Then, for a little while there was silence, save for insects’ hum, the whisper and trickle of water and Bubba’s snores, while Charly sat quietly waiting for her breathing to return to normal. Troy waited with her, saying nothing, his hand in her hair, gently stroking.

“I don’t remember much,” she whispered, “about afterward. Except that I felt awful…so ashamed. I don’t even know how I got home that night. The next day, Colin came over, and we sat on my bed this time, and he held me and we talked-I cried-and he told me I shouldn’t be ashamed, that we’d both had too much to drink, and we should just forget it ever happened.” She gave a sharp, hurting laugh. “Which I would have been only too glad to do.”

“Except,” said Troy, clearing his throat, “somebody had other plans.”

“Yeah.” Charly sat up straight and waggled her shoulders, as if it were possible to ease the weight of memory. “I actually had a terrific summer,” she said, struggling for a lighter tone. “Richie and I patched things up, and he apologized for his behavior that night, and we spent the whole summer double-dating with Kelly and Bobby. Had a great time. School started-our junior year-and it looked like it was going to be so much fun. Bobby and Richie were football heroes, and Kelly and I were doing our bit as adoring groupies, hanging on to our guys’ big strong arms. Except for the fact that I’d sworn off sex, which annoyed Richie no end, and was sick to my stomach every other day, everything was fine.” She drew in a breath. “Just…fine.”

There was a thinking silence, and then Troy said slowly, in a voice raspy with disbelief, “So…you’re telling me that Colin…your best friend, and the father of your child, this sweet, kind, sensitive boy…committed suicide-killed himself-rather than marry you?”

She swiveled her head toward him, meeting his frown with a clear, steady gaze. “So it seems.” she said evenly. I’m sorry, I’m sorry…

“That doesn’t make sense.”

Charly shrugged and looked away again. “Nevertheless, it happened.” But her voice had begun to tremble, and she wondered what she would do if he persisted. How long would she be able to keep the truth locked inside her heart, now that he held the keys?

She waited, heart pounding and shoulders tensed, while Troy’s mouth opened and the questions poised there on the tip of his tongue. But at that moment, Bubba came out of his doze with a warning woof. And then they both heard it-a car, whining down the grade.

“We’d better be getting back,” Charly mumbled, trembly with relief and danger narrowly avoided. “There might be word from the hospital.”

Troy nodded, and without another word, went to untie Bubba’s leash. Sick with uncertainty, Charly glanced at him, but his face was so grim and thoughtful she couldn’t bring herself to look at him again. She gathered up the blankets in silence and helped him stow everything in the Cherokee, finishing just as a minivan pulled into the clearing, disgorging several laughing, shouting children in assorted sizes.

As they pulled away, Charly turned to fasten her seat belt, taking advantage of the opportunity, as she did so, to look back unobtrusively at the granite memorial, poignantly spotlighted now by a shimmering ray of sunlight. Tears stung her eyes. I did it, Colin. I did it. I kept my promise. And your secret…

She only hoped and prayed that honoring her vow to one friend hadn’t just cost her another.


They drove straight back to the motel without stopping for breakfast, since Troy figured he still had enough groceries left from last night to tide them over until they could get something hot-starting with coffee. He unloaded the car while Charly made for the shower, and then, since the rooms at the Mourning Springs Motel weren’t equipped with phones, he went down to the office to see if there’d been any messages.

The desk clerk was real glad to see him, since Troy hadn’t officially asked to extend their occupancy or paid for their two rooms, as was the local custom, in advance. Troy thought about telling him to cancel one of the rooms, but he didn’t, even though it gave him an unfamiliar, hollow feeling in his belly when he thought about sleeping in a bed alone, and Charly a mile away in the room next door. A cold, lonely feeling.

In the end he paid up both rooms for the next couple of days, and then asked if there’d been any messages for either him or Ms. Phelps. The desk clerk hmmed and muttered and poked around and finally came up with a piece of folded paper with the name “Charlene Phelps” written on it. Troy took it back to the room with him and laid it on the dresser. Then he took Bubba outside and fed him.

When he came back in, Charly was standing there with her hair dripping on her shoulders, wearing tan slacks and a white bra, holding the piece of paper in her hand. Her eyes reached for him and held on tight, and this time he could see her in there plain as day, that little lost girl, waving at him from their woodsy depths, crying out to him for help.

“It’s from Dobrina,” she said in a flat, scared-sounding voice. “She says my father wants to see me.”


“You gonna be okay?” Troy asked her as they approached the ICU nursing station.

Charly nodded, although her jaws felt so tense she wondered why her teeth didn’t crack.

“Well, okay, then. I’ll be right here waitin’.” He touched her elbow and abruptly left her.

Even though she’d prepared herself for it, his absence left her off balance, as if the room were rocking. She put a hand on the station counter to steady it.

“You can go on in,” the duty nurse said. “He’s been askin’ for you.”

Asking for me. It was the unreality of those words that carried her the last few steps around the glass partition and into her father’s tiny room.

It seemed quieter than the last time she’d been there-less busy. Gone was the aura of urgency that hovers like gunsmoke over the battlefields where struggles for life and death are fought. In that quietness she felt some of her tension ease, and a little-just a little-of the fear seep away.

The upper half of her father’s bed had been cranked high so that he lay in a semireclining position. He was apparently dozing; his mouth was hanging half-open and his eyes were closed. The skin on his face looked slack and pleated, Charly thought, as though the person inside it had shrunk.

She moved toward him cautiously, wondering if she ought to wake him. She was still a few steps from the bedside when his eyes opened and he said in a hoarse and groggy voice, “Thought you’d have left by now.”

She cleared her throat, but couldn’t think of anything to say. How did a person respond to a statement like that? State the obvious? Argue? The last argument she’d had with this man, she’d almost killed him.

Her father’s eyes traveled slowly over her, but avoided her face, while his eyebrows drew together and lowered in the intimidating way she remembered. Then he coughed and said gruffly, “They, ah, tell me you saved my life. I wanted to thank you.”

Charly gave a high, stressed laugh. She wasn’t sure what she’d expected, but it sure wasn’t this. “Thank me?” Since I’m probably the one that caused this… She looked away, her arms folding themselves across her body in a purely reflexive defense posture. “Listen, I’m sorry,” she said in a hurried mumble, desperate to get the words out before she ran completely out of courage. “I didn’t mean to upset you. I shouldn’t have barged in on you like that. I didn’t know you were sick. I’m sorry.”

The judge’s hand brushed the sheet in a gesture of dismissal. “Well, I didn’t know, either.” He gave a soft grunt of a laugh. “Took ever‘body by surprise. ’Brina’s been tellin’ me for years I needed to shed a few pounds-guess I shoulda paid more attention to her. Well, she’ll get t’ say she told me so for the rest of my natural life. That ought t’ make her happy.”

“How are you?” Charly asked, taking a cautious step closer. Her heart wouldn’t stop pounding, and her throat felt scratchy and dry. She wished she had a drink of water. “Have the doctors said? How bad was it? Are you-?”

“Am I goin’ t’ die any time soon, you mean?” He glared at her from under his eyebrows, then relaxed back against the pillows with a deep exhalation. “Oh, they’ve got to run all sorts of tests, yet. They’ll wait till I’m out of the woods for that, but I expect I’m lookin’ at some surgery-only question is how many arteries need bypassin’.” His voice faded into a weak-sounding cough.

Charly looked around in sudden panic. “You’re tired,” she muttered. “I should probably go.”

Her father raised his head and shifted around, gruff and restless, like a bear rousing from his winter’s nap. “Sure, go on. Maybe you should.” And then, as Charly was turning uncertainly, beginning to move away, “Guess you saw the boy…got what you came for…”

She turned back with a sharp exhalation, feeling as if someone had just grabbed her around the chest and squeezed hard. “Yes. Yes, I saw him. But that wasn’t what I came for. How could it be? I didn’t know he was here.” Easy…easy.

What was she doing? The man was sick, he’d almost died and here she was, yelling at him again. She shouldn’t be here, shouldn’t be saying this!

She clenched her jaws and reined herself in, but the words came out anyway, in a constricted growl. “I came…to see you.”

Her father flinched back against his pillows, glaring at her with the poignant fierceness of a battered eagle. “Why?”

She jerked away from him, turning her back on the bed and the beeping machines, one hand clamped to the top of her head, the other clenched against her stomach, fighting for control. I can’t do this, she thought. Not here, not now.

How many years had she thought of this moment, how many times had she rehearsed what she would say to him, to her father, the man lying in that bed…the man whose approval she’d longed for so desperately all of her life? How many times had she asked herself, Now? Do I deserve it now? And answered herself, No-not yet. Go a little farther…climb a little higher…achieve a little more…and then maybe. And now finally, feeling worthy at last and come to demand what she’d worked so hard to earn, to find that she’d been chasing a fantasy all along.