Randy was gone.
She couldn’t remember what she had been thinking of when she ran, screaming, toward the fire. Someone had tackled her, several someones, and held her down while she thrashed and screamed and clawed, until the paramedics appeared and gave her a shot, one of them kneeling on her chest and another one immobilizing her arm.
Now she was numb.
Mark had asked her some questions-about Randy, and Becky Castle, and Shaun Reid. She had answered them because it was the quickest way to get him to stop bothering her. After that, he left her alone. And kept the others away.
Outside, she could hear someone crying, and Mark’s voice, and then the squad car door opened and Rachel was there, saying, “Lisa. Oh, Lisa,” in a tear-clogged voice.
Lisa let her weeping sister wrap her arms around her shoulders and hold her. She wanted to tell her it was okay. She wanted to ask her if she remembered that day sledding, and the sun going down, and the numbness. But she was too tired to talk. So she let Rachel choke and sob over her, and she closed her eyes against the darkness and the light.
Keep watch, dear Lord, with those who work or watch, or weep this night, and give your angels charge over those who sleep. Tend the sick, Lord Christ; give rest to the weary, bless thy dying, soothe the suffering, pity the afflicted, shield the joyous; and all for your love’s sake.
Clare rolled to a stop and turned off the lights. “Here we are.”
“Let’s go,” Russ said without moving. “You must be exhausted.”
“I’m not, surprisingly. I think I’ve gotten my second wind.” She had shuttled Hugh to the Stuyvesant Inn and Deacon Aberforth to the rectory before returning to the Algonquin Waters resort-or what was left of it-to pick up Russ. He had been adamant about getting a ride with one of his officers, but when she pointed out that they could drop her at the rectory first, and that he’d be doing her a favor by returning Hugh’s car to him on Sunday, he agreed.
“How’s Mark?” she asked.
“Okay, I guess. I took him off duty as soon as I found out about Randy Schoof. I think they were all planning on going over to his in-laws’ house. I’m sure it’ll help the girls, being with their parents.”
“Mmm. I have to remember to call tomorrow and ask if I can do anything.”
“You mean today. It’s Sunday.”
“Is it?”
“Has been for two hours.”
She wrapped his dinner jacket, which she hadn’t taken off yet, more tightly around her. She liked the smell of it. “Now you’re fifty years and one day old.”
“I’ve decided I’m not going to have another birthday until I turn sixty. Maybe by then the town will have recovered from this one.”
“I wonder what you’ll be like when you’re sixty?”
“A geezer, just like everybody else.”
She grinned into the darkness. “Nah. I bet you’ll be all dashing and sexy, like John Glenn.”
“John Glenn? The astronaut? You think he’s sexy?”
“Yep.”
“You have some serious father issues you’re working out, don’t you?”
She laughed.
“Clare?”
Something in his voice made her laughter die away. “Yeah?”
“I decided something tonight.”
She took a breath. “What?”
“I’ve decided to tell Linda. About us. About my feelings for you.”
“I can’t be dishonest with her anymore. She’s been beside me every step of the way for the last twenty-five years, and now I’ve walked so far afield we can’t even find one another with a map. I need to do something about it. I’ve decided to start by being truthful.”
“What do you think her reaction is going to be?”
He laughed briefly. “Damned if I know. Somewhere between shooting me and giving me her blessing, I think.”
“What if she asks you to cut off all contact with me? That wouldn’t be unreasonable, you know. A lot of marriage counselors would probably recommend it.” She forced herself to consider, dispassionately, what might be best for Russ. “Maybe it would be better.”
He looked at her in the darkness. “It wouldn’t be better. It would kill me. The thing about all this is, Linda loves me. I don’t think she’d ask me to do something that will”-he searched for the right word-“eviscerate me.”
She reached for his hand. He interlaced his fingers with hers.
“C’mon,” he said. “Time to get you into bed.”
She laughed. He paused, not getting it for a second, and then groaned. She opened the door, leaving the keys in for him. He held out his hand, and she went around the side of the car and caught it, interlacing her fingers in his again.
“Look at that moon,” he said.
She looked to where it was riding, halfway to the horizon.
“We had dinner,” he said, “but we never danced.”
“Nobody danced. The bandstand blew up and the instruments melted.”
He tugged her off the driveway and onto the front lawn. The frost on the grass was pure silver in the moonlight. She could feel it, chilling her feet.
“Dance with me,” he said.
“You’re moonstruck,” she said.
He placed one hand at the small of her back and took the other in a proper dancing position. “No, I’m not. I’m alive, and you’re alive, and we don’t know where we’ll be twenty-four hours from now. So let’s dance while we can.”
He began singing a melancholy, wordless tune.
She chimed in, her alto humming above his baritone, the sleeves of his dinner jacket falling over her hands, and they danced, beneath the November moon, to sad, sweet music they made themselves.
Julia Spencer-Fleming
