Rachel Lee (21 page)

And the drugstore was probably closed, anyway. Everything was closed.

Besides, she reminded herself, reaching into the depths of her memory for the nurse she had once been, antidepressants took weeks to work.

Nothing she could get today would help Witt right now.

It was nearing suppertime, so she went to make him a bowl of soup and a sandwich. He wasn't going to like it very much. No mayonnaise on the turkey, only a little bit of mustard. A can of low-fat minestrone, when he preferred chowder.

Then, of course, there was the challenge of getting him to eat it. He didn't want to eat anymore, either.

For an instant, just an instant, Hannah felt a surge of frustration that nearly blinded her. Then she tamped it down, because it wasn't going to do her a lick of good, not her nor anyone else.

Since Witt seemed glued to his recliner, she opened a wooden TV table in front of him and laid out his soup and sandwich, along with a spoon and napkin. Then she went back to the kitchen to get him a glass of water. Later she would make a pot of tea; it was one of the few things he seemed willing to touch.

When she returned to the living room, he still hadn't moved a muscle.

The food sat untouched, and he continued to stare out the bay window at the swirling snow.

"Witt. You have to eat."

Finally a response. "I'm not hungry." "Too bad. Unless you want to be back in the hospital by nightfall, you have to eat."

"What's the point?"

She was so relieved to have him talking again that she considered finding some conciliatory answer. Then she decided to speak her mind.

"Oh, I don't know. How about that I've had enough of sitting in the hospital worrying about you? How about that you'll never get better if you don't start taking care of yourself?"

"I'm not going to get better."

"Not at this rate." She went to stand in front of the window, putting herself right in his line of sight. "Look. You had a relatively minor heart attack. You suffered some injury to the heart muscle, but not enough to get worried about. You can live another twenty or thirty years, so maybe you'd better decide if you want to spend them all in that chair. Or if you want your life back."

Once again he didn't answer. But he did sit up and look at his lunch.

"What the hell's that?" he asked, pointing at the soup.

"Minestrone." "You know I only like New England clam chowder."

"Too much fat."

He made a disgusted sound and settled back in his chair. "I'm not hungry."

"Eat the damn sandwich, Witt."

She walked out of the living room, her head high, her shoulders square, daring him to argue with her. A couple of minutes later she peered around the corner and saw he was eating the sandwich.

Thank God.

One hurdle down. For the moment. Of course, that could change in an instant. Returning to the kitchen, she put water on to boil for tea.

Maybe she needed to get a part-time nurse to help out with this.

Because she wasn't as young as she used to be. Because she was too emotionally close to Witt to brush off his depression and irritability easily. Because after only three days she was beginning to feel worn to a nub. Not so much physically as emotionally.

But she didn't want to do that. She ought to be able to care for him.

It wasn't as if he were running her in circles, or demanding constant critical care. He was just depressed and cranky. That shouldn't be too much to deal with.

And maybe she wouldn't have felt it was, except for her problems with Joni. Awful as it sounded, she felt Witt was a big impediment to her working them out. If he hadn't disowned her, maybe Joni would find it easier to accept the truth.

Even though the truth was awful. Hannah knew that and had been carrying a heavy, dark burden of guilt for twenty-six years. Ever since the one night of madness that had created Joni. Ever since she had faced the fact that she was no better than Lewis.

And she really wasn't. She might have succumbed only once, and Lewis might have done it multiple times, but that was only a matter of degree. She had been unfaithful to her husband, and, worse, she had been unfaithful with his brother.

That bitter knowledge had lain buried in her soul for nearly three decades, but it had never stopped hurting her. She supposed it had been hurting Witt, too, although they had never mentioned it, not even when they could have, freely, after they were both widowed.

Witt was an upright man. Sometimes wrongheaded, but very upright. He always made the choices that he believed to be correct, even if the rest of the world could see how wrong he was, as in the case of Joni.

It must have tried him sorely to remember he'd been unfaithful with his brother's wife.

Which was why neither of them had mentioned it. Which was why neither of them had pursued a closer relationship when they had been free to do so. She had no doubt that Witt would have thought of it as enjoying the fruits of his sin. And frankly, so did she. A little. Nothing changed the fact that at the time they had come together, they had been sinning against their marriages.

Then there was Joni. She sometimes wondered if Witt guessed that Joni was his. Probably not. Joni had kindly cooperated in the cove rap by being born several weeks early. And Witt had no reason to know that Hannah hadn't had sex with Lewis in over two months. Lewis had known that, of course, but he'd never said a word about Joni's surprising arrival. Never asked a question.

Maybe because he'd felt too damn guilty to do so. When she'd finally screwed up the nerve to tell him she was pregnant, he'd merely nodded and said, "Nice." He hadn't asked a single one of the questions she'd been dreading.

Probably because it set him free. Whatever, he'd been a good enough father to Joni, treating her with every bit as much love, attention and concern as if she'd sprung from his loins. He'd certainly been a far better father than he'd ever been a husband.

She supposed it was because he really liked children. Lewis had, at one time, talked about a big family. Then he'd seemed to become content with just Joni.

Hannah sometimes thought about that, and wondered whether, if she hadn't gotten pregnant with Joni, they could eventually have mended their marriage and had that big family.

She had no way of knowing now, because she still didn't know what had gone wrong in the first place. She didn't know if it was her fault, or his fault, or both their faults that he'd started playing around. It was easy to blame herself, though. She'd been doing that for a long, long time.

Now she had to wonder if she'd made another really big mistake by telling Joni the truth. The problem was, Joni was more flexible than Witt. Not by much, sometimes, but even a little was better than none.

Hannah was watching her family get torn apart by one man's hardheadedness and grief. Why shouldn't she use every weapon in her arsenal to keep either of them from doing something irrevocable?

She only wished she could tell Witt. But it was too dangerous. Yes, he was past the heart attack, but if she upset him, his blood pressure could go up, so for a while, at least, she had to keep him calm. Keep him away from major upsets.

And for the present that seemed to mean ignoring her daughter.

For the moment that made her almost hate Witt.

But she couldn't really hate him, much as she might want to. She could be angry with him. call him names and tell him he was a stubborn old cuss and she washed her hands of him--she'd done that a few times--but she couldn't really hate him. Nor could she abandon him.

She had to trust that Joni would work her way to a point that she was willing to talk to her mother again.

But looking at Joni's father, the dictionary definition of intractable, she began to wonder if her daughter had it in her.

* * *

"Saves us from having to watch the news," Hardy had said when it went out.

so she found some cheap motel stationery, wrote the alphabet on it and cut out all the letters.

"What are you doing?" Hardy finally asked.

"Making a Ouija board."

"You're kidding."

"No. It's crack brained I admit, but it's fun."

"Hmm."

She looked up from the round table that sat near the window. "Am I scaring you?"

"Hell no! I just think it's ridiculous."

"Of course it is. But it's still fun."

"I don't believe you can communicate with ghosts." But he was enjoying seeing her look almost happy. Well, maybe amused was a better word.

Happiness was beyond reach for the two of them at this time.

"Neither do I." She leaned back, her blue eyes sparkling in the lamplight. He could hear snow crystals beating on the window behind her. "But it's fun anyway. It's silly, it makes you laugh, and that's all it is."

He still felt uneasy. Maybe he was a little more superstitious than he thought. He glanced around, noting the antiseptic motel room, thinking it was hardly the place for a ghostly visitation, then asking himself why the hell such a thought was even crossing his mind. Because he never thought about things like that.

Still, Joni was smiling and looking content, humming quietly under her breath, the happiest he'd seen her in twelve years. If this was going to make her happy, even for an hour, he would bite the bullet and do it--superstitions aside.

The squares on which the letters were written were ragged, because she'd had to fold and tear the paper without scissors. But she laid them carefully out on the table in a circle, along with squares that said yes and no. Then she put an upended water glass in the middle.

"This is it?" he asked. Why was the back of his neck prickling?

"Yup."

It looked harmless enough.

"I know," she said, misreading his uncertainty. "This is a girls'

game. I promise I won't tell anybody you played it."

That put h|m on his mettle. "I'm not even thinking of that." "No?

Then why are you looking ready to bolt?"

He pulled out the chair and sat. "I'll play." "Great. The alternative seems to be sitting around trying to tell each other tall tales."

He had to laugh at that. "You mean the one about the spruce tree that grew so tall the top got burned off by the sun?" "Sounds like a combination of Icarus and Jack and the Beanstalk to me." "I confess.

So what do we do?"

"Just rest your fingers lightly on the glass, like this." She demonstrated. "They should barely be touching it. Not enough to create any pressure."

"Okay." He felt like a jerk siting there with his hands hovering over the glass. "Now what?"

"Ask a question. Anything."

Now he really felt foolish. Ask a question of the empty air? What kind of question? What did you ask an empty, upside-down water glass?

"Don't be shy."

He lifted his gaze to her face and found she was teasing him. "I'm not shy. But I am feeling totally ridiculous."

"That's part of the fun."

"Maybe in your book." He frowned at the glass and his fingertips, which were barely touching it. His fingertips, which were perilously near to brushing hers. Hmm.

"Okay," he said finally, deciding to be a man about it and just plunge in. "Will the storm stop?"

"That's a dumb question," Joni said. "Of course it's going to stop."

"I'm testing whether it works."

"Fair enough."

They waited. Nothing happened.

"Ask again," Joni prompted.

"Okay. Is the storm going to stop?"

Then the absolute weirdest thing happened. He felt almost as if there was a pressure on his hand, pushing it. And the glass zipped over to the yes square.

Joni laughed. "Did you feel it?"

"Uh..." He was reluctant to admit what he'd felt. "It's subconscious," he said. "Like when you're hypnotized. This is autohypnosis."

"Probably," she agreed, undeterred. "That's what I always figured.

It's still fun."

He wasn't so sure of that, but he decided he could do this a while longer just to keep her smiling. No . he could do this all night if she would just keep smiling.

He guessed that made him lame brained And he didn't care. "Okay, you ask," he said, unwilling to talk to the glass again.

She closed her eyes for a moment. "Will the storm stop tonight?"

The glass moved again, this time to no. And Joni giggled.

"Hey," said Hardy, trying to enter the spirit of the game. "Ask something better. Like, " Will we be able to get home tomorrow? "

After a few seconds the glass slid around the table, describing a big circle, and came back to the no.

"It's feeling contrary," Hardy said.

"It's probably true, anyway. We know the weather says the storm is slow moving. Let's try something we don't know."

He figured they would just get a lot of garbage.

Alphabet soup or nonsense words. "Do we stick to yes-or-no questions?"

She shook her head. "Anything at all. It just takes longer to spell out answers than to get the yes or no."

He figured they had plenty of time. It was only seven-thirty, and when you were snowbound, those evening hours could get long. "I'm not in any rush."

"So ask."

"Hmm." He had to think about that. It wasn't as if he had any burning questions--at least, none he would feel comfortable asking in front of Joni. "Well, okay. Who's going to get the contract for Wilt's hotel?"

Joni drew a sharp breath, as if the question surprised her. Or worried her. Not that it really mattered, Hardy thought a few moments later as the glass remained stubbornly still. He opened his mouth to make a humorous remark, but then the glass started sliding rapidly around, touching letters one after another. Joni had a pad beside her elbow, and after each letter, she wrote it on the paper.

THEBESTMAN.

The glass stopped moving.

"The best man," Joni read aloud.