Silence

28

IT WAS ALREADY afternoon when Jack Till awoke. He kept his eyes closed and oriented himself. He knew he was in a hotel bed in Morro Bay. He had driven from King City into Morro Bay in the night and found a hotel on a low ridge above the harbor. The hotel was big enough to have a night clerk on duty who was capable of finding a vacancy for a pair of tired travelers, particularly a pair who were willing to pay summer rates for an expensive set of adjoining rooms for a minimum of three days. He had gone back outside to park their new rental car among the others in the back of the hotel where it would not be seen from the street. This time he had chosen a blue Buick Park Avenue that didn’t resemble the cars he had driven before. Moving the car gave him a chance to circle the lot and sweep the surrounding area with his headlights to search for parked vehicles that still had people in them.

When he had returned to his room, he had found Ann Donnelly placing a chair to hold the door between the two rooms open. She said, “Whatever else happens, I don’t want to die and have you not know about it.”

“We’ll be okay. We’re pretty far from where they lost us.” Till had locked and chained his door and hers, then moved a chair in front of each to give him an extra second or two if the door opened. She sat on her bed and watched his preparations without revealing anything, but she did not seem especially comforted. He put his pistol in its holster on the bedside table. Then he turned off the light in his room before he undressed and got under the covers. For a time, he could hear Ann Donnelly moving around and see the flickering bluish glow of her television set on the white cottage cheese ceiling of her room.

Till closed his eyes and let the events of the day repeat themselves in his mind, from the time when he had reached Ann Donnelly’s house in San Rafael before noon, through the sight of the car’s headlights growing steadily in his rearview mirror and then the shots. He saw again the car veering to the left to try to pull up beside him, and remembered trying to block its movement and stay ahead. His body relived the feeling of speed, the sensation of rising in his seat whenever the car went over the top of a hill and started down, and his ears felt the shock of the bullet pounding through the rear window and spraying broken glass everywhere.

He had moved the car from side to side each time the car behind him moved, trying to anticipate the other driver’s intentions and block them without losing control. Then the shots had come again, some of them making an amplified bang because what he was hearing was the bullet punching through the steel of his car’s trunk.

Everything had happened so quickly that he had acted without deciding, not even contemplating the events until now, hours later, as he lay in bed. He remembered looking ahead at the windshield and seeing the bullet hole in it, the aura of powdered glass around it just above eye level and to the left, and knowing that the bullet must have missed his head by two inches. That sight had goaded him to act, and he had let the car fly off into the empty field because the road wasn’t working and the shots were too close.

“I can’t sleep in there.”

He opened his eyes and dimly saw the shape of her standing beside his bed. She was wearing a pair of pajama pants and an oversized T-shirt. “Why not?”

“Because today I lost my best friend, abandoned my children, my husband, my home, my name, and then got shot at and driven into a ravine.”

Till slid to the far side of the king bed and pulled back the covers to admit her. “Reason enough.”

She climbed in beside him and rested her head on the pillow. “I’m sorry. I’m not used to sleeping alone anymore.”

“You were married for three years?”

“Almost four.” She was quiet for a few seconds, and Till thought she was falling asleep, but she said, “That’s not a long time. It’s just long enough so you get used to the illusion that things will always be the same.”

“Never sleeping alone?”

“You don’t think you’ll ever have to lie in bed in a dark room at night alone. You will, of course. People go on business trips and things. Then you find yourself—by accident or on purpose—with your face in the other person’s pillow, smelling his smell.”

“So you loved him. When you were talking before it sounded as though you didn’t.”

“I don’t know. It’s hard to say what relationships are really about, other than not wanting to be alone. Mad, romantic love isn’t necessary. All you have to feel is that you’d rather be with that person and all his faults than be alone. And you don’t have to feel even that much all day, every day. You only have to feel it once each time you’re ready to file for divorce and put it off. If that’s what love is, then I loved Dennis.”

“That sounds pretty grim.”

“It’s not meant to be. I was in disguise, living as a person I wasn’t, remember? I knew the person I invented would be safer married than single. If your whole life is a lie, why draw the line at one more that will give you an extra layer of security? When a woman marries, not only does she get a bigger, stronger companion who will try to protect her, but she takes on his name, his whole history, whatever credit and credibility he’s built up, friends of his who will swear she’s legitimate. And I didn’t lie to Dennis. Everyone else in San Rafael, but not him.”

“Why did you think that he could protect you from the guys who were after you? Did you tell him what to look for, or describe them to him?”

“My disguise was being Mrs. Dennis Donnelly. It’s a lot easier to stay in character if you can find things to like. I knew Dennis loved me, and for a woman, that’s a bigger part of the equation than men know. I like him. I may regret that I married him, but I’m grateful to him. Now that’s over.”

Till had been asking for information about the killers, not her husband. Her answer surprised him. “You’re sure?”

“God, if I wasn’t before today, I would be now.”

“Because they found you?””

She turned toward him in bed. He could see her big eyes reflecting the faint light of the clock. “If I had been with Dennis when they found me, I would be dead tonight. I’m not, because I was with you. And he’s not dead, and the kids have their father.”

He glanced at the red numbers glowing on the nightstand. “It’s four-fifteen A.M. on your first night since you found out you were in trouble. For a while tonight, we were hanging by spit. Maybe you ought to put off thinking about the big things until you recover from that.”

“Maybe.”

“Good night.” He turned to face away from her, and closed his eyes. After a few seconds he felt her move closer to him, so she was touching his back.

“Jack?”

“Yeah?”

“Thanks for letting me sleep with you.”

“You’re welcome.” He lay in the bed staring into the darkness. Her voice had come from very close, almost the back of his neck, and he could feel that she was curled against him. Her touch, which she probably didn’t think he could even feel, was the biggest phenomenon in the room. He squeezed his eyes closed, forcing out thoughts of her, and let his tired, overactive mind rest, as it often did at night, on the thought of Holly sleeping peacefully in her room at Garden House.

It was no longer morning when his eyes opened. He sat up in the bed, and he realized he must have been hearing daytime sounds for hours, because when he heard someone walking along the hallway outside the door of his room, the sound was a continuation, not a beginning. He looked at the clock on the nightstand. The numbers said 2:20.

Ann was still asleep. He got out of the bed quietly, took his cell phone off the nightstand, and walked into her room, closed the door, and pushed the curtain open a few inches. The afternoon was bright, and people were walking below the hotel along the street to the harbor. Beyond the docks, restaurants, and shops, a few hundred yards out into the ocean, was the bulbous shape of Morro Rock, with tiny white birds circling above it and launching themselves from its peak to plummet a couple hundred feet toward the water. He wondered what it would be like to live here, where there was a single feature, a shape that dwarfed everything and seemed to be everywhere he looked. He supposed that people must become experts on the way it looked at different times of day and in different weather.

Till opened his cell phone and dialed. After a moment he heard, “Hello?”

“Hi, sweetie.”

“Hi, Dad. Checking up on me?”

“I guess so. I hope you don’t mind.”

“Not me. Where are you?”

He sighed. “I’m in a hotel.”

“By yourself?”

“Checking up on me?”

“I guess so. Do you mind?”

“Not me. I’m alone at the moment. I was missing you, and I wanted to hear your voice and I wanted to tell you I love you. So here I am. I love you.”

“I love you, too. Do you know when you’re coming home yet?”

“It should be in a few days. Things are going pretty much as I expected, so I’m hoping I’ll be there in time for the weekend. But I’ll call and let you know.”

“Good.”

“Holly, do you remember what I said about this job the day I left?”

“I don’t know.”

“I said it was a job where people were going to know who I was. Remember?”

“Oh, yeah. That.”

“I really hope you’ve been doing what I said.”

“I have. The only places I’ve been are work and home. I stopped wearing my name tag at the store. I’ve been wearing one that used to belong to a girl who quit. The tag says ‘Louise.’” She laughed. “Everybody keeps calling me Louise.”

“Have you been keeping your eyes open?”

“Yes. No strange men, no cars parked at work or at home. Bobby and Marie and I go to work together and come home together. If I wake up at night, I check to see if something woke me up.”

“That’s good. Don’t stop watching.”

“Hey, you know what? Mrs. Fournier is waiting for me. We’re going to pick up some paint for the walls in the back part of the store, and I can’t keep her waiting for too long.”

“Oh, sorry. You’d better get going, then. Nice to talk to you.”

“It was. And Dad?”

“What?”

“Don’t worry so much. Everybody here looks out for me.”

“Good. Go back to work. Love you.”

“’Bye.”

Till hung up and sat in Ann Donnelly’s room, staring out the narrow gap in the curtain at the ocean. During his career as a cop, he had guarded against situations where Holly might be in danger. Right now he probably had even less to worry about. Holly hadn’t lived with him in three years, and the phone at Garden House wasn’t in her name. He had sold his house when he’d retired.

Till was accustomed to living with a constant low-level anxiety about Holly. Letting her out of his sight was an act of trust and confidence that he had not felt when she was four, and did not feel now. Every time he turned his back on her, his mind was crowded with images of Holly being careless or confused or victimized.

“Good morning.”

He turned and saw Ann Donnelly standing in the doorway between the rooms. “Hi.” He felt an unexpected hollow in his stomach, a feeling that he might have let something precious and important slip away. He told himself that it would have been out of place and unethical to make some romantic overture to her last night, but now he could not help feeling a terrible suspicion that she had been telling him to try. She looked appealing, squinting in the beam of sunlight from the open curtain, running her long, thin fingers through her light hair, trying to search for tangles that weren’t there.

“Did you just wake up, too?”

“Yes.” He looked out the window again. “I was just checking to be sure nobody was standing on the rock watching our room with a pair of binoculars or something.”

She stepped close to him, her body touching his as she opened the curtain a few more inches. “Holy shit. I didn’t see it last night.” She laughed. “I can’t believe I actually didn’t notice that huge thing.”

He shrugged. “It was dark. I drove straight into town from the inland side.”

She stretched her arms, brought them forward and bent her back and then arched like a cat. He felt the hollow in his stomach deepening into regret, and looked away. She seemed to see his unhappiness. Did she guess what he was thinking? He said, “Let’s get showered and dressed. We can find a place for—what time is it? Lunch, I guess it would be.”

“Great. I’m starving.”

He went back to his room and closed the connecting door behind him, but before he was two steps from it, the door opened again. She looked at him apologetically. “I’m sorry, Jack, but would you mind if we still left it open? Having it closed gives me the creeps.”

“No, not at all.” Of course she was afraid—not stupidly afraid of shadows, but realistically afraid of genuine danger—and she thought he had the remedy, or maybe was the remedy.

But fear was not affection.