Forgotten Vows. Modean Moon

asked. “The man who—the man downstairs—what does he look like?”

      “Ah, Jennie, Jennie,” the older woman said softly, sitting beside her on the chaise and placing the tray across Jennie’s lap. “I suppose he’s a fine-looking man, healthy, strong of will and body, but, child, he doesn’t look like he’s ever in his life smiled.”

      

      Sheriff Lucas Lambert’s office was in keeping with the affluence of the town: state-of-the-art computers and communications equipment shared spacious, carpeted quarters with high-tech filing and retrieval systems, welldesigned furniture and cubicle dividers and professionally uniformed employees.

      The office was distinctly out of keeping with the rugged, world-weary man who seated himself behind his oversize mahogany desk and glanced quickly through a file a deputy had handed him as he and Edward had entered the building.

      Lambert tossed the folder onto his desk, glanced at it, glanced at Edward, opened a desk drawer and brought out a much fatter folder and placed it beside the first one. He took the pen and small notebook from his jacket and aligned them with the folders. He picked up the pen, rolling it between his fingers as he studied Edward. Then, apparently reaching a decision, he dropped the pen to the desktop. “Your identity checks out.”

      Seated in a chair in front of the desk, Edward only nodded. He was unaccustomed to being doubted, surprised there had ever been any question of his truthfulness.

      “You didn’t report your wife missing.”

      “There didn’t seem much point in reporting anything,” Edward said tightly. “I had a—a farewell note from her telling me how much better her life would be without me in it.”

      “Didn’t you find it a little strange that your wife of— what?—eight hours or so just up and took off?”

      “Hell, yes, I found it strange,” Edward said with quiet fury. “As strange as the fact that our airline reservations for our trip to Hawaii had unexplainably been rescheduled for a later flight, as strange as the fact that my private office was burglarized that afternoon requiring me to go down there. As strange as the fact that when I returned to my home, my brand-new wife, one hundred thousand dollars’ worth of bonds and several other reasonably valuable items were missing. As strange as the fact that when I went to Jennie’s studio, trying to make sense of what had happened, I found it stripped of any sign of her, including all of her unsold work.

      “Yes, Lambert. I found it damned strange. But I had a note from her. A note, damn it man, that stripped me as bare as that studio. A note taunting me with the wonderful new life she was going to lead once she broke free from me.”

      Lambert leaned back in his chair, once again sliding his pen through his fingers, once again seeming to come to a decision. He stood and nudged the fatter of the two folders across the desk toward Edward. “Take a look at this while I change clothes. Then we’ll both go take a look at the place where your new bride spent two, maybe three days of that wonderful new life.”

      

      Edward was feeling sick, physically ill, when Lambert returned to the office wearing jeans and climbing boots and carrying a lightweight jacket. He dropped another pair of boots at Edward’s feet.

      “You’ll need these,” Lambert said. “I think they’ll fit you.”

      Edward closed the file, but he couldn’t close away the memory of the police photographs or the medical reports. He couldn’t close away the rage that he felt growing inside him—the need to hit—to hurt. He held his hand flat on the cover of the folder as if by doing so he could hold all its horrible contents away from him, away from Jennie. God, no wonder she didn’t remember. Thank God she didn’t remember.

      “What did this to her?”

      Lambert took the folder from him and put it back in the desk drawer before he answered. “For a while, I entertained the thought that maybe you did this to her.”

      

      They took the sheriff’s Land Rover. They’d driven for over an hour, most of it on narrow dirt roads, the last fifteen or twenty minutes uphill on a rutted, hole-pocked narrow trail. They’d long before left the green surrounding Avalon and had entered what Edward had always thought typical of eastern New Mexico—harsh, rocky land, barren except for scattered cactus, which now, but only for a few short days, blazed with color, outcroppings of rock, the badlands of hundreds of B-grade western movies, and mountains—harsh and unforgiving.

      Lambert eased his vehicle across a boulder-strewn dry gully, left the track and pulled to a stop at the edge of the precipice that overlooked the dry bed of some ancient ocean.

      “Watch your step,” Lambert told him and felt his way over the edge and onto a barely visible animal trail. With only one quick glance toward the valley floor, Edward followed, feeling rocks sliding beneath his sturdy boots.

      Finally, they reached an outcropping of rock that formed a narrow ledge and an overhang that created a sort of cave. The animal trail continued downward, but Lambert stopped.

      “There are two ways to get here,” Lambert told him. “Up from the valley floor, or down from the ridge.” He pointed to a shallow depression beneath the overhang. “Two high-school boys cutting class and out exploring for outlaw gold found Jennie there.

      “We don’t know when she lost her sight, but even sighted, there’s no way she got here by herself. She either fell or was pushed from about where we parked,”

      In the last few hours, Edward had been hit with almost more than he could stand. For his sanity, for Jennie’s sake, he had to emotionally separate Jennie from this anonymous broken woman who had been discarded on a New Mexico mountainside. He had to get his protective armor in place, had to stop acting like a terrified ten-year-old. Never again, he’d promised himself years ago, would he give in to the nameless, numbing horror he had once experienced. And he hadn’t. Until now. But not until Jennie had he let himself be vulnerable again.

      “You’re sure she didn’t come here for some reason?”

      “What reason?” Lambert asked. “And yes, I’m sure. She couldn’t have walked it. The trail down from the top is a cakewalk compared to the one up from the valley floor. And we found no vehicle.

      “You last saw her on the seventeenth of November,” Lambert asked abruptly. “What was she wearing?”

      What was she wearing? For a moment, the memory swirled through Edward’s mind.

       He pulled the sheet over Jennie’s bare shoulder and smoothed the dark hair away from her cheek, placing a kiss that was much more chaste than anything he felt at that moment on the tender skin he had just exposed.

       “God, I hate to leave you,” he told her, tracing his finger over her cheek, outlining lips that only a short while before had driven him nearly crazy with her untutored passion.

       “And I hate for you to leave, but you know Madeline wouldn’t have called unless it was important,” she said.

       “Are you all right?” he asked her. “Really all right? I didn’t hurt you?”

       She grinned at him then. “One of my deepest, darkest secrets is this hidden desire I’ve had to be ravished by a loving madman. Edward?” She sat up in the bed, letting the sheet fall away from her as she captured his face in her small hands.

       “Edward, I’m teasing you. Of course you didn’t hurt me. You’d never do that.”

      “She was—she was dressing for dinner,” he said, forcing himself back to the present. “We were going to go out to eat when I returned… before we caught our flight.” Edward threw off his memories. “Could she have parked somewhere else and walked in?”

      Lambert shook his head. “She was wearing a white silk dress, silk lingerie. No jewelry. No hose. No shoes. The boys found her on