I spin around, nearly losing my footing. Conrad Reese reaches out to steady me. There is only one explanation for why he is here in the shed, asking me if I am all right. He had been watching me in the solarium as I spoke with Ursula. He had been watching me like I watch him. He had seen that Ursula had said something that upset me. Me, the psychiatrist. The one who is supposed to be in control. The one who is supposed to be listening to the patient and offering wise words in response. He had seen me leave the room with my hand over my mouth. He had followed me down the hall. He must have caught the inner door that I’d failed to secure and trailed me out the front door, across the lawn, and into the garden shed.
I want to know why he would do that and yet I think I already know why he would do that.
He takes a step forward. “Miss Bright, what has happened? Is there anything I can do to help you?”
He has never looked more beautiful to me than in this moment. His gaze, alight with compassion and longing, is tight on mine. He is standing so close to me that I can smell his cologne, the scented pomade in his hair, and the starch in his collar. I fight for the words to tell him that I am fine, I just needed to clear a cough, and that I’m so very sorry to have alarmed him. But those words don’t come.
“I’ve done something terrible,” I whisper.
“Oh, I’m sure that’s not true.” His eyes don’t widen even a fraction. He doesn’t believe such a thing to be possible of me.
He’s been watching me like I’ve been watching him.
“But it is true. It is!” Fresh tears spill from my eyes and I want him to pull me into his arms and whisper that all will be made right in time.Not to worry. Everything will be made right. You’ll see.
“We’ve all made mistakes, Miss Bright.” He roots about in his coatand trouser pockets for something. A handkerchief, no doubt. But he doesn’t have one.
“Not like this.” A fresh vision of Ursula swinging by a rope, her brain causing her legs to jerk and flail, fills my mind. “Not like this.”
Lacking the handkerchief, Conrad extends his hand tentatively toward my face and catches my tears with his fingertips. “We’ve all done things we wish we hadn’t,” he says, so gently.
I look up at him, in awe and wonder and agony. I see the ache he also carries, the grief at the slow loss of his wife, at the death of the dream he’d had for their life together. We had wanted happiness for our lives. We’d pursued it the way everyone did after the flu and after the war, and we thought we’d caught it. He’d done nothing wrong, though. His pain was different than mine because it was undeserved. I tilt my head into his palm and before I know what I’m doing, I am kissing it. His strong hand is wet with my tears and I taste salt. A second later Conrad’s arms are around me and his lips are on mine, tender and hesitant. It’s as if we both sense that we’re poised above a dam about to burst, and the water could sweep us away if we let it. If we want it to.
A second later I am returning his kiss, and then his hands are everywhere on my upper body and his lips are finding me in places I have never before been found. Behind my ear, along my jaw, on the chevron between my clavicles. His chest muscles are tight under my fingertips, tensing with desire, and I hear a small voice in my head telling me nothing good can come from continuing this. Nothing. Conrad is married. To my patient. Conrad is married to Sybil. Sybil is his wife. But I cannot hold back the floodwaters. I’m in love with Conrad. I have been for weeks and had refused to admit it. I would do anything for him. Live for him, die for him. I would do anything, including cure his wife, if I could, and if it would make him happy.
His wife. He is married. Sybil is his wife.
I pull away. We are both breathing as though we’ve just run througha great stretch of woods. His hair is askew where I’ve run my hands through it. His coat is off and lies at my feet, his vest unbuttoned, and his shirt untucked. Three buttons on the front of my dress are open, and cold air stings my bare flesh.
Conrad is staring at me with tears in his eyes, and I don’t know if he’s sad that we’d started on each other or that we stopped.
“I’m so very sorry,” he says a second later, his words cutting across the space between us. “Please forgive me. Please. I’m so sorry.”
I don’t want him to be sorry. And I can’t utter the words that I forgive him, because I don’t. I can’t forgive him. I’m in love with him.
Conrad doesn’t know what to make of my silence. He stoops for a second to pick his suit coat up off the dirt floor and then he lays it across his arm. “Are you all right?” He doesn’t look at me. “Are you hurt? Did I hurt you?”
Hurt me? Has he hurt me? All I feel at this moment is an ache for everything in my life up to this point to have gone differently. I feel anew the scorching loss of Henry, my mother, Gilbert, and even my own innocence at embracing without question Maggie’s deception, year after year after year.
Conrad raises his head. I am still only partially buttoned and tendrils of my hair have fallen about my face. He looks away from my body for just a second and then returns his gaze, focusing on my eyes only.
“Please, Miss Bright. Tell me you are all right.”
I’m not. I’m not all right. Maggie and I have taken a child from his family, have caused his sister years of merciless suffering, and the man I love is married to someone else.
“Miss Bright?”
“Evelyn,” I say as new tears rim my eyes.
“Please. Did I hurt you?” His voice sounds pained.
“You could never hurt me, Conrad.”
His intense stare softens as he realizes that I’dwantedhim to touch me and kiss me and take me. I wanted him. I want him. I have been watching him like he’s been watching me.
Conrad closes his eyes at the impossibility of our situation. Then he turns, puts on his suit coat, and tucks his shirt into his trousers. I refasten the buttons on my dress and slip the fallen locks of hair back into their hairpins.
He moves toward the door. “I won’t take advantage of you again, I promise,” he says over his shoulder.
He takes another step and I rush forward. “Conrad, wait!” I grab his hand, and my fingers touch his wedding ring. We both look down at the circle of gold. He pulls his hand away but then reaches up to touch my face for the merest second before he steps outside.
I watch him walk across the lawn to the driveway, and to the rows of automobiles parked in front. He climbs into his Buick and drives off slowly. I don’t move until he is gone from view. Before I leave the shed, I retrieve Ursula’s pencil box and I check to make sure that I’ve seen to every detail on my clothes and every hairpin.
It is only a few minutes after three, but I must find Dr. Bellfield and ask him if I might have the rest of the afternoon to take care of a family matter. I cannot think of Conrad right now or what almost happened in the shed or whatdidhappen in the shed. I must first see that Ursula is all right in the solarium, and then I must talk to Maggie.
We must tell Alex the truth.
We must tell everyone the truth.
