But he wasn’t going to the bus station. He wasn’t going to leave town, because that would mean leaving Cara.
Confident that Milford would be working in his office at the mine, Luther wandered around town for a while, trying to figure out where to go. If he got a motel room, Milford would eventually find him. And maybe not so eventually. Life on the streets in a place the size of Hiram was impossible. The homeless were made to move on or were arrested for vagrancy. The sheriff’s department would pick him up the first day.
Luther had no idea where to go, what to do.
What now? What will happen to me now?
He found himself only a block from the Sands’ big Victorian house. Maybe Cara would be there alone. He might talk to her, be sure she was all right before leaving. She might have some ideas.
He couldn’t be absolutely sure Milford wasn’t home. His pulse quickened as he approached the house and went up the steps to the wide front porch. He looked up and down the block. Unless someone was peeking out a window, he hadn’t been seen. The only unnatural sound was a car alarm beeping insistently blocks away. A bee droned out from the branches of a nearby sweet-smelling honeysuckle and circled Luther as if sizing him up, getting up the nerve.
A few seconds after he’d rung the doorbell, Cara opened the door and stared out at him in surprise.
She looked fine, unmarked. Maybe Milford had taken it all out on Wilde.
“Cara…you okay?”
“I am.” He saw now she’d been crying. Fresh tears glittered in her eyes. “Milford went to see Tom Wilde,” she said.
“I know. I just came from there. Wilde had to fire me. Milford beat him up and didn’t leave him any choice. I don’t know what to do now, where to go. Listen, Milford isn’t…?”
“He’s not here. After coming back from Wilde’s, he went to work. To his office at the mine, where he’s spent most of his time the past ten years.”
She opened the door wider and touched Luther’s arm lightly with the tips of two fingers, drawing him inside with only the slightest pressure, as if by some magnetic force that bound them with the slightest contact.
“I needed to come here and see you,” Luther said. His breath caught in his throat.
He would have said more, but Cara suddenly clung to him and was kissing him hard on the mouth, grinding her lips against his. She moaned and began to tremble, digging her fingers into his back and turning their bodies so they moved back and were away from the lace-curtained window in the door and no one might notice them from outside.
When they separated, she gazed into his eyes as if at worship and said, “You came to the right place, Luther. Here’s where you finally belong.”
He believed her. Whatever name was on a mortgage or a marriage license, he was the one who belonged here, with Cara.
With Cara he was home.
27
New York, 2004.
He knew when she was due home from work, and he’d be watching out the window. Even from twelve stories up, he’d recognize her. He’d seen her leave for work, followed her and observed her eating lunch at an upscale restaurant on Central Park West. She was wearing a light gray dress and carrying a red purse and a folded black umbrella in case of rain. He’d know her by her clothes and by her long dark hair and by her walk, proud and erect, back slightly arched, head held high, her pace slightly faster than those around her. Almost as if she were on parade and could feel the gaze of someone watching her closely, focusing on only her out of the throngs of passing people.
Maybe she senses it already. Maybe she knows.
In the end, when destiny and time meet, they all seem to know, seem to understand that they knew all along and were betraying me. They understand the meaning and the justice and that they must pay. They’re struck by the meanings of life and of death simultaneously and see that there is no difference. A blink, a missed heartbeat, a final exhalation, nothing…the buzzing…color the length of light, nothing more. Their final wisdom is the lesson and the gift.
He glanced at his watch, then went to the window and raised the blind. Pressing his forehead against the glass to gain a better angle, he looked down. Blue distance.
And there she was!
He gasped at the beauty.
Mary Navarre strode along the sidewalk toward her West End apartment, veering slightly now and then to navigate the flow of pedestrian traffic and pass slower walkers. She was wearing the leather strap of her red purse diagonally across her torso as a precaution against snatch-and-run thieves, and she was wielding her folded umbrella in her right hand almost like a weapon with each stride. She might have intimidated those walking toward her, were it not for her smile.
She used the keypad to enter the lobby, then checked for mail in the brass box with her apartment number above it.
Nothing but advertising circulars and a notice urging residents to attend a neighborhood meeting to discuss increasing block security against the threat of terrorism.
Maybe Donald could attend, Mary thought as she relocked the box, then used her key on the door to the inner lobby and elevators.
As she pressed the up button, she saw that one of the elevators was on the twelfth floor, the other on the fifth. The arrow pointing to twelve didn’t move, but the one resting on five immediately began to descend. It stopped briefly on three, then continued down to lobby level.
When the door slid open, a heavyset woman Mary had seen before nodded to her and left the elevator in a swirl of navy blue material, trailing a long scarlet scarf. Trying to look thinner. Mary wondered why overweight people so often tried to hide their bulk beneath tentlike clothing that only accentuated their size. Then she remembered stepping on the bathroom scale this morning, and tried not to think about the five pounds she’d somehow gained during the past month. She and Donald, himself getting thicker through the middle, had been enjoying too many rich meals in too many good restaurants lately.
It has to stop…
As she took possession of the elevator and pressed the button for the twelfth floor, Mary swore to herself again that she was going on a diet. Maybe try the Atkins. Her favorite meal was steak with a salad, rolls, and a baked potato, all washed down with a strong martini. She should be able to give up the potato, maybe a roll.
On twelve, the elevator slowed and stopped, then settled slightly as it found its proper level, and the door slid open.
As Mary stepped out into the hall, she was aware of the adjacent elevator’s door sliding closed.
In the apartment she paused inside the door as she often did and admired the spaciousness and tasteful decor, reminding herself again that it was all hers and Donald’s.
It wasn’t until she went to the kitchen for a glass of water that she noticed the two shrink-wrapped steak filets on a corner of the kitchen table. They were prime cuts, thick and lightly marbled, the way she liked them.
She stared at the steaks, puzzled. How on earth…?
When she’d gotten a glass of orange juice this morning, had she accidentally removed the steaks from the refrigerator and forgotten them?
But she doubted that. She was sure she hadn’t even opened the refrigerator’s meat compartment. She’d had no reason. Besides, she didn’t remember the steaks even being in the refrigerator. Maybe Donald had bought them and planned for a romantic dinner at home this evening. Maybe he wanted to surprise her because they had something to celebrate. That would explain everything.
“Donald?” Her voice surprised her. It was higher than normal. Frightened.
“Donald!” Better.
