Night Moves : Dream Man/After the Night Read online

  She remembered the night it had first happened. Gray had been in New Orleans on business. Mama had come down for dinner, but despite Alex’s cajoling, had been more depressed than usual and had really made an effort just to eat with them. She had gone back to her room almost immediately, despite his pleas. When he had turned back to face Monica, she had seen the desolation in his eyes, and impulsively reached out to put her hand on his arm, wanting to comfort him.

  It had been a chilly winter night. There was a fire in the parlor, so they had gone in there, and she had set herself to easing that look from his eyes. They had sat on the sofa in front of the fire, talking quietly of many things while he sipped an after-dinner brandy, his favorite. The house was quiet, the room dim, with only one lamp on. The fire had softly snapped. And in the firelight, she must have looked like Mama. She had worn her dark hair in a twist that night, and she always dressed in the conservative, classic style Mama preferred. For all those reasons, the brandy, the solitude, the darkened room, his own disappointment, her resemblance to Mama—it had happened.

  A kiss had become two, then more. His hands were in her hair, and he was groaning. Monica remembered how her heart had pounded, in fear and an almost painful sympathy. He had touched her breasts, almost reverentially, but only through her clothes. And he had pushed up her skirt only enough to bare the essential part, as if he didn’t want to violate her modesty more than was necessary. She had a confused memory of naked flesh, unseen but felt, as he pressed himself to her, then a sharp sting of pain and the quick pumps into her. Unfaded by time, however, was the memory of how his voice had broken as he murmured, “Noelle,” in her ear.

  He didn’t seem to know he’d been the first. In his mind, she’d been Mama.

  And in her mind, God help her, he’d been Daddy.

  It was so sick that she was still disgusted at herself. She’d never had any sexual feelings for Daddy; hadn’t had any at all, until Michael. But in the tumult of emotion that night, she’d thought, Maybe he won’t leave, if I give him what Mama won’t. So she had taken her mother’s place, offering herself sexually as a bribe to keep Daddy at home. Poor Alex . . . poor her. Both of them surrogates for something neither one could ever have. Freud would have had a field day with her.

  But that night had been the first of many, over the past seven years. Though not that many, come to think of it. Michael had probably had her more often in just a year than Alex had in seven. Alex had been so ashamed, so apologetic. But he had come to her again, helplessly needing the pretense that Noelle would ever lie in his arms, and Monica had let him have the ease that he needed. He never approached her when Gray was home, only when he was out of town on business.

  The last time had been just two days ago, when Gray had been in New Orleans. She had gone to Alex’s office that night, as she usually did, and he had done it to her on the sofa there. It never took long. He never undressed her, or himself. Seven years he’d been doing it to her, and she’d never seen him naked, had actually only seen his thing a few times. He was still apologetic about his need, as if she really were Mama, and thought the process was nasty. So he finished as fast as he could, and Monica cleaned herself and went home.

  It wasn’t like that with Michael. She still didn’t know what had attracted him to her, or how she had actually allowed things to progress so far. He’d grown up in Prescott, so she’d known him, to put a name to his face, to speak to, all of her life. He was five years older than Gray, and already a deputy with the sheriff’s department when she had finished high school. He’d married his high school sweetheart and had two little boys. They’d been like Ward and June Cleaver, and then she’d up and left him, right out of the blue. She had moved to Bogalusa and remarried a couple of years later. His sons were seventeen and eighteen now, and he had a good relationship with them.

  Michael had a good relationship with everyone, she thought, a smile curving her mouth. That was why he’d been elected sheriff when Sheriff Deese had finally retired three years ago. He was a true good old boy, disdaining suits in favor of a uniform, and wing tips in favor of boots. He was a lanky six feet, with sandy hair and friendly blue eyes, and a smattering of freckles across his nose. Opie, all grown up.

  One day, a year ago, she’d been in town and decided to eat lunch at the courthouse grill, which made the best hamburgers in town. Mama would have been horrified at such a plebeian taste, but Monica loved hamburgers and treated herself occasionally. She’d been sitting at the little table when Michael had come in, gotten his own hamburger, and was on his way back to a booth when he suddenly paused by her table and asked if he could join her. Startled, she’d said yes.

  At first she’d been stiff, but Michael could tease the starch out of a shirt. Soon they’d been laughing and talking as easily as if they were best friends. She’d had another moment of stunned awkwardness when he’d asked her to have dinner with him; she was acutely aware that Mama wouldn’t approve. There was nothing upper-crust about Michael McFane. But she had agreed, and to her surprise, he had cooked dinner himself, grilling steaks in his backyard. He lived now on the small farm where he’d grown up, with the closest neighbor a mile down the road, and Monica had felt relaxed by the quiet solitude of his rural home.

  Relaxed enough, after they’d eaten and danced to country tunes on the radio, moving slowly around his small living room; to let him take her into his bedroom. She hadn’t planned to let him, hadn’t even considered that he’d try. But he’d started kissing her, and his kisses were warm and slow, and for the first time in her life she felt the curl of desire deep in her body. Alarmed by what was happening, and the speed of it, she had nevertheless stood in his bedroom and let him unzip her dress, then unhook her bra and remove it. No one had ever seen her bare breasts, but all of a sudden Michael had not only seen them, but was busy sucking on them. The drawing pressure of his mouth had made her go wild, and they had tumbled to the bed. Not for him a discreet pumping, with trousers barely lowered. Soon they were both naked, locked together on the cotton sheets, and that curl of desire had exploded into a wantonness that still alarmed her.

  No lady would act in such a manner, but then Monica had always known she wasn’t a lady. Mama was a lady; Monica had been trying all her life to be like Mama, so Mama would love her, but she’d always fallen short. Mama would be horrified and disgusted if she knew her daughter spent several hours a week in bed with Michael McFane—the sheriff, of all people!—screwing like a rabbit.

  Sometimes Monica felt resentful of the strictures that had been drummed into her from the cradle. Gray hadn’t been subjected to, and confined by, all the things that ladies didn’t do. It was as if Mama had written Gray off as a lost cause from the moment of his birth; he was a male, therefore she expected him to act like an animal. Because she was a lady, she had ignored the sexual escapades of both father and son; such things were of no interest to her, and she expected her daughter not to be interested in them, either.

  It hadn’t worked that way, though Monica had tried. She had tried really hard, for the first twenty-five years of her life. Even after Mama had withdrawn from them, after Daddy left, Monica had kept trying, hoping that, if she was good enough, Mama wouldn’t feel so bad about Daddy being gone.

  But she had always hungered for more. Mama had always been so reserved and cool, perfect, untouchable. Daddy had been warm and loving; he had hugged her, tussled with her despite Mama’s disapproval of such rowdiness with her daughter. Gray was even more physical than Daddy; he had always burned with an inner fire that Monica had recognized at an early age.

  She remembered once, when Gray had been home from college, they had lingered around the dinner table, talking. Gray had been lounging in his chair with that big-cat grace of his, laughing as he described a prank some of the football players had pulled on one of the coaches, and there had been . . . she couldn’t quite describe it . . . a sort of sensual wildness in the tilt of his head, the motion of his hand as he picked up his glass. She had g