Spider - Michael Morley [3]
They sat and talked; he made her laugh, flattered her with compliments and even made her blush a little. It was a perfect afternoon. Just as he’d hoped.
They had coffee in the crowded café and he told her how he worked as a company auditor, a stuffy job that he hated. He had to come to the park for some space and air.
She knows just what he meant; she loved to be outside too.
When it got to the point where they should go, he’d told her that he’d had a lovely time, in fact he couldn’t remember the last time he enjoyed himself so much. She blushed again and said she’d had fun too. It damn near broke his heart that he had to leave, had to deliver some boring accounts to some boring businessmen east of Georgetown.
She looked disappointed. He was sure of that. She’d wanted to spend more time with him, he could remember that clearly. In fact, looking back, it was almost as though she’d picked him, as much as he’d picked her.
Don’t people always say that in the end it is always the women who do the choosing?
They’d been together for almost three hours when they finally passed through the park’s gates and, looking back now, well it seems incredible, but if truth be known, for a moment he’d thought of not going through with it.
That made him smile.
Not gone through with it? How could he have thought that? My, how things would have been different if he’d simply said goodbye and gone his own way.
3
San Quirico D’Orcia, Tuscany
Neither Jack nor Nancy could get back to sleep. That had become routine too. His wife was the only person he could bring himself to talk to, the only one who could even begin to understand what had happened to him, and how it had left him.
The real nightmare had started long before the nocturnal ones. Overworking and over-caring had led to Jack’s collapse at JFK, after a cold case conference in LA, right in the middle of the hunt for BRK and just days before the birth of their son.
Now, he and Nancy went over the ground again, searching for a way to find some peace: Jack’s weeks in intensive care, unable to speak or walk properly, afraid that he’d die or be crippled for the rest of his life; Nancy’s fears that he’d let his job ruin their marriage, her thoughts of leaving him, taking Zack to her parents’ house and starting over again. As usual, they didn’t leave a stone unturned. And as usual they didn’t make any real progress.
Nancy King was tall, trim and tough. The daughter of a Marine, she knew how to deal with a crisis. Or at least she thought she did. After Jack’s crash and burn, they’d seen La Casa Strada on an Internet auction and she’d just known that they had to buy that hotel and start over in a new country.
A new beginning. A new way of life.
That’s what she’d said they’d needed, and that was what she’d been determined they’d have. Only now, well now, it seemed that new beginning was on hold.
And on hold was something Nancy wasn’t going to settle for.
Dawn was filtering through the shuttered windows when she finally got back to the prickly suggestion that Jack seek some professional help. ‘The Bureau gave you a number for a psychiatrist in Florence, a good one who said she’d see you at the drop of a hat. Ring her in the morning.’
‘The female trickcyclist –,’ Jack tried to joke his way out of it, ‘– you really think I need to see this shrink?’
His wife raised an eyebrow. ‘Honey, we both know you need to see a shrink. Now please get it done, yeah?’
He gave in. ‘Yeah, I’ll get it done.’ He sounded defeated, but even as he spoke, he felt slightly better at hearing himself admit that after all this time there might just be some help on its way. ‘You want some breakfast?’ he asked, standing in front of an open window in his boxers, patting his belly.
Behind him, Nancy could see the sun shimmering and rising across the velvet green valley.