One More Time

Chapter 1 The funeral was the worst day for me. Not that anyone loves funerals, but I had to stand there accepting everyone’s condolences for Donald’s death as though my life for the last six years hadn’t been one big lie. Well, maybe six years was an exaggeration. “I’m so sorry for your loss, Dane,” a neighbor, Mrs. Worth or Mirth, something like that, said as she stopped before me at the cemetery. She held my hands in a viselike grip, her skin ice-cold. I shivered. “Donald was such a sweet man. And he adored you so.” He did, once. I didn’t know when he had stopped; he hadn’t told me, though I guessed maybe he’d planned on it. “Thank you,” I said, numb to the words but not to the hollow feeling in my heart. She continued past me and another person took her place, saying similar words meant to comfort me for the loss of my partner. I wanted to scream, to rage, that Donald had not loved me, not anymore, and was planning on leaving me before he inconveniently had a heart attack, but his service wasn’t the time or place. And there never would be a good time for the people here at the cemetery. They didn’t need to know. The sky was dark and ominous with clouds, though the rain hadn’t managed to appear…yet. The news reports were all about storm watch. Rain was so dramatic in Southern California. A colleague of Donald’s came to stand before me. They’d taught at the same university for years before Donald’s mother’s death a couple of years ago. Donald’s mother had been very wealthy, and since he had inherited everything, Donald had taken early retirement. “You know, Dane,” Professor Arndt said, taking my hands as everyone had before, “it’s all right to cry. You don’t have to be so strong and controlled.” I supposed that was some sort of comment on my dry eyes. I hadn’t cried during the service, hadn’t cried as I tossed a handful of dirt on Donald’s coffin. But if this guy thought my heart hadn’t been shredded, he was wrong. “I will. Thank you for coming,” I said, like a robot. “If there’s anything you need…” I didn’t miss the innuendo. The offer came with a barely hidden leer. My stomach lurched. “There’s nothing. Thank you, Professor.” I’d met Donald at the university as a student myself, barely twenty when I entered his classroom. Expecting to take a class on criminal justice, I had instead found myself a lover and a mentor. Donald was by the book, though, and insisted I transfer out of his class before he took me to bed the first time. We’d moved fast then. Too fast, really, and just a month into our relationship, I was moving in with him. But I’d never left in the last six years. I wondered as Professor Arndt continued down the line if he and Donald had ever been lovers. As people do after funerals, everyone made their way to our house—Donald’s house—to talk about Donald and to bring food and see if I needed anything in that big lonely house. I could barely function as people tried to engage me in conversation, some pushing glasses of brandy in my hand as though that would bring Donald back to life or make him love me again. I missed my best friend, Marty Castle, who’d left only a couple of days before Donald’s death for a whirlwind European vacation. I didn’t figure his trip needed to be ruined by me contacting him, but just then I really felt his absence. Friends offered to stay with me as everyone finally, mercifully left, but I turned them down, assuring them I would be fine. Alone. I shut the door on the last well-meaning person and double-locked it. For a few moments, I leaned against the closed door, the silent, empty house mocking me. This had been the house Donald grew up in, inherited upon his mother’s death. When I’d first moved in with Donald, he’d had a small bungalow in Burbank. This house, this mansion really, was in Hollywood Hills. I moved away from the front hall and made my way to the kitchen. Earlier it had been a mess with glasses and paper plates everywhere from those who had visited, but some of the neighbors had cleaned it for me before they left. Tears stung my eyes, and I willed them away. I couldn’t afford to break down. I might never recover. After I made myself a cup of tea, I walked down the long hallway to the room at the end on the right. Donald’s office. I twisted the knob and entered the dark room. Flicking on the light, I stared at the large empty leather chair behind his mahogany desk. How often had I come in here to ask him a question or to tell him something? A million times. Or so it seemed. And he’d always looked up from whatever he was doing with his glasses perched on the end of his long, thin nose. “What is it, Dane?” I could almost hear him. Mechanically, I walked around the desk and sat in the oversize chair. It smelled like him. Masculine, fresh, and safe. Funny how safe had a smell, but if it did, it was Donald. I used to love this office, but now it reminded me of what I’d lost. Even before his heart attack. Just two days before Donald’s death, I had been in here cleaning. My lover had kept lists for everything. He was very organized. He always left them sitting in the middle of the desk, face up or face down; it never mattered as long as they were within his reach. I’d read them because they amused me. Talk to George. E-mail Kathy. Need paper towels and TP. Check source for Dane. Stuff like that. I wrote crime novels, had even gotten a couple published, and was working on another for my agent. Donald liked to help me with the research. That day I found some old lists, but also a new one he’d recently added to the stack. I suppose it was an invasion of privacy of sorts, but I hadn’t thought we had any secrets. He might have known I read his lists—he’d never made much of an effort to hide them. Talk with lawyer. Drinks with George? Contact University Review Board. Talk to Dane about Chris and Bobby, relationship. I had stared at the list, wondering what in God’s name the items on the list meant. As far I knew, Donald didn’t know anyone named Chris or Bobby. And the only thing I could think of that Donald would talk to his lawyer about was finances. Of course the most troubling thing on the list was Talk to Dane about Chris and Bobby, relationship. I had tried to think what that could mean other than the obvious explanation, and I couldn’t come up with a single plausible reason he’d write that other than that Donald had been cheating on me. What did he want to talk to me about regarding our relationship, and what did it have to do with Chris and Bobby? But then I started to wonder if someone, even someone as organized as Donald, would really write breaking up with their boyfriend on their to-do list. Maybe it was something else he wanted to tell me about. Was it his relationship with me he wanted to talk about or his relationship with them? But who were these people? Were they the hot young things Donald planned to replace me with? I was twenty-six, hardly old, but then when Donald and I met, I’d only been twenty, so maybe six years was all the difference in the world to him. When Donald returned home from wherever he’d been that day, and of course I wondered if he’d been with these mysterious men, I waited for him to tell me. My stomach had been knotted with dread. Donald pecked me on the lips, then pulled back and frowned. “What’s wrong? You’re pale.” “Um.” I felt foolish, and he looked at me as though I’d lost my mind. “H-how did your day go?” “Good.” He continued to frown. “Maybe you should sit down.” I nodded, swallowing. Here it would come, at last, I thought. “Okay. Where do you want me to sit?” Donald shrugged. “I guess in a dining room chair. I don’t think it really matters, Dane.” So I sat in the high-backed wooden chair closest to the kitchen, looking expectantly at him. “What?” he asked. “Don’t you want to tell me something?” I ventured. “Tell you something?” Like, it’s over, Dane. I’ve replaced you. “I thought that’s why you wanted me to sit down.” He laughed. “No, Dane. I wanted you to sit because you look like you might faint. Do you want tea or something? Are you coming down with something?” “No, I—No.” Why wouldn’t he just spit out? This waiting was killing me. “All right, then I’m going into my office. Let me know if you need anything.” Donald kissed the top of my head and went down the hall to his office. But he never said a word that day or the next. Doubt, horrible doubts, had filled my head for two solid days. I’d thought about bringing it up myself, but every time I went to say something to him about it, the words froze in my throat. That night when we went to bed, Donald had made love to me like there was nothing wrong between us, and I was more confused than ever. Even the next day, though we didn’t have s*x, he didn’t tell me it was over. Didn’t mention Chris, Bobby, or his lawyer. Nothing. The next day while having lunch with his friend George, whom he’d known all his life, Donald suddenly grabbed his chest, collapsed, and died before the paramedics arrived. George had told me about Donald’s death himself. Tears blurred my vision as I stared at the hated list. Would I ever know what any of it meant? Maybe. Talking to his lawyer could have meant changing his will, in which case I might be out of the house soon. The lawyer would come tell me—if Donald had changed his will. I didn’t know. Maybe I should ask George, Donald’s best friend. If anyone knew what had been going on with Donald, it would be George. How did one go about asking someone why their partner no longer loved them? Not that Donald had ever been particularly affectionate. He had no pet names for me. It was always Dane and nothing else. He rarely spoke of his feelings directly. He just indulged me in anything I wanted or thought I wanted, and when we made love, his body convinced me he loved me. Right after Donald’s mother died, he had come out and said, “I love you, Dane.” I’d been so startled I had stared at him until he actually laughed. I managed to form words of apology and love of my own, but he brushed it off and said he supposed I knew how he felt even without the words. I did, I had thought. Outside, rain splattered the office windows. The storm had arrived at last, and with it a chill in the room. Too many memories in this place. Like the time I had come in to distract him from whatever he’d been doing and he’d f****d me on his desk, brushing the papers off onto the floor in a frenzy to get us both naked. I’d yelled loud enough for it to echo through the whole house as he’d pounded into me. God, I had loved that night. I stood up and walked back around the desk, my fingers grazing the rich wood, memories flooding me with such pain I could barely breathe. Even if Donald had left the house to me, I might sell it. I couldn’t imagine living here without him. And so for the third night since his death—at the age of forty-eight, for f**k’s sake—I went upstairs to our bedroom, collapsed on our king-size bed, and sobbed myself to sleep.