The last secret_ a novel - Mary McGarry Morris [99]
“Gotta go.” She snaps her phone shut. “I didn't see you coming.”
Almost an accusation the way she says it. Still though, he smiles. “You were too busy talking.”
“My mother,” she says so quickly that he knows she's lying.
“How come you don't take my calls?”
She stands up and looks around, squinting as she watches Lyra swing, belly on the rubber sling, spread-eagled. Like a trapped bug, he thinks. The cricket legs he used to pull out and then the calm he always felt.
“All my messages, you musta got one, anyway.”
“It's been so busy. Doctor appointments. Then Clay's … he hurt himself This is Lyra's first day out of the house.”
“That's not why.”
“It's cold, I know, but she needs this.” Shivering in her short denim jacket, she hugs herself, revealing the soft flesh of her waist. “Lyra!” she calls and strides off suddenly, as if something is wrong when all the girl has done is jump off the swing and run to the slide. Instead of climbing the ladder, Lyra is walking up the slide itself At the top, a younger child sits, waiting her turn. Poised behind her on the ladder, a red-cheeked, curly-haired little girl with glasses grins and waits her turn. Lyra laughs. She enjoys being in the way, holding things up, he thinks as he follows Robin. She tells Lyra to get off the slide so the two other girls can come down.
“That's Jane!” Lyra points up at the petite, blue-eyed child, unlike Lyra, so stiffly bundled in her quilted snowsuit that her legs stick out in front of her. “And Mary, that's her sister.” The two waiting children smile down at Lyra. “C'mon, Janie-Jane!” Lyra laughs, daring, taunting, teasing like her mother. Just as Robin reaches to take her daughter off the high metal slide, the child, Jane, loses her grip and hurtles down on her slick nylon bottom, boots first, into Lyra, knocking her back onto the frozen ground. Quickly next, comes Mary, landing on both of them.
Eddie chuckles. Brat. She had that coming.
Lyra wails and Robin is helping up the crying girls. Their mother runs over from the sand box where she's been gathering up their toys.
“Janie!” the woman calls. The smaller girl's nose is bleeding. Her sister hugs her.
Should have been the other one, he thinks. Lyra, the troublemaker.
“I'm sorry,” Robin says. “Lyra knows better than to go up the wrong way.”
Her tension excites him. He wants the other mother to go at her, attack her, hurt her. She deserves it. A good slap, that's what she needs, right across that full red mouth. His fist clenches as he imagines it hard on her wrist, and her soft, wet face at his, begging forgiveness.
The women apologize, assuring one another it was just one of those things. That's how they'll learn, the hard way, they agree.
Ditto that. The hard way, he thinks, stunned to see her suddenly leaving. Carrying Lyra, she hurries down the street. He calls her name, but she only walks faster. Her car isn't parked in the playground lot, but across the street, behind CVS. Trying to hide it. From him, he knows, easily keeping pace. So close he hears her panting. He waits while she buckles Lyra into her booster seat. Closing the door, she stands with her back against it. Message clear: shielding her kid from him. Raising his hands, he steps back.
“Why? What'd I do?”
“Nothing.”
Her weak smile infuriates him.
“I just have to go, that's all.” She makes a show of pushing up her sleeve and checking her watch.
The honey brown fuzz on her forearm makes him ache with horniness. More hair than you'd expect on such a beautiful woman, proof of her earthiness, her warmth, all that makes her so desirably real. A creature of flesh and fear, born for a man's pleasure. Submission now in the slow sweep of her gaze. Her soft mouth trembles.
“Please.” She steps around him to open her door. She gets into the car.
“Tell me what's