One More Knight

“Feel like talking about it?”

She wanted to. She really did. She’d intended to. She’d thought she was ready to tell him, that she’d talked herself into it. But now… Maybe it was his hand, the way he touched her, the incredible gentleness of it, but suddenly there was a dangerous ache all through her, and a useless lump where her voice should be. She knew if she talked about the past in this fragile, vulnerable state, she would almost certainly cry. And that was something she had promised herself she would never do again. Ever.

There was only the softest whisper of an exhalation to betray Troy’s frustration when she firmly shook her head. And she was sorry, truly sorry.

“Let’s get some breakfast,” was all he said, and gave her neck a gentle squeeze before he took his hand away.

Charly had been half hoping Kelly Grace wouldn’t be there for the breakfast shift. There was a lot she didn’t feel like explaining this morning, not the least of which was her companion. But no such luck. They’d just gotten themselves seated in a booth and were looking over menus when Kelly came out of the kitchen and spotted them.

She yelled out, “Charlene! I was hopin’ t’ see you this mornin’!” and intercepted the teenage waitress who was headed their way, coffeepot in hand. “Here, April honey, I’ll take that-this here’s an old friend a’ mine. Hey, how’re y‘all doin’ this mornin’? How’d it go yesterday? I sure have been thinkin’ about you…”

And of course, all the time she was talking away a blue streak to Charly, her eyes were about to eat Troy alive.

Resigned to the inevitable, Charly muttered introductions.

“Hey, Troy.” Kelly Grace offered him her Miss America smile along with the hand that wasn’t full of the coffeepot, oozing Southern femininity from every pore. One thing Charly had forgotten about was how that girl could flirt.

And like any true son of the South, Troy was naturally eating it up, taking her hand like it was the Lady Guinevere’s and he was Sir Lancelot.

Then all of a sudden he got very still. He stayed that way for a second or two, then looked over at Charly and muttered, “Kelly…Grace. You’re kiddin’, right?”

Charly picked up her coffee cup and dipped her head to hide her smile, but Kelly Grace squealed with delight and slapped Troy playfully on the arm.

“No, sir, she is not! Isn’t it just awful? You have to understand, my mama is a strange person. She claims she didn’t plan it that way at all, says she never even made the connection until she saw it written down on my birth certificate, and by then it was too late.”

She plunked the coffeepot down and shifted gears. “Where you from, Troy? I know I haven’t seen you around here before.”

Troy told her he was from Georgia, and she echoed it in a tone of pure amazement, as if she thought he must be talking about the one in Russia.

“He’s helping me out,” Charly reluctantly explained. “I had a little accident last night-”

“An accident!” Kelly Grace’s mouth fell open. “Oh, my Lord, was that you? A couple of the troopers were in here this mornin’, talkin’ about some woman goin’ off the highway last night, up by the spring, but I never dreamed-My Lord, Charlene, are you all right? You’re not hurt, or anything…”

“I’m fine.” Charly gave her chest a reflexive rub. “Just a seat-belt bruise.”

At that, there was a faint, strangled sound from Troy. She threw him an inquiring glance, and found that his eyes were riveted on her chest, his face pale and a muscle working in his jaw, looking as horrified as if she’d just sprouted a third breast. And it dawned on her that what he must be feeling was guilt-for not having thought to ask, in all the time they’d been together, if she might be injured. For all the things they’d done and all the ways he’d touched her. For forgetting to be gentle.

Pictures flashed through her mind; sensations reprised themselves all over and through her body. A strange warmth flooded through her, totally unexpected and indefinably tender. She wanted to tell him it was okay, that she hadn’t thought about it, either, that he hadn’t hurt her-far from it. But in present company all she could do was gaze at him, and hope he would read those things in her eyes and take it no further.

“My Lord, Charlene, why didn’t you call me? I would’ve been glad to help. Or you could have called…” Kelly Grace stopped suddenly, looking confused.

“Kelly, I didn’t know your number,” Charly reminded her, regretfully tearing her eyes away from Troy’s.

“Oh, my Lord, that’s right! I should have given it to you yesterday. Don’t know why I didn‘t-I surely meant to. Charlene and I go way back,” she explained to Troy, giving him a companionable nudge. “We were best friends back in high school. Oh, that reminds me…I was hopin’ I’d see you again. Brought these with me, just in case.” She plunged her hand into a pocket of the denim skirt she was wearing, brought out several snapshots and dropped them on the tabletop. “Got to lookin’ at ’em last night. Sure does bring back memories.”

Then she hesitated, coffeepot in hand, while her natural effervescence seemed to go flat. She tried to pick it up again in her usual friendly way, but it sounded forced now, and uncertain. “Well, listen, I got pies in the oven-guess I better let you alone, hadn’t I? Let you get you some breakfast. Let me see if I can get April to come take your order, okay? I’ll be seein’ y’all later.”

She hurried away, and it seemed to Troy as if she was fleeing from the memories she’d left behind on the table.

He sipped his coffee in silence as he watched Charly reach for the photographs and slowly, almost as if it was against her will, spread them out in front of her. He couldn’t see her eyes; she was looking down so that her lashes shielded them like curtains. But it seemed to him her face was unnaturally still, and a lot paler than a California girl’s should be.

He watched, and waited, while questions backed up in his throat, and his manners and upbringing choked them off like a too tight collar.

The little waitress-a high-school kid, by the looks of her-came to take their order and refill their coffee cups. When she’d gone away again, Troy reached over and casually picked up one of the snapshots. “Who’s this?” he said, “Charlie’s Angels?”

She acknowledged that with a crooked grin. “Hey, it was the seventies-what can I say?”

“You’re the dark one, right?”

“Naturally.”

“And the Farrah Fawcett blonde is…?”

“That’s Kelly Grace.”

“Uh-huh. And the two jocks in the football jerseys?”

She hesitated, then reached across the table and pointed. “That’s…Bobby Hanratty. He and Kelly got married. She says they’re divorced now-have two kids. And that’s Richie. I went out with him for a while. This was the homecoming dance. We were juniors-Kelly Grace was junior-class princess that year.” Her voice seemed oddly flat, Troy thought, for somebody reminiscing over her happy youth. And she kept her eyes downcast. He wondered if it was to keep him from seeing the sadness in them.

He bared his teeth in a smile. “Yeah? Princess, huh? Why does that not surprise me? And the next year-queen, I presume?”

She shrugged and her voice went from flat to edgy. “I wouldn’t know. I wasn’t here then.”

“So,” he probed, unable to stop himself, “that’s when you moved away?”

“Right.”

He waited, his pulse tapping like an impatient foot, but there was nothing more. So he touched the photograph once more. “Who’s the fifth wheel? The guy in the band uniform?”

There was a long pause, and it seemed to him that she had to unstick the words from her throat before she could say them. “That’s Colin.” She reached across the table and took the snapshot from him, tucking it under the rest as she made a small neat pile of them and set them aside. “He was…a friend. He lived next door. We…grew up together.” And suddenly her voice had gone soft, with a kind of tenderness in it that for some reason made something twist and knot up under Troy’s belt buckle.

“Where is he now?” he asked her, trying hard to keep it casual.

Her eyes met his, shadowed and deep as the woods in summer. “He died.”