Passing Through Midnight (10 page)

"Muscular dystrophy?"

"No. But it's like that. Myasthenia gravis they called it."

There was a sinking feeling in her chest. It was a chronic
progressive muscular paralysis, as painful to watch as it was to
experience.

"What happened?" she asked.

"We came home," he said, the defeat in his voice as fresh
as it had been fifteen years earlier. "I was drowning in medical bills
and I couldn't take care of her and Fletch, and work and go to school
at the same time. I tried for a few months but… We came
home."

"How'd she take it?"

He sighed, hesitating. "You'd have to have known her to
understand. Beth was perfect, a perfectionist. At least, I thought so.
She worked at keeping everything just right—only it never
looked like work. It was simply the way she did things. And it wasn't a
bad thing. She didn't expect anyone else to do things her way, but I
used to feel as if I had to stay on my toes just to keep up with her."

"She was sweet and kind and giving, and if she wanted
something that didn't come naturally to her, like her looks and her
brains, she worked a little harder at whatever she wanted and got it. A
paint job for her old car, Homecoming Queen, a partial scholarship to
KSU, solos in the church choir. It was always like that. If she didn't
already have it, she worked for it and everything was perfect. Her. Our
little apartment. Our life. Fletcher."

"Then she got sick, and everything sort of fell apart. At
first she thought if she worked at it, tried harder to walk and pick up
Fletcher, her strength would come back. But her perfect body failed
her. Her dreams failed her. I brought her home—I'd failed
her. She couldn't handle all the disappointment."

"It must have been horrible for both of you," she said,
thinking her voice was too loud in the darkness.

"For her mostly," he said. "I survived. My life went on.
She ended her life years before her heart stopped beating."

"What? How?"

"She gave up. Without a fight." A short silence. "She was
bitter and abusive at first. That wasn't so bad. I understood that. I
could deal with it. Hell, I was bitter myself. But then she decided
that wasn't a very becoming way to die—it wasn't the perfect
way to die. So she shut me out. Wouldn't talk to me. Wouldn't look at
me. Moved back over here into her old room. Then she shut her parents
out and Fletcher and the rest of the world. She just curled up and
faded away."

"Are you still angry with her?"

"No," he said, not surprised that she knew he had been
angry for a long, long time. "It wasn't her fault. It wasn't anybody's
fault. She dealt with it in the best way she knew how… I
guess I did too. I'm sure the place she created in her mind was
perfect, exactly the way she wanted it to be. I like to think she was
happier there than facing her illness with the rest of us."

"What about Fletcher?"

"He was very young and there have always been plenty of
other people around to care for him, but later, when he was Baxter's
age, he… well, he was a lot like Baxter is now. They begin
to notice that something in their life was missing. Every woman that
walks by they see as good mother material."

"So you married a mother for Fletcher?"

"Partly," he said, moving smoothly on to his second wife,
with much less emotion in his voice. "But as I said, you can't live for
your children. Beth adored Fletcher, but he couldn't give her the will
to fight, to hang on. You can take a kid's needs into consideration,
but you can't base your decisions on them. You have to live your own
life, be your own reason to get up every morning."

Be your own reason to get up every morning? When she
thought about it, she hadn't been her own reason for years, not since
medical school. She'd never wanted to be anything but a doctor. Even
mothering came second. And if she were honest, wife was a close third
place during all those years of training and establishing herself.

Things changed for a short while when becoming pregnant
nudged medicine aside. Technically, she supposed, that had been for her
too. She'd wanted a baby; to feel it growing inside her; to give it
life; to nurture and protect it and watch it grow. But then suddenly,
that was impossible. And Philip was gone. All she had was her
profession as a reason to get up every morning.

For too long she hadn't felt like a woman doctor, she
realized then, just a doctor tending the ill and infirm.
They
had been her reason to get up every morning.
They
had become her reason to live.

A caustic mixture of betrayal and anger filled her chest,
pressing hard against her heart, crowding her lung space.
They
had hurt her; tried to kill her; left her for dead. True enough, she'd
been deluding herself with her stoic self-sacrificing for the good of
mankind to avoid dealing with her existence outside the hospital, but
at the same time she'd inadvertently given them her life, and they'd
stomped on it.

Now here she was, divorced and childless with a career
that made her want to throw up. No wonder she was depressed! But it
wasn't her life. It wasn't the life she'd wanted, the one she'd set out
to have. When
was
the last time she'd gotten out
of bed in the morning and been happy and satisfied to be herself? Done
something totally selfish for herself? Taken time to be good to herself?

She had a wild impulse to do something crazy.

Mood swings and impulsive behavior are clinical
manifestations of deep psychological… who cares
?
she thought.

She leaned to the left and kissed Gil on the cheek. She
didn't need to see his face to know it startled him.

"Thank you," she said, her face still close to his. "For
dinner. For listening. For trying to understand. You're a nice man, Gil
Howlett."

With that said, she moved quickly to get out of the car.
The driver's side door closed seconds after hers. He was somewhere in
the dark garage with her, she could feel his presence, but she couldn't
see him. Then he was behind her.

"Careful you don't trip over anything. There's so much
stuff in this garage, I'm surprised you could get your car in here," he
said, following her out with his hands on her upper arms. Little
prickly tickles shot down her arms into her fingertips.

"It's not a very big car," she said stupidly, inching her
way along and trying not to shiver with excitement.

It had been a long time since a man had paid any attention
to her as a woman; a long time since she'd felt like one. She couldn't
remember the last time she'd noticed the way a man smelled and liked
it. The size of his hands. Wondered if his hair was as soft as it
looked.

He could have released her when they cleared the garage
doors, but he didn't want to. He slipped his arm across her back and
around her waist… and she didn't push him away. She felt
nice in the curve of his arm. Not too tall or too short or too wide or
too thin. Just about right, he thought, as he examined her profile in
the moonlight.

He wanted to take her to bed. If he tried, he could come
up with a handful of selfless excuses to do it. To comfort her. To
pleasure her. To draw her out of herself. Well, okay, three selfless
reasons anyway. But the plain truth of it was, he liked her and he
wanted her.

Getting her would be no problem. He knew
that
much about women. It was after he got them that he always managed to
fumble and drop the ball. He'd never learned to decipher their secret
language for telling him what they wanted or how they felt. No, Dorie
didn't need any more problems in her life—and he sure as hell
didn't want any more.

Still, a kiss wasn't sex. People kissed each other all the
time, he told himself. No commitment or blood test required.

"I have a confession to make," he said, as they stepped
onto the sidewalk that led to the front porch.

"You don't want to walk home after all," she said, turning
to go back to the garage.

"No, no," he said, enjoying the fact that she'd turned
toward him and that he could loop his other arm about her. "I like the
walk."

"Then you're not really Gil Howlett? Those boys aren't
yours? Matthew is really your aunt and he put a hallucinogen in the
potatoes and this isn't really Kansas?" she joked nervously, her heart
thumping wildly in her chest, her muscles quaking as she stood
perfectly still in his embrace, his body pressed loosely against hers.

"Close," he said, chuckling. "But not quite."

"What is it then? Confess. I can handle it."

He grew serious, studying her face in that way that always
made her feel as if he were looking into her soul, revealing nothing of
what he saw there or what he thought of it.

"I'm not any good at games," he said, his deep voice
rumbling up her spine.

"You were cheating at pool?" Of course, he hadn't been,
but he was so close and she was so nervous, her tongue seemed to be
unhinged and rattling at will.

It reminded her of the Dorie of old, whose smart mouth
would take over in times of stress and trepidation. The Dorie who
cared. The Dorie who could fight back. The Dorie in control. The Dorie
who could make light of a critical situation even as she faced it
head-on.

"No, I wasn't cheating at pool," he said, thinking her
smile was the prettiest he'd ever seen, enjoying the way her lips moved
against her even white teeth, one just a little crooked, as if it were
being crowded by the others. "I don't cheat at games. I just don't play
them very well."

"What sort of games are you talking about?" she asked, her
feminine intuition sensitized to the max.
She
was
playing the games. She knew exactly what he was talking about and what
he wanted.

And she knew he knew she knew.

"You know the games. We can play them like we're a couple
of kids who don't know what they're getting into, or we can pretend we
don't want to play them at all. It's your choice. I'm simply warning
you that games don't always work well for me."

Oh gawd! Another decision! And not about which can of soup
to open or if she wanted to take another nap or not. A big one. A real
one.

"What do you want to do?" she asked, hoping for some
guidance.

"I want to kiss you so bad, my lips are itching."

She giggled. Well, a kiss wasn't exactly sex. People
kissed each other all the time. No commitment or blood test required.
Come to think of it…

"Mine are too," she said, taking in a deep breath, holding
it as if waiting to be hit by a train.

He half smiled, then looked as nervous and unsure as she
felt. He tipped his head to one side and lowered his mouth to hers,
tilting his head to the other side seconds before his lips touched hers.

It was a too-quick kiss, they both realized, looking at
each other in confusion. A spark or two, but that could have been
nerves. Could have been wishful thinking. Silently, they agreed to try
it again, maybe for a little longer; maybe they should relax a little.
After all, it was just a kiss.

Their lips touched once more, but it was hardly relaxing.
It was like stepping on a live wire—in the rain. It was all
Gil could do to keep his muscles from contracting in a convulsion that
was sure to crush her in his embrace. His insides coiled like the
springs on a ballistic missile.

For a second Dorie thought a bolt of electricity had
passed clean through her from the ground, shooting out by way of her
hair, leaving her new do standing straight on end. But then came wave
upon wave of indisputable pleasure, lapping away at the anxiety, the
nervousness, and uncertainly. Washing her mind clean of the fears and
the doubts and any sort of rational thought she might have had.

Titillation engorged her breasts. Her head reeled. Her
blood ran hot with fire, then flowed sweet like warm honey. His hair
was
as soft as it looked, his body as hard and sure as she had imagined.

Somewhat abruptly, her cheek was being pressed tight
against his chest and she thought she heard him mutter, "Damn."

For a simple little kiss, it seemed a very complicated
thing when she could finally open her eyes and begin to think again.
For all its delight, it left a deep churning dissatisfaction within her.

She let her arms go limp at her sides and stepped away
from him. She kept her head lowered, afraid that he hadn't felt what
she had, afraid she'd be able to see the disappointment in his face.

The fingers of his left hand slipped tenderly through her
hair, tangling in the fringe along the nape of her neck, as those of
his right hand curled below her chin, gently lifting her face toward
his. His thumb feathered across her lower lip. He was smiling at her.

"I think we should play the grown-up version of this game."

Go straight to bed. Do not pass go. Do not collect two
hundred dollars.

"Me too," she said numbly.

"I think we should sleep on it tonight and make a clear
adult decision about it in the morning."

Solid adult decisions weren't her forte these days. She'd
been surviving on pure animal instinct—run, hide, protect
yourself. At the moment her instincts were skipping blissfully up the
stairs to her bedroom.

"Me too," she said, trying very hard to sound mature.

He grinned. "I think I should leave now, before I let that
look on your face ruin all my good intentions."

"Me too." She was lying.

He laughed. He knew she knew he knew she was lying.

"Good night, Dorothy Devries," he said, walking away from
her. She watched him walk with his sure steps toward the pasture, swing
his long legs over the fence as if it were two feet high, then meld his
dark form into the night shadows.

"Good night, Gilliam Howlett."

"Hello."

"Hi, Mom."