Read Online Michael’s Wife by Marlys Millhiser - Free Book Online Page B

laughed and his mustache straightened a trifle and then drooped as he sobered suddenly. “I … did it again, didn’t I?”
    â€œYes, you did.”
    He shook his head and then slapped himself on the forehead. “Look, forget what I said. What do I know? Those people had wonderful treatment, honest.”
    Laurel walked slowly out into the sunlight to get warm and then just kept walking. She could hear Evan’s plea behind her but she didn’t turn.
    â€œPlease, it’s not you. It’s me. I always say the wrong things to the right people … Mrs. Devereaux? Oh … hell.”
    That night Laurel prowled. She put a coat over her nightgown and walked the covered walkways where hanging palms and leafy vines made weird silhouettes on the walls in the moonlight and the twisted trees in the courtyard created moving, menacing shadows. There seemed to be no darkness in this desert world with the harsh sun in the day and the moon at night sending its eerie glow through barred windows and wide archways. There seemed no place to hide in darkness and to nurse jangled nerves.
    It was cold and the pool steamed, the steam wisping and writhing in the moonlight as if from a witch’s caldron. She paced back and forth beside it, tense and writhing inside like the steam. She couldn’t bear to stay here but couldn’t think of any place to go. Evan Boucher had offered help, but she dismissed him. Whether he was a fumbly lovesick kid or a house burglar, he wouldn’t be much help. She still couldn’t bring herself to trust him. Her parents had been cruel enough to disown her and she didn’t know them anyway. It’s hopeless .
    She walked toward the recess of the garages at the back of the courtyard, and in a corner under the stone steps that led to the old nursery was a door she had noticed before but never opened. A thick wooden door like all the doors in this house, but locked. A large old-fashioned key of wrought iron was still in the lock. The key turned easily and the door opened to the outside world, a world she’d scarcely seen since she’d entered this house and become Laurel Devereaux.
    Laurel pocketed the key and closed the door behind her. The house was built on the slope of a hill and the city of Tucson spread out on the valley floor below her, its lights snapping like stars in the clear night, dark jagged peaks rising up behind it on the far side of the valley.
    Below her she could see the patio of another lush home with a steamy pool. She’d forgotten how close the rest of the world was, once inside this self-contained house at her back.
    The hill rose steeply behind the house and the giant branched cacti marched widely spaced to the top, their ghostly profiles standing out on the skyline. Toward the front of the house a chain link fence that must have been ten feet high enclosed an area of desert outside Paul’s laboratory and sloped down the hill almost to the drive of the house below.
    Rustling noises on the hill around her gave Laurel the creepy feeling that unfriendly night eyes watched her. She turned back to the door. And then a measured thumping from within the house caught her attention.
    Not far from the door the ground fell away to expose a subbasement and another barred window that opened into a lighted room. She had to stoop slightly to see into it and wondered who else was awake.
    She was looking down into a gymnasium with mats, barbells, hanging ropes, and a trampoline that thumped each time Michael came down on it. He had removed his shoes and the coat he’d worn at dinner. White shirt sleeves were rolled to his elbows and straight black hair flopped against his forehead as he landed. Keeping his eyes on the taut canvas beneath him, he measured each jump with a precision that brought him down at almost the same spot as before.
    He rose higher each time, his head rising level with the window and then above it, his arms flung out for