Passing Through Midnight (4 page)

"No one," she said, a bit surprised by his assumption. "It
was an accident. In a car." It was considerably more complicated than
that, but she'd found that if she didn't think or talk about the rest
of it, she could imagine it to be something as simple as a mishap on
the freeway. "That's why I'm here. To rest and get my strength back."

"Man," he said, nearly going limp with relief. "We thought
someone had beat the tar out of you, and you were hiding out here. A
gangster maybe."

"A gangster? Oh, because I'm from Chicago?" she said,
smiling easily this time. "Jeez, I'm sorry I'm such a disappointment.
You guys were probably having a grand old time over there watching for
black limos and people with violin cases."

"Not just us. Everyone in Colby thinks you're some wise
guy's girlfriend," he said, shattering her illusion of invisibility, of
being no one in Nowheresville. Hell, she was practically a damn
celebrity. "We must get five or six calls a day from people wanting to
know if we've seen you yet. We know when you hit the IGA. Bax thinks I
have ESP cuz I can tell when he's going to get sugar cookies or
chocolate chip or peanut butter. Beforehand, you know? Depending on
what you buy that day."

"Oh, this is just great," she said, leaning her head
against the chain that suspended the swing. "I should have known this
would happen. Small towns live on gossip. How could I have been so
stupid, so… Now I'll have to leave."

"No you won't," he said, looking at her as if she'd
suddenly lost her mind. "Just tell the truth. It's boring. No one'll care about a plain old car accident. They'll
forget all that gangster stuff in a week. And stop wearing those
glasses and the scarf and that coat. You don't look that bad."

Her hand automatically covered the thin red scars on her
right cheek and chin. "I don't?"

"No," he said, amazed that she'd think so. "In fact, my
dad's gonna be real happy that you're pretty. From the way Frank
Schulman was talking, he thought you were going to scare Bax to death."

Frank Schulman? The real estate agent. Why, that had been
weeks ago. Maybe it was time to take another good look in the mirror.

Fletcher was making a vague gesture with his index finger
as he said, "You oughta do something about your hair though. It looks
pretty weird."

She touched the stubble of hair growing at her left temple.

"I was going to stay inside until it grew out again."

"All summer?" He was aghast.

She could only look at him, her mind shuffling down a path
she'd been avoiding for a long time. People. How long could she avoid
them? She was vain enough to admit that the scars and the limp were
good excuses to hide from the public eye. But what would happen when
her leg was strong again and the scars faded and her hair was the same
length on both sides of her head? What then?

"I think I'll go in and take a nap," she said,
circumventing a decision. Sleep was the answer to most of her questions
these days. A major symptom of depression, she knew, but when something
worked…

"Can I come back?" she heard Fletcher ask as she opened
the screen door. "Not every day, but some other time, maybe?"

"Sure." Then, as she grew drowsy in the doorway, she
remembered their deal. "Don't forget my car."

"I won't."

She felt as if a vampire had sucked all the life and
energy from her body. She could barely close the door and climb the
stairs to bed. She flopped down on the mattress, knowing that such
instant and complete fatigue was telling her something, but she ignored
it. She was cold. She sat up and yanked the blanket from the foot of
the bed and rolled herself into it.

"My dad's gonna be real happy that you're
pretty."

The words floated through her mind twice before it blocked
out everything.

"Pretty, huh?" she speculated several hours later in front
of the bathroom mirror. She'd slept the afternoon away, waking with
just enough time to refill Baxter's cookie can before she heard the big
black and silver truck turn into the drive.

She'd watched from the windows as Gil and the boys got out
of the truck and, as usual, she held her breath until she knew that
they weren't going to come to the door.

Fletcher's behavior had puzzled her. He climbed out and
waited for Baxter to follow, watched him skip to the porch for his
cookie can, and then the three of them walked out into the field behind
the house without a backward glance. Hadn't he told his father about
their encounter? Hadn't he told him that she was pretty under her
disguise?

Again she scanned her face in the mirror. All she could
see were the scars, red and ugly on her cheek and along her chin.

"Kid, you got really rotten taste in women," she said,
turning out the light and walking away.

It was still early, maybe nine o'clock, and with so much
sleep that afternoon she wouldn't be returning to bed anytime soon.
She'd already washed her dishes, part of the get-with-it program she'd
started the week before. She wasn't much of a TV person, not having the
time to watch much before now. She generally read when she couldn't
sleep. Technical, nonfiction sort of material about blood gases, shock
trauma, burn therapy —but she had no interest in it.

She opened the front door and took in a deep, satisfying
breath of the sweet spring night. Without really intending to, she
pushed the screen door open and stepped out on the porch. The swing
looked inviting, lit softly from the lights within the house.

She sat in it sideways, tucking her long terry robe about
her bent knees and around her bare feet, huddling close against the
chill and the constant breeze that blew across the prairie. She looked
up at the stars as they dangled quiet and peaceful in the black sky.
They sparkled like so many crystals in the window of a New Age
bookstore, mesmerizing her, clearing her mind. Once again she felt
small and insignificant, unseen from the stars, hidden and safe in the
night.

For a long time she sat motionless, satisfied to let time
and the world pass her by.

Gil Hewlett watched her from the fenced pasture not two
hundred feet away.

He hadn't meant to disturb her. He'd bid his family good
night an hour earlier and had gone up to bed. He couldn't sleep. He
stood watching the dim lights in the distance for some time before he
took the back stairs down to the kitchen for a drink of water.

He could hear the television program Matthew was watching
in the next room. The back door stood open to the cool night air. He'd
passed through it on an impulse.

Unable to see the still, green wheat in the fields or
distinguish the shapes of cows as they huddled together on the horizon,
he was greeted with vast empty space. Miles and miles of nothing but
him and the earth, the sky hanging low, and the stars seeming to be
within his reach.

His mind began to wander, and so did his feet.

If he had to describe himself in one word, it wouldn't be
deep. But sometimes, and usually at odd times, "life as it might have
been" would creep up and smack him in the back of his head.

He relived the heartache of letting loose each of his
dreams, one by one. Carving them up, reshaping them to fit reality.
Compromising them, trading them off, finally terminating them
altogether. The bitterness rose up within him like black tar boiling
over in its pot.

With an effort, an effort that was less and less stressful
with the passage of time, he pushed that darkness from his heart. He
gathered the good things in his life close to him. His boys, his
friends, his home. He counted himself a lucky man.

Some things just weren't meant to be, he had reminded
himself wistfully, looking up to find that he had roamed a considerable
distance from the house—more than halfway to the Averback
farm, as a matter of fact.

It was no longer a cluster of lights on the skyline, but
homey windows with warm glowing lights shining through them. A familiar
sight from his childhood. How many times had he walked the mile to the
Averbacks', crossing the road, jumping the fence, picking his way
carefully through the pasture?

He did it then from habit and was smiling to himself when
he heard the screen door open on the Averbacks' front porch, just as it
had a thousand times before when they had seen him coming.

Only he wasn't a kid anymore, and the Averbacks were gone.
The figure on the porch was held in the shadows, but it was
unmistakably that of a woman. She sort of floated toward him, to the
end of the porch and sat down.

He watched her for a few minutes and when she didn't move
again, he did. He took slow steps, quiet steps, until he reached the
fence. From there he watched her stare at the stars, motionless, a part
of the night, almost invisible in the dark.

He couldn't imagine being alone in a house, ill and weak.
Who was this woman who had no one to care for her? No family, no
friends. Why would she travel from what she knew to a remote town full
of strangers and lock herself up in a house there? It was a puzzle that
intrigued him.

Watching her, thinking about her, recalling Fletcher's
tale of his encounter with her over supper that evening, Gil was once
again reminded, forcefully and profoundly, of how lucky a man he really
was. Failed dreams and all.

"You couldn't sleep either, huh?" he asked, speaking as
softly as he could so as not to frighten her. Not that it did any good.
She let loose a little yelp and was on her feet in one startled
movement. "Sorry. Clearing my throat would have scared you just as bad.
I figured why waste the breath."

Dorie clasped her hands in front of her as they started to
shake. She recognized his voice and could vaguely perceive his tall
form in the moonlight. She didn't speak—couldn't with the
huge lump of fear stuck in her throat. She watched him take the fence
in one graceful leap, and fought her impulse to run inside and lock the
doors as he crossed the yard toward her.

"Nice night for stargazing," he commented, coming up the
broad set of steps in the middle of the porch. "I was in the
neighborhood and thought I'd stop by and borrow a cup of sugar," he
said, covering all the excuses he could think of for dropping in
unexpectedly.

She didn't smile, and she still looked frightened enough
to make him wish that he'd gone home without disturbing her. Yet,
something kept him moving toward her.

"I'm sorry I startled you," he said again lightly. "I was
out walking and found myself in the middle of the pasture there.
I… thought I'd come see how you were."

"I'm fine," she said. And she might have been if her heart
hadn't tripped into a snappy tattoo—as any woman's might in
the presence of a handsome man with eyes that asked questions and took
answers indiscriminately.

To tell the truth, she might have managed several more
lifetimes without seeing him again. She wasn't going to try to convince
herself that the jitters within her were due to his being an unknown in
her life. She knew after his last visit that she was attracted to
him—poring over old pictures of him, waiting and watching for
him each day, enjoying the way he walked, listening for his voice.
However, being attracted to any man, ever again, wasn't part of the
question mark her life was in at that moment.

"Shew. Those fields must have gotten bigger since I was a
kid. I used to run across them without getting winded. They wore me out
tonight. Can I just sit here on the swing for a few minutes? To catch
my breath?"

"Of course."

She wasn't going to make this easy for him. There was no
offer of a beer or a glass of water forthcoming. She simply stood there
holding her elbows while he made himself comfortable.

"Spring at last, huh?" he said, slapping his hands down on
his knees as he scanned the new season in the darkness. He could feel
her watching him.

"Seems like it," she said when his gaze returned to her,
clearly expecting some comment. "It's been a long winter."

Weather discussed, and their acquaintance too short to
debate politics or religion, they fell into an uneasy quiet. They were
both completely aware of the other, their size and shape in the space
around the swing; each subtle movement or the lack thereof; breathing
patterns. Dorie was afraid he could hear her heart pounding.

"I've spent a lot of time in this swing," he remarked,
simply to break the stillness. His voice seemed to carry for miles.

"With Beth?"

He turned his face to her sharply. She was frozen with
embarrassment. Where had that question come from?

"You know about Beth?" he asked, amazed but not offended.

"From pictures. In the house," she stammered, feeling like
an idiot. "There's a prom picture."

He nodded. "They must have taken the wedding pictures with
them."

"Where are they? The Averbacks. They left so many things
here, it's as if they're coming back soon. As if they're away on
vacation."

"Mike and Henry both moved to Wichita after college, and
then… after Beth died, old Henry and Janice moved there,
too, to be closer to the grandchildren. They visit three or four times
a year, but they usually stay over at our place," he said. "I think
there are just too many memories for them over here."

Bending her knees and lowering herself into the space on
the swing beside him, she asked softly, "Did Beth die here?"

He nodded.

"How sad," she said, leaning against the back of the
swing, feeling a deep and wholly unexpected sympathy for the Averbacks.

She had received a considerable amount of on-the-job
training in dealing with other people's grief, along with a certain
sense of failure in herself when she was a part of it—but she
didn't know the Averbacks, had never met them. And yet she felt Beth's
loss as if it were very much in the here and now, and very close to
home.