Free Twisted Triangle by Caitlin Rother Page A

doing this, but sometimes people do stupid things. I admit I should have turned and run down the street. Why? Because I was married, if for no other reason. I should not have walked into that, but I did because, frankly, it felt good, and it was the first time I had the sense of being appreciated for what I brought to the table.”
Over the next two hours, Patsy unveiled some of her more personal struggles. She seemed tired and fragile.
Patsy talked about growing up with her mother, who had suffered from mental illness. She explained how her brother had kept a gun in their bedroom in case their mother came in again, act-ing crazy. How she’d been molested as a child by a security guard. How her dog went missing when she was in elementary school, and when she came home one afternoon, her mother was burning something in the fi that looked and smelled like meat.
Patsy also told Margo she’d recently come out of a relationship that broke her heart, but she didn’t elaborate. Margo took that to mean that Patsy was ready to feel something for someone again. Margo’s own heart had felt frozen for a long time, but she was ready too.
After they hugged goodbye, Margo left, confused. She really wasn’t sure what she was doing or what it all meant.
But she was quite sure of one thing: the desire for more was entirely mutual.
     
On April 15, Patsy extended a welcome invitation to Margo over the phone.
“Would you like to spend some time together?” she asked. “I’ll come and pick you up and bring you back.”
Clearly, Patsy meant intimate time.
“Yes, I would,” Margo said, scared but forging ahead nonetheless.
Margo was expected to be at Quantico all day, but nobody kept close tabs on her. So they made arrangements for Patsy to come by two mornings later, then bring Margo back around three in the afternoon so that she could check her messages and be available to students.
Over the next two days, Margo let herself remember the satisfaction and completeness of being with a woman. It was a feeling she’d thought she’d left behind more than fifteen years earlier.
To have that memory reawakened after all that time, coupled with the physical attraction and passion she felt for Patsy, was a heady experience. She was not thinking rationally at this point. She was enjoying being in the moment too much for that.
She’d felt passion and lust for Gene in the beginning, too. She’d even grown to love him, but it was different. Being with a woman was more of an emotional experience for her, an inter-mingling of spirit and soul, something she’d never felt with Gene or any other man. She didn’t think Gene had ever fully let go of control over his emotions, and neither had she, so they had sex. When she’d been with Donna, they both had let go. To her, that was making love, and she expected it to be the same with Patsy.
When the morning of their rendezvous arrived, Margo was ready.
“I’ve got some things to do,” she told John Hess as she left the offi around ten that morning. He had no idea what was going on and frankly wouldn’t have cared anyway.
Patsy was waiting for her at the parking circle, dressed in a white pantsuit. She handed Margo a toasted bagel, doused with olive oil and wrapped in foil, for the hourlong drive to her house.
“I’m glad you could get the day away,” she said. “Me, too,” Margo said.
“Are you sure you want to do this?” “Yes,” Margo said defi . “I’m sure.”
From that point on, Margo felt no guilt or confusion, only nervous excitement about consummating her feelings for Patsy.
During the drive, they talked about Patsy’s writing, how she drew her ideas from conversations with police, news events, and her own imagination. She said she’d sit down to write, blocking out the world, not knowing the end of her own plots until she got there, which made for rapid, unexpected endings.
Despite the difference in their incomes, Margo didn’t feel any socioeconomic divide or awkwardness