A String of Beads (Jane Whitefield, #8)(82)

He sat down and drank, looking at her and noting the position of her glass.

Chelsea had gathered her thoughts while he’d been away. “This is the time to be open and honest. I went out with you because you’re such a great guy, and I felt safe with you. I felt I could talk to you about anything, but that you wouldn’t make me relive Nick’s murder. The first night we went out, I enjoyed it and forgot how sad I was for a while. I was distracted, and I was drinking, and I guess that one night I got carried away.”

Crane realized Chelsea was being absolutely sincere. She had actually remembered none of that night—passing out, his carrying her to the bedroom, moving her this way and that as he’d stripped her, the sex. The powder was magical. It had absolutely erased her memory. He had never used GHB before that night, but it had lived up to its reputation completely.

He could see she was blushing, and that it embarrassed her to look at him, but she wanted to be sure she was getting through to him. If she couldn’t see his hurt, then she couldn’t be sure he was hearing her.

She said, “The next morning I realized I had passed out at some point and a lot was a blank. I must have thrown myself at you, and so we’d had sex. I decided that since I’d done that, I owed it to you, and to me—I’m not saying I was being unselfish—to try to see if this was what we both really wanted, or just a drunken mistake.”

“It wasn’t a mistake,” Crane said. “I know this has been awkward for you, so soon after Nick died. But we hardly ever get to choose when it’s time for things in our lives, good or bad, to happen.”

Chelsea reached out and touched his hand, and he took it as permission to come closer on the couch. “It was good. It was,” she said. “But it’s still a mistake, and I’m so, so sorry.”

She began to cry. She bent her head down and he hugged her. He could feel her sobbing, and he could tell her tears were making the shoulder of his sport coat wet. While he held her with his hands behind her back, he tore off the end of the envelope, transferred the envelope from his left hand to his right, and poured the envelope into her ginger ale, trying to make his gesture quick and measure the dose by eye. Was that too much? He slipped the empty envelope into his coat pocket and brought his hand up to pat her tenderly. He stayed there, could have stayed there forever holding her, but after another minute or two she straightened, her head came up, and he had to release her.

He handed her the silk handkerchief from the breast pocket of his sport coat. She wiped her nose and dabbed at her eyes. The black eyeliner smeared on it, and she cried some more. “I’m ruining this.”

“Keep it.” While she was occupied with staring at his handkerchief, he watched the last of the white powder dissolve in her ginger ale.

She pivoted to face the coffee table, picked up the ginger ale, took a few swallows, and set it down. She seemed to collect herself. “I made a mistake. You’re a wonderful man, but I’m not in love with you.”

“I think you are, deep down. Whenever you’re not thinking, brooding over things, everything is fine. Maybe this was too soon to start a new relationship and you weren’t ready, as you say. Maybe we need to step back and take things more slowly. We can still see each other, and over time—”

She was already shaking her head impatiently. “I’ve got to be totally honest. If I thought that could be the problem, then I’d leave things the way they are, keep my mouth shut, and wait. That’s what I wanted to do, but I can’t. This has got to be over before the future can start.”

He took a drink of his ginger ale, trying to get her to feel thirsty.

It worked. She took another long draft of her ginger ale, stood, carried it to the bar, and set her glass on the granite surface. “I need to go home.”

“Please don’t go back to that empty house now. It’s late. We don’t have to talk about this anymore. I can sleep in one of the guest rooms, and in the morning I’ll drive you back there.”

“I know it’s not fair to drag you out to drive me at this hour. I’ll call a cab.”

“No,” he said. He stood up from the couch. “Of course I’ll drive you home if that’s what you want. Just give me a minute to pull myself together.” He walked to the arch leading to the gallery and headed for the bedroom.

In the bedroom he checked the spots where she had always put her things on overnight stays. She had left nothing. It occurred to him that while he’d been standing at the bar imagining her hanging up her dress and brushing out her long blond hair in front of the mirror, she had been feverishly stuffing the dress into her overnight bag and gathering her other belongings as fast as she could.

He went into the bathroom and pissed, brushed his teeth to get rid of the smell of cognac on his breath, combed his hair, went to his closet, hung up his sport coat and returned his tie to the rack, and then took out a windbreaker. He put it on and walked slowly back up the gallery to the living room.

She was sitting on the couch again, so he could only see the back of her head, but it looked odd. She was slouching, leaning her head back against the top of the couch as though she were studying the ceiling. As he came around to the front of the couch he saw that her eyes were closed and her mouth open. He glanced in the direction of the bar and realized that while she was waiting she must have downed the last of the ginger ale.