Page 28 of Dark Secret

Or had I already lost that?

I turned the show off and ran my hands over my face. Music. Maybe that would help. YouTube opened, and the first item on offer was Bruce Springsteen’s I’m on Fire. Fucking hell.

I scrolled past it and glared at the screen. I loved all genres and eras of music, but that song hit too close to the bone right now. I found some country music to play and tried to go back to writing up the contract. I’d had it out before the lawyer arrived and now took it back up.

It still looked like more of a letter than a contract, and I’d decided to leave it that way. I was on my third rendition of the thing and still didn’t have it exactly right. I had a row of promises, a row of things I wanted from her, and a date at the end. There were two places to sign, my name and hers.

I went to my laptop and opened it. I found my writing program and opened that up.

I made nice, neat tables and filled them in then added some text.

It still read like a proposal, and that wasn’t what I wanted. I wanted a contract. I went and found a copy of the old one on my laptop’s hard drive and opened it. This was more like it. I started to edit things, took out the part about money altogether, left in the parts about privacy, and started to add in stuff from the new one. That just made it messy, and just as I thought I’d say fuck it and learn to live without the damned thing, Stephanie came home.

“Hi, babe,” I called out and shut the laptop. I didn’t want her to see the contract yet.

“Hey, Dylan. How are you, babe?” She sounded tired, but there was an extra sadness there.

“Hey, what’s wrong?” I took her hand, and she came to sit on my lap at the kitchen table.

“Nothing, just a few problems I have to deal with.” She sank into me, her face warm against my neck. I felt a dampness too and wondered if she’d been crying.

“Anything I can help with?” I hugged her close and let her just relax into me. It felt good, even if my back did protest the extra weight.

“Not really, no. Just … stupidity.” She kissed my cheek and got up. “I shouldn’t be sitting on you with your back like that. How did your day go?”

She pulled her coat off, threw it in the bedroom, and came back to sit with me.

“Wine?” I asked and got up to get a glass for her and took a bottle from the fridge. I couldn’t have it with my medicine, but I thought she needed some of it.

“Yes, please.”

“My day went fine,” I said once I sat. “The lawyer came. We got papers signed and stuff done. It looks good.”

“I’m glad for you. I know you’ve waited a long time to get this settled.” She sipped her wine then frowned. “What happens once you’ve found a place? Do you go back to Kansas?”

Ah, that question had finally occurred to her.

“I’ll be here for a while. I want to get everything settled and opened, and then I’ll figure out where to go next. I’m normally in Kansas or California, but I’ve neglected both a little lately. They’ll need to be checked on soon, and the resort in Washington too.” I blew air through my cheeks at the thought of all that travel. “I’ll be here for a long time, though.”

“Good,” she said and finished her wine. “Are you hungry?”

“We can order out if you’re tired? I don’t want you to exhaust yourself.”

“I’m fine. Besides, cooking soothes me.” She brushed her fingers through my hair and smiled. “It reminds me of happy times.”

“I’m surprised you know how to cook.”

“Oh, why’s that?” She looked confused, and I wondered if I’d broken one of our unspoken rules. Don’t ask about my past, and I won’t ask about yours.

“It’s just, you seem well educated. Most of the time, people who spend so much time on education rarely know how to cook.” Whew, hopefully I’d sidestepped that one.

“I spent summers at home, with the cook’s daughter in the kitchen. I’d sneak down during the nights, and we’d cook up a storm.” I saw a sweet expression cross her face as the memories replayed. Hmm, a live-in cook. She definitely came from money then.

Not that I was judging, but Stephanie was a mystery I wanted to untangle. Every now and then she’d give me a clue. I didn’t want to tell my secrets, although she could look online and find most of them. They weren’t actually secrets, just things I didn’t want to talk about. She may have already done that, for all I knew. If she did, she hid it well.

She got up suddenly, a move that startled me. “Excuse me a minute. I’ll, uh, I’ll be right back.”

I heard the tap go on in the bathroom and wondered. What had upset her so much? I was almost certain she was crying. I waited for her, and when twenty minutes had passed, I went to the door. “Stephanie?”