Envy(145)

When Mike was there, Parker had constantly sought solitude and silence in which to write. But it was amazing how much he missed having the old man puttering around. He found himself subconsciously listening for Mike’s footsteps or the clang of pots and pans in the kitchen, the closing of a door, the whirr of the vacuum cleaner somewhere in the house. The sounds would be welcome distractions now. Comforts. Because he felt terribly alone.

Years back, while he lay in hospital wards with strangers in neighboring beds, being attended by capable but impersonal nurses, he had felt utterly friendless. Completely alone. That’s when Hatred became his companion. His imaginary friend. His security blanket.

Through the years that followed, there were times when Hatred was an exhausting sidekick. Particularly after he’d succeeded with the mystery series, he grew tired of it constantly hanging around, never going home. It grew to be a nuisance. He wished to be rid of it.

Sometimes he kicked it around, hoping that it would leave of its own accord, but it never did. It stayed, and he could never bring himself to abandon it. Instead, he had fed it daily, keeping it loyal to him, until his relationship with it became codependent. It needed him to survive. He needed it for motivation.

Now Mike was gone, and he was left again with only Hatred, his trusty but parasitical ally.

He was feeling awfully sorry for himself, but the irony didn’t escape him. His misery was self-imposed. “Poor you. But look at it this way, Parker,” he whispered to himself. “The end is in sight.”

The last die had been cast when he sent the Envy manuscript to Noah. It was too late now for second-guessing. One way or another it would soon be over and he’d have closure. Everything he had done, said, or written in the past fourteen years had been with this goal in mind. It all funneled down to here and now.

Whatever the outcome, whether in his favor or not, it hadn’t come cheaply. He had achieved worldwide acclaim, yet no one knew his name. He had sacrificed fame in exchange for anonymity. He had money but nothing to spend it on. He owned a beautiful house, but it wasn’t a home. He shared the empty rooms with only a hanging man’s ghost. His need for vengeance had cost him his one true friend. Ultimately it had cost him Maris.

He missed her with a physical ache. If he were a woman or a child, he would cry himself to sleep each night. He moved through the house touching things he had seen her touch, inhaling deeply in the hope of catching a whiff of her fragrance. He was pathetic, as daffy as Professor Hadley’s jilted aunt who lived in the attic with only bittersweet memories and her fear of fresh fruit.

Maris had been essential to his plot, but he hadn’t expected her to become essential to him. In the brief time she had been in his life, she had become the most important element of it.

Second most important, he corrected.

If she were the most important, he would leave Noah to the devil as Mike had advised and spend the rest of his life loving her and letting himself be loved. At night when he couldn’t sleep, he’d get downright sappy. He envisioned them on the beach, tossing a stick to a golden retriever and supervising a couple of sturdy, laughing kids building a sand castle. A greeting-card tableau. A Kodak commercial.

Too often for his mental health, he relived making love to her. God, it had been sweet. But perhaps the sweetest part had been holding her. Just that. Holding her close. Feeling her heartbeat beneath his hand, her breath against his skin. Allowing himself to forget for a few moments that he had only this one night with her and that, come morning, he would hurt her terribly and irreparably.

Maris was the one plot element that might have caused him to change his outline and end the thing differently.

But he couldn’t have even if he’d wanted to. Because the revenge he sought wasn’t only for himself. It was for Mary Catherine. He might not deserve restitution, but Sheila damn sure did. By most moral measuring sticks, she would come up short. But he knew better. That spectacular body had been home to a kind and generous spirit. In many respects, she was innocent.

And Noah had killed her.

As surely as he had killed Daniel Matherly.

Parker hoped that Maris and the authorities were thoroughly investigating Matherly’s death, because Noah’s account of it smelled to high heaven. It stank of Noah. It was doubtful they’d find anything that implicated him. He would make certain they didn’t. He would have made the old man’s death look like a tragic accident, and his explanation for how it had come about would be perfectly plausible. He was gifted that way.

Overt aggression wasn’t his style. He was smarter and more subtle than that. Oh, he could hold his own in a fistfight. Parker still had the scar above his eyebrow to prove it. But Noah’s real power wasn’t physical. It was cerebral. His strength was his cunning. He maneuvered insidiously. You didn’t see him coming until it was too late. Which made him the most dangerous kind of animal on the planet.

But he had a major flaw: his intolerance for anyone getting the best of him.

When Noah read the Envy manuscript, he would come south on the next flight. He’d be unable to resist. The book would be a red flag waved in his face, and it simply wasn’t in Noah Reed to ignore it.

During these intervening years, if Noah thought of Parker at all, he had probably imagined him as he’d last seen him—a vanquished enemy, a threat he had eliminated.

If for no other reason, he would come to St. Anne out of curiosity. He’d come to see how old Parker had fared. He would come to see for himself what his wife had found so interesting about his former roommate.