Someone Is Watching Read Online Free Page B

always insisted this was unintentional, at least until Harry came along, one thing was indisputable: He constantly played the brothers against one another, the result being that, were it not for the lawsuit, I doubt any of them would be on speaking terms today.
    Amazingly, this was not the father that either Heath or I knew. Our childhood was idyllic, our father as loving and attentive as any child could possibly wish for. I credit my mother for this. Younger than my father by eighteen years, he often proclaimed that she was the first woman he’d ever really loved, the woman who taught him how to be a man. And I guess that because he loved her, he loved us, too. The father I remember was generous and tender, soft-hearted and fiercely protective. When my mother died three years ago of ovarian cancer at the tragically young age of fifty-five, he was beside himself with grief. Still, he never deserted us, never sought escape in the man he used to be, was never the man my half-siblings all remember.
    He was always there for me.
    And then, suddenly, he wasn’t.
    The man I’d considered invincible died of a massive heart attack at the age of seventy-six.
    That was four months ago.
    Since he died, I’ve broken up with my boyfriend, Travis, and embarked on what most people would consider an ill-advised affair with a married man. Not that one thing has anything to do with the other. My relationship with Travis had been deteriorating for some time. I was reeling from my father’s unexpected loss, experiencing a renewal of the daily anxiety attacks that had plagued me after my mother died, times when I couldn’t move my legs, when I couldn’t draw sufficient air into my lungs to breathe. I tried to hide these attacks from everyone, and I was largely successful, but there was one man who wasn’t so easily fooled. “Are you going to tell me what’s going on?” he’d ask. “What’s
really
going on?” And so I did, reluctantly at first, then compulsively, as if once that particular tap had been turned on, it was impossible to shutoff again. He quickly became my closest ally, my confidant, eventually, perhaps inevitably, my lover.
    I knew right from the start that he would never leave his wife. She was the mother of his children, and he couldn’t imagine being just a part-time dad, no matter how unhappy his marriage. He said that while he and his wife rarely argued, this was because they lived largely separate lives, and that although they were regularly seen together in public, they retreated to opposite ends of their house when they were alone. They hadn’t made love in years.
    Do I believe that? Am I really so gullible? I don’t know. I only know that when I’m with him and that when we’re together, I’m both where and who I want to be. It’s as simple—as complicated, as complex, as awful—as that.
    When I think now of the times we made love, the gentle way his fingers explored my body, the soft probing of his tongue, the expert way he brought me to orgasm, it seems impossible that an act so full of tenderness and love can, in other circumstances, be so overflowing with rage and hate, that what produces so much pleasure can inflict so much pain. I wonder if I will ever again experience the joy of a man’s touch, or if every time a man enters my body, I will feel a rapist ripping into my flesh, if each time a man’s lips move toward my breasts, I will convulse in horror and disgust. I wonder if I will ever be able to enjoy sex again, or if this is something else that has been forever taken from me.
    When they brought me home from the hospital, after all the tests and hours of police questions, my brother was so traumatized that he chain-smoked at least four joints before he was able to calm down—“We should call Travis,” he kept mumbling, and then he fell sound asleep. Even though Travis and I are no longer a couple, he is still Heath’s friend. They were friends before Travis and I hooked up. In fact, it