The Scent of Rain and Lightning

8

IN THE LIVING ROOM of the big stone house, Laurie sat with her back against the frame of a window seat with Jody slumped asleep in her arms. The child had cried after her father left, and then finally gave in to the hot and humid day, to her tears, and to the accumulated exhaustion of a morning spent being a three-year-old who loved to hop up and down stairs, and twirl until she fell down, and run a groove into the carpet around the big walnut dining room table.

Long after Hugh-Jay’s truck turned the corner, long after her arms went numb from holding Jody, long after the telephone rang repeatedly and she didn’t answer it, Laurie continued sitting in the window seat, staring outside. She was furious and anxious about Hugh-Jay’s surprise visit home, and she didn’t know what to do about it. She wanted to throw things. She wanted to run out the door and keep running until she was far away from him and Rose. She wanted to scream. What she didn’t want to do was have to sit still to keep Jody from waking up, even though the quiet was a relief.

Why had he come home? It was so unlike him. Was he checking up on her?

Even on such a hot day, she felt chilled and ill at the memory of his voice behind her in the kitchen.

The way he’d grabbed her…

She shuddered, which made Jody shift in her arms.

Laurie forced herself to sit perfectly still and barely breathe.

She didn’t want to have to deal with a child’s wants and needs, but then the truth was, she never did want to play mommy. That’s what it felt like to her. Pretend. Not real. Only, it was a joyless game that never ended-like Monopoly, which Chase and Belle loved and played as if the fate of the ranch depended on which one of them got Park Place. She hated that stupid game, because she thought it was stupid to care so much about plastic houses, and because she wasn’t accustomed to competing. But at least with Monopoly she could cash in and walk away. With the game of being a mother, she could never win and she could never quit.

She stared down at the sleeping child, feeling resentful and trapped.

Nobody had ever warned her she might feel this way toward her husband or her own flesh and blood. That was a nasty surprise. A child was a whole lot of work and trouble, she was finding out, just like marriage had turned out to be. A baby-like a husband-always had to be considered, even if all the mother wanted to do was take a nap. And God forbid she should want to talk on the telephone or take a leisurely bath or take a few hours off when there wasn’t anybody around to babysit.

At least her daughter looked like her, thank God for that much of a blessing.

If she’d had an ugly child, Laurie thought she’d have hated it.

Her child was beautiful, and she lived in the biggest, nicest house in town, and her husband was rich, or would be someday. People thought he already was, just because he was a Linder, but all Hugh-Jay made was a salary like any other ranch employee. He made more than his brothers because he was older and had more experience and responsibility, but still, it was just a salary, as if he was a janitor’s kid instead of the oldest son of the wealthiest people in town. In a few years they could share in the ranch profits, but not yet, because his parents didn’t believe in giving their children too much, too soon, or too easily. Laurie wanted to shake Annabelle and Hugh Senior for being so selfish! It would be so easy for her father-in-law and mother-in-law to let loose of a few more dollars so that she and Hugh-Jay could have some fun instead of only work.

Fun. It felt like forever since she’d had any.

On days such as this one, when the house and the heat made her feel like an animal who wanted to claw and howl her way to freedom, Laurie thought she would take any escape that anybody offered to her.

And it wasn’t as if nobody ever did…

She smirked to herself, reveling in that other truth.

Her thoughts made her shiver again, but in a delicious way.

In that overheated moment, she intensely felt her own raw, tingling nakedness under her sundress, longing for hands upon her skin that were not her husband’s callused, fumbling, clumsy ones. She felt those other hands moving on her breasts, another mouth pressing against hers, another man’s weight on top of her, his eyes admiring her, eating her up, loving her in the ways she wanted to be loved and not in the tame, safe, predictable, infuriating ways she actually was loved. She imagined him commanding her, refusing to give her instantly what she demanded, making her wait and beg and do whatever he ordered her to do, holding her arms back, pinning her legs down, tasting her, teasing her, until she exploded with desire for him, and only then would he give it to her-laughing at her, tormenting her as he made her moan and scream and beg again, again, again. Her breath went shallow. She felt consumed by desire for skin she wasn’t supposed to touch, obsessed by sex she wasn’t supposed to have, wild with longing for things she wasn’t supposed to do and would never do with her husband. She didn’t believe she had made a mistake marrying Hugh-Jay-Laurie never thought she made mistakes because there were always other people to blame-but sometimes she wondered what it would have been like to marry one of those other boys who stared at her, one of the good-looking, sexy ones who hadn’t been respectful and patient like Hugh-Jay, one of the ones who’d been hot instead of lukewarm, who’d been exciting instead of steady, passionate and fun instead of plain and dull. What would her life be like if she went with a man who whispered shocking words to her, and who gave her things that didn’t have anything to do with money?

What if she could have had both, the money and the pleasure?

And then she finally saw it, the silver lining that her anger and the sluggish day had hidden from her until this moment: Hugh-Jay was going to be gone that night and maybe longer! She could do what she wanted to do. She could do what she needed to do, and had every right to do, because didn’t she have a right to be happy? And she wouldn’t even get in trouble for it, because there would be nobody home to catch her.

In her arms, Jody stirred and opened her eyes.

“Hi, sleepyhead,” her mother said, with an encouraging smile that surprised her daughter into smiling back. “How would you like to go out to Grandma and Grandpa’s to spend the night?”