and one detective kept giving me the evil eye. But eventually they came around to concluding that I was as clueless as they were.”
Linda studied him, just to make sure.
“I have a young son,” Geoff told her, and immediately Linda saw the anguish in his eyes. She saw he was no murderer. Even if he’d stopped loving his wife, his son meant the world to him. That was obvious from the look on his face when he spoke of him. “He misses his mother terribly. She wasn’t a particularly attentive mother, but since she’s been gone, he’s kind of romanticized her.”
“I suppose that’s only natural,” Linda said. “Every child wants a mother.”
Geoff shook his head and sighed. “You know, as sick as she was, I just can’t imagine how she could walk out on her own son.”
“What’s his name?” Linda asked.
“Joshua. He’s a good kid.” His eyes grew sad. “But he needs a mother.”
“So what’s Josh going to say about the wedding plans?”
Linda is startled back to the present. Lucy is grinning at her across the table, having asked a perfectly appropriate question, but one that rattles Linda every time she hears it.
“We’re going to tell him this weekend,” Geoff answers for her. “Out at the house in Sunderland.”
“Well, I’m sure he’ll handle it well,” Lucy says. “After all, I’m sure he adores Linda.”
Linda says nothing.
“Will you get married in Sunderland, too?” Lucy asks. “I remember so well your marriage to Gabrielle out there—”
“We haven’t decided yet,” Geoff says, looking over at Linda.
“Oh, but you must,” Lucy says, reaching across the table to tap Linda’s hand. “The chapel out there is so quaint. Get married in the spring, when the forsythia is in bloom. That’s what Geoff and Gabrielle did. Oh, my, it was so lovely. The church was decorated with daffodils and white lilacs…”
“Well,” Linda says, finally speaking up, “it might be nice to do something original to us.”
“And a date?” Lucy’s asking, not listening. “Have you set a date?”
“Well, the divorce won’t be final until the fall,” Geoff says.
Jim leans in to rest his chin in his palm. “Why’d you wait so long, buddy? Gabrielle’s been gone for a long time, and you can file for divorce one year after desertion.”
Linda looks over at Geoff to see how he’ll answer. She believes him when he says he fell out of love with Gabrielle long before she left. Still, she had been brilliant and beautiful, two things Linda finds difficult believing about herself.
“She’s the mother of my son,” Geoff says simply. “And he’s never stopped talking about her since the day she left.”
They all nod.
“Besides,” Geoff adds, smiling and reaching over to squeeze Linda’s hand. “There was no great motivator until this little lady came along.”
She smiles. She feels her cheeks start to burn. At first she assumes she’s blushing. She often blushes when Geoff pays her a compliment. It’s something that goes back to grammar school, when she’d turn beet red when the teacher called on in her in class. But then she realizes it’s more than mere blushing: her face actually begins to hurt. It feels the way it does when she occasionally holds the hair dryer too close to her skin. It feels the way—
—the way it did in her dream last night.
She looks up. The restaurant is suddenly in flames.
Her companions at the table are engulfed in a ferocious conflagration, their skin melting. She sees first Jim, then Lucy, wither and crumple under the flames, as if they were nothing more than cardboard. Then Geoff, too: the man she loves, the man she thought she’d never find, with his handsome face caught on fire.
That’s how it is, the thing in the flames tells her. That’s how it will be.
Linda screams.
CHAPTER 2
“Darling!” Geoff shouts. “What’s wrong?”
Her hands are covering her face against the approach of the flames.
“Linda! Are you all right?”
The heat…It’s gone.
She peers between her fingers. There’s no fire. Geoff is fine. Jim and Lucy stare at her as if she were a madwoman.
And might possibly she be?
“I—I felt—fire,” she stammers.
“Fire?” Lucy asks.
The waiter has approached their table, fluttering his hands and looking anxious. “Is everything all right?”
“Yes,” Geoff says, waving him away. “Bring my fiancée some water, please.”
Linda realizes patrons at the other tables are looking at her oddly.
“I thought—I felt this heat—I thought there was a fire—”
“It’s okay, darling. There’s no fire.”
“I thought I saw it,” she says, breaking into a sweat now. “It was like a dream I had last night—”
“Maybe we ought to order some food,” Jim suggests. “When Lucy’s light-headed she gets hot flashes, too.”
“Oh, Jim,” Lucy says, smirking.
“Are you all right, Linda?” Geoff asks. “Do you want to go for a walk outside?”
“Maybe.” She touches her brow and feels the sweat there. “I’ll just go to the ladies’ room for a moment.”
“Do you want me to go with you?” Lucy asks.
“No, no, I’ll be fine.”
Linda stands, hurrying across the room, avoiding the strange looks from the other guests. She pushes open the door of the ladies’ room and stands over the sink, splashing water on her face. She’s frightened by the vision. Her heart is racing. But she’s embarrassed, too. What must Jim and Lucy think? Geoff’s little girlfriend…What a flake.
But what did it mean? Had her dream so traumatized her she was now having flashbacks? What did they call it? Post-traumatic stress disorder? She’d seen it on Oprah, she thinks.
It had felt so real. Her cheeks were still hot. Maybe she ought to make an appointment with a doctor.
When she returns to the table they’re back to discussing historical theory, debating whether Ronnie Simms, whoever he is, should get the chair of some committee or another. Linda tunes out, concentrating on her salad. Geoff holds her hand under the table. She gets through the dinner with some forced smiles and again apologizes for her outburst when they’re all saying goodbye. Jim and Lucy assure her it was nothing, but she knows they’re going home shaking their heads over Geoff’s choice for a bride.
“Do you want me to stay?” Geoff asks when they’re back at her apartment.
“No, I’ll be okay.”
“You sure? Darling, I’m not going to leave until I know you’re okay.”
God, she loves him. She encircles his neck with her arms. Actually, she’d love for him to stay. To feel his strong, hard body next to hers all night. There’s nothing she likes more than waking up beside him, leaning up on her elbow to stare down at him, running her fingers through the nest of black hair on his chest. Geoff is the most exquisite lover she’s ever known. Not that she’s had all that many: in her twenty-five years, she can count all