Share No Secrets by Carlene Thompson

Author:Carlene Thompson [Thompson, Carlene]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 978-0-312-98314-7
Publisher: St. Martin's Press
Published: 2005-08-17T04:00:00+00:00

TEN

1

“I’m sorry, Lottie. So sorry. My fault. All my fault.”

Gavin Kirkwood lay beside his wife in bed, his head propped on his hand as he looked down at her troubled, dreaming face. She’d greased her skin with a cream he knew cost over a hundred dollars a jar—cream that promised a decrease in wrinkles and an increase in firmness. The cream was a rip-off. In spite of faithful use for six months, Ellen’s complexion still bore the inevitable traces of age and gravity. Gavin knew that within a year, she would resort to plastic surgery.

He really didn’t care if she looked thirty. The sexual attraction he’d felt for her when they first met had vanished long ago, and he was frankly relieved that not much was expected of him in the lovemaking department anymore. Ellen was too depressed since the death of young Jamie last year to care about sex. That was the only good thing that had come from Jamie’s death. Gavin had loved him too, and although Ellen had sucked up all the sympathy offered by friends and relatives, Gavin had often wished he’d drowned instead of the intelligent, charming little boy. For a long time, Gavin’s world had turned gray and cold without the child. But no one seemed to notice his pain, or to care.

Ellen had arrived home at five o’clock today claiming she’d been out looking for Lottie. She was sweating, shaking, scratched by thorns, and so weak she could barely stand. Gavin wasn’t sure some of her maladies weren’t just attention-seeking acts, but to be safe he had promptly called her doctor, who’d given Ellen a mild lecture on overexertion, then to Gavin delivered a downright harsh lecture on his lapse in looking after Ellen. As if anyone could ever make Ellen cooperate, Gavin had thought in fury. He’d felt like punching the guy, but that would have brought on a fit of hysterics from Ellen and probably a lawsuit from the doctor. So, as he did so often, Gavin had seethed in silence while Ellen’s emotional state took dominion over his life, and he endured being belittled by yet another person contemptuous of a man they believed had married only for money.

Now, five hours after the doctor had given Ellen a tranquilizer and sent her to bed, Gavin lay miserably beside her, suffering through her slurred rambling and maddening restless leg movements. He had a brief but almost overwhelming desire to lay a pillow over her perspiring face and hold it in place until the woman finally stopped talking. And breathing. The urge became so strong, Gavin was frightened and promptly threw back the covers, abandoning the bedroom without even bothering to put on a robe. The pretentious silk pajamas Ellen made him wear covered enough of his well-toned body so the maid wouldn’t be shocked if she happened to hear him rattling around the house and emerged from her room to investigate.

He ambled into the room Ellen had decorated and called his study, a room he found dark and depressing and inconvenient.

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