* * *
Lilly looked tired, and that didn’t sit well with me. Her natural rosy glow was missing, and her beautiful eyes lacked their normal sparkle. I stood to greet her as she came in and walked up to the table. I held out my arms, and she came for a brief hug. I tried to hold her just a second longer, but she stiffened and pulled away. Was she avoiding giving any ground, or did she find me repulsive? I couldn’t stand the mental debate, so I handed her one of the restaurant’s giant green menus. “Pick a salad, any salad,” I said in a mock con man’s voice. “If they don’t have it, they’ll go out back and pick it.” I was referring to the restaurant’s promotion of using locally sourced fresh ingredients grown by boys with community-service hours on their hands on abandoned west-side lots. I thought reinvesting in your own disintegrating neighborhoods an excellent way to handle their idle time.
She smiled at my attempt at a joke and ordered. I held up two fingers to the waiter and he left us alone.
“How have you been?” I asked.
“I’m OK.”
My brain was screaming that was a lie, and yet I couldn’t voice it. “You look a little tired,” I hazarded, and her hand immediately went to her cheek.
“Do I?” she asked, a worried expression on her face.
“I’ve missed you,” I countered.
“Don’t, Bolt. This is hard enough.”
Our salads appeared, and it seemed to take an excruciatingly long time to add dressing and refuse the offered French bread with butter. The waiter finally left again.
“Talk to me, Lilly. Tell me how you’re feeling. I promise, no arguments, no fights. I just want to know what’s going on in your head.”
She sighed heavily, her pale, delicate hand lifting an overly large glass of iced tea to her lips. I wanted to kiss those lips and not stop there.
“Bolt, I just can’t do it anymore.”
She dropped her fork, and I signaled the waiter for a fresh one, noting that her hand was shaking. He brought it, wrapped in a fresh napkin, and when she turned back to me, I smiled and nodded encouragingly.
“What can’t you do?” I prompted her.
“You know! I didn’t make a secret of anything, unlike you. That’s all you had were secrets. Double-talk, huge gaps in our conversation, the inability to make solid plans—what are you hiding, Bolt?”
I read the emotions on her face and couldn’t say a word.
“See? That’s what I mean. You’re hiding something big, and for some reason you don’t trust me enough to tell me what it is.”
“I wish I could.”
She put down her fork. “Did you murder someone? Is the mob after you? Are you in the witness protection program? What is it?”
I ran my hand through my hair in frustration. I knew other men told their wives they worked with the government, but that’s where it stopped. Lilly would have to be my wife, and she’d need to undergo a security background check before I could even admit who I worked for. Natalie was a problem. She ran with a bad crowd and had a history of being out of control. If Lilly knew, it would only be a matter of time until Natalie knew, or at least thought she did. Sisters were close and read each other’s minds. I couldn’t chance it. Anyway, I had decided to back out entirely and was headed to Washington in a few days to do the paperwork and debriefing. They weren’t happy, but then, neither was I.
She frowned and picked up the napkins to dab at her lips. She’d hardly eaten anything. “I can’t be in a relationship with a man I can’t trust, Bolt. The thing is, I really don’t, in my heart of hearts, believe that you’re cheating on me or doing something illegal. But you won’t account for your whereabouts or the gaps in time when you’re gone and unreachable. You have to understand how disconcerting that is to me.”
I nodded. “Yes, I can.”
“And you won’t do anything to clear all that up?”
“I can’t, not yet, but soon.”
“What does that mean?” She looked at me quizzically, and I hated that I couldn’t explain. This wasn’t fair to her, and I’d had my fill. When they debriefed me, they’d give me some idea of what I could tell her. They’d have to.
She laid down her napkin. “I’m not sure why you wanted to meet, Bolt,” she said as she pushed her chair back and stood up. “It hasn’t done anything but underline what we both knew already. I can’t trust what I don’t understand, and you’re not willing to open up. For my own sanity, I need to be away from you. Make no mistake, I’m in love with you. I just can’t live with you,” she said.
I stood up. “Lilly, wait! I will fix this, I swear I will. But in the meantime, will you at least have dinner with me, or come out to the house once in a while?”
She looked hopeful, but like a cloud passing over the sun, the look faded. “I can’t come to the house, Bolt. That makes you accountable. Dinner once in a while, OK, I’ll agree to that. But you keep your daily business to yourself, and I’m going to do the same. Don’t look for me, Bolt, or I’ll disappear to somewhere you’ll never find me.”
She leaned forward and gave me a ghost kiss on the cheek, and then she was gone. I pushed away what was left of my salad and noticed she’d barely put a dent in her own. I knew all this was making her ill, and it was my fault. The sooner I got back from Washington, the better.