’s how it sounds to me. You’re like the others. Like all the—” He stops, distracted by his ringing cellphone. He lurches to his feet to retrieve the phone from his trouser pocket. “Dr. Gordon,” he answers curtly. Though he’s turned away from me, I can see the muscles knotted in his bare back. He feels wounded, of course. He’s fallen in love with me and I’ve rejected him. And at this most painful of moments, he’s forced to deal with a crisis at the hospital.

“You’ve started the infusion? And how does her EKG look now?”

As he talks to the hospital, I gather up my clothes and quietly get dressed. Whatever desire I’d felt earlier has gone stone cold, and now I’m embarrassed to be seen naked. By the time he hangs up, I’m fully dressed and sitting primly on the bed, hoping we can both forget that anything ever happened between us.

“I’m sorry, but my patient’s just had a heart attack,” he says. “I have to go in to the hospital.”

“Of course.”

He pulls on his clothes and briskly buttons his shirt. “I don’t know how long I’ll be there. It could take a few hours, so if you get hungry, feel free to raid the refrigerator. There’s half a roast chicken in there.”

“I’ll be fine, Ben. Thank you.”

He pauses in the doorway and turns to look at me. “I’m sorry if I assumed too much, Ava. It’s just that I thought you felt the same way I did.”

“I don’t knowwhatI feel. I’m confused.”

“Then we need to hash this out when I get home. We need to settle this.”

But there is nothing to settle, I think as I hear him thump down the stairs and out of the house, and the front door bangs shut behind him. There is no fire between us, and above all, I need to feel fire. I look out the window and am relieved to see him drive away. I need this time alone to think about what I’ll say when he comes back.

I’m about to turn from the window when another vehicle rumbles by. The gray pickup truck is startlingly familiar, because it used to be parked in my driveway every weekday. Is Ned Haskell working somewhere in this neighborhood? Ned’s truck vanishes around the corner and I back away from the window, disturbed by my glimpse of him.

As I head downstairs, I’m glad that Henry is right at my heels, his claws tapping on wood. Why do I own a cat when I could have a dog like Henry, whose sole reason for existence is to protect and please his owner? Meanwhile, useless Hannibal is off prowling like the tomcat he is, once again complicating my life.

In the kitchen, I look in the refrigerator and confirm there is half a roasted chicken, but I have no appetite for food. What I really want is a glass of wine, and I find an already opened bottle with just enough Chardonnay left in it to get me started. I empty it into a glass and sip it as I wander into the living room with Henry still at my heels. There I admire the four oil paintings hanging on the walls. All of these are Ben’s work, and once again I’m impressed by his skill. The same beach is the subject of all four paintings, but each has a different mood. The first captures a summer’s day, the water reflecting bright shards of sunlight. Lying on the sand is a red-checked blanket, still bearing the rumpled indentations of the two people who had been lying there. Lovers, perhaps, who’ve gone off for a swim? I can almost feel the heat of the sun, taste the salt from the sea breeze.

I turn to look at the second painting. It’s the same beach with the same jagged rock jutting up on the right, but autumn has tinted the vegetation in brilliant reds and golds. On the sand lies the same checked blanket, rumpled as before, with fallen leaves scattered across it. Where are the lovers? Why have they left behind their blanket?

In the third painting, winter has blown in, turning the water black and ominous. Snow covers the beach, but one small corner of the blanket has curled up from beneath that layer of snow, a startling red patch against white. The lovers are gone, their summer tryst long forgotten.

I turn to the fourth painting. Springtime has arrived. The trees are a bright green and a lone dandelion blooms in a scrubby patch of grass. I know this is meant to be the final painting in the series because once again there is the red-checked blanket on the sand. But the seasons have transformed it into a tattered symbol of abandonment. The fabric is dirt-streaked and littered with twigs and leaves. Any pleasures that were once enjoyed on that red-checked cloth are now long forgotten.

I imagine Ben setting up his easel on this beach, painting this same scene again and again as the seasons unfold. What kept drawing him back to this spot? The corner of a tag peeks out from behind the frame. I pull it out and read the label.

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