Devoted(13)

He gave her the number, and she wrote it down with no intention of calling him. “All right, but I’m afraid our time has passed, Lee. What’s best for me is what’s best for Woody, and that’s not Costa Rica. You’ve made a life for yourself that anyone would envy, and I’ve no doubt you’ll find someone to share it with. You deserve to be happy, happier than you’d be with me.”

He began to importune her again, and she lied to bring an end to this excruciating conversation. She said that Woody was calling out to her, that he was having one of his tantrums—Woody never had tantrums—and that she had to go to the boy right away.

After hanging up, Megan turned her attention to the canvas on which she had been working. Her own backyard served as the setting. The hour of the scene: perhaps four o’clock in the morning. Only the moon to illuminate the moment. This eerie luminosity was a metaphor for the light at the heart of the world, the unseen light in all things; therefore, though its effects were rendered realistically, they were subtly exaggerated, so that the softest reflections of moonglow seemed to emanate from within certain pale elements of the composition: from the slices of apple in the boy’s hand, from his face, from the soft coats of the three deer, from the white blossoms on the apple tree. The dark forest loomed over all.

To the best of her knowledge, Woody had never ventured into the yard after dark, alone. He had lured the deer to the porch steps to feed from his hand. Sometimes an artist had to stage events as they might have been, slightly different from how they had been, to best convey the truth of them.



And what had been the truth of Lee Shacket’s call?

It eluded her.

Unable to get back into the mood of the painting, she put her brush in a jar of turpentine.

She went to the tall French doors and the flanking windows that provided her with ample north light. This was not the lawn in the painting, but the forest embraced this side yard as well, looming somewhat closer than at the back of the house.

When a narcissist like Shacket had a $100 million to fall back on, he didn’t fall into melancholy under any circumstance, didn’t become sentimental and brood about days gone by and all that might have been. He went out and bought what he wanted, whether it was a Ferrari or a piece of arm candy with long legs and canyonesque cleavage.

The explanation had to be inebriation. Wherever he was calling from, perhaps it was much later in the day than half past three, and maybe he’d gotten an early start on the bottle.

He hadn’t been the kind of man who’d spoken of his heart, only of his opinions, which were dogma to him, and of his high ambitions, which he had been certain would be fulfilled. He had never loved her, only wanted her. When the alcohol wore off, he would regret what he’d done. He wouldn’t phone her again. And if he did, Megan wouldn’t take the call.

The quality of the light had changed, not just because the afternoon was waning, but also because the sky had begun to grow pale-gray scales, its fine blue skin molting away in favor of a serpent’s dress.



As always, there was magic in the day, though not the kind to inspire in her the enchantment that she needed to do justice to the painting of Woody and the deer.

Every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday, Verna Brickit came to do light housekeeping, which concluded with preparation of a meal that Megan could reheat for dinner. By now, Verna would be at work in the kitchen; she welcomed an assistant cook, and Megan was good company.

Megan cleaned her brushes, put away her paints, and washed her hands in the bathroom that adjoined her studio.

When she looked at herself in the mirror above the sink, she was surprised to see such unmistakable anxiety in her face, in her eyes. Lee Shacket’s reentry into her life had disturbed her more than she wanted to admit.

Always he had hummed with a dark energy, the memory of which came back to her now by degrees. He had wanted one thing from her, and like a puppet master, he pulled strings with such finesse that, in her youth and naivete, she had not at first felt him tugging on them. When she began to see through him, he tried using another girl as a weapon. What had her name been? Clarissa? Yes. He’d used the threat of Clarissa’s sexual availability to manipulate Megan, and she’d let him manipulate her right out of his life.

Where she intended to remain.

She went to the kitchen, looking for Verna Brickit.





13



When thirst troubled Kipp, finding water to drink required little effort.

Lake Tahoe was among the deepest and purest lakes in the world, and drinking from the streams that fed it involved no serious risks.

The water was cool and clean.

He paused in his drinking to watch torsional fish, their fins wimpling as they swam through the sun-pierced pools in which the descending stream periodically gathered itself.

Hunger proved a greater problem.

As a canine, he was a hunter by nature. But he’d never actually hunted.

Except when Dorothy had played hide the ball and he’d been tasked with finding it. He’d found the ball a thousand times, but he’d never eaten it.

The meadows were full of rabbits nibbling grass in the sun. When they spotted Kipp, most of them either tensed and froze and pretended invisibility or raced away in terror.

A few rabbits regarded him warily, then continued eating as though they perceived his weakness.

Kipp was physically strong, seventy pounds of muscle and bone. He was mentally strong, too.