Chapter 1
A bitter day in early December
Joss kept her hair carefully aligned over her collarbone every time John was near.
No need to remind him of the horrid scars along her neck, the rude marks of her brief flight with death. Thanks to him she had survived, but the margin had been as thin as a bird's wing.
Every day, seeing his anxious eyes and tight mouth, she was reminded of just how near a thing it had been for both of them. They could have died there in that abandoned alley, both bleeding dry from gaudy bullet holes before help arrived.
But they didn't: John saved her; Harold saved him.
After two weeks, her return home from the hospital had been an uproarious affair with her mother and girlfriends leading the balloon-laden celebration. Swaddled under her comforter in bed, she was draped in new pink flannel pajamas with a cheery paisley pattern, part of a gift set from John's landlady. Because Mrs. Soni believed comfort was more important than fashion and because Joss had lost considerable weight during her convalescence, the pajamas were at least two sizes too big.
Like coddled royalty, she received the stream of visitors in bed. They brought plates of food, magazines, gossip, and prayers. As the hours dragged on, the crowd in the living room became rowdy. Though she didn't get even one sip, Joss noted the scent of Champagne and heavier winter red wines in the air.
Her shrunken appetite dictated that she stick with ginger ale and a finger-sized sliver of ham sandwich. But she participated vicariously in the general feast.
She checked on the smothered chicken, pot roast, chicken-fried steak, and her favorite versions of scalloped potatoes and creamed spinach that burdened the dining table. It all looked delicious, she told them.
With dancing eyes, Taylor boasted of sampling four different chocolate cakes and two kinds of raisin oatmeal cookies supplied by the congregation at her mother's church. In her weakened state, her scowl couldn't deter him from also taking a gigantic slice of the bursting cherry pie sent over by the cook at Otto's Uptown Diner.
John had wisely chosen to avoid the boisterous party.
He arrived that evening after the girls had skittered out the door, after her mother had spirited away Taylor for a lamb chop and mashed potatoes conference in some secret location.
With the celebrants gone, the darkened apartment took on a hushed pall, reminding her of the dim hospital room she had just left. To fill up the empty spaces and push back the shadows, Joss climbed out of bed, shuffling down the hall to the kitchen again.
She heard John creep through the front door, but she was too tired to turn her head when he entered the kitchen.
He pressed his face to the top of her head as she stood in front of the open refrigerator.
She was confounded by the array of food, too exhausted to decide what to have for dinner. All those containers and tins and cartons of food crowding the shelves looked ominous to her, like weird tokens of some permanent infirmity.
Too many choices, too much caring and worry packed up inside each box. Her antsy stomach revolted and like an ungrateful child her impulse was to throw out every plastic cube and foil covered plate.
"John, I don't know what I want. There's so much. It's all too much."
The wail sounded pathetic in her own ears, embarrassing her so that she clamped her mouth shut after that.
John gently closed the refrigerator then and led her by the hand toward the bedroom. After she was under the puffy white comforter again, he pulled down a box from the shelf inside her closet and unfurled her late Aunt Juliette's hand-stitched crazy quilt.
"Even if you're not cold, you need this."
He tucked the frayed coverlet around her shoulders and stroked her cheek, staring at her with mournful eyes before heading back to the kitchen.
In a matter of minutes he returned with a cup of vegetable barley soup, a glass of milk, and a pyramid of her mother's home-made brownies on a tray. All simple and warm and just what she supposed she needed. She wasn't sure, but she was determined to try all the same.
"If this doesn't do the trick, then we'll have to just send you back to the hospital for some more of that delicious grub you're pining for."
A fleeting smile carried the weak joke to her so she replied with an equally hesitant tilt of her mouth.
When he kissed her forehead while settling the wicker tray on her lap, it was with such an unexpectedly delicate touch that she started to cry. Like feathers fluttering over her skin, his lips felt dry. His fingers as he stroked away the tears were cool and careful.
While she tried to sip the rich broth, she smoothed her hair around her throat, wishing it was a ribbon that could hide the awful scars. He tracked her gestures, another faint smile flickering at his mouth as his eyes traced patterns across her face.
She felt he was studying her at a judicious remove, like she was a project or a target. Measuring her reactions against some hidden yardstick of recovery and restoration.
His emotions seemed disguised from her now, mysteriously swathed by the conventionality of his comforting actions. She didn't know what to make of his feelings, how to read the silences or his mild jokes. Bantering seemed so stiff and difficult, like rehearsing lines for a new play they would never perform.
Trying to interpret it all, to get it right without upsetting anything, depleted her meager resources.
So the barley soup swamped her, the brownies tasted like dust, and she didn't even manage to finish more than two sips of milk. She suspected it had soured, or maybe her tongue was burned by the soup. Or maybe something else was wrong.
As John carried the tray away, she called out to him: "I just need to sleep, I guess. Maybe find a way out of this haze I'm in."
That wasn't exactly how she felt. But the words were close enough to true that she hoped they would erase some of the doubt she saw behind his eyes.
Was she supposed to have died for him? Was that the fate they had dodged? Were they living a substitute existence where the bullet wounds had just left ugly marks instead of fatal crevices in the heart? Were they paying the price now for a mistake they had made over a year ago?
That first night when he slept chastely beside her, his heavy arm over her waist, she awakened three times to make sure the scar was hidden. She turned her head so that as he slept his face couldn't nestle against the wrecked skin of her throat.
In the morning, she was pulled from sleep by the sounds of a shower.
At first she thought it must be Taylor getting ready for school as usual, but the gushing noises were closer than the hallway. Though it was still dark, she could see yellow light slicing under the door of the bathroom in her suite.
John was up already.
Had he gotten an early call from Finch summoning him to a new case? Surely she would have heard the buzz of his cell rattling across the night stand? She guessed she had been awake all night: her numbed senses suggested as much, but maybe she was wrong.
She knew the heat radiating off of John's body made her scratchy and sticky, his crowding kept her from sleeping except in fits.
Rest was stolen, so she must have been awake at dawn; she couldn't have missed that call, could she?
She listened to the varying sounds of the water as John moved under the nozzle.
The stream swooshed, then paused, then gushed again as he interrupted the spray. She wasn't certain but she thought she detected a word, a groan perhaps, then a curse in the midst of the splashing. She could picture his sleek head bent in concentration, his torso straining under the water's force as he frantically drove for his release.
A corresponding twinge pinched her insides, the erotic urge pulling at her until she turned her face into the cool pillow to smother it. She lay still under the covers waiting for the throbbing to subside, willing away the ache and the longing.
They didn't have to do this right away: he was injured, she was recovering. Sex was a luxury they could indulge in when the time was right. Now, the scrape of skin against skin made her stomach pitch in protest and her fingertips prickle with anticipatory despair.
As the bathroom door opened and steam crept along the floor next to her bed, she turned on her left side and pretended to sleep.
Talking about this, about anything really, was more than she could bear right now. Inspecting these shredded feelings, probing the tender layers of doubt would be work for another time when they both were stronger.
After he dressed, John kissed her lightly on the ear and then delicately touched her eyelids with his lips, like a cat waking his mistress in the most discreet manner possible. The green scent of Palmolive soap pricked her nostrils as he bent over her.
"I'm taking off early. No need for you to get up yet."
Through her sticky lashes, she saw his eyes were red. From the shower. It must be.
"Will I see you tonight?"
Doubt made her voice quaver until she gulped it down and smiled.
"If I'm lucky, yes."
She saw the bobble at his throat as he swallowed a promise.
"Go back to sleep now."
She awoke two hours later, the nagging doubts tugging at her mind as she swam up to consciousness again.
Turning on the lamp beside her, she found a single bullet standing upright on the night stand, guarding her tube of lip balm like a little soldier.
This was the bullet John had given her as a memento of the suicidal thoughts he had discarded so many years earlier, doubts he had overturned because of her.
This was the bullet she had returned to him in that lonely alleyway when she thought she was dying.
Rolling the token between her thumb and middle finger now, she noted its slightly dented surface, its mottled finish. When she kissed it the sharp tang of metal lingered on her lips.
His luck or his determination prevailed that night: John returned as she had hoped. And he came back the next night and the one after that, feeding her, sleeping beside her, touching her only if necessary.
Most evenings, she slipped away from the sofa alone, nodding at Taylor to encourage him to keep up the innocuous conversation with John.
If she and John retired at the same time, they lay side by side like dinner knives in a cutlery tray: dull, cool, and silent.