Castle of Sorrows Read online

  A doorway creaked from down the hall.

  Ben checking on Joshua.

  Claire noticed her nightgown was long enough to cover the expensive lace underwear she’d selected for the festivities tonight. With a tremor of excitement, she drew up the pink gown to reveal a hint of the underwear beneath. She deliberated a moment longer before hiking up the gown another couple inches so that a pink V of lace would greet Ben as he opened the bedroom door.

  She hoped he’d ravage her.

  Footsteps approached.

  Claire lay back, placed her hands behind her head so her breasts would jut up at him. They were enormous these days. Full of milk, yes, but enormous nonetheless. She was sure Ben would enjoy the view.

  The footsteps continued past her door.

  Arching an eyebrow, Claire sat up and listened. Ben had continued on to the nursery to check on Julia. Claire gritted her teeth. She had the video baby monitor right beside her, for goodness sakes; why must he also open Julia’s door to confirm she was okay? What if he woke her up? Claire leaned over and pushed the button on top of the monitor. Her lips thinned. Not only had Ben gone to the nursery to check on Julia, he’d actually ventured inside to stand over her crib. Claire watched with apprehension as Ben reached out and caressed the soft down of Julia’s pate. Don’t wake her up! she wanted to shout. It might be another month before we get another chance to have sex!

  But Julia did not stir.

  After what seemed an age, Ben straightened and made his way out of the nursery. Claire smiled ruefully and shook her head. She was thankful Ben was such a devoted father, but sometimes she wanted to remind him that she had needs too.

  Ben let himself in and eased shut their door. Claire assumed her prior position.

  He’d taken three strides when he stopped and saw her lying there. “Nice outfit,” he said.

  “Like it?”

  He grinned, sat next to her. “A lot.”

  She trailed a hand over the silky pink material. “Why don’t you show me how much you like it?”

  His eyebrows went up. “Really?”

  She smiled languidly.

  He reached down, let his fingertips caress her from throat to sternum. Tiny goosebumps rose at his touch. “That’s two good pieces of news this evening,” he said.

  “Oh yeah?” she asked, her voice thick.

  He nodded. “Nat’s going to help us out tomorrow night.”

  She barely heard his remark, was too busy focusing on the delicious tingling between her legs. “Help us out how?”

  “He and my mom are going to watch Julia for us,” Ben answered.

  “They’re coming here?”

  Ben’s fingers had moved to her right breast. His index finger made little swirls on the fabric over her nipple, which responded by pressing almost painfully against his fingertip. In a faraway voice, he said, “You know how persuasive Nat is. He told me you were right about Joshua’s birthday, that I need to stop being so protective.”

  “Wise,” Claire said, closing her eyes.

  “So he’s gonna be here with Mom, make sure the house is safe while we’re gone.”

  “Whatever makes you comfortable,” Claire said, nestling into the mattress.

  “Comfortable,” Ben repeated and drew down the shoulder straps of the gown. Peeling off the cups sheathing her breasts, Ben leaned down and began kissing the white flesh, his lips skimming the bunched areolae.

  “Careful,” Claire said. “You do much more of that, you’re gonna get sprayed.”

  Ben laughed softly. “Kinky.”

  Claire lowered her arms so Ben could slide the nightgown down her body. Then he kissed the inside of her calves, licked his way up her thighs, began to rub her through her panties. He drew aside her underwear, kissed her sex, but before he could get too involved, she cinched her fingers in his brown hair, compelled him up her body.

  “Don’t want me down there?” he asked as their lips came together.

  “Not yet. I’m still self-conscious about that whole area.”

  “You sure?” he asked, kissing her. Their tongues came together, pushing, tasting.

  “Mm-hm,” she breathed into his open mouth. “Tonight I’ll settle for the real thing.” Her hands lowered to the front of his cargo shorts.

  “You will, will you?” he asked, helping her get his shorts open.

  “Uh-huh.” She licked his lips, plunged her tongue inside his mouth. Then her hand was around him, squeezing. Ben moaned.

  “Here,” she said and guided him inside.

  It didn’t take him long, but it was enough for her to get there too, and when it was done, they lay there sated, the glow of the bedside lamp still bathing them in its amber warmth.

  She had an arm thrown over his chest, the tip of her nose touching his big shoulder. He’d been very muscular when they met last summer, but a year of intense weightlifting and running had transformed him into a hulking physical specimen. His six-foot-four frame was so strong and sculpted that the baser part of her nature worried about women coming onto him, especially ones who wanted a piece of his growing fame.

  Knock it off, she reminded herself. He’s faithful. That’s all you need to know.

  “What are you thinking about?” she asked.

  “Tell you the truth, I’d started to doze a bit.”

  “Sorry. I’m not used to you sleeping.”

  “Me either,” he said. “I guess sex relaxes me.”

  She caressed his chest. “We should do it more often then.”

  “How about hourly?”

  She smiled, kissed his shoulder. “So where are you taking us?”

  “Somewhere close,” he said, his voice tightening slightly.

  She tried to keep it light. “Shouldn’t we let Joshua choose? It’s his birthday after all.”

  “He can choose next year. This year we’re going somewhere nearby.”

  “But Nat’s going to be—”

  “I feel better with Nat being here, but it doesn’t mean I’m comfortable.”

  Claire nodded. “Joshua will be thrilled. We can concentrate on him rather than his little sister’s screaming.”

  Ben said nothing to that, and Claire didn’t press it.

  She figured if she did Ben might cancel.

  Later that night, Ben finally sleeps. What’s more, his dreams are not sweat-soaked nightmares that make him moan and whimper and wake up dry-mouthed with terror.

  In his dream Ben is in the hospital room, and everything is exactly as it was the day Julia was born. Ben’s dream-self waits until everyone is gone from their hospital room. Claire is sound asleep now, the adrenaline of the birth, the stress of labor, the joy and exultation over seeing baby Julia and nursing her for the first time, and the exhaustion of not having slept in over thirty hours having slammed down on Claire like an avalanche. Ben looks at his wife for a long moment, tears welling in his eyes. He doesn’t know how she did it, but he is proud of her. So proud of her.

  He lowers his eyes to his daughter.

  When Ben and his ex-wife had Joshua, Ben had let the doctors and nurses call the shots, and when there had been a moment without white-coated people bustling around their room, Jenny had insisted on stashing little Joshua in the hospital nursery, where Ben was forced to stare at him through the glass partition.

  Not this time.

  Ben and Claire have an agreement that Julia is never to leave their room unless the doctors or nurses need to weigh her or perform some other measurement, and even in those situations Ben will be accompanying her. This isn’t paranoia or micromanagement. This is love.

  Ben stares down at the tiny body asleep in his arms and thinks, I love you, Julia Grace Shadeland. I love you more than you will ever know. Not in a thousand lifetimes could you understand what I feel for you, nor will anyone who isn’
t in my heart understand how powerful this is. I will protect you and I will cherish you. I will change your diapers and I will stay up all night holding you against my chest. When you won’t stop crying I will dance you around the room, and I will sing you country songs off key for hours until you feel better or are too sick of my voice to cry any longer.

  Julia’s little forehead pinches briefly, the little pelt of black down shifting almost imperceptibly with the movement. At this moment Julia looks like Claire. That frown is the one Claire gets when she’s misplaced something and is trying to remember where she left it. Ben cranes over Julia and kisses her hair. Though her scalp feels warm on his lips, he realizes they’ve forgotten to replace the pink cap that’s supposed to cover her head. Claire had taken off the cap so she could nurse Julia, and the cap is right where she left it, lying beside her on the hospital bed. Ben briefly considers ignoring it, but then he remembers the doctor saying something about how the cap keeps the baby’s body heat in, which Ben assumes is a good thing.

  Gingerly, he scoots forward on the green vinyl recliner. He takes great care not to awaken her, but she stirs anyway, her curled fingers curling even more. Her balled fists and the somehow determined appearance of her closed lips remind him of a sports fan rooting on her favorite team. I’ll take you to the Cubs games with us, he thinks. Your mommy will want you to do all the girly stuff too, and that’s fine, but you’re gonna watch Lord of the Rings and play catch with me and wrestle with me just like your brother does. I’ll shower you with clothes and jewelry and all that stuff if you want later on—I’ll even learn about different kinds of makeup if you’re into that—but you’re sure as heck gonna know that Han Solo shot first.

  Carefully, Ben rises out of his recliner, careful to keep his arms level. Julia isn’t moving now, her sleep gone deeper, so as he tiptoes over to Claire’s bed he whispers, “I’m gonna teach you piano, I’m gonna read to you, I’m gonna push you on the swing for as long as you want…”

  Halfway to the bed, the door opens and Ben freezes. It is an older nurse. Her teeth show apologetically and she mouths, Sorry. Ben smiles at her and beckons her over with a twitch of his head. When she gets to him she spots the pink hat, jerks her thumb at the chair to let Ben know he can sit back down, and then follows him over to the recliner. Once seated Ben starts to raise Julia’s head a bit so the nurse can slide the cap over Julia’s head, but the nurse gives a quick shake of the head, and then with a practiced pair of hands—the nails are cut short, Ben observes—proceeds to snug the cap over Julia’s head. And she does it without waking Julia up.

  When the cap is on, Ben resumes staring at his daughter, but then he notices the nurse is still bent over Julia too, a soft look in the nurse’s otherwise stern face. The woman, he notices for the first time, has worry lines on her forehead and the ghosts of crow’s feet around her brown eyes. The nurse’s hair is curly and brown, but there are strands of white woven through.

  “I lost mine,” the nurse whispers.

  Ben looks up at her face, only a couple feet away. He has no idea what to say.

  “I have two boys,” the nurse goes on. “Both grown now. They’re starting families.” She reaches out and with a thumb and forefinger gives Julia’s hand a brief rub. “But my daughter died when she was sixteen. Crashed on the way to school with her boyfriend. He lived.”

  Ben looks down at Julia’s sleeping face. He decides he can’t wait for the nurse to go; he has to do this now. He raises Julia up a little and lowers his face to hers. He kisses his baby girl on the lips. She makes a little chipmunk sound, rustles in her sleep, and hides her bottom lip under her top one. She sighs.

  Wordlessly, the nurse reaches out and places a hand on Ben’s forearm. She squeezes it, but her eyes are on Julia. Then the hand goes away and so does the nurse, who exits as noiselessly as she entered.

  Ben glances at his baby, tells her, “No dating until you’re thirty. And then I get to screen every guy, make sure he’s a good driver. And that he likes Lord of the Rings.”

  Chapter Four

  “Would you get your ass out of the house?” Nat Zimmerman said. He was as tall as Ben, but he had a bony build, so when he pushed Ben toward the front door, Ben hardly budged.

  Claire saw the look on Ben’s face and thought, Please don’t back out now.

  Joshua was already waiting in the car. Through the glass front door she could see his expectant little face peering through the back window of the car. Even on the booster seat, his face didn’t come up far enough for her to see his mouth, but his big, blue, worried eyes were enough to galvanize her into action.

  She linked her arm with Ben’s. Ben was explaining to Nat—rather redundantly, Claire judged—how often Julia needed to be fed and could he make sure he took the baby monitor with him if he and Ben’s mother went to the kitchen together?

  “Go to the kitchen together?” Nat asked. “I hardly think we need to use the buddy system.”

  Ben turned, nodded toward his mother, who stood with arms folded and a sympathetic smile on her lips.

  Ben said, “I just mean if you should happen to both get a beer at the same time, something like that.”

  “Ben,” Charlotte Shadeland said. “I haven’t had a beer since your father and I were married.”

  Ben shrugged. “Or something else.”

  Claire gave his arm a firm tug. He glanced down at her, brow knitted.

  “It’s time to celebrate your son’s birthday,” she said.

  He made a pained face. “I still don’t see why we have to go out. We can bring the food here, let Julia watch him blow out the candles.”

  “Look out the window, Ben.”

  Reluctantly, Ben did.

  From the back window of the car, Joshua’s small, pale face peered at them. Ben seemed to deflate. “Okay,” he said. “Let’s go.”

  Nat held the door while Claire led Ben through. As she passed Nat, he winked at her, and as usual, she was struck by how handsome he was, how he looked every bit his sixty years, but somehow seemed twice as virile as a man half his age. The salt-and-pepper hair was trimmed neatly, the matching mustache reminding her a little of Sam Elliott. And also like Sam Elliott, Nat Zimmerman was tall and rangy, like a cowboy or an ex-baseball player.

  Claire and Ben made their way down the walk.

  “You think there’s enough milk?” Ben asked her, throwing a glance back at the house.

  “Honey, even if I died, I’ve pumped enough bottles for Julia to survive for the next six months.”

  Ben’s face went tight. “That’s not funny.”

  “Please don’t ruin this.”

  He glanced down at her.

  “Joshua needs this,” she went on. “He hasn’t had us to himself since the day Julia was born. He’s a super kid, but even he has to get jealous sometimes, doesn’t he?”

  Ben ran a hand over his mouth and studied his shoes. “What if something goes wrong with the bottle warmer? Julia could burn her mouth.”

  “Your mom is almost as cautious as you are,” Claire said. “Where do you think you get that from?”

  Ben nodded.

  “Nat’s here in case anything happens—”

  Ben looked up at her.

  “—which it won’t,” she added quickly. “And your mom still has her nursing training. You couldn’t ask for a safer environment.”

  “It’d be safer if I was here.”

  She stared at him until he met her eyes.

  “Ben?” she said.

  “What?”

  “Quit being an old woman.”

  Ben was wrong. They had a wonderful time at the seafood place Joshua chose. They went out afterward for ice cream and a walk, and they returned to the ranch road at around nine forty-five.

  Joshua and Claire were debating whether Joshua would have to go straight to bed when they got home when
Ben felt it for the first time, the whisper of unease. He told himself it was pointless paranoia, but as they threaded their way up the mountain road, the whisper grew in strength and clarity: You made a mistake.

  Ben clenched the wheel harder. He flicked on his brights, though a lusterless orange twilight still lingered. He didn’t like it, that tingling at the nape of his neck. It was like they were driving under a high-tension wire, some of the electricity transferring to them through the air.

  Ben swallowed. Claire and Joshua hadn’t noticed his disquiet yet. He supposed that was good. But their arguing had grown loud enough to distract him, and not in a good way. Not in a way that took his mind off of Julia—in a way that made him yearn to shout at them, to demand they shut the hell up for one minute so he could get them home. And then Claire and Nat and his mom could make fun of him all they wanted. At this particular moment Ben cared about nothing else but his baby girl, his sweet little trusting Julia, who was

  (dead)

  probably lying on her tummy asleep, the way she often rested despite the fact that Ben worried about crib death, and what a stupid, senseless phrase that was. Why did there even have to be such a thing? Why couldn’t babies just be safe until they got old enough to deserve the consequences of their actions? No baby deserved to have a rash, much less anything as serious as

  (murdered)

  NO! Ben’s mind screamed. No murder, no injury, no anything, not even a blistered tongue from a too-hot bottle. Julia was going to be fine, she was going to be—

  They rounded the last corner, and when Ben looked at the house and saw the glass front door, he knew nothing was ever going to be fine again.

  Chapter Five

  Ben brought the Camry to a halt and barely remembered to throw it into Park before climbing out.