“I suggest you let me in. It wouldn’t do for your nosy neighbors to see you refusing to examine a pediatric patient, no matter how closeted you are.”
He glanced down at the bundle in her arms. “The baby’s sick?”
“He’s as healthy as a horse, but they don’t know that.” She shoved past Gabe and entered the house.
He took a furtive look up and down the street. Norma’s sister’s automobile was the only one in sight, but Patsy wasn’t in it. He shut the door. “You drove yourself?”
“I wanted us to be alone.” Without invitation, Norma went into the parlor. “This room is like a dungeon. Why don’t you raise the shades and open the drapes?”
“Never mind the drapes, Norma. I told you not to come here.”
“You gave me no choice. You haven’t kept your promise to come see Arthur and me.”
“I couldn’t get away.”
“What’s keeping you occupied? Not your practice. The sign out front says you’re still closed.”
“People are watching me.”
“People?” she said, sputtering a laugh. “What people?”
“All people,” he shouted. “My every move incites speculation on what really happened to Mila.”
“You’re imagining things.”
He chewed the inside of his cheek. “Maybe. To an extent. But we have to be discreet, Norma. Why can’t you understand that?”
“I do understand it. I just hate being apart.” She came toward him, her gait that of a stalking predator. He was easy prey. He swelled inside his trousers just as he had the first time he saw her.
Patsy had been suffering a wracking cough, and Norma had brought her to him for treatment. While he’d been pressing his stethoscope against her sister’s chest and listening to her wheezing lungs, Norma had been toying with the strand of beads lying against her own chest and drawing his attention to her voluptuous, well-defined breasts.
When they left, Patsy had gone ahead of her. Hanging back, Norma had glanced toward the kitchen where Mila could be heard humming. Looking up at him provocatively, Norma whispered, “I hope the medicine doesn’t work, and we’ll have to come back soon. Or maybe,” she’d purred, “you should spare my ailing sister the trip into town and make a house call.”
The following day, he’d done that. He’d spent five minutes examining Patsy, then had spent an hour in Norma’s cluttered bedroom examining every inch of her dusky nudity. She was without shame or modesty. She was exotic and carnal and sexually industrious, so unlike Mila and her conventional wholesomeness that he became besotted.
Or bewitched.
Because even now, when he was irritated with her, he was incapable of breaking the spell she had cast over him that first day. Sandwiching the baby between them, she leaned in and breathed against his lips. “I’m tired of doing without you, Gabe. I’m burning. I want us to be together all the time.”
He placed his hands on her shoulders, squeezing. “We will be. Be patient. Please. Just a little longer.”
“How much longer?”
“Until our being seen together won’t arouse suspicion. We’ve come this far. We can’t get careless now.”
Beneath his hands, her shoulders relaxed. “Of course. You’re right. I’m being selfish.” She backed away, then went over to the divan, sat down, and opened the light flannel blanket wrapped around the infant. “Come say hello.”
Gabe sat down beside her and looked at his son, whose dark eyes were open and alert. Gabe stroked his cheek. “He is a fine-looking boy.”
“More than fine. He’s perfect. I adore him.”
“He does appear to be the picture of health.”
“He eats well.” Her eyes linked with Gabe’s, she unbuttoned her dress, pushed down her chemise, and put Arthur to her breast. When the baby latched onto her nipple, the lust that surged through Gabe was rampant and consuming. During the past year, and with only token resistence from him, his sexual appetite for her had taken control of his reason. It had procured his soul.
He couldn’t pinpoint the precise moment he had decided that he must kill his wife, but it had been around the time that Norma told him she was pregnant. His spontaneous reaction was to suggest an abortion. “I could send Mila to her kinfolks for a visit and perform the procedure in the office while she’s away.”
He’d done D and Cs following miscarriages, but had never aborted a living fetus. He wasn’t certain that when the time came, he could go through with it. But his ambiguous reaction to the prospect was mild compared to Norma’s tumultuous one.