Third Strike

remind you—”

“You don’t,” I said, cutting him short. “And do you think I don’t know that, anyway? Do you honestly think I would stay with someone who deliberately set out to intimidate me? To hurt me?” I huffed out a breath. “You must have a pretty low opinion of my own sense of self-worth, Sean.” A wisp of an earlier conversation drifted through my mind. “And you’re not the only one,” I muttered.

It took Sean all of a second to latch on to that. “Your father?”

“He made his feelings clear over breakfast,” I said lightly. “Told me how pitiful he found me—that I must be a whack-job to have enjoyed any of it.”

“Your father actually used the expression ‘whack-job,’ did he?” Sean murmured. “Don’t you just hate it when he comes out with all that technical medical jargon?”

I shrugged, more an annoyed roll of my shoulders. “So I’m paraphrasing,” I allowed. “‘Pitiful’ is definitely one of his, though.” I debated silently for a moment about how much of the rest to tell him, then said, “When I told him I wasn’t likely to turn into a battered wife, he nearly had a heart attack.”

“At the ‘battered’ part or the ‘wife’ part?”

“Either—or both. Take your pick.”

A mile passed in silence. The periphery of the Camry’s headlights picked out some unidentified large bird of prey lying as crumpled roadkill on the shoulder of the highway, the feathers of one stiffened wing ruffling slightly in the wash from the passing cars like it was waving for help.

“Does the prospect have any appeal for you?” Sean asked then. “Marriage?” There was nothing in his voice, no clue to which way he hoped I’d answer.

“I’m assuming that wasn’t some kind of proposal,” I said, with the same care I’d use to approach a suspect device. “I think, at the moment, I like things the way they are. What’s that old saying? If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it. Besides, I’m not sure I’m good wife material—battered or otherwise.” I only caught Sean’s shoulders shift by some infinitesimal amount because I was looking, and looking hard. “Why?”

Sean pulled out to overtake a truck that seemed to be going only a few miles an hour slower than we were, despite hauling a double trailer-load of tree trunks behind it. The driver was tired enough to wander slightly into our lane as we drew alongside. Sean accelerated out from under him, then let the cruise control pick up again.

“Because it’s not a question that’s occurred to me before,” he said. “And this is the kind of journey where no doubt we’ll get to say all kinds of things that haven’t occurred to us before.” He took a breath, cocked his head as if considering. “I don’t think I’m good husband material, either. And, if genetics are anything to go by, I’d make a lousy father,” he added, his voice hardening just a touch.

“Well, like I said—if it ain’t broke …”

“That’s not to say it will never need fixing, at some point in the future,” Sean said then, his voice calm, almost remote. “It’s just, right now, I think this is probably all I have to give you … to give anyone. But, if—or when, but more likely if—I ever get to the stage where I feel inclined to propose, it would be to you, Charlie.”

Inside my head I heard a soft hissing sound, like a lover’s gasp or spray on summer lawns, followed by a smooth vortex of tightly spiraling, conflicted thoughts.

Too much.

Not enough.

As good as you’re going to get.

“Thank you,” I said quietly, listening to the rhythm of the tires over a section of mended road surface. And I found myself smiling. “My parents would utterly freak out.”

“All the more reason for you to say yes, then—if or when it ever happens.” I saw the answering flash of his teeth. And, as if I’d asked the question out loud, he added, “And no, you’d never be battered if you were my wife. Not by me, at any rate.”

I reached across and brushed my fingers along his cheekbone, where the hollow dipped it into shadow. The skin was tightly stretched. He was concentrating on the road ahead and almost flinched under my touch.

“I’m not made of glass, Sean,” I said, keeping my voice deceptively gentle. “Four of them couldn’t break me. You won’t come close. And I meant what I said last night.”

“Which part?”

“The part where I told you if you dared hold anything back, I’d kill you where you stood.”

He let a laugh form, even if it was a shaky one. “Ah, that part,” he murmured, and his voice turned wry. “I think you almost did.”

I grinned at him, mostly in relief. A feeling that lasted right up until a disembodied voice spoke up from the backseat.

“I’d like to stop for a short break when it’s next convenient,” my father said, sounding cool and collected and not at all like a man who’s only just woken from an uncomfortable nap. “No rush,” he added. “Please—do finish your conversation first … .”

CHAPTER 27

We drove through the night, Sean and I, heading steadily southwest, one town blurring into the next on the endless road. We passed signs for familiar English place names in unfamiliar locations, all jumbled together until it was like something out of a long bizarre dream.

Dawn broke as we crossed the border from Virginia into Tennessee, the sun rising ragged over the Appalachians. It sparkled on the dew in roadside pastures, stretching the outlines of the trees and the dozing horses. We chased our own shadow for a hundred miles before it fell away and was trampled beneath the Camry’s wheels. The daylight, which started out so softly tentative, sharpened to a vicious edge by noon.

By 3:30 P.M., allowing for the hour we’d gained going from Eastern to Central time, we were approaching Memphis, Tennessee. We stopped at a roadside diner that had been cryogenically frozen sometime in the mid- fifties. An antique jukebox played a series of old maudlin country numbers, to which the wait staff sang along with more enthusiasm than technical accuracy. Raucous, but welcoming.

Our waitress must have been sixty-five, with skin the color of bourbon and the legs of a woman half her age, which she showed off beneath a skirt that was barely longer than her apron. She also had an accent thick enough to slice as she called my father “sugar” and bumped him with her hip as she declared how much she just loved the way he done talk.

I half-expected my father to tighten up like a clam’s armpit at her impertinence. To my surprise he seemed happy to chat to the woman, whose name was Glory, even going so far as to compliment her on the caterwauling she’d been subjecting us to.

“I knew you folk must be believers,” she said, beaming at us. “You on this road, headin’ west, and you gotta be goin’ to Graceland.” She finished scribbling on her pad, already heading for the kitchen, which we could see into behind the long counter, calling back over her shoulder, “You see the King, sugar, you be sure to done tell him Glory never lost the faith, now. We know he ain’t dead. It’s all some gov’ment conspiracy. Yes sir.”

“Of course,” my father said gravely. “I’d be delighted to pass on your message.”

“‘Delighted,’ huh?” She laughed and shook her head as she slapped in our order. “You sure talk pretty, sugar.”

My father waited until she was out of earshot, then looked at the rest of us, totally puzzled. “The king of where?” he said.

Once we’d stopped, it was hard to get going again. We drove for another couple of hours before Sean finally caved and agreed that we needed to rest up until morning. By that time, we were just approaching Little Rock and night had fallen hard on Arkansas. The city looked very bright as it loomed on the horizon, initially beautiful against the utter black. It was only when we got nearer that the glitter seemed to take on a slightly tarnished quality.

We picked out a small nondescript chain hotel near the airport. It was close to the interstate and promised Jacuzzi rooms, free HBO movies, and a business center.

We left the Camry under the impressive portico at the front entrance while we gave the woman on the desk a