The Bone House - Brian Freeman [60]
Cab turned on the oven in the apartment's kitchen. He'd found a restaurant on the north side of town that sold vegetarian quiche, and he'd ordered it to go, along with a bottle of Stags' Leap Chardonnay. He deposited the quiche on foil lining a baking sheet and put it in the oven, then located a corkscrew and opened the wine. He found a glass in a cabinet above the stove and poured the wine almost to the rim. With the Chardonnay in hand, he dimmed the lights in the apartment and switched on the gas fireplace. He settled into the leather sofa, put up his long legs, and drank the wine in gulps as he watched the fire.
He thought about calling his mother. They texted each other several times a month, but he hadn't actually heard her voice in six weeks.
It was the middle of the night in London, so he used his phone to send her a message instead.
Cold as hell here. Lonely but beautiful. See pic. C.
He attached a picture he'd taken with his phone on the crossing from Washington Island, with the angry water against the gray sky and the forested coastline of the peninsula looming ahead of him. His rented Corvette had been the only vehicle on the ferry. Right now, in the empty guest house, he felt like the only man alive in the town of Fish Creek.
He was accustomed to that sense of isolation. He thought of it as being homeless with a roof over his head. If he were back in his condominium in Florida, he would have felt the same way.
His mother had extended an open invitation to join her in London. Neither one of them had anyone else in their lives who really mattered. Even so, he'd resisted moving there, because he didn't know if he was ready to stop running. Whenever he looked back, he saw Vivian Frost chasing him. He still needed to exorcize her ghost. That was something his mother didn't understand, because he'd never told her the truth about Vivian's death.
Cab finished his glass of wine. He got up, checked the quiche in the oven, and poured another glass before sitting down again. He watched the gas fire, which burned in a controlled fashion, never changing. Fire wasn't like that. It was volatile and unpredictable, twisting with the wind, sucking energy out of the air. It was also, he knew, a particularly excruciating way to die. Hilary Bradley may have been blowing smoke his way with her story about Harris Bone, but she was right about one thing. If you were capable of burning up your wife and children, then you were the owner of a cold, dead soul, and you would feel little remorse watching the life flicker out of a girl's eyes on the beach.
Then again, he'd felt no remorse himself watching Vivian die. Not then. Not until later.
Cab got up restlessly and took his wine with him. He walked to the west end of the apartment and pushed open the glass doors that led to the balcony. He went outside, where the wind shrieked and cut at his face. The empty boat docks of the harbor were below him, and street lights glowed in haloes along the waterfront.
He thought about Hilary Bradley and realized he was annoyed with her. He was used to being the smartest person in the room, and he had the sense that she was every bit as smart as he was. He didn't like it that she had put a finger squarely on his vulnerability without knowing anything about him. It also bothered him that he experienced a glimmer of jealousy at the idea that she was so deeply in love with another man. It was an unwelcome reminder that his own life was emotionally and sexually barren. When he did have sex, it was generally the end of a relationship, not the beginning. He'd even gone so far as to pay for sex on a few occasions when he was living overseas, in order to be free of any complications.
'Cab.'
He heard the voice, but he didn't move or look around, because he knew it wasn't real. It was just