Down River by John Hart Read Free Book Online Page A

and for an instant, before she lay back down, one of her breasts hung in my vision. Then she was flat on the wood, and I knelt unmoving, completely undone. It was her manner, the sudden woman of her, and the certain knowledge that the Grace I’d known was lost forever.
    “Don’t take all day,” she said.
    I put the lotion on her back but did a bad job of it. I couldn’t look at the soft curves of her, the long legs slightly parted. So I looked over the river as well, and if we saw the same thing we could not have known. There were no words for that moment.
    I’d barely finished when she said, “I’m going for a swim.” She retied her top and stood, the smooth plane of her stomach inches from my face. “Don’t go away,” she said, then turned and split the water in one fluid motion. I stood and watched the sun flash off of her arms as she stroked hard against the current. She went out fifty feet, then turned, and swam back. She cut through the river like she belonged in it, and I thought of the day she’d first went in, how the water had opened up and taken her down.
    The river ran off of her as she climbed up the ladder. The weight of water pulled her hair back, and for a moment I saw something fierce in her naked features. But then the glasses went back on, and I stood mutely as she lay back down and let the sun begin to bake her dry.
    “Should I even ask how long you plan to stay?” she said.
    I sat next to her. “As long as it takes. A couple of days.”
    “Do you have any plans?”
    “One or two things,” I said. “Seeing friends. Seeing family.”
    She laughed an unforgiving laugh. “Don’t count on a whole lot of this. I have a life, you know. Things I won’t drop just because you decide to show up unannounced.” Then, without skipping a beat, she asked me, “Do you smoke?” She reached into the pile of clothes next to her—cutoffs, red T-shirt, flip-flops—and came out with a small plastic bag. She pulled out a joint and a lighter.
    “Not since college,” I said.
    She lit the joint, sucked in a lungful. “Well, I smoke,” she said tightly. She extended the joint toward me, but I shook my head. She took another drag, and the smoke moved out over the water.
    “Do you have a wife?” she asked.
    “No.”
    “A girlfriend?”
    “No.”
    “What about Robin Alexander?”
    “Not for a long time.”
    She took one more drag, stubbed the joint out, and dropped the charred end back into the plastic bag. Her words were soft around the edges.
    “I’ve got boyfriends,” she said.
    “That’s good.”
    “Lots of boyfriends. I date one and then I date another.” I didn’t know what to say. She sat up, facing me. “Don’t you care?” she asked.
    “Of course I care, but it’s none of my business.”
    Then she was on her feet.
    “It
is
your business,” she said. “If not yours, then whose?” She stepped closer, stopped an inch away. Powerful emotions emanated from her, but they were complex. I didn’t know what to say, so I said the only thing that I could.
    “I’m sorry, Grace.”
    Then she was against me, still wet from the river. Her arms circled my neck. She clutched me with sudden intensity. Her hands found my face, squeezed it, and then her lips pushed against mine. She kissed me, and she meant it. And when her mouth settled against my ear, she squeezed me even tighter, so that I could not have stepped away without forcing her. Her words were barely there, and still they crushed me.
    “I hate you, Adam. I hate you like I could kill you.”
    Then she turned and ran, down the riverbank, through the trees, her white suit flashing like the tail of a startled deer.
     
     
     

CHAPTER 4
     
     
       Some time later, I closed the door of my car as if I could shut off the world. It was hot inside, and blood pounded where the stitches held my skin together. For five years I’d lived in a vacuum, trying to forget the life I’d lost, but even in the world’s greatest city the