“Of course not.” Gloria sat down on the couch and pulled her feet up under her caftan. “Fall is my favorite time of year. I love to watch the seasons change; I don't think I'd like to live where it's hot all year round.”
Ethel sat down in the rocker and picked up a ball of yarn and a crochet hook, and pulled a half-finished afghan from the wooden bucket beside the chair. “There's somethin' about crochetin' that's relaxin'. I've made so many of these over the years, I can almost do it with my eyes closed.”
“I'll always treasure the one you made for me, Aunt Ethel.”
“Now that we've got some time to ourselves, tell me what finally pushed you into breaking away and coming out here. You said you wanted Peter to know that there was more to life than apartments and pavements and tall buildings. Is that all there was to it?”
“Yes, I wanted that, but I did it for myself too.” Gloria gazed into the fire, letting her memories wash over her. “When I look back on my life, Aunt Ethel, I find that the only constructive thing I've done has been to get Peter. Like I told you before, it was wanting a better life for him that gave me the courage to break away from Marvin in the first place.” Gloria turned large, luminous amber eyes toward her aunt. “I knew immediately that I'd made a mistake marrying him. I didn't tell anyone. I just resigned myself to make the best of it.”
“You stuck it out for five years. I'd give you an A for trying.”
“I was a coward, and I still am to a certain degree. Marvin is powerful and ruthless. He provided me with all the material things as long as I was willing to be an invisible person in the house, a nonentity, and let his mother run things and not interfere in his life. I was merely one of the props of a production he created to show the world what a wonderful man he was. He went about his daily existence as if I wasn't there, until the occasion called for him to appear at some social function with a young, devoted wife on his arm. Then I was dressed up and put on display.”
There was no bitterness in her voice, only a strange kind of sadness. She talked on as if compelled to tell it all.
“He was shocked and outraged when I announced I wanted to adopt an abandoned child. I found Peter while I was doing volunteer work at the center for abused children.”
“I'm surprised he changed his mind.”
“Marvin is a very strange man. To him appearance is everything. That was why he needed a wife and I guess he decided that adopting an abused child wouldn't hurt his image either.” Gloria paused, and a picture of a man with thinning black hair, piercing blue eyes behind blackrimmed glasses, dark suit, white shirt, and conservative tie flashed across the screen of her mind. Suddenly there was another image superimposed over Marvin's—curly black hair, bushy beard, and laughing green eyes. Startled, Gloria shook her head to bring her thoughts back to what she was saying. “It's almost a requirement for a Masterson to do a certain amount of volunteer work among the less fortunate.” The words were heavily laced with sarcasm.
Ethel clicked her tongue sympathetically.
“Marvin is the product of what he was raised to be. He was forty-five years old and had never been married when he married me. I was twenty-one. Aunt Ethel, I was so stupidly young and naive. Now I understand that was why he chose me. As the old saying goes—he swept me off my feet. If I had stopped to think for two minutes I would have realized we were from two different worlds and that I had mistaken security for love.”
“Sometimes you have to flunk the course to learn the lesson,” Ethel said dryly. “What did Ernest think about you marrying a man so much older than you?”
“He didn't meet him until the day of the wedding, and then we were off to Mexico City for our honeymoon. I don't think Daddy liked him much, but Mother was walking on clouds.”
“Humph! That figures,” Ethel said under her breath. Aloud she said, “Sometimes people are blinded by glitter.”
“I wanted Peter so much,” Gloria said. She bit her lower lip as she remembered. “He was so sweet and so helpless. I began to spend all day, every day, at the center. At first Marvin refused to even discuss the idea of adoption. He doesn't like children and has never wanted any of his own.”
“What did he think when you left him?”
“By this time he was getting nervous that I might refuse to continue playacting as his wife. Besides, he was seeing a woman a few years older than himself. The fact that this woman had been married to someone on the fringe of European royalty was important to him. Marvin has a vast number of interests, the least of them being a physical relationship with a wife.”
Ethel gave her a sideways glance, but Gloria had turned her face away. When next she looked at her aunt her eyes sparkled with devilish amusement.
“I heard that his new lady friend and Mother Masterson locked horns, and he had to end the relationship.”
“Well, hallelujah!” Ethel chortled.
“I'm so glad I'm out of the whole mess. Aunt Ethel, I appreciate your letting me come here and giving me time to get on my feet and decide where to take my life from here on.”
“This could be a new beginning for both of us. In a few years we could have a string of Rusty Cove motels all across the state.”
Gloria giggled happily. “You'd better teach me how to clean the rooms first.”
“We'll start on that in the morning, just as soon as the guests leave. The truckers are up and gone early, the salesman a little later. I keep a pot of coffee, rolls, and cookies in the office, and they come in and help themselves before they go. Everyone who isn't staying over is usually out by ten o'clock. Gary rents number ten by the week and I make the bed when he's used it and change his bedding and clean the room on Friday, if it needs it.”
“Do you wash everything here, or do you send it out?”
“We have a big washer and dryer in the room behind the kitchen. George got disgusted with the laundry service and went to town one day and ordered them. It took a hunk out of our savings, but now I'm glad we have them; they've already paid for themselves. Of course, when something goes wrong it costs an arm and a leg to have it fixed. But Gary's pretty good at fixin' things.”
“Who stays here when you go to town? You must have a lot of grocery shopping to do.”
“Gary is usually here on Saturday. He looks after things while I'm gone. He was here when George died; I don't know what I'd have done without him.”
“Then he's the one you were telling me about on the phone? His wife died, and his little girl lives with his mother-in-law in Great Falls, right?”
“Yes. He lives in his truck when he's on the road. He dotes on that child, but knows she's better off with her grandma.”
Gloria looked thoughtful.
“Aunt Ethel, do you know what I notice the most about this place? It's the quiet and the darkness. I stood on the porch for a few minutes before I came in, and there isn't a light anywhere except here at the motel. It's the strangest feeling to look out into all that black void.”
“I guess I don't even notice it anymore…” Ethel's head was resting against the back of the rocker, and her eyes were closed.
“Aunt Ethel, it's past ten o'clock. Do you want me to turn off the vacancy sign?”
Ethel didn't answer. Gloria got up from the couch just as her aunt opened her eyes, looked up at her, and shook her head as if to clear it.
“I must of dozed off.” She put the half-finished afghan back in the bucket and got slowly to her feet, holding onto the chair.
“Are you all right?” Gloria asked anxiously. Her aunt didn't say anything. “Aunt Ethel, are you all right?”
“Just a little dizzy. Nothin' that hasn't happened a hundred times before. Too much excitement for an old lady, I guess.” She straightened up. “See…it passed. I'm as good as new. You run along to bed and I'll turn off the vacancy light. Good heavens! It's later than I thought it was.”
“I can turn off the lights, Aunt Ethel. What time do you get up?”
“Anywhere from 5:30 to 6:30, but you don't have to get up that early.”
“I'll set my alarm for 5:30.” Gloria put her arms around the small woman and hugged her. “Good night, Aunt Ethel. I…love you.”
“Ah…go on with ya!” Ethel smiled embarrassedly. “Check the door and turn out the lights as you go through the office.”
On her way out, Gloria looked back over her shoulder at her aunt, who was still standing beside the chair. A little, nagging fear possessed Gloria's heart. Had she imagined the white spots on each side of her aunt's mouth and the almost vacant look in her eyes when she first opened them? Had her words been slurred the slightest bit? She thought about it as she washed her face and pulled a nightgown over her head. Tomorrow, she decided firmly, I'm going to insist that she make an appointment with her doctor for a checkup.
Jack Evans sipped at the soft drink he had taken out of the refrigerator, and then wondered why he had taken it. He didn't want it; it was simply something to do. He considered building a fire in the potbellied stove in the center of the room, decided against it, and put on a jacket instead. He was restless tonight. It had been damned cold coming up that mountain road on the motorcycle; there'd been only a few times he'd let night catch him away from home unless he was in the Jeep. The town seemed more forlorn than ever tonight. There had been no light in the saloon at the end of the dusty street when he came into town; old Cliff Rice, his sole neighbor, had either gone to bed, or had been too drunk to light the lamp.
Hangtown, Montana, population two: one old drunk and one worthless hippie, Jack mused. He sat down in a chair, tilted it back against the wall, and propped his feet on the table. Critical green eyes swept the neat but primitive home, surveying it as if through other eyes than his own. The bed on a headboardless frame, a three-burner stove for summer, a cookstove for winter, a table, a bookcase, a reading chair, and a gas-powered refrigeratorfreezer made up the furnishings, along with a couple of standing TV trays. Every month he made a trip to Lewistown to get bottled gas to keep the lamp and refrigerator running.
Jack had a strong suspicion that the building he lived in had been a funeral parlor back in the 1870s. He had found a chest of moldy ribbons upstairs and a halffinished coffin in the shed out back. He had chosen the building because it had survived the ravages of time better than any of the other eleven buildings that made up the town, regardless of what it had been used for during the town's heyday.
Eight years ago he had founded the town, completely abandoned by all businesses and permanent residents, and bought it, not dreaming that, four years later, he would come back to the ghost town and call it home. Almost everyone thought he was a squatter, a hippie, or whatever they called bums these days. It didn't matter to him what anyone thought of him…that is, not until today.
Hell, it still doesn't matter,
he told himself, and the front legs of the chair he had tilted back against the wall came crashing down with a bang.
Dammit! What the hell is the matter with you, Evans? You acted like a love-sick kid today; you couldn't keep your eyes off the woman.
The questions that had nagged at him all the way up the mountain continued to nag at him now.
Why in the hell did it irritate me when she looked at me as if I was something that had just crawled out of the sewer? I even enjoyed breaking that punk's arm when I found him harassing her and the kid, and God knows, I hate violence. And why did I have the urge to smash someone when the kid started to cry because I said I wasn't coming back to see him? Dammit, Evans. Stay away from that woman and that kid or you're letting yourself in for some sleepless nights.
He placed his folded arms on the table and rested his forehead on them. He sat that way for a long time thinking, and trying not to think. Being with the boy had brought forth a flood of memories that he had managed to keep at bay for a long while. There had been a time when he was sure he would lose his sanity; now, he was more able to cope with his feelings. And yet he was hearing, once again, the voice of his small, green-eyed, goldenhaired daughter:
I love you, Daddy…. I want to stay with you…. You'll come get me? Promise me, Daddy—
“If only I'd've done things differently,” he groaned aloud. “If only I'd fought harder, dirtier, instead of trying to be Mr. Nice Guy. Why in hell didn't I go against the damn courts and just take her? I'd be in prison now, but she'd be alive!”
The Chicago traffic was heavy the morning his attorney had called for him to come to his office. He had filed a lawsuit against the FBI months ago, trying to force them to tell him where they had secreted his daughter, his exwife, and her new husband after the man had testified and caused the conviction of the head of a gigantic drug operation. He contended it was a violation of his visitation rights that he was no longer able to have Wendy with him every other weekend.
He resisted every attempt of the FBI to force him to drop the litigation. Naively he thought the courts would give him custody of Wendy, at least for part of each year. But he had underestimated the power of the FBI. It had been almost a year since he filed the suit, and he had yet to have his day in court.
On the way to George's office he firmly believed the case was coming to trial, that George had good news. The moment he stepped into the office he knew that he was wrong. George Fisher, his attorney and friend, stood with his back to the door gazing out the window. A bald, overweight man with a cigar between his fingers pushed himself up out of one of the chairs and held out his hand.
“Mr. Evans, I'm Paul Blake of the FBI.”
George turned from the window and came to stand before his desk. His face was gray and still.
“What's happened, George?” A feeling of dread began to overtake him; he felt the queer tension that hovered over the room. His first thought was:
Oh, my God! The judge has refused to hear the case.
“Mr. Blake has something to tell you, Jack.” There was anger in George's trembling voice.
The rotund man took a drag from his cigar, walked a few paces, and turned. “They found them. In spite of all we could do to ensure their safety, they found them.”