A Charmed Place (26 page)

"We're s'posed to chase him away," the busboy said sullenly. "He bothers the cust—"

The sound of brakes and a shrill cry of pain brought the episode to a tragic close: they turned to see that the dog had been hit by a passing car.

Dan swore under his breath and ran out to the road with Maddie hard on his heels. The animal lay without moving, his head haloed in blood. His g
aze, still soulful, was glassy-
eyed. The driver of the car that struck him had pulled over and was rushing back, a look of horror on her face. Inside her car, Maddie saw two children.

"He ran out so fast
... oh, God
... I never saw him
... I hit the brakes, but
..." Tears were streaming down the young mother's face.

The busboy had been hanging back. Now he sprang to life and said, "I'll call the dogcatcher!"

He ran inside. Dan pitched Maddie his car keys and said, "Park my Jeep behind the dog and leave the blinkers on." Maddie ran to the lot to position the car. By the time she got it into place, the young man who'd fed the dog the french fries had come out with the dismal news that they'd got an answering machine and not the animal control officer.

"Oh, for—" Without looking up, Dan told the busboy, "Go find a storm window, plywood, anything." To Maddie he said, "Look up the nearest animal hospital; call and get directions."

By the time Maddie returned with the route scrawled on the back of a take-out menu, Dan had moved the injured animal onto a plywood stretcher and was loading it, with the help of the others, into his Jeep.

Maddie jumped into the front seat and divided her attention between the wounded animal behind her and the cryptic scrawl of her directions. "Oh, Dan, he doesn't look good," she said, dismayed. The dog's breathing was becoming more labored.

And yet the poor creature seemed to respond to her attempts at comfort, so she kept up a steady, soothing stream of endearments as Dan wove the Jeep through midday traffic until they arrived at the nondescript building that housed the animal clinic. Maddie ran in to warn the staff that Dan had the dog in his car, and an assistant came out to help them bring him inside.

The dog was taken into surgery at once; there was nothing now for Dan and Maddie to
do. She said rather timidly, "
Do you want to wait?"

"Definitely."

They went outside and sat on a stile fence at the edge of shade being thrown by a huge maple tree. After the burst of activity, waiting now seemed exhausting. Hungry now, and more tired than ever, Maddie watched absently as a sedan pulled slowly into the parking lot. A middle-aged woman climbed out, then coaxed a gray-muzzled, obviously failing setter out of the car and hooked a leash into its collar before walking it slowly to the entrance. It was clear that she cared deeply for her pet; the contrast between her dog and the neglected stray was painful to see.

Maddie's eyes stung with tears. She sighed and said softly to Dan, "You didn't have to take responsibility for the dog back there. But I love that you did."

Through the haze of her sadness, she heard his answer.

"I could relate to him, I guess," Dan said pensively. "Living on the occasional scrap of kindness—it's how I grew up."

She thought about that, and about love and loss and what might have been. After a long silence between them, she said, "Tell me about the fire, Dan. Tell me what really happened."

Her question had come out of the blue, but he didn't seem surprised by it. "Do you really not know?"

She said softly, "I know that the physics building was a converted mansion, and very flammable. I know that the sprinkler system wasn't up to code. I know that my father reentered the building to try to save his files. That he got trapped by the flames but managed to escape. And that he never had a clue afterward how he did it."

Dan took so long to answer that Maddie began to believe she would never learn the truth—the whole truth, anyway. But then, in a voice that sounded subdued and remote, he said, "I'm the one who came up with the plan to occupy the physics building. Understand that."

He looked away from her and fixed his gaze on a place she could not see.

"Some of the students wanted
Lowell
to reconsider the research it was doing with nuclear energy back then," he began. "They were sincere but disorganized. Hell, their grandparents were doing a better job of demonstrating against the risk of nuclear power than they were.
Hollywood
made a pretty good movie about it. And I—I, in my infinite wisdom, led the charge to take over a physics building."

"But it wasn't your idea to set the building on fire," she said. "It could never have been."

His laugh was bleak. "No, I can honestly say that the brilliance of that strategy never occurred to me. I still don't know who started it. I wasn't in the building at the time. I'd sneaked out the back to try to set up a meeting with the dean of students. He declined to see me, naturally. By the time I got back, the building was in flames."

"But
... that means the dean would've been able to exonerate you. Why didn't he?"

Dan shrugged and said dryly, "This is just a wild guess on my part, but I'll bet that by the time the hearings took place, he wasn't feeling all that charitable toward me."

"But still! That's not right!"

Now he turned and looked directly at her, and he was the one surprised. "Maddie, it wasn't right to lead a bunch of firebrands into a building without understanding the risk. I was older and smarter than they were. I should've assumed that one of them was going to run amok. I was the one playing with fire," he said bitterly.

Rebuked, she murmured, "I'm on your side, you know."

"I do know," he said, dropping down from the stile. "It's just that I have to live with it, and it's hard. Especially now."

"It could've been so much worse."

"Yes."

In the pause that followed, a
yellow swallowtail
fluttered past, an instant of joy in their moment of pain.

"You were in the building, weren't you," she said, somehow convinced of it.

"Yes. It's not as if I've forgotten it."

He sighed, and then he began the unburdening. "I
... went back into the building through a window, after I heard someone shout that people were still in it, one of them your father. I didn't think about the students. I didn't think about the protesters. I thought only of him. Because of you."

His voice was filled with self-loathing as he said, "Is it possible for someone to behave more selfishly than that?"

She had no answer for him, but let him go on, spilling his heart to the butterfly lifting and falling around them.

"I saw your father face down on the floor, not that far from an exit. He was unconscious. And then suddenly his shirt was on fire. I saw it catch—poof—like that
... as I was making my way through the smoke. I was driven back
... I had to drop down and crawl, to be able to breathe
... it slowed me down
... and his shirt
... his shirt, Maddie, it was burning. And then there was a crash—something fell on me, I don't know what
... heavy
... hot
... I rolled out from under it
... more time wasted
... it all went so slow, in slow motion. There was a chair in the hall with a loose cushion. I used it to put out the flames, but his shirt, by then it was
... and then I dragged him the rest of the way out. He'd almost made it
... so close
... on his own. The firefighters took him
... and then I ran. I ran. And I haven't stopped until now. Forgive me. God
... forgive me."

Overwhelmed with emotion, Maddie sat on the fence without moving, a mute witness to his intensely personal confession. It was not for her to forgive him, she knew. She thought of saying something, but nothing seemed adequate. A long moment passed. And then she saw a tear roll down his cheek.

She'd seen him angry and she'd seen him icy. But she'd never seen him cry.

She bowed her head to give him privacy and said in a whisper, "Can you forgive me for sending you away?"

He turned his dark, brooding gaze on her, and then he gathered her to him, cradling her head to his chest. And there they stood, in the bright sunshine of silence, while God sorted out which of his creatures would live, and which of them would have to die.

****

Not too long afterward, they found out that the mutt with the trusting eyes was going to live. He had a broken leg, broken ribs, bruises all over and a few less teeth—but he would live. Maddie was delighted. Dan was ecstatic. He wrote a check and left instructions that if no one answered the found ad in the local papers, he would adopt the dog himself.

"I've never had a pet before," he told Maddie as they walked back to his Jeep. "Now that I'm settling down, though
... gee, this feels good. Ready for that lunch now?"

She laughed and said, "Are you kidding? You're as dead on your feet as I am."

"Doesn't matter," he said, smiling through a yawn. "I have to make up for lost time."

"Not without becoming a vampire." Unable to suppress a yawn of her own that turned into a sigh, Maddie slipped her arm through his and said, "I'm calling this weekend a day, my friend. Let's each go home, crash for a few hours, and then—"

"And then what?" he asked, holding the car door open for her.

Her smile was wistful. "What, indeed," she said on a sigh. "I wish I knew."

He grinned and said, "That was not a deep, philosophical question, m'am. I meant, maybe a pizza?"

"That'd be great." Immediately she checked herself. "I can't," she said, disappointed. "I have to take Tracey to Junior League volleyball."

"Can't your mother do it?"

"I suppose; but I'd have to—"

"Tell her you're with me."

It wasn't posed as a question; he expected Maddie to come clean with her family. "Well
... eventually.
"

"You can't expect to keep us secret this time, too," he said seriously. "Your mother will find out from someone else if not from you."

"Oh, I don't know
.
My mother doesn't go out much anymore. She stays in touch with a few friends, but—"

"Maddie, tell her the truth. The sooner the better. Anything else gets real tricky, real fast."

"
Yes
. You're absolutely right. And I will. Only—"

"Not right away," he finished quietly for her. His face showed his disappointment.

"Because I'm so tired, that's all. I can't even think straight. Oh, Dan, this time I want to do it right
.
I don't want the mess that we had the first time. You don't know my mother—"

"You're right. I haven't had
that honor yet," he said dryly.

"She's still so very
... raw. I can't hurt her more than she's already been hurt. And she can be very unforgiving. I have to take all of it in account and do this right."

"Just tell her the truth,
Maddie," he said.

"The truth can hurt, Dan." She knew that from
experience. Daunted by his take-no-
prisoners approach, she added, "Didn't you ever slant a story to suit your needs? Maybe played up an injustice or skipped an awkward fact so that you could drive your point home to your viewers? I know that your motives would've been completely honorable—they could never be anything else—but
... didn't you?"

He grimaced, then sighed and said, "Okay. You win. Tell your mother about us when you see fit. But, Maddie, tell her soon."

"Oh, definitely. A little sleep first; that's all I ask. And then I'll be my persuasive, soothing best."

Dan dropped Maddie off at Hollyhocks, where she reclaimed her car and drove home in a trance, physically aching for her bed. Despite her weariness, her spirits were up. She felt closer to Dan, closer to her daughter. Now if only her mother would let herself get to know Dan and embrace him
....

Was it really such a big "if"
? It occurred to Maddie that Dan had a genuine shot at being accepted into the family. After all, he was everything—nowadays—that his mother admired in a man: confident, well-off, accomplished, successful, admired, and much, much more than presentable. Heck, he'd even stopped smoking; no more cigarettes stowed in the sleeve of his T-shirt. What more could any mother ask for?

If only
.

****

When Maddie arrived at
Rosedale
she found the front door wide open and the screen door unhooked. After a quick check of the first floor and a call up the stairs, she discovered her daughter sunbathing in the back yard, undoubtedly without lotion. The girl was
listening to music through earbuds
, so she couldn't hear Maddie calling her, and she had sunbathing cups over her eyes, so she couldn't see Maddie when she stood in front of the chaise and waved her arms.