Free The Devil's Punchbowl by Greg Iles Page A

prospect of reliving the hell she thought long behind them is almost more than she can bear. She has gone from fury to terror and back a thousand times. The pills make her wonder about other women. A woman might push Tim back to using, if she was an addict, a woman from the boat, maybe—
     
An unfamiliar scraping sound brings Julia to full alertness, the yarn stretched taut between her fingers and the hook. That noise didn’t come from the baby’s room—she’s sure of that. It sounded like someone raising the window in the guest room at the back of the house.
     
She swallows hard, then goes to the cabinet above the stove and takes down the pistol Tim stole from his father’s safe back when he was using. He’d tried to give it back later, but his father told him to keep it. The gun is heavy and black, but Julia grips it firmly in her flexed fist and tiptoes to the back of the house.
     
Terror hits her, gluing her bare feet to the floor. She can hear shoes moving behind the door. They creak as the intruder shifts his weight. Could it be the police? No—they would crash through the door. It might be another junkie, coming to steal Tim’s stash. When the window slides back down, Julia tightens her finger on the trigger and almost fires through the door.
     
She’s on the verge of bolting for the baby’s crib when she realizes that the intruder must be Tim, because there’s no light on in the guest room, yet the person inside is moving with assurance. She slides back three steps and aims the pistol at the door. If it opens and anyone but Tim appears, she will fire. She hears a muttered curse, and then the door opens.
     
Tim jerks as though he’s been hit with a cattle prod when he sees the gun pointed at his face. Then suddenly he is apologizing, begging her to forgive him. She’s so angry that she wants to shoot him, but her relief is even stronger.
     
“Where were you?” she cries in a squelched scream. “It’s four in the morning!”
     
“Hey, hey,” he says soothingly, throwing some balled-up clothes onto the floor. “It’s going to be all right now.”
     
“Bullshit!” she hisses. “I almost shot you! You fucking liar! Liar liar LIAR!”
     
Tim’s forehead wrinkles with puzzlement. “What are you talking about? I’ve been with Penn, honey. You don’t want to know more than that.”
     
Julia wipes her eyes with a quivering hand and looks at him the way she used to when she had to manage every moment of his life to keep him from sliding back into the abyss. She means to ask about the drugs, but what she says is “Just with Penn?”
     
Something in the quick blinking of his eyes tells her that whatever follows is going to be a lie. As she turns away, the fine cracks that have accumulated in her trust over the past weeks give way, and the true fragility of her existence is revealed. She stifles a wail, then goes to the kitchen cupboard and takes out a bottle of Isomil to heat on the stove.
     
She now knows that what she told herself after leaving her first husband was a lie. If a man ever cheats on me again, I’ll leave him in a second. So easy to say, but with a baby in the nursery things get a lot more complicated.
     
“Julia?” Tim says awkwardly.
     
If he tries to approach her, she will move away to avoid smelling another woman on him. “There’s something for you on the table,” she says coldly.
     
“Huh?”
     
“The table!” She watches the gas flame glow at the edge of the pot.
     
“Oh, God,” Tim breathes. “Julia—”
     
“Mm-hm?”
     
“It’s not what you think.”
     
“It’s not? That’s not dope on the table? That’s not Vicodin and cocaine?”
     
“No. I mean…it is, yeah. You know it is.”
     
“Let me guess. It’s not yours, right? You’re just holding it for somebody.”
     
Hearing the floor creak, she holds up a hand to ward him off. He stops.
     
“Baby, I know what you think, but that stuff is part of what Penn and I are doing.”
     
Even Julia is surprised by the harshness of