Afterlife - Douglas Clegg [62]
She unbuttoned her shirt, and took it off, and then unzipped her dress, slipping out of it, getting it wet in the process.
Then, her bra, and finally, her underwear.
She tossed them back to the shore.
The mugginess of the evening clung to her naked
form. She felt alive in a way she hadn’t in months. She stepped forward into the water.
Another step.
Another.
She put out of her mind the snapping turtles and the freshwater eels and snakes and any of what Livy would call the squirmies, and went further into the water until she was up to her neck. It was so dark that she felt as if there were no separation between the water and the woods and the sky, and she dipped her head beneath the surface of the water.
Coolness.
Up again, to breathe, to gasp.
The lights across the water.
The dark sky above, but now, she saw the faint prickles of stars, and as she kept watch on the sky, they seemed to come out by the hundreds and thousands.
It had been years since she’d looked up at the stars. Years, even, since she’d gotten into the lake that was less than a quarter mile from her house.
Years since she’d felt young.
And she remembered:
She and Hut had been talking divorce. Well, she had been—he had ignored her. He had told her she needed therapy. He had told her that she needed to start taking anti-depressants. He had told her she needed to quit the job at the ER and be a better mother.
They had been fighting.
The last three years had felt like hell to her, but she’d put up with it, for Livy. For Livy and Matt both, and for the shred of memory of love she still carried.
Somehow, it had all been wiped away in the murder.
Somehow, her mind had changed the bad memories to good.
Somehow, she’d turned Hut into a saint after his death.
He was a difficult, complex man, perhaps. And she’d loved him as much as she could, until he had turned mean, and cold, and unfeeling.
And the day she saw him strike his own son, she had been planning on how to leave him and somehow get Matt away from him.
All pushed aside, blocked, when he’d been murdered.
And the touch of one man had opened it, like an old Christmas present at the back of a closet, forgotten, hidden, pushed aside, and then, drawn out into the light of day, its wrapper torn back. Michael Diamond. He was bullshit. But he knew things. How had he known? How had he been able to know about Amanda Hutchinson’s death?
She walked back to shore, dressed, and hurried back to her car.
At home, in bed, she stayed up later, reading Diamond’s book, The Life Beyond.
4
She had an eleven a.m. with Eleanor Swanson, who wanted to meet at Julie’s house. “My office is being redecorated by the group.”
“The group?”
“The Seven Arts Medical Association. Every five years they decide they need a different look, redo the offices, and suddenly, I’m paying more in rent.”
“Oh,” Julie smiled, and set a cup of coffee down on the table in front of her.
“Thank you, dear,” Eleanor said. “I’m glad we could meet here. I’d have suggested my house, but it’s a mess right now.”
“It’s nice to do this here,” Julie said. They talked a bit about the heat and vacations, and then Julie said, “I have to talk to you about these sexual dreams.”
“Still going on?”
“They’ve intensified, Eleanor. I mean, they’re full of perversions and things that I’d never do.”
“Hut’s in them?”
“Sometimes it’s Hut. Sometimes, not.”
“Well, what’s disturbing about them?”
“It’s like I close my eyes. And suddenly, they just begin. It’s a rollercoaster.”
Eleanor nodded. “Maybe you need a little something to help you sleep.”
“I’ve tried sleeping pills. I have a prescription. But it doesn’t take them away.”
“I’m not much of a conventional therapist. I’m no good at just sitting and listening. If I think I can help, I’ll try and bring my insights to this. You’re in your mid-thirties, you lost your husband. By your own account, you had a less-than-satisfactory sex life with him. Now, I think your subconscious is making up for lost time. Sure, there might be disturbing or—as you put it—perverted elements to the