“He still does.”
Dora didn’t acknowledge that. “You’re the reason he’s been sneaking out of the house at night. He came to you.”
“Yes.”
“Do you realize the danger you placed him in?”
“Yes,” Marilee replied, her voice soft with contrition. Staring into the flames, she added, “The risks were incredibly high for both of us.”
“Yet you lured him into your bed.”
Marilee raised her head and looked across at Dora. “Do I look like a femme fatale capable of luring any man, Mrs. Hamer?” She smiled with self-deprecation. “Hardly. Scott responded to me in the same way I responded to him. We recognized a matching need.”
“For sex.”
“Yes. There was passion.” Ignoring the other woman’s wince, she continued. “But we were drawn together by more than that. Both of us lacked something essential that the other was willing—no, glad—to provide.”
“Oh, I’m sure you gladly provided an outlet for my eighteen-year-old son’s lust.”
“I did,” she admitted without a qualm. She wondered how much she should say. Should she tell her that she had become Scott’s sounding board last night when he finally opened up to her and railed against the steroids Wes had forced on him?
That was the least shocking thing he’d told her, but wouldn’t it be cruel to tell Dora about Wes’s treachery concerning Millicent? Perhaps she already knew. But if not, she was in no state of mind to hear the story now.
Besides, Marilee wasn’t a hypocrite. Who was she, having been caught in bed with her student, to cast stones at Wes or anyone? She stuck to the facts but veiled them. “I also gave Scott relief from the pressures imposed on him by your husband. I listened to his opinions, his thoughts and dreams, where—”
“Don’t whitewash it, Marilee. Priests who abuse young boys also hear their confessions and give absolution. You’re nothing but a sexually repressed old maid who finally found a willing partner.”
“You’re right, of course,” she admitted sadly. “On every point. My only saving grace is that Scott is beyond the age of consent. So far as the law is concerned, I didn’t have sexual congress with a child. But from an ethical standpoint, it was . . .” She wouldn’t say it was wrong. She would never think of it as wrong. She finished by saying “Unacceptable.”
They stared into the fire for several minutes. Then Dora leaned forward and placed her elbows on her knees. She rested her face in her hands and remained that way for a long time, time enough for the logs to burn down to charred sticks that needed stoking.
Then she lowered her hands and turned her head toward Marilee. “You love my son, don’t you?”
“With all my heart,” she replied quietly. “But don’t be distressed, Dora. You don’t have to worry about me ruining Scott’s life. Before it started, while he was still just a lovely daydream, I knew that if anything were to develop between us, it would be temporary. I recognized that it couldn’t, and wouldn’t, and shouldn’t last. I planned all along to quietly exit his life one day so that he would be spared any embarrassment or guilt over us.”
She turned her head and looked wistfully into the fire. “I knew this day would come. I knew it would break my heart in two, and possibly break Scott’s as well, although I hoped to avoid that.
“In anticipation of this day, I treasured every moment we were together. I knew that if our affair was discovered, I would be reviled for the rest of my life. I didn’t care. For once in my life I disobeyed the rules. I lived in the moment and tried not to let the dread of the inevitable outcome spoil the time I had with him. I gave him everything I had within me to give.” She shifted her gaze back to Dora. “And I would do it again, without a grain of regret.”
The two women looked at each other with complete understanding. It was hard to say who moved first because it seemed that they simultaneously reached across the space between the two chairs and clasped hands. They clung tightly to each other, because neither had anything else to which she could cling.
CHAPTER
30
WINDOW PEEPING ON MY FANTASIES.”
He closed his lips around her nipple and sucked it into his mouth, rubbing his tongue against it until she thought she would die of the pleasure. As he moved to the other breast, he whispered, “Naked is so much better than through clothes.”
“But even fully dressed, you managed to find everything.”
“I have a built-in heat-seeking device.”
“You certainly do.” Smiling seductively, she slid her hand down his belly, closed her hand around him, and began to massage. “I saw you washing,” she confessed in a whisper.
He looked at her inquisitively.
“In the window glass. Your reflection. It was only an accidental glimpse, but . . .”