Lone Creek

38

I awoke to the sound of a woman weeping. That had happened a number of times before in my life, almost always because she was wishing that one of us was someplace, or somebody, else.

Lord knew that Laurie Balcomb had plenty of cause for that.

It was still night. I couldn't tell how late. I knew I'd slept a while, and I sure could have kept on going. But her muffled sobs pierced me like little stabs. Whatever bond of kinship she might have felt had been safely abstract, but now it was shattered by the waffle-head hammer of reality. She was in a hell of a spot, and all because of me.

I crawled out of my sleeping bag into the near-freezing chill, hobbled to the van, and sat beside her feet again, trying to drag up words of reassurance that I didn't feel.

"I know you're scared," I started, but she cut me off.

"Of course I'm scared." She was curled up like a child, her face hidden by her hair. "Not of Wesley. I mean, I am, but that's not it." She shook her head. "I don't know how to explain. There's something happening to me. It's almost like a voice in my mind. Maybe I'm going crazy. But it seems so right."

I was still groggy, and this bewildered me. It wasn't at all what I'd expected.

"What does this voice say?" I said.

"That I'm not really who I always thought I was. Like I've been living in a dream that's pretty, but all for show, and I'm starting to wake up."

She pushed her hair aside and looked at me. Her face was a shadow, but her legs, pressed against me now, were warm.

"That you and I go way far back," she said.

"How do you mean?"

She turned away again. "Now you'll think I'm crazy. I started feeling it when I first saw you, months ago. It wouldn't leave me alone."

"Months ago? I thought you didn't know who I was until yesterday."

"I had to pretend. I couldn't just come out and tell you," she said impatiently.

"No, I guess I can see that."

"So I arranged for us to accidentally meet."

"You arranged it?"

"I knew your routine, knew you'd go get rid of that trash at the end of the day. So I went riding out there. I'd finally decided-this isn't a nice thing to say, but I thought if I got to know you a little, I'd see how silly it was."

"That would have worked pretty quick, all right. It's just your bad luck that all this other stuff happened instead."

But she shook her head again. "It's here right now, stronger than ever," she said quietly. "Not an 'it'-a 'she.'"

My scalp started to bristle.

Laurie rose up on one elbow and put her other hand on my arm. Her shoulders were bare.

"Do you know at all what I'm talking about?" she said, with a hint of pleading. "Or is it just me?"

I stared at her hidden eyes.

"What do you know about her?" I said.

"That she died young. That you were in love with her."

My rational mind told me this was insane, some kind of folie a deux. But that came about when two people developed it together-it didn't arise in them independently.

Then there was the fact that my whole world had gone insane.

"It's not just you," I said.

She sank down again, exhaling like she was letting out a breath that she'd held to the lung-bursting point.

"That's why I'm afraid," she whispered. "That I'm going to lose this as soon as I found it."

Her hand slipped down my arm into mine.

"She loved you, too, but she couldn't show it," Laurie said. "She wants to, now."

No doubt it was wrong, too, in all kinds of ways, but what the hell did right and wrong have to do with anything anymore?

The rest of Laurie was bare, too. I shut down my thoughts and let my hands dare to warm themselves on her silky skin.