Every Single Secret(13)

“Hello, Dr. Strangelove,” I whispered.

In the center of the room, a battered metal desk and folding chair faced the monitors. Only a yellow legal pad and pen were on the desk. I opened the drawers—all six of them—but they were empty. No car keys. I crept around the desk, taking in the strange setup. The computers, if that was what they were, must have been the main servers, linked to the cameras downstairs and to the monitors up here. To timers, as well, most likely. And there was probably, somewhere, a mechanism for recording the captured footage so Dr. Cerny could review it later. I could see slots that looked like they might fit VHS tapes, but I was hopeless at technology, and the rest of the knobs and buttons and dials were meaningless to me. Frankly, the whole tableau looked very KGB circa 1980.

I examined the monitors. Feeds from our in-room cameras, maybe? They were dark, at least they appeared to be at first glance—but then a curtain fluttered in the corner of one, and I jumped in fright. The cameras were running, even though it was after ten. Either somebody had screwed up or the timers were off.

I moved closer.

Each camera must have been mounted near a fireplace mantel, allowing for a wide shot of the suite, even a bit of the windows. On our monitor, the one on the far right, I could see the bed, the door to the bathroom, and the small sitting area. The monitors were illuminated the slightest bit, by some light source outside the house, maybe. The moon or a floodlight on one of the eaves.

Heath was still sprawled out, his leg kicked out from under the comforter now. On my side of the bed, the comforter was thrown back, and I noticed, with a guilty flush, the twist of underwear lying on the floor. I turned my attention back to my fiancé—that beautiful, strong, tormented man—and, as I watched him sleep, thought back six months ago, to the night of his first nightmare.



Heath asked me to marry him on a perfect April night.

We were at our house—the bungalow Lenny’s father had agreed to sell to us to bolster Heath’s fledgling private foray into Atlanta real estate. We’d eaten pizzas loaded with every leftover vegetable I could scrounge from the fridge and now were relaxing on the back deck. The sky was perfect and clear, promising a star-sprayed canopy after the crisp spring dusk had passed.

We were stacked together on one of Barbara Silver’s hand-me-down Adirondack chairs, my head resting back against Heath’s shoulder. As we’d watched the night settle around us, he’d been gathering my hair over my shoulder and gently twisting it. It felt so good, I’d nearly fallen asleep.

After a while, he ran one finger down the length of my arm. His skin, pale like mine but with an olive tint, was warm. He turned up my hand and laid a ring in the center of my palm. It looked like an antique, a simple silver band, but heavy, engraved, and set with diamonds. The lines of my palm converged in the ring’s center.

“It was my grandmother’s.” Heath’s voice was soft in my ear. I tore my eyes from the ring, twisted in the chair to look at him. The kitchen window was a bright block of light behind him, so I could barely make out the expression on his face, but I knew he was smiling.

The Silvers were wonderful, but I’d never had a family, not a real one of my own. All my junkie mother had left me with was an enormous need for privacy and an annoying eating disorder, not family heirlooms. But now, starting that night, everything would change. I was about to become a part of a new family. The family Heath and I created together.

“Daphne,” he said, and this time his voice had a ragged edge to it. A vulnerable, open need that made me feel scared and exhilarated, all at the same time.

“Yes,” I said. “Yes.” Then I reached up and laced my fingers through his thick black hair and drew his face to mine. He took off my glasses and kissed me, and I thought, for the thousandth time since meeting him, I’d never been kissed so well in my life.

In the bedroom, I was impatient, peeling off my shirt and then Heath’s, but he gripped my wrists to make me slow down. I pulled him to the bed, but the more urgently I moved, the more he resisted. Every time I pressed against him, he would pause whatever incredibly delicious thing he was doing, fix his eyes on mine, and gently push me away. He grazed his fingers over every plane of my face.

In the light from the hallway, I could see that his brown eyes had lightened to a pure, reflective amber—the way they did anytime he was tired. His lips parted, then pressed together. It seemed like there was something he wanted to say.

“What is it?” I gave him a playful shake even as alarm shuddered through me. This was always tricky territory for me—opening up, talking about my feelings. And Heath and I didn’t usually go there, but this night felt different. He shook his head and kept staring at me with those amber eyes. There was something more than tiredness in them—something I’d never witnessed before. He was afraid, afraid to tell me something.

Suddenly I was afraid too. I had a crazy urge to cover his mouth with my hands or to run out of the room. But I didn’t do either. Instead I calmly pulled aside the sheet, tugged down his underwear, and went to work on his body until all thought of conversation had been forgotten.

Later, he pulled the sheet over my shoulders and murmured in my ear. A simple wedding, he said—maybe in our backyard, or even at the courthouse. A honeymoon in the Caribbean. I nodded to all of it. The details of a wedding were irrelevant to me. Neither of us had enough family to count and only a handful of friends. What mattered was we were back to normal. Whatever he might have wanted to say, he’d changed his mind. The delicate balance between us was restored. I was safe.