This Perfect Stranger. Barbara Ankrum
her dark yard. “Are you askin’ me to stay?”
She pressed her hands together. “Asking? No. That wouldn’t be fair of me. I can’t really pay you. Not what you’re worth. But I still have to cook tomorrow and well…you’ll still be hungry. Right?”
He thought about it for a minute, rubbing a hand absently against his belly. “I’ll move that stack of wood closer to the house in the morning,” he said at last. “Maybe…sand down that railing of yours. Then, we’ll talk.”
Relief washed over her as he turned and melted into the darkness. She shook her head and wrapped her arms around herself against the chill. “Crazy,” she told herself. “You are definitely, unquestionably, nuts, Maggie.” But something told her that Cain MacCallister might just be her one last chance.
Cain lay with his hands propped under his head on the cot in the tack room, staring up at the blackness above him. The cot was comfortable, if a bit too short for his six-three frame, and the room smelled comfortingly of leather, horses and hay. It wasn’t the sound of the animals moving restlessly in their nearby stalls that kept him from finding sleep. Or the songs of coyotes far off yipping to each other.
It was Maggie. She was interfering with his dream.
He closed his eyes and sighed, trying to shove her out of his mind. He’d spent the last hour trying to call up Annie’s image in his memory. He almost had it once: the blond hair that framed that oval-shaped face of hers; her eyes, not quite blue, but not really green either, but always a pool he’d wanted to dive into. He was having trouble with her nose and her mouth. It was the mouth that bothered him most, because he could always remember her mouth. More specifically, her smile.
He kept confusing it with Maggie’s, the way her mouth turned up at the corners and that little dimple dented one cheek near her mouth.
Focus, man. Don’t get distracted.
But the little bruise above Maggie’s eye popped into his mind again…the soft feel of her hand in his…even the smell of her hair.
Damn. He squeezed his eyes shut. What the hell was wrong with him?
Annie’s voice. Remember it. Yeah. There it was. He could hear it now: “Be right back. Save me some popcorn. Be right back, save me some…be right…save me—”
Shoving off the blankets, he sat up, finding the cold floor with his bare feet. He felt dizzy and his chest, dammit, his chest was doing its usual timpani roll.
Seven little words that had changed his life.
Snapping on the lamp parked near the cot on the little wood table, Cain dragged in a few deep breaths. He re-oriented himself as he reached for his backpack. He shoved things aside, then threw them on the floor, one by one, until his hand closed around the thing it sought. Cool, smooth glass. It took shape in his hand.
The whiskey inside the bottle sloshed against the sides with a magical sound, calling to him. He cradled it in his hands, tempted by all reason to break the thin paper seal that stood between him and true destruction.
He craved it right now, something that he hadn’t done in a long time. Even when he’d gotten out, he’d managed to steer clear of bars where he knew he might be tempted. But he’d bought this bottle to remind himself what was back there in that dark place he’d visited in the months after Annie’s death. The ones that had nearly killed him.
He’d spent the last three years building his strength, finding the quiet place inside him that could silence the noise outside. The guilt and the pain. He could call it up when he needed it. Except tonight.
Tonight, he found himself tempted again, not just by the siren of oblivion, but by a woman he hardly knew who had already made him forget the curve of Annie’s lips.
Cain turned the bottle over in his hands, smoothing the cool glass with his fingers. It would be easy, he thought. One twist, one sip or two and the noise would stop.
But he wouldn’t stop at two or three, or even four. Not until he reached the bottom of the bottle and the darkness it promised. And slow suicide, as appealing as it had once been, wasn’t his style anymore. If it was going to end, it wouldn’t be slow and it wouldn’t come in a liquid form.
So with its paper honor code still intact, he slid the bottle back inside the leather knapsack and reached instead for his wallet, resting on the table beneath the lamp.
He pulled out the dog-eared photo, soft from years of handling. Annie smiled up at him from the picture and Cain stared at her hollowly. He rubbed his thumb over the image. How many times had he wished he’d gone that night instead of her? Maggie had said she didn’t believe in luck, good or bad. He figured a man was only born with so much of it and he’d used all his up when he’d met Annie and stolen those few short years with her. Their luck had run out simultaneously that night even though they’d been miles apart. And a man like him didn’t get second chances.
Minutes later, he didn’t know how many, Cain reached for the light switch and flicked it off. For a long time, he just sat there in the dark, counting the seconds ’til morning. If he could just make it to dawn, he’d be all right.
He wouldn’t think about luck, or about the woman sleeping a few hundred yards away, or anyone who reminded him what it was to be alive. Because he owed Annie that much.
Dawn had barely lightened the sky when the phone beside Maggie’s bed rang. Groggily, Maggie looked at the clock. 5:45 a.m. She frowned. Who would be calling her at this hour? And why, after a sleepless night, did they have to pick this particular morning to wake her up?
She dragged the receiver to her ear across the sleep-rumpled bedclothes. “Hello?”
There was only silence on the other end of the line.
“Hello?” she repeated, sitting up on one elbow. “Is anyone there?”
Nothing. Angry, she began to shove the receiver back in its cradle when she heard a voice, the words too indistinct to make out.
Pulling it back to her ear, Maggie listened. “Hello? Is someone there?” Nothing. “Okay, I’m hanging up now.”
“Don’t,” said a man’s voice.
A shiver went through her and her hand tightened on the receiver. “Who is this?”
“A friend.” The voice was cigarette hoarse and unfamiliar.
“I know my friends’ voices. And I don’t know yours.”
“Your husband…” the man continued, undeterred. “Ben?”
Her heart started to pound. “What about him?”
There was a long pause. “He didn’t fall on his own. He had help.”
“Wh—what are you talking about?”
“If you want to know more, find Remus Trimark.”
“Who?” Maggie scrambled into the bedside drawer for a pen and a scrap of paper. “Who’s Remus Trimark?”
There was another long pause before the caller said, “It’s not over,” and clicked off.
“Hello?” The dial tone buzzed in her ear. Maggie stared at it, feeling dizzy and off balance. Not over? What’s not over? She hung up the receiver and scribbled the name he’d mentioned down on the back of an old Hallmark anniversary card from Ben.
She remembered to breathe.
Remus Trimark? What kind of a name was that, and what did he have to do with Ben’s death? And why had the man on the phone waited six months to tell her about it?
She eased back down on the pillow, clutching the card between her shaking fingers. Her mind raced over those last days with Ben, trying to remember something, anything he’d said about a Remus Trimark—what an odd name—or anyone he’d mentioned for that matter. She came up blank. Completely blank.
It