The Barbed-Wire Kiss (39 page)

“I’d love to. And I intend to. But if I were you, when I got back from that trip I’d think about relocating. For a while, at least.”

“I’ll keep that in mind.”

“Good. Because I never want to hear your name again, Harry. I don’t want to see it in a report on my desk or come across it in the transcript of a wiretap. I don’t want to read it in the paper. In fact, I don’t even want to see it in the phone book.”

She came in the back door, took a pack of cigarettes from the counter. She lit one, watched him.

“I get the message,” Harry said.

“Good. It’s time to say good-bye, Harry. Let’s not meet again.”

The phone clicked in his ear. He replaced the receiver.

“Who was that?” she said.

“A friend. I think.”

“Is everything okay?”

“Yeah.”

“Are you sure?”

“Surer than I’ve been of anything in a while.”

“Well,” she said, “I guess that’s something.”

“From where I’m standing,” he said, “it’s everything.”

The next morning, after breakfast, he stowed their suitcases in the back of the Explorer. They’d woken to the sounds of heavy equipment, and when he’d gone out onto the porch, he’d seen a pair of bulldozers plowing through the trees on the property across the road. Men in yellow hard hats stood around, hands on hips, watching what was going on. He could hear chain saws, the rumble of diesel engines.

When he was done loading the Explorer, he went into the backyard, walked out beneath the trees. The air was cool and sharp, and smelled of the woods. He sat on one of the table-size rocks alongside the creek. After a few minutes, she came outside, called his name. He waited, heard her come up behind him.

“There you are,” she said. “I was wondering where you’d gotten to.”

She sat beside him.

He picked up a pebble, tossed it into the water.

“I was wondering,” he said, “what comes next. After we get back.”

“We’ll worry about that then.”

Something moved beneath the surface of the creek, ripples trailing above it. A cloud shifted and sunlight flashed across the water, formed a rainbow pattern in the spray around the rocks.

“Hours of darkness,” he said.

“What?”

“I was thinking last night about that phrase. The hours of darkness. They’re just that, aren’t they? Hours. They end. Things move on.”

She reached over and caught the tips of his fingers, squeezed them.

“We should go,” she said.

He nodded. They stood, hand in hand, and began to walk back to the house.

At midnight, they were still on the road.