“It just came to me, when you were telling me about your friend.”
“You mean, the thought?”
“Yes. A fragment of … recollection.” The Colonel raised two fingers to the bridge of his nose and closed his eyes. “I think it’s vaguely possible that … that I didn’t …
I made a speed-it-up gesture with my hand.
“… that I didn’t come here by myself,” he finished.
I felt as if someone had hit me in the solar plexus. The wind left my lungs with a rush. “Please don’t tell me there are two of you,” I whimpered.
The Colonel opened his eyes. “Oh, there’s only one of me. But someone else may have … might have come along. Perhaps.”
Given his profession, that raised an immediate question.
“Good guy or bad guy?” I asked sharply.
“Excuse me?”
“Friend or foe?”
The Colonel turned away and gazed out the window in the direction of the shed. After a long moment he turned around and looked at me. I stared back, noting (in spite of myself) the fathomless blue of his eyes.
“Well?” I said impatiently.
“I don’t have a clue,” he told me finally.
Maybe not. But I sure did.
“Enemy,” I said.
Chapter 10
In a heartbeat, all my plans changed. We couldn’t stay here. We had to get out, and the sooner the better.
I snatched up the phone, blew into the receiver and discovered it still worked. Then I called Mary Stein to whom I hurriedly explained that a sudden emergency had called me out of town. Yes, please keep the file open and ready for signatures. Yes, I would call her when I got back to town, but no, I didn’t know when that would be. Then I gave her my phone number. Not the one in Virginia, but the one at Lila’s cottage on the Outer Banks of North Carolina, just up the road from Cape Hatteras.
I hung up the phone and debated what to tell Lila.
“Why an enemy?” the Colonel asked quietly, breaking into my thoughts.
“You mean your travelling companion? Because a friend would have looked for you. And since you haven’t gone anywhere, he would have found you by now.”
“An enemy would have searched me out even more vigorously,” he argued.
I shook my head. “His priorities would change rapidly. He’d be disoriented, even frightened. Chasing you around would be the last thing on his mind. Friendship, on the other hand, concern for you, would trump all that.”
We were silent for a minute while the Colonel thought about this.
“You have a point,” he said finally. “The Pike alone would be terrifying, and without you with him to … interpret … explain—”
“He’d try to hide somewhere while he figured out what happened to him,” I said.
The Colonel nodded. “It’s highly likely that he’s been watching us all this while.”
The thought was downright chilling. It wasn’t like I could call 911 and have the police take care of everything. I had gone too far down a solitary road. I was on my own and I knew it.
“And I’ve been trying to remember,” he went on. “I’ve been disturbed by how much I can’t recall, but — when I tumbled out on your side, I tumbled out alone. If someone fell with me, he arrived before or after I did.”
“You were clearly alone when I found you,” I confirmed. “And I’m sure no one came before you did. I was in the garden for several minutes before I decided to get that rake. I would have seen someone come out of that shed.”
“It’s a wide stretch of lawn, Mrs. Finlay. And if you were inspecting the garden, I expect your back was to the shed a good part of the time.”
“But the latch is stiff,” I pointed out. “Anyone trying to get out of that shed would have had to rattle the latch and I would have heard.”
“That’s true,” he said, sounding surprised. “I heard it, too, as you were coming in. I remember that. And when I went back last night to search, I noticed that the hinges squeak as well.”
“Exactly. So no one slipped out while I was poking around the garden.” (Maybe, I prayed, there was no one at all.)
“Which means he arrived — if he arrived — after I did. While we were in the house or out on the Pike. Assuming,” he qualified (a bit hesitantly, I thought), “there is a he.”
I looked at the phone. I thought of Lila. “Tell me again what you think you remember,” I said.
“I shifted.” He thought for a minute. “Or maybe I flinched or … jerked. The stone I sat on wobbled, just as I told you earlier. I fell.” He thought again. “I didn’t see anything, but I think I … felt something.”
“Something?”
“I have a sense of being clutched at as I fell. But something inanimate would not clutch. So … someone. Perhaps.”
“You weren’t pushed?” I asked hopefully. The idea was appealing since the pusher quite probably remained on the other side. But the Colonel quashed that idea.
“No. A weight falling against me, with me. All in an instant, like a fragment of a dream.” He looked at me.
It was all so vague, I thought. Ephemeral. I wanted to discount it, and I sensed he wanted to as well. But we couldn’t.
And then I realized something else. Wherever we went from here, we’d have to go alone. If someone was lurking in the shadows, if there was any chance someone might follow us, then I couldn’t take the children with me.
*****
I dialed the phone and listened to the distant ring, my foot tapping nervously, my mind conjuring up excuses for not having called the night before. Fortunately, however, I was spared the trouble of this particular lie.
“Kathy Lee!” Lila exclaimed as soon as she heard my voice. “You must have been worried sick! We had a terrible storm. The power was out all night and the phone came back on just this very minute.”
Aha, I thought. “Well, I was worried,” I said to her. This was true, although for entirely different reasons. “I tried to call Julie, too (lie number one), but the line rang and rang and —”
“Didn’t you hear about it on the news?”
“Hear about what?”
“The storm.”
“It wouldn’t be on the news, Mother. Not up here.”
“It was a big storm,” she persisted, before veering off to score her real point: “Don’t you ever turn on TV up there, Kathy Lee? The radio or something? I just worry that you’re … isolating yourself. And without the children and all, it … well, it must be … gloomy.”
She was just itching to say melancholy.
“Mother, you never watch television at all, not even—”
“I watch the news.”
“60 Minutes on Sunday. Philadelphia could fall off the map, a hydrogen bomb could fall on Center Square, and you wouldn’t know it unless Byron Pitts mentioned it on 60 Minutes.”
“I just worry about you all alone up there—”
“I know, Mother, I know you do, but—”
“And if you had the TV on, you would have known about this storm and you wouldn’t have been worried about us—”
“And if you had a cell phone,” I interjected tartly, “you could have called me even with the power out.”
Quickly, before Lila could launch an argument, I switched the subject. “Are the children there?” I asked weakly, leaning my forehead against the wall. “Can I talk to them?”
Of course, the children were there. I had heard them bouncing in the background waiting for a chance to speak for the last several minutes. As Lila prepared to hand over the phone there was an brief squabble to see who’d get to talk first — a battle which (predictably) Blythe won. Then I heard the line click as Sammy picked up the extension in the hall.
The source of all this competition was who got first crack at telling me about last night’s adventure in the storm.
“We had candles in the dark!” Blythe exclaimed.
“Like in olden days,” Sammy told me.
“And c
ookies for dinner!”
“Cause the stove wouldn’t work.”
“And we slept on the porch!” Blythe chirped on. “In a pillow nest, like baby birds!”
“Like when you were little,” Sammy reminded me gently. “Lalla told us.”
I stilled at the unexpected memory.
“Mommy?”
“Yes, Sweetie,” I said. “I remember. When it was hot…” I broke off. We had air-conditioners, small units in the bedroom windows. We didn’t need to sleep on the porch. But we had because…
“It was fun,” I went on. “Sleeping on the porch was fun. You could hear the crickets and owls.” And smell the mock orange, I recalled in a sudden rush of memory. And hear the lap of the river and the rumble of thunder and the leaves of the trees tossing in a cooling gust of wind. It came to me then, and I wondered why I hadn’t seen it before: between spells and husbands and visits to the fruit farm, Lila wove magic into my childhood.
“So!” Lila said brightly, having wrestled the phone away from the children. “How are things going?”
She meant was I doing something sensible about the house, of course. So I told her quickly about Mary Stein.
“I cannot tell you how pleased I am,” she replied, audibly relieved. “This will be such a good thing for you.”
“I think so, too,” I said honestly, and then followed it up with lie number two: “While they’re showing the house and all,” which of course they weren’t, not yet, “I thought I’d go down to the cottage.” (This part, at least, was true.)
Lila paused. “The cottage? You’re not coming home?”
Something caught in my chest. I wanted to go home. I wanted my children. I even, at this moment, wanted my mother.
But I couldn’t go home, and I knew it.
“I’ve got…” I broke off and tried again. “There’s so much to do. A pile of things — papers and stuff, you know, and—”
“You don’t mean,” Lila interrupted, “that you intend to drive straight down there?”
“Well, actually, I thought I would. Would it be okay? I’ve been, I don’t know, so strung out over everything. This weekend has been just awful…” (Technically, at least, another truth.)
“I expect it has, putting the house up for sale and all. But that’s such a huge drive from Pennsylvania. It’ll be midnight before you get there. Are you sure you don’t want to spend the night here at least? I just worry so much, Sweetheart.”
I knew she did, and I felt rotten. “To tell the truth” — now there’s a novel idea — “it’s probably better if I just go straight through. If I spent the night I wouldn’t sleep and I’d be even more tired in the morning and then I wouldn’t want to leave the children but I know I need some down time by myself…” I caught my breath, then added: “I’m just so rattled by everything.” Rattled was one of Lila’s words. She would understand rattled. “So it’ll be easier to make the drive while I’m fresh and alert, instead of spreading it out over two days.”
“Well, you have a point, I guess. Will you call me when you get there?”
“Of course. I promise.” (The truth.) “I’ll call you from the car.”
“Not the cell, Sugar.”
“Then I’ll call from a pay phone.”
“One in a bright, well-lighted place.”
“Hemingway,” I said.
“His line was ‘a clean, well-lighted place.’ Which would do as well, actually.”
I smiled. “Is it really okay that the children stay with you?”
“Of course it is, Honey. Don’t even worry about it. I owe Phillip Olson lunch, but I’m not sure he’s in town this week. Besides, I can do that any time, you know.”
Phillip Olson, you may recall, is my mother’s occasional luncheon date. He’s an accomplished painter and Lila’s known him forever. She might find him attractive and talented but I think Henry is right: Phillip’s main drawing card is a tract of land he owns, 75 acres which, nearly a century ago, belonged to River House. Lila (you can bet) intends to buy it back.
I hesitated. “Are you sure? I know you enjoy seeing him.”
“Positive. And besides, we’re having such a good time, aren’t we, Sweeties?” In the background I could hear the children’s cheerful, assenting little voices. As long as Lila thought the house was on the market, I’d be in her good graces. It meant I could stay “rattled” half the summer, and Lila would happily mind the kids while I allegedly recuperated at the beach.
I skirted around several more out-right lies, feeling guilty and miserable, and finally hung up the phone. When I looked around, the Colonel was nowhere to be found. Swell, I thought, and began hunting for him through the house and then outside. I finally found him inside the garage, sword in hand, slipping stealthy along the wall toward a storage closet.
“What on earth are you doing?” I queried, my voice echoing cleanly off the walls.
The Colonel gave me an exasperated glance and motioned me away. Instead, I slipped up beside him.
“Well?” I whispered.
He nodded his head toward the closet. Finally, I got it. I watched as he moved silently down the wall and then, in a swift and seamless move, kicked open the closet door, his sword thrust out in front of him.
For an instant I held my breath. And then I saw his shoulders relax and the tip of his sword dip slightly.
“No one home?”
He turned and shrugged. “While you were arguing with your mother I did some reconnoitering.”
I waited expectantly.
“Nothing,” he said wearily. “No sign of anyone. Perhaps I dreamed it after all.”
I had a feeling that he wasn’t telling me everything.
“I thought I heard something, like a muffled thump,” he went on slowly. “I was checking the shrubbery on the far side of the drive. There’s quite a little thicket there.”
I waited.
“The sound seemed to come from the carriage house.”
“Garage.”
“When I circled the building I noticed those locust trees in back. There’s a bit of a breeze. I think I heard a branch rub against the wall.” He paused. “Clearly, there’s no one inside.”
I turned on my heel and marched quickly toward the house. The Colonel caught up to me at the porch steps and took my arm. “I saw no sign of anyone,” he repeated.
“I don’t care,” I told him. “We’re not staying here a minute longer.” I charged into the kitchen and up the back stairs to the bedrooms where I began throwing stuff into suitcases. Then I dashed through the house methodically and rapidly, turning off lights, checking faucets, locking windows and doors. When I finished I found the Colonel in the living room thoughtfully disassembling a small lamp.
“Let’s go,” I said hurriedly, pulling the lamp from his hands.
“Where?”
“Avon.”
“The River Avon? Stratford-upon-Avon? Avon in Wiltshire?”
“Avon in North Carolina.”
He lifted his hand slightly, avoiding my gaze, and studied his fingers. “Would it be necessary for you to leave if I weren’t here?” he asked.
“No, but you are here and quite possibly someone else as well—”
“I shall leave, then, and you shall stay. I can’t allow you to be run out of your own home, Mrs. Finlay. And if there is anyone else abroad, he will surely follow me and leave you be.”
“How reassuring.”
“It is not you he wants.”
“Where would you go?” I demanded.
“Does it matter?”
“It should matter to you,” I said.
“There are a number of houses about,” he said thoughtfully. “Some with a little property. I could pass myself off as an itinerant laborer, and work for food and a bed in a loft.” He shrugged. “I am a soldier, used to hardship far worse than that.”
“No one would hire you to so much as rake the leaves,” I snapped. “They’d need your social security number. They’d have to ob
tain an Employer Identification Number and pay your health insurance premiums and all sorts of stuff. Otherwise there’d be hell to pay if the President ever offered them an appointment to his cabinet—”
“I’m afraid you’re babbling, Mrs. Finlay. I have no idea what you—”
“It won’t work,” I said. “Trust me on this.”
“But you had no hand in any of this, Mrs. Finlay. It is not fair that you should have the burden of…”
His gaze caught mine and for a moment we looked at each other, neither of us saying anything. And then the Colonel cleared his throat.
“…that you should bear the burden of its cure,” he finished.
“Nor did you.”
“Pardon me?”
“Nor did you have a hand in this,” I said. “We were both just … innocent bystanders. So let’s get out of here.”
“Innocent bystanders,” he repeated slowly. “Yes, I suppose we were. Are. Still, you shouldn’t have to—”
“Now, I said, cutting him off. I had no idea if the Colonel came alone or if he was being followed, but I wasn’t going to wait around to see. I ushered him quickly out of the house and into the car where I showed him how to latch his seat belt. Then I backed the car out of the garage, got out to flip down the door, climbed back in and eased the Accord down the drive.
Escape was just within my reach.
Chapter 11
At the foot of the driveway, I turned on my left turn indicator.
The Colonel watched what I did with great interest. “You’re turning left?” he asked. I wasn’t sure how he knew that. The set of the steering wheel, perhaps, or else he saw the arrow blinking on the dash.
“Yes,” I said impatiently.
“Turn right instead.”
“What?” I looked at him.
“Turn right. I want to drive past the hedge again.”
We argued briefly. I absolutely did not want to retrace the Colonel’s route up and down Skippack Pike while someone might be lurking in the bushes at Uncle Bennet’s. There was no one to help us with this, no cavalry to save us. We needed to be gone.
Out of Time Page 7
