The Man, The Moon And The Marriage Vow

by Christine Rimmer

  At last, he could retreat to his studio. He could lie down on the couch.

  And maybe, just maybe, he could be with Evie in his dreams.

  The week crawled past.

  On Tuesday, Jack took the keys to Wishbook from Erik. He spent several hours in the store alone, going over every inch of the place. He found nothing useful at all, though he did formulate a theory of the motions Gideon might have gone through, had he really kidnapped Evie Saturday afternoon.

  Jack proposed that Gideon had parked his vehicle on Rambling Lane, across that overgrown field from Main and the back of Evie’s store. He’d gone in the rear door, overpowered Evie and rendered her unconscious. He’d stopped to turn the Open sign around, lock the front door and take her purse, so it would look as if she’d left on her own steam. Then he’d carried her out the back way, flipping the light switch at the back door—which would have turned off the hall lights but not the ones inside the store. No doubt, he’d decided time was too precious to go back and take care of those lights. He’d left them burning, as he’d left the back open, unwilling, probably, to fumble around trying to lock it with an unconscious woman slung over his shoulder. Luck had been with him, enough that he’d made it across the field carrying Evie and stowed her safely in his vehicle without anyone seeing him.

  Coincidentally, Angie Leslie called Jack at the station late that afternoon. She said she had noticed a black van she’d never seen before, parked over on Rambling Lane last Saturday. Jack went to Angie’s place, where he interviewed her in-depth as to what she’d seen. But all she remembered was that the van had been there. She’d seen no one get in or out of it and she’d paid no attention at all to the license plate.

  So Jack’s theory reached a dead end right there.

  Erik tried his best to keep going through the motions of living his life. On Wednesday, Pete had a soccer match in Nevada City. Erik took a little time off and the whole family went, with only Tawny staying at his place to watch the phone just in case. Pete played without much enthusiasm and his team lost.

  Thursday was Thanksgiving. Erik went to dinner at his mother’s. Darla outdid herself with a huge turkey and enough side dishes to make the table legs wobble supporting their weight. When they all bowed their heads to say grace, Erik found it damn hard to drum up any thankfulness.

  Each night, Erik retreated to his studio a little earlier. He made no pretense of painting anything in there. He stretched out on the couch and looked at the painting of the mountain meadow and waited for sleep.

  Friday night, after Nellie put the kids to bed, he and his former mother-in-law sat at the kitchen table over twin cups of hot chocolate, something that had become a sort of nightly ritual with them the past few days. Erik was counting the minutes, thinking that very soon Nellie would go home and he could go up to the studio.

  But then someone pounded on the front door.

  “Who’s that?” Nellie asked.

  Erik shrugged.

  “I’ll see.” Nellie stood.

  Erik watched her leave the room. Outside, the wind was up. He listened to it whooshing around under the eaves, making the panes rattle in the windows, as he waited without much interest for Nellie to find out who was there.

  After a few minutes, when she didn’t return, he decided he’d probably better see what was going on.

  He found Nellie at the front door, blocking Oggie Jones from entering the house.

  “I gotta see him, woman. Now,” Oggie said.

  Nellie stood firm. “Ogden, I asked you why.”

  “It ain’t none of your business.”

  “The man is very tired. You know the kind of stress he’s been under. And yet you refuse, as you always do, to explain what you’re up to. And as long as you refuse to explain, I see no reason why poor Erik should have to converse with the likes of you in the middle of the night.”

  Oggie caught sight of Erik. “It’s freezin’ out here, boy. Tell this old bat to let me in.”

  Nellie puffed up her flat chest. “Well, I never…”

  “It’s all right, Nellie,” Erik said gently. “I’ll talk to him. Let him in.”

  Disapproval evident in every line of her gaunt form, Nellie stepped aside. Oggie stumped in on his cane and Nellie shut the door, closing out the biting wind.

  Erik said, “Thanks for everything, Nellie. Why don’t you go ahead and go home now?”

  Nellie looked as if she’d just sucked a lemon. “Very well. If that’s your wish.” She softened a little. “I’ll see you tomorrow.”

  “I’d appreciate that.”

  The two men waited as Nellie put on her coat and hat and went out into the blustery cold.

  Once she was gone, Erik said, “Let’s go upstairs, to my studio. We can talk there.”

  Upstairs, Oggie took the couch as he had that other time, when he and Jack were there. “This won’t take long,” he declared in a bleak voice.

  “Okay. What can I do for you?”

  Oggie grunted. “For me? That ain’t the question. The question is, what can you do for Evie, gone missin’ nigh on a week now.”

  Erik had started to sit, but instead he drew himself stiffly erect. “What are you getting at?”

  “You know I was the one who talked Evie into stayin’ put?”

  “No, I—”

  “I got that postcard from Giddy and I went and showed it to her. And then I told her that here, she would be safe. Here, she’d have her people all around her. And that it was time she learned that an old man like Giddy had no power over her that she didn’t give him of her own free will.”

  “So? You were wrong.”

  “Yeah.” There was bottomless self-disgust in the old man’s voice. “In the end, her people didn’t protect her. We didn’t protect her. And I’m gonna live with that knowledge for the rest of my days.”

  Erik didn’t know what to say. “Look, I—”

  Oggie threw up a hand. “Wait. Let me say my piece here.”

  “All right.”

  “I’m gonna talk from my heart. And I’m sorry if it hurts you to hear what I got to say.”

  “Say it.”

  “I got me a hunch, a strong, awful feelin’, that if we don’t find Evie soon, we ain’t never gonna see her alive again.”

  Erik stared at the old man. What he’d said was only what Erik himself secretly feared. But to hear it out loud that way stole the breath from his body.

  Oggie tapped his cane on the floor. “Time’s wastin’, boy.”

  Erik found his voice. “I know that.”

  “And you done gone numb on us.”

  Erik frowned, not quite following.

  Oggie elaborated. “You gotta face what you can do about this here situation.”

  “What can I do?”

  “I don’t know. Only you know.”

  “You’re talking in riddles.”

  “I’m talkin’ as clear as I know how, about somethin’ no one can explain.”

  Erik turned from Oggie then, and found himself staring at the painting of the high mountain meadow.

  “Evie ain’t Carolyn, boy,” Oggie said from behind him.

  The words struck a chord deep inside Erik. He turned on the old man. “What the hell are you talking about?”

  Oggie didn’t flinch. His beady eyes met Erik’s eyes, straight and true.

  “Carolyn got lost, lost inside her mind,” Oggie said. “And maybe she never found a way to really get back to you before she died. Maybe you feel that she abandoned you. But Evie is different than that. Stronger. More determined. She didn’t go away. She was taken. And I personally believe that there was more to all those people she found in the old days than a bag of con artist’s tricks.”

  “So?”

  “So I believe Evie’s got somethin’. Somethin’ special. And I believe if you love her enough, you can reach out to that somethin’ and bring her home safe.”

  Erik stared at the old man, torn between desperate belief and absolute denial. The
n he sank to the stool and stared at the floor between his shoes. The logical, down-to-earth part of him completely rejected what Oggie said. His rational mind told him that the old man was babbling, at his wit’s end from worry over Evie.

  But a deeper part of him, the heart of him, wasn’t so sure. He looked up. “What do I have to do?”

  Oggie stood once more and leaned on his cane. “I believe you know. Just follow your heart, boy. Just follow your heart. That’s all I gotta say. I can see myself out.”

  Feeling lost and a little bit dazed, Erik trailed the old man to the door anyway. Then he returned to his studio and sat for a time, staring at the painting of the high mountain meadow.

  Soon enough, he rose and took the painting from the easel, replacing it with a blank canvas. Then he went to his worktable and got a pallet and a clean brush.

  He stood before the easel for a long time, but nothing came to him. So he set down the pallet and lay on the couch.

  Erik woke at dawn, his eyes turning immediately to the canvas he’d set up last night in place of the mountain meadow. It was just as he’d left it. Blank.

  He felt like a fool. He didn’t know what he’d expected.

  He went to his bathroom and showered and changed. Then he headed downstairs to make coffee. Darla showed up soon after that. She cooked a big breakfast for everyone.

  It was Saturday, exactly a week since the day Evie had disappeared. Erik decided to take the day off. Yesterday, he’d finished the interior of the new town hall. He had another job lined up, painting Cathy Quail’s newly remodeled kitchen and bathrooms. But Cathy wasn’t expecting him to start until Monday, so that could wait until then.

  He spent the morning with the kids. Since the windy night had turned to rain overnight, they stayed indoors, playing Monopoly and computer games. He made the family’s lunch himself, slapping sandwiches together and heating up canned soup. Everyone looked relieved when they came to the table and saw he hadn’t attempted to cook anything more complicated.

  All morning, his mind had kept returning to what Oggie had said the night before. Right after lunch, he asked his mother if she’d mind if he went upstairs for a little nap.

  She shooed him off, just as if he were one of the kids, promising that she’d see to it he wasn’t disturbed for as long as he wanted to rest.

  He returned to his studio and the blank canvas that waited there. Again, he had no urge to paint anything. He felt that his mind was circling. Circling a certain impossible idea.

  He lay down on the couch. Outside, the rain beat against the panes, as it had done on the day he and Evie were married.

  He closed his eyes.

  Evie was ill. Far gone in it now.

  The dark place was alive with phantoms of her confused mind’s creating. She lay in a shadowland between dream and waking. Occasionally some small object would pick itself up from the bureau or the bed stand and hurl itself through the air.

  Telekinesis. Her psychic energy out of control.

  Her father, grown kinder now that she seemed to truly be fading from the world, came to her with more tenderness than she ever remembered receiving from him before.

  He bathed her hot face and begged her to come out of this, to do his will and all would be well. He talked of the old days, of all the incredible things she’d done then. And sometimes he would shake his head, mumble how she shouldn’t hold it against him, that once in a while he’d made her lie.

  “The lies were necessary, Evangeline. We had to tell them. We had to get what we could, while the money was there.”

  It seemed to her, as she listened to his disjointed babbling, that he had suffered guilt, too, for the deceptions he had orchestrated.

  He took to sitting in a chair at the foot of the narrow bed, just being there with her, bringing a magazine to study, or the piles of junk mail he received, which he would read through completely, as if each form letter were a special message from someone he loved.

  His sitting there was a vigil, really, and Evie knew it.

  Once in a while, she’d ask for water or a cool cloth against her skin. Gideon always gave them, tenderly. He dosed her with aspirin and cold remedies. But he wouldn’t go out and hunt down the antibiotics she really needed. In the end, he either refused to admit to himself how ill she was—or his fear of discovery was stronger than his desire to save her life.

  Evie forgave him. Who was she to judge him? And who could know the agonies he’d suffered in his life, who could say what had been done to him, to make him the lonely, twisted man he had become?

  And, also, within this darkness and suffering, there was great beauty. Sometimes, when her father left her alone, she would go to meet Erik, in the meadow with the mountains all around. Of course, she knew that she was only dreaming. But the dreams felt so real, so comforting.

  And ever since she’d told Erik the painful old truths of the way she’d once abused her gifts, they could touch in the dreams. He would hold her and love her among the wildflowers. And for a time, she would forget all the pain.

  Like now. She could see him right now.

  With a glad cry, Evie reached out her arms. “I’ve been waiting for you. Where have you been?”

  “Trying to get back to you.” Erik moved out of the swirling shadows, whole and real. He came down onto the tiny bed with her, and enfolded her in his strong arms.

  They kissed, a long, searching kiss. His skin felt cool and good, against her own fevered heat. His scent was a clean scent, his breath sweet with health.

  He smoothed back her lank hair. “Your eyes are burning. You’re like an oven, so dry, so hot.”

  “I know, I know. Hold me. Pretend you won’t have to let me go.”

  In answer, he cradled her closer. She nuzzled his chest, feeling cherished, loved as she had never been loved until he came into her life.

  She felt his lips in her hair. “So,” he whispered. “This is it, this dark place?”

  She burrowed her head against his shoulder. “Yes. I liked the meadow better.”

  “The meadow was a dream.”

  “Yes. But so is this. How are the children?”

  “They’re getting through it, somehow.”

  “Pete really loves the computer, huh?”

  “Yeah. Where are we, Evie?”

  “Huh?”

  “I said, where are we?”

  She pulled back a little and looked around, wondering if the dream had taken them to someplace she’d never seen before. But it hadn’t. She explained patiently, “We’re in the room where my father keeps me.”

  “No.” There was an urgency in his voice, now. “What state? What town?”

  She burrowed close to him again and shook her head against his chest. “He won’t tell me. I’ve asked a thousand times.”

  “Have you tried…looking into his mind?”

  She closed her eyes, a little ashamed to confess that she’d used the abilities she’d sworn never to use again, even in a desperate circumstance such as this one.

  Erik wouldn’t let it go. “Did you?”

  She sighed. “Yes, I did—at first, when I wasn’t so weak.”

  “And?”

  “I got nothing. It’s always been like that with him. A blank wall.”

  “But there must be something, some clue, something he’s said…”

  “There isn’t. I swear. If there had been, I’d remember.” At the thought of the total hopelessness of her situation, despair rolled through Evie, like a big black train through a dark tunnel, thundering, with frightening speed.

  She would never get back to them. Erik would suffer terribly. Losing Carolyn had nearly destroyed his belief in love. But then he’d met Evie, and he’d learned to love again. How would he bear it, to lose her, too?

  And the children. What of the children? Jenny and Becca, who were so glad she had married their dad. And Petey, just beginning to trust her. Little by little, one day at a time, Evie had been building faith with the children. And now that sh
e had disappeared, where would that faith go? How would they pick up the pieces, after first losing their mother—and then losing the woman who’d presumed to try to fill the void their mother had left?

  “Evie, you can’t give up,” Erik said.

  But she didn’t want to talk anymore. Words meant nothing now. She reached up with hungry arms. “Love me, Erik. Love me, now. This is all I have, these dreams of you…”

  “Evie…”

  She pressed her lips to his in a desperate caress.

  He froze for a moment, and she feared he would pull away. But then he groaned. His mouth went soft on hers. His big hands, so cool and good, caressed her.

  He laid her down on the wrinkled sheets and touched her everywhere, so she forgot the black walls that surrounded them, the illness that was taking her down to oblivion, the sad old man who kept her here—everything, all of it, except for Erik and his loving touch.

  He came into her, murmuring love words. She clutched him close. Together, they left that dark place. They soared among the stars.

  And when it was over, when they lay intertwined, he whispered, “Don’t give in, Evie. Don’t give up.”

  “Oh, Erik.” She tried to hide her head against his shoulder.

  He wouldn’t let her. He captured her face in his hands and made her look at him. “No. I mean it. We need you, Evie.”

  “But there’s nothing I can do now.”

  “Yes, there is. There has to be. Help me find the way to bring you back to me. The kids need you. I need you. More than I even know how to say.”

  She felt a single hot tear slide out of the corner of her eye. “I don’t know…” she strove to explain, though it hurt so much to talk of her shame “…if I deserve to live…”

  He brushed the tear away with a tender thumb. “No. Don’t say that. You’re brave. And good. Let the past go now. Forgive yourself.”

  “I don’t know…if I can.”

  “You can. You have to. You will.”

  He seemed so sure. She could almost believe him. Another tear fell. He kissed the place where it trailed down her cheek.