I sat silent and enthralled.
“I spent twenty-five years of my life with Grace. She wasn’t perfect. I’m not perfect. Our issues were severe as we closed in on the end, and I not once thought we couldn’t clear them. When she left and refused to come home, a piece of me went with her that I’ll never get back.”
“Honey,” I whispered.
It was like I said nothing.
He kept going.
“Went to a seminar given by a psychiatrist. He said as animals, monogamy is not in our genes. He said in the beginning, when that concept was formed, you were lucky to live to the age of forty, so it wasn’t as hard as it is now. But mostly, he said, the idea was created so men would know the children they sired on a woman were theirs. Also, so men could use the idea of exclusivity against women for a variety of reasons, when for the most part they ignored the concept was supposed to adhere to them as well.”
Bohannan took a break from bestowing his wisdom on me to down some of his drink, and then he carried on.
“From the things this doc said, it’s easy to follow the path of centuries of men getting away with it, and society condoning that in deed if not word, but something more was expected from women, as in they were not allowed to get away with it. A ‘good woman’ was expected to be pure and chaste and faithful. Relics of all of this still exist in the societal ideologies today. This being the answer to your question.”
I decided not to say anything and simply let my eyes scream, See!
Bohannan read my eyes, his beard twitched, then he used the lips buried in it to go on and declare, “But bottom line, this doc said monogamy isn’t natural in our species. And to that, I call bullshit. I don’t give a fuck about history or philosophy or the male of a species needing to know about his offspring. If you love somebody, if you pledged your life to them, you don’t fuck around on them. The end.”
My eyes were no longer screaming, but my heart felt loud due to the fact it was beating incredibly hard.
“I don’t think you’re normal, Bohannan.”
He turned fully to me. “I’m a fan, you know.”
I was confused. “Sorry?”
“Watched your show. All ten years. You have great hair. A better ass. And a cute smile. Grace liked the show too. She watched for you. She liked your clothes and thought you were funny. I watched for you too.”
I didn’t know what to say, but if I did, my heart still pounding in my chest taking all my attention, I wouldn’t have been able to say it.
“She got your book because she was a fan. But she wasn’t a reader. I don’t think she read it. I did. It changed my life.”
Wow.
“Bohannan,” I breathed.
“I should have known you’d be this person. Only someone who understands the human condition as the prism it is could write that book. It made me go to my bureau chief. It made me ask to be transferred. It eventually made me a profiler. I wanted to understand the human condition like you do.”
A tear slid down my cheek.
His arm came out, he cupped that cheek in his palm, his thumb sliding the wet away.
“It made me move back here, home, to Misted Pines, after I left the Bureau. It led me on an exhaustive search to find the right corner of this country, until I learned that returning to my hometown would be where my daughter’s first date with her big crush is started with a malt at the local diner and a movie. In part, you gave me my career, and until Alice, you guided my way to giving sanctuary to my family.”
Another tear fell.
His thumb swept it away.
And his voice was low when he perpetrated his own sneak attack.
But he was far better at it.
“Right now, a team is going in to capture a man named Bob Welsh and to rescue his two hostages. I’m how I am right now because my daughter is on a date with a boy whose sister was murdered, and I’m waiting for a call from the FBI to tell me your situation is over.”
Now, I was panting.
He slid the pad of his thumb under my eye again and leaned slightly toward me.
“Now, Larue, I need you to eat your dinner and drink your wine and keep your shit. Celeste will come home messed up, because she likes this boy and she’s too good of a person, she takes on hurt and it doesn’t do her favors. So she’s gonna need us. And you being free is going to tweak her, because she’s terrified you’re gonna leave.”
“I’m not going anywhere.”
“I know.”
“They’re sure it’s the guy?”
“Yes.”
“Your profile,” I deduced.
“Partly.”
“Don’t be modest.”
“Shit like this is always a team. That’s why Dern is such a fuckup. Or one of the reasons.”
“Right.”
“Your husbands?”
I just stared at him.
He gave it to me.
“They were weak. They were stupid. And I can guarantee they’ve spent the years in between putting a lot of effort into ignoring that voice in their heads that’s telling them the truth. They made the biggest mistake in their lives, losing you.”
“What’s happening here?” I whispered.
“You’re feelin’ me out because you don’t wanna get hurt again. I’m feeling you out because I don’t wanna get hurt again, and I can’t have my kids dragged through shit like that.”
“You’re into me?”
His heavy brows knitted.
“You’re into me,” I mumbled.
“There’s also the sitch that I’m getting paid to look out for you, which is why my sons are taking turns on your couch, because if I had a turn, I wouldn’t be on your couch. Distractions like that lead to mistakes that I’d never be okay making. With you, absolutely not gonna happen.”
Oh my.
“This guy is getting caught tonight, Larue.”
He said that like a warning, his hand sliding away from my face.
I took it another way entirely.
That was the reason why I smiled.
Nineteen
Nervous
Later that night, we were on Bohannan’s pier for two reasons.
One, his daughter’s curfew was soon.
Two, he had a loveseat Adirondack chair on his deck.
Just around the hook of the trees, I could see the lights of my house reflected on the mist that had formed on the lake, precisely like I could see the lights of his when I was on my pier in the evenings.
Any further sign of humanity was much farther away.
“I know it’s fall, and cold, but it’s weird that those two rentals haven’t been booked the entire time I’ve been here,” I remarked.
“It isn’t, considering I own them, and I cancelled the bookings when you came to town.”
I was sitting beside him, not nestled into him as I would’ve liked to be after his spectacular speeches during dinner, but he had his arm around my shoulders and there was closeness.
I didn’t want to mess with that, so I twisted only my neck to look at him.
“What?”
“I own everything at this end of the lake. As the road goes, five miles from end to end. Except your house.”