Death Qualified Part 40

He nearly ran across the room but then stopped again, this time shaking all over.

"Nell, I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I need you, Nell. I can't do this alone. Please...."

"Go home, Doc! Don't try to lean on me. Not now.

Can't you see that I'm barely able to stand up? If you try to lean on me I'll fall over and I may never be able to get up again. For G.o.d's sake, just go home!"

She did not follow him out to the little foyer, did not see him to the door, did not move again until she heard the door open and close, and the howling wind entered and died. Then she went to the door and turned the lock.

She went back to the living room and added wood to the fire and stood hugging her arms about herself. She wouldn't sleep yet, she knew, not with the wind screaming like a demented demon. She approached the computer that Travis had set up in the living room months ago, for all of them, they had said, but it was for Travis, and they both knew that. She touched the monitor, a cold sleek surface, and touched the box, and she found herself sinking into the chair before it, blinded by tears. For the first time she wept for Lucas, for herself, for her children.

When she finally left the computer to wash her face and make a cup of tea, she realized that as much as she hated Ruth Brandywine, and it was a fierce hatred, she was also indebted to her. Ruth Brandywine had restored Lucas to her in some way. She knew that when she was a child, her belief that her parents had abandoned her had been a normal reaction to their premature deaths; she had read enough to come to understand that as an adult, even though her child-self never accepted it. Then Lucas had abandoned her and her grandfather had died, and finally Doc had tossed her away; the feeling had become overwhelming that there was no one she could trust ever again.

"Lucas didn't stay away," she whispered to her mirror image in the bathroom. Her eyes were bloodshot and puffy, her nose red. She nodded at herself.

"He was kept away."

How many times had she told herself that since hearing Ruth Brandy wine's testimony? She couldn't say, but she would repeat it as many times as it took to make the belief sink in deep, to fill the void that Lucas had left in her so many years ago.

"See," Mike said at Frank's door, "they were saying on the news that there was a blizzard out here in the wilderness.

It's just raining in town, but I thought if you get s...o...b..und, it might be fun to be s...o...b..und with you, and fight off the wolves with their gleaming fangs and their bloodl.u.s.t-fired eyes. I'll distract them with the torch while you smack them with the shovel."

Barbara stared at him.

"You've gone stark raving mad.

How did you get so wet? Did you walk out?"

Frank took his jacket and held it at arm's length. He started for the closet with it but changed his direction to head for the kitchen. "I hope you thought to put some clothes in that bag," he said in a strangled voice, fighting the laughter that kept trying to erupt.

"Maybe you can wear something of mine," he said then, eyeing the gym bag that was dripping.

"You're the wettest human being I've seen in a long time."

"I walked the last mile," Mike said, still grinning.

"I.

would have called, but there's no phone once you get through Turner's Point, so I just left the car and started to walk." They followed her father through the hallway into the kitchen. Mike squished all the way.

"Shoes," Frank said.

Obediently Mike sat down and started to remove his shoes. He was wearing running shoes; they were sodden.

"Why did you leave the car? Did you wreck it?" Barbara demanded, standing with her hands on her hips, glaring at him.

"Ran out of gas."

"Good G.o.d!" she muttered.

"You still haven't fixed that gas gauge, have you?"

"Keep forgetting." He pulled off his socks; his toes were scarlet.

"Forgot to put gas in the can last time I filled up."

"Well," Frank said, surveying the rest of his clothes.

"Let's get you into a hot bath before you realize you're freezing. Come on, come on." He left; his shoulders were shaking. A little later Barbara put down her yellow pad and looked at Mike, who was watching her and had been for many minutes.

"Dad's gone off to bed in somewhat in decent haste," she said.

"You realize that, don't you?"

Mike was wearing one of her father's old terry robes and a pair of his slippers; he looked very comfortable in that room.

He nodded.

"I was thinking. You know what I really like about you?"

"My intellect."

"That, too."

"My raven, cascading hair; my eyes like pools of inviting, unplumbed depths; my gazelle like neck."

"I thought raven hair was black."

"It usually is; mine's different."

"All the above," he said.

"But that's not what I was thinking about."

"So tell me already."

"Your a.s.s," he said soberly.

"I never thought of myself as an a.s.s man, but there it is. I love your a.s.s."

She sputtered with laughter and stood up, holding out her hands to him. He rose and put his arms around her; his hands slid down her back to trace the curve of her b.u.t.tocks.

"Ah," he breathed.

"Ah, indeed," she murmured.

"Let's go to bed."

In the guest room that had already become his room they made love with pa.s.sion, but underlying it there was a quality of serene timelessness, as if they knew this act should not be rushed, and there was all the time in the universe awaiting them this night.

She would not go to sleep, she had told herself, a very long time ago, it seemed. But she fell asleep in his arms and came awake again at five in the morning. They were entwined, his arm over her, her leg over his. She eased away from his warmth with regret; it was time to get up, shower, have coffee, and go back to work.

When Prank came down, he found her at the computer typing furiously.

"Did you get any sleep?" he asked at the door.

"And do you want some breakfast?"

"Yes, some, and no, I already ate." She looked up at him without taking her hands from the keyboard. He studied her for a moment, then grinned widely and vanished again. She scowled at the vacated s.p.a.ce. Some father!

Where was the outrage? The shotgun? She began to grin, then reread her last words, and slowly her grin faded and she concentrated once more on the summation.

In midmorning Frank and Mike left to do something about his car and gas. Frank said he would drop in on Doc and Jessie, see if they had taken any storm damage. Barbara heard their words but paid little attention. She got stiff and sore from sitting too long and went out to the terrace to stand under the roofed section and gaze at the river, which was steel gray. The wind was pus.h.i.+ng it backward; the current was pus.h.i.+ng harder in its determination to reach the sea. The battleground was marked by white froth; wavelets dashed frantically, larger waves rolled and churned. The rain drove in horizontally, the cycle nearing completion as the sea storm returned the water the rivers had carried to it all year. The las.h.i.+ng, wind-driven rain drove her inside again, back to the computer, back to the printout that was nearly finished.

Another time she stopped reading to listen; her father was laughing in the kitchen. She tried to concentrate again but finally had to leave the desk and walk through the hall to stand outside the kitchen, where silence had settled.

Suddenly Frank said, "Listen up: A nameless young lawyer cried, "Sue!

It's the civilized course for you.

Don't fret about facts, My friend;'just relax!

By the way, my retainer is due. "

Barbara stifled her laughter as Mike said, "Oh, yeah?

Well, take this: A brilliant young mathematician Juggled sums like a maddened magician.

When the numbers went screwy, He simply said "Phooey."

And turned into a staid statistician."

Frank snorted.

"I don't get it." A dish rattled, a knife or something clattered. Then he said: A judge from the bar fraternity Heard trials that dealt with paternity.

He could tell at a glance Who had lowered his pants, And screwed with no thought for maternity.

Barbara fled back to the study, where she stood grinning.

Poor Dad, she thought then. How he had wanted a son. He never told her dirty jokes, and he cleaned up his language around her more than she did her own.

"Not my fault," she muttered, and began to do some stretching exercises. Let him adopt Mike. Never too late to make a family any way he could.

Late in the afternoon Nell called and asked if she could come by. She looked dreadful when she arrived, sleepless, pale, so tired her hands shook when she tried to unb.u.t.ton her jacket. The children had gone to play in the snow up at the Boy Scout camp, she said. It was a ritual that when it snowed up there for the first time in the season, and rained here, down five hundred feet, there would be a snow party. Friends had come by and picked up Carol and Travis.

"Can we talk?" she asked Barbara.

"Sure. Let's go to the study."

Nell glanced at Frank.

"Will you come, too?"

Belatedly, Mike looked embarra.s.sed. He said, "You guys go to the living room. There's something I wanted to do on the computer. If you don't mind, I mean."

They went to the living room, sat near the fire, and waited for Nell to begin. If Nell had noticed any change in Barbara, she was not showing a sign; she seemed so wrapped in gloom and unhappiness that she probably noticed nothing.

Finally Nell drew in a long breath and said, "I keep dreaming about Lucas up on the ledge. He's up there with my grandfather, talking and talking. In the dream, when I first go up to the ledge they don't see me, but then Grampa looks surprised and says, "It's about time, young lady."

" She had been gazing fixedly at the fire; now she looked at her hands, which were clutching each other in her lap. She drew them apart and flexed her fingers.

"Grampa is trying to tell me something," she said in a very low voice, nearly a whisper.

"I used to go up to the ledge with him when I was little, and I'd talk out a problem or something.

He never told me what to do, but I seemed to know what I should do after we talked. I don't know how he did that.

Then, after he died, I used to go up and pretend he was still back there, sitting on his log, and I talked to him. I told him about .. . things, and it was almost like before.

Somehow I could come to some sort of decision that I hadn't been able to make before. It sounds crazy, doesn't it?" She trailed off; her hands had gone back to clutching each other again.

There was silence in the room. Now and again the wind made the fire sputter, or it drove a puff of smoke back down the chimney. Little of the sound of the wind penetrated the house, but Barbara felt that Nell had brought the storm in with her, and that it was raging in her head.

She felt frozen by the icy winds that blew in her head. Finally Frank cleared his throat.

"Nell, what is it you think you should do?"

"Testily," she said in a whisper.

"Tell them I didn't kill Lucas."

The silence this time was deeper; no one moved. Barbara realized she was watching her father, not Nell, and she jerked her gaze away. Again, she was thinking bitterly.

Again.

"Nell," Frank said slowly.

"You know we've been over that. You can't do your case any good by taking the stand, but you sure can do it a lot of harm." He took off his gla.s.ses as he spoke and polished them, peered through the lenses, and put them back on to look at her over the rims.

When Nell remained silent, Barbara stood up.

"Wait a second," she said. The ice that had entered her was re leased in her voice, her manner. She hurried out and went to the dining room where she began to s.n.a.t.c.h papers away from the stacks that still covered the table. She found maps and drawings and carried them back to the living room. Her father was talking when she returned.

"We used to meet down at the store, or in the woods.

Chatted a bit. He was a good man, and shrewd. He knew a thing or two, he did. He wouldn't ever tell you to do anything that could hurt you in any way. Now you know that as well as I do."