“Want some more?” he asked quickly.
“No. No thanks. Maybe later.” She looked around the apartment, recognition and sense coming back to her face. “Where’s Jack?” she said, and suddenly clutched Terry’s sleeve. “Where’s Jack?” She sounded frightened.
“He’ll be back any minute,” Terry said.
Laura stared at him then. “Oh, you’re Terry,” she said.
“You’re Laura.” He grinned. “I saw you first.”
She blinked at him, unable to joke with him. Dead serious, she asked, “Did the oysters help?”
“Help?” he said. “Oh. You mean Jack and me.”
“He says you love them.”
Terry studied her, frowning over his smile, and then looked away in embarrassment. “Not the oysters so much,” he said. “But you helped, in a roundabout way. By getting lost.”
“I’m glad,” she said, confused. “He loves you terribly.” She seemed to have no sense that this might startle him or be the wrong thing to say. She hadn’t the physical strength to censor herself. She spoke the necessary truths and no more. But Terry was strongly affected. He walked to the other side of the room and refused to look at her for a while, letting his feelings whirl around inside him. When he did look back, she was stretched out on the sofa, sleeping the sleep of complete exhaustion.
Laura woke up to find Jack sitting in the armchair sipping gingerly at a steaming cup of coffee. His eyes showed over the rim of the cup, heavy, anxious, and old. He lowered the cup when she wakened, putting it on the coffee table by the sofa and lighting a cigarette.
“It’s a nice day,” he said cautiously.
She sat up halfway. “What time is it?”
“Seven-thirty.”
Laura dropped back and shut her eyes. She found a blanket over herself and her shoes were on the floor beside the sofa.
“Well,” said Jack, “are you going to tell me where the hell you’ve been? Or am I going to ask?”
Laura turned her face suddenly to the back of the sofa and wept. “Oh, Jack,” she moaned. “I killed him. I killed him. Oh, God help me.” And she began to sob.
“Killed who?”
“My father.”
“Your father,” he said with friendly sharpness in his voice, “has a prize concussion. But he’s very much alive.”
She turned her head slowly to look at him, her eyes enormous and her heart stopped in her chest. “Alive?” Her voice was a startled whisper. She sat up suddenly and said it out loud. “Alive?” She grabbed Jack’s arms with the strength of shock. “How do you know? How do you know? Tell me quickly.”
“I will, give me half a chance.” He pushed her back down and told her of his trip to the McAlton. “I just went up to the fourteenth floor,” he said. “It was easy. There were a lot of people standing around outside his room and the elevator boy told me about it. Incidentally, you made a real friend. He thinks you’re the original Goof Nut.”
“But my father, Jack, my father?”
“There was a doctor with him. He’s okay, Mother.”
Laura half fainted and it was some minutes before Jack could bring her around. Terry sat on the floor by the sofa, watching her with interest while Jack propped her feet up on pillows. “That better?” he said.
“I hit him so hard,” she murmured the moment she was able to talk. “I was sure I killed him. Maybe he died of the concussion.” Her eyes went wide again with fear and she looked at Jack, but he shook his head with a little smile.
“No such luck,” he said. “I talked to him last night.”
She gasped. “What did you say? Is he all right? Did you tell him who you were?” The fears tumbled out of her.
“I called him on the house phone. Relax, Laura, you’re among friends. I asked him if he knew where you were. He said no.”
“What else?” Laura had clutched his arms with trembling hands.
“He was pretty curious about me, naturally. But I didn’t give him my name and phone number. Now calm down, will you? You’re giving me the screaming mimis.”
“What did he say?” She was crying again. “What? Tell me!”
“He tried to get me to talk but I didn’t tell him anything, except that I was your best friend. Finally he said he was afraid he had hurt you.” Laura shut her eyes and covered her face with a groan. “He wanted a chance to explain. He said if I found you to tell him right away. He has an agency trying to track you down. He said to tell you he’s sorry.” Jack looked curiously at her.
“He’s sorry,” she repeated, staring. “He’s sorry!”
“Did he hurt you, honey?” Jack said gently.
It was too enormous to describe, too torturous to explain; her own private agony. Not even Jack could share it with her. “Yes,” she whispered. “He hurt me.” She looked at Jack and he could see in her face how much more there was to it than the simple words told him.
Jack crushed out his cigarette angrily. “I wish I could break his head for him,” he said.
“No, no,” Laura said. “I thought I had killed him. I never meant to. I was sick. I’ve been so sick, Jack, you wouldn’t believe—Oh, thank God he’s alive. Thank God. I wanted to hurt him and I did. I never wanted anything more. Just a chance to get even with him.”
“What the hell happened between you two?”
“I can’t talk about it.”
“You can to me.”
“No. I can’t. Not to anybody.”
“Did he beat you?”
She shook her head. “Don’t ask me, Jack,” she said. “It’s my own personal sickness. And his. It’s between us, and nobody else.”
Jack lighted a cigarette, watching her closely through the blue smoke. “Why did you go to him in the first place? Didn’t you know it would be bad?”
“I had to,” she said, her
