school and college. But those items were not the object of his focus. In
the semidarkness he reached out a long arm for the framed photo, decided
against it, and then changed his mind again.
He pulled it out. This had almost become a ritual. He never had to worry
about his financee stumbling onto this particular possession of his
because she absolutely refused to enter his bedroom for longer than a
minute. Whenever they slid between the sheets it was either at her
place, where Jack would lie on the bed staring up at the twelve-foot
ceiling where a mural of ancient horsemen and young maidens shared space
while Jennifer amused herself until she collapsed and then rolled over
for him to finish on top of her. Or at her parents’ place in the country
where the ceilings were even higher and the murals had been taken from
some thirteenth-century church in Rome, all of which made Jack feel that
God was watching him being ridden by the beautiful and absolutely naked
Jennifer Ryce Baldwin and that he would languish in eternal hell for
those few moments of visceral pleasure.
The woman in the photo had silky brown hair that curled slightly at the
ends. Her smile looked up at Jack and he’remembered the day he had taken
the picture.
A bike ride far into the countryside of Albemarle County.
He was just starting law school; she was in her second year of college
at Mr. Jefferson’s university. It was only their third date but it was
like they had never lived without each other.
Kate Whitney.
He said the name slowly; his hand instinctively traced the curves of her
smile, the lone dimple right above the left, cheek that gave her face a
slightly lopsided look. The almond-shaped cheekbones bordered a dainty
nose that sloped toward a pair of sensual lips. The chin was sharp and
screamed out “stubborn.” Jack moved back up the face and stopped at the
large teardrop-shaped eyes that always seemed full of mischief.
Jack rolled back over and lay the photo on his chest so that she stared
directly at him. He could never think of Kate without seeing an image of
her father, with his quick wit and crooked smile.
Jack had often visited Luther Whitney at his little row house in an
Arlington neighborhood that had seen better days. They spent hours
drinking beer and telling stories, mostly Luther telling and Jack
listening.
Kate never visited her father, and he never attempted to contact her.
Jack had found his identity almost by accident, and despite Kate’s
objections, Jack had wanted to get to know the man. It was a rare thing
for her face to hold anything but a smile, but that was one thing she
never smiled about.
After he graduated they moved to D.C. and she enrolled in law school at
Georgetown. Life seemed idyllic. She came to his first few trials as he
worked the butterflies from his stomach and the squeak from his throat
and tried to remember which counsel table to sit at. But as the
seriousness of the crimes his clients were accused of committing grew,
her enthusiasm diminished.
They had split up his first year in practice.
The reasons were simple: she couldn’t understand why he had chosen to
represent people who broke the law, and she could not tolerate that he
liked her father.
At the very last breath of their lives together he remembered sitting
with hex in this very room and asking, pleading, for her not to leave.
But she had and that was four years ago, and he hadn’t seen or heard
from her since.
He knew that she had taken a job with the Commonwealth Attorney’s office
in Alexandria, Virginia, where she was no doubt busily putting former
clients of his behind bars for stomping on the laws of her adopted
state. Other than that Kate Whitney was a stranger to him.
But lying there with her staring at him with a smile that told him a
million things that he had never learned from the woman he was supposed
to marry in six months, Jack wondered if Kate would remain a stranger to