painstakingly reconstructed their route based on threads and scraps of information from former neighbors or overlords. Finally, as the second winter was setting in, he stopped at Lake Balaton and rode through the village, searching for faces that were like his own.
As he came to a gathering of huts on the outskirts of the village, a feeling passed over him, a feeling that someone he knew was very close. Adair dismounted, crept through darkness toward the huts, and peered through the windows. Pressing an eye to a chink in the shutters, where candlelight was barely visible, he saw a few familiar faces.
Though they had changed with time, had gotten rounder, wrinkled, and worn, he recognized those faces. His brothers were gathered around the fireplace, drinking wine and playing the fiddle and the balalaika. With them were women Adair didn’t recognize, their wives, he supposed, but no sign of his mother. Finally, he caught sight of Radu, grown up, barrel-chested, tall… How Adair wanted to rush into the cottage, throw his arms around Radu, and thank God he was still alive, that he’d been spared all the hell and torment Adair himself had been through. Then it struck him that Radu looked older than Adair did, that all his brothers had passed by him in time. And then he saw a woman come up to Radu and smile, and Radu slipped an arm around her shoulders and drew her tight. It was Katarina, a woman now and beautiful, and in love with Radu, the brother who looked just like Adair. Except older.
As he stood in the dark and cold, Adair still burned with the desire to see his family, to embrace them and speak to them, to let them know that he hadn’t perished at the physic’s hands-when the terrible truth settled on him in its fullness. This would be the last time he would look on them. How could he explain all that had happened to him and what lay ahead still? Why he would never age. That he was no longer mortal like them. That he had become something he could not explain.
Adair went to the front of the hut and slipped a bag of coin from his pocket, leaving it before their door. It was enough money to end their wandering. It would be hard for them to fully trust in this miracle, but in time they would accept their good fortune and thank God for his generosity and mercy. And by then, Adair would be several days to the north, losing himself in the crowds of Buda and Szentendre, learning to cope with his fate.
By the end of the story, I had withdrawn from Adair’s arms, the narcotic smoke’s effect worn off. I didn’t know if I should be in awe of him, or fear.
“Why did you tell me this?” I asked, recoiling from his touch.
“Consider it a cautionary tale,” he replied cryptically.
TWENTY-FIVE
Luke turns off the highway and onto a shaggy dirt road, letting the engine’s low torque pull the SUV along over the ruts. When they come to a bend, he parks just off the access road but lets the engine run. Their view is clear owing to the nakedness of the winter trees, and both he and his passenger can see the U.S.-Canadian border crossing in the distance. It looks like a child’s play set of a construction site: an enormous span of booths and bays clogged with trucks and cars, the air above it heavy with the fug of exhaust fumes.
“That’s where we’re going,” he says, gesturing toward the windshield.
“It’s huge,” the girl replies. “I thought we’d be going to some backwater outpost-two guards and a bloodhound, inspecting cars with a flashlight.”
“Are you sure you want to go through with this? There are other ways to get to Canada,” Luke says, though he’s not sure that he should encourage her to break the law any more than she already has.
The look she gives Luke goes straight to his heart, like a child turning to a parent for assurance. “No, you brought me this far. I trust you to get me over the border.”
As they approach the checkpoint, Luke’s nerves begin to falter. The traffic is light today but still, the prospect of sitting in a queue for an hour is daunting. There must be a police bulletin out on them by now, for the murder suspect and the doctor who helped her escape… He nearly jerks out of line, but stops himself, hands shaking on the wheel.
The girl glances over, nervous. “Are you okay?”
“It’s taking too long,” he mutters, sweating despite the chilly winter air outside the car.
“Everything’s fine,” she croons.
Suddenly, a green light snaps on over a booth the next lane over, and with surprising speed, Luke cuts the steering wheel and stomps on the gas, throwing the car toward the border police benignly waving traffic in. He cuts off a car that was waiting two vehicles ahead in line and the woman behind the wheel gives him the finger, but Luke doesn’t care. He brakes hard in front of the border agent.
“In a hurry?” the official says, disguising his interest with nonchalance as he reaches for the doctor’s identification. “We normally take the next person waiting in line when we open a new lane.”
“Sorry,” Luke says abruptly. “I didn’t know…”
“Next time, okay?” he responds, amicably, not even looking up as he goes over the driver’s license, then Lanny’s passport. The agent is middle-aged, in a dark blue uniform, his utility vest bristling with a walkie-talkie and pens and whatnot. In his hands are a clipboard and an electronic device that seems to be some kind of scanner. His partner, a younger woman, walks the perimeter of the car with a mirror on the end of a long pole, as though they expect to find a bomb strapped to the underside of the SUV. Luke watches the female guard in the side-view mirror, a new round of nerves breaking over him again.
Then it dawns on him: if they ask for the vehicle registration, he’ll be in trouble. Because it’s not registered in his name.
People borrow cars every day, Luke tries to tell himself. Nothing criminal there.
“So you’re a doctor?” the agent at the window asks, jolting Luke to attention.
“Yes. A surgeon.”
“Reason for traveling to Canada?”
Before Luke can answer, Lanny leans forward, to be seen by the border agent. “He’s doing me a favor, actually. I’ve been staying with him and it’s time for me to go sponge off the next relative for a while. And rather than put me on a bus, he generously insisted on driving me there himself.”
“Oh, and where is the cousin?” the agent asks, a gentle prod hidden in the question.
“Baker Lake,” the girl answers casually. “Well, we’re meeting him in Baker Lake. He actually lives closer to Quebec.” She knew the name of a nearby town, which seems like a miracle to Luke. The doctor relaxes a little.
The agent steps into the booth and, through the scratched Plexiglas window, Luke watches him, hunched over a terminal, filling in a database no doubt. It’s all he can do to keep from stomping on the gas. There’s nothing to stop him, no striped automated arm or strip of metal teeth waiting to puncture the tires, blocking their escape.
The agent is suddenly at his window, the driver’s license and passport in his extended hand. “There you go… have a nice stay,” he says, waving them along, already looking to the next car in line.
Luke doesn’t start breathing until the border-crossing station is shrunken in the rearview mirror. “Why were
