The Night Mark

Chapter 17 (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter 18 (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter 19 (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter 20 (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter 21 (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter 22 (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter 23 (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter 24 (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter 25 (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter 26 (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter 27 (#litres_trial_promo)

Author’s Note (#litres_trial_promo)

Extract (#litres_trial_promo)

Copyright (#litres_trial_promo)

1 (#u5dfc0014-26a7-5683-8c38-2537ef8d0be1)

Faye closed her eyes and thought of Casablanca.

Easy to do since she’d been watching it earlier that day. She’d also watched it the week before and the month before that. In the past four years, she’d watched it at least ten times, definitely more, but ten was all she would admit to if asked. And her husband had asked when he’d come home from work and found her watching it.

“Again?” Hagen had asked.

“It’s a classic” was all Faye had said.

Now, hours later, as Hagen kissed the back of her neck, her thoughts returned to Casablanca. It was nine o’clock on Friday night, the one hour of the week they usually made the effort to show up for their marriage. But she hadn’t felt well all day—tired, aching—and all she wanted to do was close her eyes and go to sleep. Since she couldn’t sleep, she dreamed of Rick and Ilsa and Morocco while Hagen did his best to pretend theirs was a real marriage.

Faye was far more concerned about Bogie’s Rick than Hagen. Had Rick ever found someone else to love or had he made a monk of himself, living in celibate devotion to his beloved Ilsa for the rest of his life? Or maybe he’d died shortly after Ilsa got on that plane, killed by fascists or Nazis on his way to Brazzaville with Louis. Faye hoped he had died. Better that than live for decades still in love with a woman he could never have again.

Whoever first said it was better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all had neither loved nor ever lost.

But Faye had. She’d loved and she’d lost and as she lay in the bed of a man who didn’t love her any more than she loved him, she would have sold her soul to not have done either.

“Faye?” Hagen said in her ear. He’d been nice to her today, so she opened her eyes.

“Yes?”

“Your phone’s beeping.”

She reached for the phone on the bedside table and saw she had a text message.

Check your email asap

It was from Richard, her friend who owned the only decent camera store in Columbia, South Carolina. There was no good reason he would be emailing or texting her on a Friday night that she could think of and many bad reasons.

“Emergency text. I’ll be right back,” she told Hagen who immediately rolled onto his back and stared up at the ceiling, silently seething—as usual. Why did she even bother lying? He was always angry at her these days. She looked at him, looked at him longer than she meant to, longer than she had in a very long time. Wives of her husband’s coworkers called Hagen a “catch.” That he was handsome—brown hair, brown eyes, good body—was merely the smallest part of the equation. He was a good provider. That was what one of her neighbor ladies had called him, and here in the South, where men were still expected to be breadwinners, patriarchs and kings of the castle, that was the trump card. It didn’t matter that Hagen spent every free moment outside work golfing with his buddies, that he rarely spoke to her except to criticize how she’d spent her days and that the sole reason he was trying to have sex with her was so they could pretend they were happy together when they both knew better.

Faye shut the bathroom door and read her email.

Hey, Faye—I just had to cancel some work. Got too busy with weddings. If you’re interested, I’ll give them your name. The ladies of the Lowcountry Preservation Society need a photographer for their annual “Journey through Time” fund-raising calendar: $10,000 for 100 exclusives. Landscapes, beach scenes, historical houses, ladies in dresses, the usual old-timey tourist shit. Due date August 1. Yes or no?

Work.

A job offer.

She hadn’t expected that. She hadn’t taken on a professional photography assignment in almost four years. Last week she’d stopped by Richard’s camera shop to buy a replacement lens cap for her Nikon. It had fallen off during a walk two weeks ago and rolled into a gutter. She’d mentioned to Richard she missed going out on assignments. He’d told her to help him with his summer wedding load, and she’d simply smiled at him and said, “No, thanks. I don’t do weddings.”

But this job wasn’t a wedding.

Faye knew she’d been in the bathroom long enough she was risking a fight, and though she wasn’t scared of getting in a fight with Hagen, she was just too tired for it tonight. Out of guilt she made herself try to go. When she did, she discovered exactly why she’d been feeling so tired and miserable and aching all day.

To stall for time, Faye washed her hands. She washed them till they went pruny and then kept washing them. She washed them for so long she forgot why she was washing them. Once she’d read a phrase in a book—the valley of tears. She didn’t know where she’d read it, but she guessed the Bible. This was the moment she should go into that valley and find her tears. She wanted them. She needed them. In her heart she wandered through brambles and thorns and down a steep ravine and into the valley. At the bottom she found a river, where all her tears were supposed to be. The riverbed was dry. She had no more tears left.

She heard a soft knock on the bathroom door and started.

“Faye?”

“Yes?”

“It’s been ten minutes.” His voice was testy, impatient, his usual tone with her these days. All day every day.

Faye dried her hands and opened the door.

“Sorry,” she said.

He nodded and turned around. “I’m going back to bed. Hurry up, okay?”

Faye didn’t want to hurt Hagen; she truly didn’t. She didn’t want to hurt anyone, but there was no way to say it that wouldn’t hurt him.

So she hurt him.

“I’m bleeding.”

He stopped. His broad, powerful shoulders slumped and the air seemed to go out of his body like a balloon with a pinprick in it.

Slowly, he turned around.