Holding Lies Read Online Free PDF

world, a world of ferns and firs and dank little nameless mushrooms, and yet there she was against all this, glistening like an olive, refined and salty. He could still taste her, like he could still feel the bites she’d left, and even though she was all the way over there, she was right here with him, her moans in his ears, her heels on his ass. He shut his eyes so as not to lose her. “Shake it, sugaree.”
    â€œWe should bring Annie here, when she comes,” Caroline called from the edge of the waterfall. “Wouldn’t she love it?”
    And it was gone, all of it. Replaced by a surge of sobering regret: first the girlish image of Annie as he last saw her, then of a male corpse contorting in the merciless current. He sat up and gasped, “Come back over here I’m not done with you.”
    A light wind was blowing up the creek now, and she pulled her silver hair from her eyes and smiled at him. She was still smiling when she backflipped off the edge and out of sight.
    *
    H ANK AWOKE IN the bedroom, where they’d napped the midday away, to find the sheets bare. In the kitchen, Caroline was busy making the boat meal for her trip that evening. She was listening to some Spanish guitar, a CD she’d snagged at a show in Portland. Hank preferred buying a sack lunch from the diner, picking it up on the way to meet the clients, but Caroline said she didn’t mind the twenty minutes of extra preparation. It gave her a chance “to tighten her knots,” which was her way of saying screw her head on straight.
    â€œMind if I crash here a little longer?” Hank asked. The exhaustion hadn’t abated with the sleep. In fact, if anything, it had become as destabilizing as a sudden fever. He needed to stay here and sleep, watch the aquarium, be away from all that awaited him at home. This is what he told himself, and it was true enough, but there was something else too.Despite all that had happened last night, she’d pulled her arm away this morning at the café. As if anyone would have seen. And so what if they had?
    He’d had enough sneaking around; it’d been years of this now. Either she wanted him outright and in total, or she didn’t want him at all. “Just need another hour or two.”
    Caroline didn’t look up from her sandwiches. “I’d rather you go, if it’s all the same. Just simpler.”
    â€œSimpler?” He turned to Charlie in the fish tank, watched him tuck into the lee behind his favorite cobble. “How about I take Samson and Delilah for a walk? I could do these fucking dishes.” He hadn’t meant to swear. Now she’d know what was really going on. She could read him with a glance, like she could the holding lies in a tailout. And yet, try as he might, he could rarely decipher a damn thing about her. “I can have dinner ready when you get home.”
    â€œI’d rather you go, sweet. You know how things stand.”
    What did that mean? “No, I don’t think I do. One minute we’re loving and the next—”
    â€œHanky.” She looked up now, pulled a tendril of hair from her mouth with a pinky, and said, “You really want to do this now?” Then, after a long moment, “You’re pulling at your beard again. You only pull at your beard when you’re feeling trapped.”
    â€œI’m about as trapped as a … as a leaf blowing around your pasture up there.” He looked around for his pants and shirt. He’d been standing here this whole time in his skivvies.
    She was looking out the window. “I kinda like that image.”
    He stepped into his pants and tightened his belt. “You know what, Carrie? I guess I am trapped.”
    â€œYou have exactly what you want. You’re perfectly free to do whatever.”
    He hipped open the front door while pulling on his shirt. “Guess that’s what I mean.”

Chapter Four
    G OING HOME WAS the