Rapture

The weekend went extremely well, Jeff thought, and he was quite pleased with himself when he looked back on it while driving home Sunday evening after returning Georgianne to her friend's house in Santa Barbara. Yes, yes, yes, he told himself. It's all here, it's all happening, it's all go now. He had been damn near perfect, he reckoned. Friendly, warm, attentive, lighthearted, generous, masterful, considerate-ah, let's see, did I say attentive? But never pushy, never too aggressive or forward or macho. Yes, it had all gone very well. So much so that Georgianne had agreed to come down again the next weekend. That said it all. Jeff had no doubt she'd be ready then for the one thing he'd been careful to avoid. Contact. Love.

"So, tell me, how was your weekend with Magnum, RI.?" Jan asked sarcastically when she and Georgianne sat down with a nightcap. "Boozy? Automotive? Lavish? Sensual?"

"Yes, yes, yes, and no, respectively," Georgianne replied when she stopped laughing.

"Can you believe that car?"

No, not yet."

"All he needs is a mustache. Not that it would turn him into another Tom Selleck, but ..."

"I know what you mean," Georgianne said. "Jeffs not quite the same person here that I knew back in Connecticut."

"Well, I never saw him before the other day, but one thing was pretty damn obvious."

"What?"

"He wants you."

"Oh dear, that's what I was afraid of. Are you sure?"

"Are you blind? You really can't tell?"

"I guess I can," Georgianne said quietly. "I just haven't wanted to think about it."

"He didn't make a play for you? All that time the two of you were alone at his place?"

"No. No, he didn't."

"I don't care." Jan shook her head. "He will."

"I'm going to spend next weekend there too."

"Oh, you are, are you." Jan sat back, eyebrows raised. "So you're interested."

"No, I don't think so. Not really. Let's just say I want to get to know him better-better than I thought I did."

"Watch yourself."

"Why? What did you think of him?" Georgianne asked. If Jeff could make a snap judgment about Jan, then she was entitled to one in return.

"The truth?"

"Of course."

"Okay. I'm sorry if he is a good old friend of yours, but I didn't like him. I don't know exactly why, but I've been thinking about it all weekend, and it keeps coming back to the same thing. The minute I met him I felt a real chill-and he knew it. Something in his eyes maybe, or something not in his eyes; something missing. You know, we were standing just a couple of feet apart, but he gave me the feeling that he was far away, looking at me, watching from a distance. Do you know what I mean?"

"Well..."

"He gave me the creeps."

Why wouldn't it go away? It was the last thing, the very last thing Georgianne wanted to think.

She had found that she could live with almost anything. Her husband's senseless murder by strangers who mistook him for someone else? She had never been sure that's what had happened, but it was the best story, and she had come to accept it. Bonnie's suicide, arising from some terrible combination of loneliness, depression, and pain resulting from the loss of her father? Georgianne had never brought herself to believe that; it was impossible. But for six months, wherever she was, alone every night, she had cried for Bonnie, until she had reached the point where she had no strength left to rage against the possibility of her suicide, the fact of her death. And so, in a way, she had come to accept that too, or at least not to argue with herself about it. There were two gaping holes in her life, and all she had managed to do was surround them with scar tissue to contain them.

Then she had come to Santa Barbara, and Jan had been able to make her smile for the first time in ages. All Georgianne had wanted to do was to lose herself in the company of her friends, and she was beginning to succeed. Then everything was suddenly changed.

It was crazy even to think that Jeff-quiet, cautious, solid Jeff Lisker-could in any way be responsible for what had happened to Sean and Bonnie. But once the idea had entered Georgianne's mind, it wouldn't go away. Because the more she thought about it, the more she saw a certain perverse logic in it. The way Jeff had reappeared in her life after twenty years, shortly before Sean's murder. The way he had come back again after the funeral. The way he apparently-obviously, if Jan was right, and she probably was-felt about her. The fact that he drank malt Scotch, and his clumsy insinuation about Jan seemed more ominous when viewed in this light.