"I can remember right after we were married. You were happy and yet you weren't. You couldn't make up your mind if you'd made a mistake or if you couldn't do any better. So your eye started roving—long before you did."
"I just stare at people," she said, with a shy smile.
He smiled in return.
"Aren't I staring at you lately?"
"Yes. Why?"
"I have my reasons."
"I'll bet you have!" He laughed.
She went wide-eyed, off balance. "Don't kid me, Vic."
"Did Trixie tell you the joke she heard today? Two turtles were walking—"
"And don't change the subject. For Christ's sake, I'm trying to be nice!" she yelled.
He smiled, appreciatively. She sounded like herself again.
"I just meant—I was trying to tell you that I admire you and that I like you. I like everything you do. Even your keeping snails. And I'm sorry for the way I've acted in the past."
"That speech sounds as difficult as a grade school valediction." "Well, it isn't difficult. I made it—because I think I have quite a lot to make up for."
"Melinda, what're you up to?"
She came toward him. "Can't we try again, Vic?"
"Of course," he said, smiling. "I've been trying all along." "I know." She touched his hair.
He barely kept from flinching. He stared at the edge of the rug on the other side of the room. He loathed her touch. It was insulting, he felt, simply insulting, considering all that had happened. He was glad when she took her hand away.
"Tomorrow's Saturday," she said. "Shall we make a picnic lunch and go out somewhere with Trixie?"
"I'd like to, but I promised Horace to go to Wesley with him to pick out some building materials. He's building a shed. Isn't it getting a little cold for picnics?"
"I don't think so."
"What's the matter with Sunday?"
"I think Trixie's doing something Sunday."
"Oh. Well, maybe you and I can go on a picnic Sunday," he said pleasantly. "Good night, Melinda. Sleep well." He went out.
Chapter 26
Trixie was doing something on Sunday. A little boy named Georgie Tripp was having a party and Trixie was invited and wanted to go. Vic had to drive her there at one in the afternoon. Trixie had thought she knew how to get to where the Tripps lived—it was out of town on a country road, and she had been there before—but she got lost, and Vic had to go back to the house for the directions that Mrs. Tripp had given to Melinda by telephone that morning. When Vic got back to the house he found Melinda on the telephone talking to Don Wilson. Her back was to him as she stood at the telephone in her room, and for some reason, perhaps because he hadn't closed the car door, she hadn't heard him come back. He knew that from her intense voice as she said, "I don't know, Don. I can't tell you anything ... No." And then Vic's steps made a sound on the hall floor—he was not trying to walk quietly, was simply approaching slowly, though he was wearing his rubber-soled sports shoes—and Melinda turned and looked startled. Then she smiled into the telephone and said, "Well, that's all for now. Got to go. Good-bye."
"I think I'd better take that paper with the directions, after all," Vic said. "Trixie got lost."
Melinda picked up the paper from her night table and handed it to him. The frightened surprise was still on her face, and it reminded Vic a little of her expression when he fed her scrambled eggs late at night, except that now she was not drunk.
"How's Don?" Vic asked, already turning to go out of the house.
"Oh, all right, I suppose."
"Well, see you in about half an hour," Vic said, smiling. "Maybe a little more."
Vic was back from the Tripps' in thirty-five minutes and they started off almost at once.
"Do you mind if we go to the quarry?" Melinda asked. "Why not, since we haven't got Trixie?"
"That's right, why not?" he said agreeably. He spent the next few seconds reviewing the tones of her voice, trying to decide if she suspected anything about the quarry or not, got tired of it, and tired of the piddling mentality—his own, after all—that had prompted him to wonder if she suspected anything. What if she did? It wasn't going to ruffle him. He could see himself and Melinda in a few minutes, huddled by a windblown fire chewing chicken bones, cavemen without a roof. He chuckled.
"What's the matter?" she asked.
"Oh, nothing. I'm just happy, I guess."
"Sometimes I think you're losing your mind. Did you ever think that?"
"I probably lost it years ago. Nothing to worry about." As he approached the overgrown lane that went off the dirt road to the quarry, he asked, "Is this about the place?"
"Don't you know?"
"We haven't been here in so long."
No reaction.
The twigs, harsh and more leafless now, scratched at the sides of his car as it lumbered through the lane. Then they came out on the familiar flat in front of the excavation and stopped. Vic remarked that it was a fine clear day, and Melinda murmured some reply. She looked as if she were pondering a tack again. But it wouldn’t be a tack about the quarry, Vic thought. He began to whistle as he gathered kindling for a fire. He let his search for kindling take him to the edge of the quarry, within six feet of the spot where Cameron had gone over. The little inlet where Cameron had sunk was half in shadow, but nothing seemed to be floating there. Any stains, of course, would probably be invisible from this height, but he squatted on his heels, rested his chin on his thumb, and peered for them, anyway. Nothing that he
