Fallen Gods

Thirty-One

She had fought against it all day. She had found distractions; insisting on taking Mark to school herself, to let Trish have an easy start to her day; taking Jazz to the playground for an hour longer than she would normally have allowed him, joining vigorously in his games until they were both too tired for more.

In the afternoon she had gone to collect Mark, and had spent time helping him with his homework, although the reality was that her older son never needed anyone's help. He had covered in Scotland some of the work he was doing at his American school, and the rest came easily to him.

In the evening, she had stood down Trish for cooking duties, even though it was her turn, under their informal agreement, and had made spaghetti bolognese, "Mafia-style' as she called it, as she remembered seeing it done in the Godfather trilogy.

Finally, she ran out of excuses. There was nothing else in her mind except Ron, and her need to see him. It was so strong that she could actually feel it within her as an amputee will feel a phantom limb.

She waited until the children were asleep, and until Trish, who had developed an unexpected interest in baseball, had settled to watch an evening telecast of the Yankees on the road at Boston. Only then did she slip into her bathroom, shower, and make herself ready. She chose a black thong, a close-fitting brown dress, and the high-heeled shoes that she had bought to match it; that was all. She didn't expect that she would need anything else.

She applied only light make-up and a coating of hairspray, then slipped downstairs and out of the house. Both of her cars were standing in the driveway; she would have taken her father's beloved Jaguar, but she had the keys of the Ford Explorer in her bag and so she climbed in behind its steering wheel.

Ron's house was only ten minutes' drive away from hers, through the suburban streets of Buffalo. The daylight was fading, and the traffic was light; she saw few other vehicles along her route, until she turned into Sullivan Street and saw the modest house, just where the road curved.

It was a pleasant street, ordinary in a comforting way, the sort of vision that came to her mind in Scotland, when she allowed herself the luxury of thinking of home. The homes were all built on generous, but not huge, plots of land; they belonged to middle managers and professional people, to teachers and public service administrators. It was multi-racial, with blacks, Caucasians and Hispanics living happily and harmoniously together. She looked around as she drove slowly along, past an elderly man walking his dog. The movement of a car refocused her. It was picking up a child from a house almost opposite Ron's; balloons tied to a tree on its sloping lawn signified a party.

Even in the dying light, other children were playing on the grass, and a woman was filming them with what she guessed was a camcorder. She smiled as she flicked her indicator; for all the War on Terror, her native land could still be a comforting place.

His flashy Camaro was in the driveway; at the sight of it, she felt a surge of anticipation deep within her. She parked the Explorer behind it, switched off the engine and took a deep breath. As she put the car keys in her purse, she saw his letter. She took it out, opened it and read it again. It was barely light enough for her to see the page, but she knew it off by heart.

"God, Ron," she whispered to herself, 'if you had written this all those years ago, where would we be now?"

She frowned. "Divorced, probably." His drawing a line under a career of success was one thing, but she knew that giving it up would have been quite another. There would have been another pressure too. She would have had to compromise with her own career, to limit her horizons to wherever he had practised law, and perhaps to general medicine, rather than her chosen specialty, an ambition which had driven her all the way through med school.

Within herself, she knew that it would have been a disaster; Ron had been right to go to Texas. She had been right to chalk him up to experience and head for New York, and then to her appointment with fate, in the hypnotic shape of Bob Skinner, in Scotland. When she had gone there, she had only meant to stay for a couple of years. But she had not counted on him; no, not at all.

She closed her eyes, and for the first time that day, Bob's face appeared before her. Yet she could only see him angry, as he was when he had left, in spite of her pleas that he should stay with her, in spite of her threats about the potential consequences of charging back to Edinburgh in defence of a job which had almost killed him on more than one occasion.

Where s the difference? she thought. He had done what Ron had done, back in the eighties: chosen career over everything else. Wasn't it logical that she should do now as she had done then, and let him get on with it? And now Ron was back; back for good, he had promised, his life fulfilled, and hers if she wanted him. Where there had been bitterness in her parting with Bob, there had been nothing but tenderness, emotional and physical, in her reunion with her second lover. Where Bob had been adamant and uncompromising, he had been flexible, ready to see things her way, and make a commitment to her alone.

And yet that was her husband as he had always been: single minded determined, courageous, professionally outstanding, and at the same time, on more than one important, crucial occasion, emotionally blind.

There was nothing different about him. The angry face in her mind's eye was that of the man she had married, and had been, all along. Would his life ever be fulfilled?

She thought of Ron. In their first relationship it had been all excitement; now it was all tenderness. She thought of the years that would stretch ahead with him; peaceful and content, with not a ripple on the surface of their smooth waters. Then she thought of Bob, and saw towering white-topped waves.

Sarah stepped out of the Explorer and walked up to Ron Neidholm's front door. She felt herself shaking in anticipation as she pressed the bell, as nervous as she had been on their first encounter in college, when she had wanted him with an urgency she had never suspected had lain within her.

There was no answer. Evening had given way almost entirely to darkness, but she realised that there were no lights within the house.

Ron was either in his den, maybe with his headphones on, or possibly he had gone for an evening run. She peered into her bag once again, and found the key he had given her.

She unlocked the door, and opened it. "Eleven ninety-one," she said aloud, recalling the code he had given her in the expectation that the alarm would need to be deactivated. But there was no warning buzz; it had not been set.

"Ron," she called, as she stepped inside. She listened for his feet on the stairs, from above or from the cellar, as he rushed to greet her, but there was no sound, no shouted reply. The door to his den lay directly in front of her, across the hall. She opened it, but saw at once that it was in darkness. She looked into his living room, in case he was asleep in his chair, but it was empty. She ran upstairs to his bedroom, in case he was in the shower, but it was neat, with no discarded clothes on the floor, and no discordant country song coming from the bathroom.

With more than a touch of frustration, she went back downstairs, to await his return; on impulse she stepped into the kitchen to make herself a coffee, throwing open the door and switching on the light in a single movement.

Ron was there.

He was lying on his back, his head almost at her feet. He was stretched out, massively, on the kitchen floor, staring sightlessly up at the ceiling. The hilt of a knife protruded from his chest; all of its blade was embedded in him, and most of the front of his yellow polo shirt had been dyed dark red by his blood.

Sarah had seen countless dead people… inside and out… through her career. As had been the case when Bob had collapsed, none of that counted for anything. She threw her hands to her face and screamed, as she had in the cemetery. There, she had been surrounded by friends; there had been people to come to her aid. Here, she had nobody to turn to. She was gripped by hysteria; she screamed again and again, until she felt her stomach begin to heave. Instinct alone made her run to the back door. She threw it open and vomited out into the garden.

From somewhere in the distance she seemed to hear a man's voice. "Hey lady, is everything all right over there?" it asked, nervously.

"The hell it is!" came a loud reply; a woman this time. "Move your ass, Mort. Call the friggin' police."