So Cold the River(112)

“No,” she whispered, and for a terrible moment he thought she was calling him off entirely, but then she tugged on his shoulders and pulled him upward and he understood that she wanted to move quickly, perhaps because she thought it was a mistake. He was afraid of that, but then her hand was on him and guiding him and all the thoughts in his mind faded and there was only her. When he entered her, she let out a soft gasp and he dropped his face to her neck, her hair tangled about him, and for a moment he lay completely still and breathed in the smell of her hair. Then she lifted her hips and urged him forward, and though he began to move, he kept his face pressed close to hers, where he could hear her and smell her and taste her.


They were done quickly the first time, lay breathing heavily but not speaking for a while and then began again, this time with a different pace, the slow savoring of one encountering something once feared lost. They spoke in breaths and kisses but not words, and it was quite a while before they were finished again, the sheets now damp with sweat.

“Your hands are shaking,” she said. Her cheek was on his chest, and she was holding his right hand close to her face.

“All of me is shaking,” he said. “It’s a good thing.”

Truth was, he seemed to have developed a muscle tremor in his hands, and the headache was returning already. He didn’t want to think about that.

“It won’t always feel this easy,” she said.

“I know it.”

“Do you? Because if you want to keep running, let’s be clear on that now, and not let tonight slow you down.”

“I don’t want to run, Claire. I want to be with you.”

“And you want it to be easy,” she said. “Easy, and as planned. You want everything to fit into the plan, your plan. Some of us try so hard to fit into that for you. It doesn’t matter. You still can’t handle the fact that the entire world does not.”

Her voice was weary when she said it, and he lifted his head to look down at her.

“You sound like you’ve given up,” he said.

“On you? On us? Oh, please, Eric. I’m the only one who never will.”

“Then we can make it work. I know it will not be easy, or as planned. But we can make it work.”

“You left,” she said. “You left. Don’t you remember that? And now I’m supposed to be thrilled with the idea of you coming back?”

“You don’t me want to?”

She snorted out a laugh of exasperation. “I didn’t want you to leave, Eric. But you did. So when you talk about making this work, forgive me if I’m a little hesitant.”

“I love you, Claire.”

“I know that,” she said. “The problem is, you’re going to have to figure out how to like Eric a little bit, too. Or at least be at peace with him. Until the two of you can sort that out, I’m afraid I’ll be lost in the middle.”


She fell asleep soon, her head on his chest and her hand curled around his side, and he watched her, feeling a sense of hope and possibility that had been absent for far too long. They would fix this. They would fix it all.

Though she did not yet know it, the water had saved him. It was the water that had returned her to him, that had her at his side right now. Without the water, he’d been alone. With it, here she was. It had revived his marriage and it would revive his career.

The thought returned his mind to Campbell and Lucas and Shadrach, to the story that could lift him to success. He was bothered that the water he’d bottled at the spa had not produced a vision or stopped the withdrawal pains, bothered that he’d required so much from Anne’s last bottle to achieve so little. What he needed was the original. The Bradford bottle. There’d been something different about it, and while the regular Pluto Water had fed the need for a while, it was not doing the job now.

It’s that spring, he thought, the spring that the boy’s uncle used for the moonshine. There was something different about it, and if I could find that spring…

If he could find it, the possibilities were damn near endless. If he could find that spring, the world would just about curl up in his palm.

But he could not find it tonight, and the headache was building and his hands were shaking and he needed to try to hold the dragon at bay if he could. He moved Claire gently, slipped out from beneath her, and went for the plastic bottle he’d filled at the spa. He’d had only a little before falling asleep the first time, and it had not been enough. He’d have to adjust, that was all. A little more, bit by bit, until he found the amount that worked. As the dark hours moved toward the light ones, he drank the water and watched his beautiful wife.