The Last Winter of Dani Lancing: A Novel by P. D. Viner

Author:P. D. Viner [Viner, P. D.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 978-0-8041-3683-9
Publisher: Crown Publishers
Published: 2013-10-07T16:00:00+00:00

Patty wakes, and for one blissful moment, floats above the world like a newborn, innocent. Aware of the press of another body against her, she feels the warmth of contact and is drawn into that gravity, yearning for embrace, her arms folding around the other figure. Then the memories flood back, swamping her, stealing her breath as they have done every morning for more than twenty years, grinding her under their heel. She begins to shake.

Jim feels the tremor beside him. Through the sticky curtain of sleep he holds out his hand and she grabs at it; they grip hard, harder. Just like they had done with her morning sickness. “Squeeze. Tighter, Jim, squeeze tighter.”

He did, with all his might. And if it didn’t work, then he held the hair away from her face while she retched … then wiped her vomity mouth for her.

“Oh, that’s disgusting, Jim. You don’t have to do that,” she’d say.

“I don’t care.” He didn’t.

He wakes. The pressure on his hand and the allure of the past draw him from sleep. For one terrible moment he is lost, buried, at the bottom of a hole as it fills with sand and he is running, scrambling, trying to climb out. Then the hand holding his own calms him. He remembers where he is. Their hands squeeze together, they roll face to face. Scared, needy, hungry and as old as the earth. Patty reaches out to his face and strokes it, feels the stubble, the gray stalks of hair forcing their way though his toughened skin. She could never have described it to another person, could not even have formed the words to tell herself about his face, his cheek. Yet she knows every contour of his face and body. A lifetime melts away, she does not see him now, not the sixty-four-year-old Jim, but he’s a boy in her bed. So fine, so fine.

He opens his arms and she rolls into them, they hug so tightly. She feels so different in his arms, there is no curve and heft—now she is air and breath. Her once alabaster skin ravaged by loss, grief and despair. And yet.

“You are so beautiful,” he whispers.

“You bloody idiot.”

He looks into her face. Her smile dazzles him like the sun and her lips caress his. He can taste the salt of tears.

“I love you, Patty. I love you,” he breathes into her, overwhelmed by the rush of emotion and desire that he finds in his heart and mind and body.

She leans into him, snuggles her mouth into his hair and whispers.

“Jim. I killed a man.”

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