The roaring grew louder, and a few dozen yards later there they were: a lacy, foaming spill that cascaded over a terraced series of jagged stones and terminated in a pool, that turned into a stream, that likely ran off and joined the river. He looked up: the trees, as if in deference to the falls, stood way back from it, and he could imagine that a full moon would pour down through and light them up.
He did enjoy a good spotlight.
He stood and breathed in silence. He was beginning to recall one of the problems he always had with big swaths of unstructured time: a restless feeling set in, a niggling sensation that might be missing out on something. It could explain why he’d just kept moving in recent years.
So he turned around and headed back.
But he stopped at the Eternity Oak and listened.
One long, low branch reached down the road toward the falls.
Not that I would, but if I ever carve initials here, he thought,that’s where I’d put them.Closest to the falls. So it’s like you’re hearing the breath of a lover in your ear while you’re sleeping.
“Britt, honey, are you all right in there? I heard screaming.”
Britt popped her head out of her screen door and looked across at Mrs.Morrison, who, leaning over her porch rail, was limned in the last bit of the day’s sun. Her hair looked like a silver crown.
“Sorry to worry you, Mrs.Morrison. I’m just watching a movie. Someone just got murdered.”
“How exciting! Well, all right then. We won’t be needing this.” Mrs.Morrison lowered the Remington shotgun she was holding and leaned it next to her front door. She retrieved her Dr Pepper and rum on the rocks from the railing she’d placed it on and toasted Britt with it.
“Thank you for picking up my prescriptions,” she called.
“Oh, you’re welcome. It’s never a problem, Mrs.Morrison.”
“Well, good night, dear. Enjoy your film.”
“Sweet dreams, Mrs.Morrison.”
“They always are. Tonight I think I’ll dream of the day my Elwyn and I carved our names in the Eternity Oak.”
“Well, you tell Elwyn I said hi when you see him tonight.”
Mrs.Morrison chuckled. “I will, dear.”
Britt ducked back into the house and collapsed back onto her sofa, snatched up one of the pillows she’d re-covered with thrift store silk and clutched it to her, then held her breath as if going back under water and took the movie off pause.
She’d spent the last five minutes in a shabby, 1970s-era kitchen in Boston, immersed in the life of a cop, a simple guy who was kind of awkward, but good and solid and ferociously loyal. He’d been in love with the same woman his entire life... but she’d married his best friend. And just when he’d won a declaration of love from her—in bed no less—his best friend stabbed him.
And his friend hadn’t meant to stab him, they’d been fighting and it was all in the heat of the moment and quite an accident, and dear God in heaven it was quite a mess and very upsetting.
John Tennessee McCord was really, really good at dying.
He was also really,reallyconvincing in the love scenes.
There were two of those.
They were real and raw and mostly naked and of the many powerful impulses that assailed her as she watched them, all were surprising, but two of them seemed strongest: she’d wanted to crawl in there and pull that woman off him. The word that had throbbed in her head throughout that scene wasMINE.
The other impulse was to nibble on one of his smooth, hard brown shoulders.
But it was particularly fascinating to witness his transformation into that character: His posture, his diction, his mannerisms, his accent—he was seamlessly, one hundredpercent a different person in his role inAgapé. It was a bravura performance.
Except his eyes. His eyes were the same. His eyes were so eloquent they were an entire movie unto themselves.
How did he know how to do that? Embody heartbreak and passion and fury and mute longing?
You either channeled that from some divine source, she figured. Or... you had to know how those things felt.
