Black Cherry Blues (Dave Robicheaux 3)

She drove up the east shore of the lake without answering. The trunks of the aspens and birch trees were silver in the moonlight, the rim of mountains around the lake black against the sky. I tried one more time.

“What does it take to make you understand you don’t belong there?” I said.

“Where do I belong?”

“I don’t know. Maybe with another guy.” I swallowed when I said it.

The scars on the backs of her hands were thin and white in the glow of moon-and starlight through the window.

“Do you want to take a chance on living with me and my little girl?” I said.

She was silent a moment. Her mouth looked purple and soft when she tur

ned her face toward me.

“I won’t always be in this trouble. I’ve had worse times. They always passed,” I said.

“How long will you want me to stay?”

“Until you want to leave.”

Her hands opened and then tightened on the steering wheel.

“You’re lonely now,” she said. “After we were together, maybe you’d feel different.”

“You don’t know that.”

“I know the way people are when they’re lonely. It’s like the way you feel at night about somebody. Then in the daylight it’s not the same.”

“What would you lose by trying?”

She slowed the jeep on the gravel shoulder a few feet behind my parked pickup truck and cut the engine. It was dark in the heavy shadow of the pines. Out over the lake the sky was bursting with constellations.

“You’re a nice man. One day you’ll find the right woman,” she said.

“That’s not the way you felt this morning. Don’t put me off, Darlene.”

I put my arm around her shoulders and turned her face with my hand. Her eyes looked up quietly at me in the dark. I kissed her on the mouth. Her eyes were still open when I took my mouth away from hers. Then I kissed her again, and this time her mouth parted and I felt her lips become wet against mine and her fingers go into my hair. I kissed her eyes and the moles at the corner of her mouth, then I placed my hand on her breast and kissed her throat and tried to pull aside her shirt with my clumsy hand and kiss the tops of her breasts.

Then I felt her catch her breath, tear it out of the air, stiffen, push against me and turn her face out into the dark.

“No more,” she said.

“What—”

“It was a mistake. It ends here, Dave.”

“People’s feelings don’t work like that.”

“We’re from different worlds. You knew that this morning. I led you into it. It’s my fault. But it’s over.”

“Are you going to tell me Clete’s from your world?”

“It doesn’t matter. It’s not going anywhere. Maybe at another time—”

“I’m just not going to listen to that stuff, Darlene.”

“You have to accept what I tell you. I’m sorry about all of it. I’m sorry I’m hurting you. I’m sorry about Clete. But you go back home or you’re going to be killed.”