The Woman Next Door by T. M. Wright Page B

urgent."
    " Andrea , Mr. Courtney."
    "And call me Brett."
    "All right . . . Brett." Another pause. "I could meet you. I'd like that."
    "Meet me? Where? I don't understand."
    "You have a cottage on Canandaigua Lake." It was a statement.
    "Yes, but how did you—?"
    "I'd like to meet you there, Brett. In an hour, if possible. Is that possible?"
    "But the cottage has been closed up for nearly five years."
    "Are you saying you can't meet me there, Brett?" Again that taunting, inviting tone.
    "I don't know, I . . . ." But he did know. He had known ever since their first meeting. This woman did not merely appeal to him; she possessed him. From her first word to him, her first look, she had possessed him. He was bewildered by it. His intellect told him that such things did not—could not—happen that way. Sixteen years of fidelity to Marilyn had to mean something, otherwise those years were a waste, a blank; it was nearly like throwing life away, and that was an immoral, perverse thing (if there were gods watching over him, they would punish him). And yet he knew what he would say to Andrea Ferraro, what would happen in the next few hours.
    He prayed the roads would be clear, that the forty-mile trip to the cottage would take no more than an hour. "I can meet you there, Andrea."
    "In an hour, then," she said, and hung up.
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    A n amorphous blob of darkness had come up to the north—a storm in the making. Brett wondered if it would bypass the lake. Storms usually did, though when they hit, they hit very hard. He remembered the last time he had been at the cottage in July '74. A bad time—for him, for Marilyn, even for Greg, barely more than a toddler. The vicious summer storm had trapped them in the cottage for two days. Brett thought now that the enforced togetherness in such a confined space was what had started their . . . emotional separation. He laughed aloud at the phrase. Who was he kidding? He and Marilyn had become strangers to each other. Then he thought that people do not become strangers. They may become friends, but they do not become strangers. You don't stop knowing a person; you either get to know him better, or you admit that you've never really known him at all.
    He stopped suddenly. He had passed the cottage. He craned his head around, put the car in reverse, and backed it up in quick, short bursts. He turned into the gravel driveway, stopped again, put the car in neutral.
    Why am I here? What am I doing here?
    He concentrated his gaze on the cabin's weathered front door. He thought—unreasonably, he knew—that Andrea was inside. Waiting for him. And then be thought what a fool he had been. It was all some kind of joke, a ruse to get him out of the office, Lord knew why.
    "Hello, Brett."
    He turned his head slowly, disbelievingly, to the left. He saw her face.
    "Why don't you turn the car off, Brett?"
    It was as if he were seeing it for the first time, as if he had been wandering through some elite gallery of beautiful faces, had turned a corner and come across her face, and the gallery had fallen to ashes around him. Where did the beauty of that face begin? The mouth? The eyes?
    "Turn the car off, Brett." He thought her voice was suddenly louder. Such a delicious, musical voice it was, the kind that could put a wailing child to sleep with one word, but touched subtly, powerfully, with sensuality—a voice that said so much about her and yet—of course, of course—only as much as she wanted known.
    "Brett, please turn the car off!" She was shouting now; he was sure of it.
    He noticed then, from the roar of the engine, that he had the accelerator halfway to the floor. He took his foot from it, turned the ignition off.
    Andrea Ferraro stepped back, away from the door.
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    "N o, Mrs. Courtney, your husband is out of the office at the moment."
    "What do you mean, 'out of the office'?"
    "He left about an hour ago. I'm afraid he didn't say where he was going."
    For Christ's