Seeing Red(73)

Ignoring Kerra’s stare, which was demanding an explanation, he pressed the doorbell. It could be heard chiming inside. He continued to look straight ahead at the glossy surface of the door until the light fixture came on, the door was pulled open, and he was looking into the face of his former fiancée.

Marianne was as pretty and sweet-looking as ever. Her eyes were still guileless. But there were noticeable differences in her appearance. She was wearing her hair shorter, and, always trim before, her belly was now distended with advanced pregnancy.

She spoke his name softly.

“Hey, Marianne.”

Her smile was as wobbly as his felt. She said, “It’s good to see you.”

“You too. You look great.” Awkwardly, he motioned toward her midsection. “Congratulations.”

“Thank you.”

“When?”

“April.”

“Not long, then.”

She laughed in her self-deprecating way. “By the due date, believe me, I’ll be ready.”

“I’m glad for you,” he said, meaning it to his marrow.

“Thank you. I’m glad, too.” She continued looking into his eyes for several seconds more before shifting to Kerra.

“I’m sorry,” he said. “Marianne, this is—”

“No introduction necessary. Welcome, Kerra.”

“Thank you.” Kerra reached across the threshold, and the two shook hands.

Marianne stood aside and motioned them in. Just as she closed the door behind them, a man stepped into the central hallway from one of the rooms opening off it. “Marianne, who—”

Upon seeing Trapper, he stopped as though he’d run into a glass wall, and, if hostility had a sound, he would have crackled. His bearing indicated that he’d like nothing better than to drop his book and reading glasses where he stood and lay into him.

In her quiet and unassuming way, Marianne tried to defuse the situation. “My husband, David. David, this is John Trapper.”

“What’s he doing here?”

He said, “I won’t be here long.”

“Damn right, you won’t. In fact, you’re on your way out.”

“David, please,” Marianne whispered.

Her husband hesitated as though he might yet whale into Trapper, but he responded to the tension in Marianne’s face and the pleading in her eyes by saying nothing more. He did, however, remain standing in the middle of the hallway with the rigidity of a palace guard and the territorial menace of a junk-yard dog.

Marianne broke the tense silence by introducing him to Kerra. They exchanged how-do-you-dos and she congratulated him on the pending arrival. “Do you know what you’re having?”

“A girl,” the couple chorused.

“We’re very happy,” David said, and shot a look toward Trapper that dared him to question his and Marianne’s marital bliss and delight over the baby.

Marianne offered them something to drink. They declined. Then no one said anything for an interminable length of time, until Trapper cleared his throat and gave Marianne a meaningful look.

She turned to her husband. “Trapper’s visit isn’t entirely unexpected, David. I didn’t tell you because, well … I just didn’t. He came to pick up something.”

“What?”

“Honestly, I don’t know.”

David came back to Trapper looking even more murderous than before. “I don’t know what you’re up to. Still playing government agent, I guess. But whatever your game is, if you’ve put my wife and our baby in any danger—”

“I haven’t. I won’t.”

“You have just by showing up on our doorstep. You’re a nightmare, and I want you to get the hell out of my house.”

Up till now, Trapper had tolerated the man’s animosity because, in David’s place, he would have felt the same. But the chest beating was wearing thin. “Look, I don’t want to make trouble.”

“You are trouble.”

“Once I get what I came for, you’ll never see me again.”

“Which will be too soon.”

They might have continued interminably, but Marianne saw an opening and seized it. “It’s in the kitchen.”

David looked like he wanted to object, but he was simply too well bred to make a scene that would no doubt upset his pregnant wife. Kerra’s presence also might have had something to do with his backing down.

He moved out of the way so Trapper could follow Marianne. David’s drop-dead look was mollified only slightly when Trapper linked his fingers with Kerra’s and pulled her along as they filed down the hall toward the back of the house. Trapper tried his best not to swagger.



Kerra couldn’t help but compare Marianne’s cluttered and homey kitchen to her own. This one smelled like the chocolate cake cooling on the counter. Hers smelled like cake only when she burned a certain candle. There were dishes in the sink that hadn’t yet been loaded into the dishwasher. Kerra’s kitchen needed cleaning only when the dust began to show.

She felt terribly outshone.

“Would you like some cake?”

She and Trapper declined, and Marianne seemed to have anticipated they would. She went to a desk built into the cabinetry, opened a lower drawer, and took out a padded envelope bearing a label that had required her signature. As she handed it to Trapper, she said, “I opened it because it was addressed to me.”