Carry Me Home (19 page)

“That’s what I keep telling her,” Cal said.

Jim looked at him, smiled a little, shook his head. “Don’t shoot Cal,” he advised Zoe. “He responds all right to ‘no.’”

“I’m not shooting anybody,” she said.

“Then,” Jim said, “what I told you. Play it safe. Be careful. I’ll check this out,” he told Cal. “Get back to you.”

“And Zoe,” Cal said.

“Yep,” he said. “Zoe, too.”

“Feel better?” Cal asked Zoe after Jim had left. “Ready for that beer now?”

She hadn’t wanted to drink anything earlier. It had seemed important to keep her wits about her.

“Do,” Raylene said. “Time to relax.”

“Sure,” Zoe decided. “Why not.”

Cal got up, grabbed a beer out of the fridge, popped the top, and handed it over. “Dad?”

“No,” Raylene answered for her husband. “Dr. Parker told him to keep it at one, except on special occasions.”

“Excuse me?” Stan said with some pain. “Is there a reason I can’t answer for myself? I’m the one who was there at the appointment.”

Cal smiled. “So, beer?”

“No,” Stan said. “Because he did say it. To
me
. Nothing wrong with my hearing, or my memory. He didn’t tell me I had Alzheimer’s.”

Raylene looked completely unruffled. “If women didn’t look after their men’s health, you’d all be eating pork rinds and pizza seven nights a week and dropping dead at forty-five. Consider it my wifely duty to remind you to get your cholesterol and your prostate checked every year. I don’t see you doing it otherwise.”

“I tend more to consider that you’re sitting at home chuckling at the idea of that rubber glove coming at me,” her husband growled.

“Could be,” she admitted. “I bore you three children. I call that a little well-deserved payback.”

“Not so much with the rubber glove,” Cal complained. “Could you two give it a rest? I’m trying to make an impression here.”

“Seems to me,” Raylene said, “that Zoe’s had a real tough night, and what we really need is to get you on out of here, Cal, so she can go to bed. You can come over for breakfast tomorrow and see her again.”

“I can, huh?” he said. “How about if I get her to sneak out her window and meet me? Roll the truck down the street with the lights off?”

“Did you do that?” Zoe asked.

“What, didn’t everybody? Well, I did it until the night Mom showed up at the party and took me on out of there by the ear. I swear, she had radar.”

“I always told him I had eyes in the back of my head,” Raylene said. “He used to think I was kidding. And you’re stalling,” she told her son. “Out. Tomorrow.”

He sighed pitifully. “All right. I’ll come have breakfast with you, Professor. Let you know what I find out about the car, give you a ride back to town, figure out a plan.”

“Oh,” she realized. “My boots. If I’m staying the night.”

“Uh . . .”

“They’re in the trunk of my car. Could you . . . would you mind getting them for me? If the car’s still there, and it’s on your way? Because otherwise, I mean, it’s snowing.”

“Sure thing.” He got up, and she rose with him, walked him to the front door, then stood and waited as he put on his own boots, grabbed his coat off its hook.

“I wanted to say thanks,” she told him. “For everything. I don’t think I’ve been grateful enough.”

“Oh, I don’t know,” he said, shrugging into the coat. “I think you’ve said that word about five times tonight. And tell you the truth, I’m a little tired of it.”

“I know,” she said, not sure what to do with her hands. “That’s just how people are here. But I’m still grateful.”

“Well, no,” he said. “That’s not exactly it. But tell you what. We can talk about that tomorrow, too.”

He stood, taller than ever in his boots, and looked down at her, and surely there wasn’t enough air in this room. He raised a hand to her cheek, gave her a sweet smile that had none of his usual cockiness.

“Thanks for wearing the red sweater,” he told her softly. “You look real pretty. Can I say right here that I’m looking forward to tomorrow?”

“You can say it,” she said. Because so was she.

He bent and kissed her cheek. His lips, his hand awakened a response everyplace he touched, and she leaned into him a little.

“Damn, Professor,” he said, his thumb stroking over her cheek, his fingers in her hair. “You do bad things to me.”

“Oh, yeah?” she managed. “Does that mean tomorrow’s off?”

He kissed her lips this time, just a brush of his mouth over hers. “Oh, no,” he said, standing back again, dropping his hand at last. “Tomorrow’s not off. No way.”

A CRYSTALLINE WORLD

Zoe lay in the old-fashioned heavy wooden double bed, covered by a warm down comforter and an embroidered white quilt that she suspected had been fashioned by a long-ago hand in a more patient time, and tried to sleep.

Not a sound, not a single beam of light to disturb her, and she was nothing but safe here. But despite her exhaustion, and no matter how firmly she closed her eyes and concentrated on her breathing, the rest she sought eluded her. Her whirling mind simply wouldn’t settle, insisting on ping-ponging back and forth over the day’s events.

Two lectures. The presentation that, this morning, had loomed so large, relegated now to a fleeting thought. The terrifying drive through the darkness, the certainty of danger, the crash. The knowledge that he was coming for her, that she had to save herself. The panic, and then the weak-kneed relief at recognizing Cal. His parents. The police. Amy. And Cal again. The pieces swirling like bits of confetti shaken in a jar into ever-changing patterns, refusing to calm.

It felt like hours, but was probably only thirty minutes before the pieces settled, before her mind slowed, before she fell into sleep. All the same, her dreams were jerky, violent, full of shadows. She woke more than once, her heart racing every time, and lay staring into the dark, her body rigid. Again and again until, finally, from sheer exhaustion, she slept more deeply. And kept sleeping until the smell of frying bacon wafted into the bedroom, until movement in the house, sounds of activity outside, gradually roused her to consciousness.

She threw the covers back and got out of bed, stumbling a little over the overlong legs of her borrowed flannel pajamas, went to the window, and pulled the curtains. And then stood there a minute because it was beautiful.

She was looking out onto a sparkling world. Every tree, every bush and roof wore a thick mantle of white, the bright sun reflecting off each individual crystalline surface. The sky was an innocent baby blue that belied the previous night’s storm, but the quiet of the morning was broken by the low growl of a snowplow, someplace not far away. The highway, maybe.

Something closer, too. The scrape of a metal shovel on concrete. She’d never heard that sound before moving to Idaho, but she knew it now. Stan was shoveling the walk.

She poked her head cautiously out of the bedroom into an empty hallway, ducked into the bathroom to clean up. She found herself wishing she had more than a lipstick in her purse, then chided herself for her vanity. Who cared if she was made up?

Well, she did. But she wasn’t, so too bad. She got dressed again in her borrowed clothes, made her bed, and ventured into the kitchen to find Stan grinding coffee and Raylene flipping pancakes on an electric griddle.

“Sorry,” Zoe said. “I guess I overslept.”

“Nothing to be sorry about,” Raylene said. “Nothing in the world to rush for.”

Well, except a couple of upcoming lectures to review, some labs to plan, grades to enter. But those could wait a couple of hours, surely. Her perspective had shifted quite a bit overnight.

“Go tell Cal that breakfast is ready, will you?” Raylene asked, opening the oven and adding a few more pancakes to a platter.

“Oh.” The scraping was continuing, she realized. Cal was shoveling his parents’ walk, and she had to smile a little at the thought. It was just so . . . sweet.

She found her boots in the entryway, because he’d stopped and picked them up for her. She got herself outfitted, stepped out the front door into that dazzling light, blinking against the bright white of it. And then couldn’t help jumping back as a big brown dog bounded toward her with a woof.

Cal turned at the sound, tossing a shovelful of snow along the way. “Junior!” he called.

The dog stopped in his tracks only feet from Zoe, his long, whiplike tail waving, and turned his heavy head back to Cal.

“He’s friendly,” Cal told her. “To friendly people. You scared of dogs?”

“No,” she said faintly. “No,” she added a little more strongly, putting a cautious hand out to the dog. He gave it a sniff, then bounded back across the yard to Cal at a whistle, spurning the shoveled walk.

“He gets all frisky in the snow,” Cal said. “Thinks he’s a puppy.”

“What kind is he?” He wasn’t beautiful, that was for sure. Plenty big, mud-brown, short-haired, and ungainly, he didn’t look exactly purebred to her inexpert eye.

“US Grade A certified mutt,” Cal said, confirming her suspicions. “Junior Jackson.” He gave the dog a thump that set his tail whipping furiously. “I’d tell you he was my best friend, but it sounds too pathetic, so I’ll just tell you he’s my dog. How you doin’? Sleep okay?”

“Not entirely,” she admitted, pulling her jacket more tightly around her against the chill. It was colder when the sun shone, she’d already found. The insulating power of cloud cover, of course.

“Bad dreams, huh?”

“Some.”

“I guess that’s not a surprise. But hey. Everything looks better in the daylight.”

“Oh,” she remembered, and laughed. “I’m supposed to tell you that breakfast is ready. Since you’ve obviously been working hard for it.”

“So what are you two doing this morning?” Raylene asked when they were sitting around the kitchen table again, and Zoe was eating a breakfast that was going to take a whole lot to work off.

Cal took a sip of coffee, his hand looking bigger than ever wrapped around the white ceramic mug.

She was getting gooey looking at his
hand
. She had to stop this.

“Well, eventually,” he said, “I’m going to be giving the professor a ride on back to her place. Vern says you’ve got some damage, like we thought,” he told her. “Maybe bent the frame. Sorry.”

“Oh.” She forgot all about his hand, and the bite of pancake threatened to stick in her throat. “That sounds bad.”

“Not great. What’s your insurance like?”

She sighed. “Not good enough. Old car.”

“You’re probably still going to be better off repairing than replacing,” he said. “Long as there’s nothing else wrong with it.”

“No,” she said automatically. “No. It’s fine. I’ll get it fixed.”

“Friends-and-family rate,” he reminded her. “Won’t be that bad, I don’t think.” She didn’t miss the look his parents exchanged.
Had
Cal paid part of it? She should care. She should object. “But meanwhile,” he said while she was still trying to work up to it, “it was so pretty driving over here, I thought we should go snowshoeing. Take your mind off the bad stuff.”

“Snowshoeing?” she asked blankly, her mind still on her car, and the bill. “I don’t know how to snowshoe.”

“Do you know how to walk?”

“Of course I do.”

“Then you know how to snowshoe. And besides, all those calories in that bacon and pancakes? What were you planning to do about those?”

“Cal!” his mother exploded.

Zoe was laughing a little, though. “And here I was afraid you were going to charm me today.”

“What, that wasn’t charming?”

“Telling me that I’m eating too much and had better get some exercise? No, oddly enough. Not so much.”

“Was that what I was saying? Funny, I was thinking just the opposite. Thinking how good you look, and wondering how I could talk you into spending a little more time with me so I could look at you some more.”

In front of his parents. He’d said that in front of his
parents
, was smiling at her like he meant it, and he was melting her as surely as sunlight melted snow.

She did her best all the same. “You know what else I’m wearing? Besides your mom’s sweater?”

“Uh . . . no,” he said, his eyes sliding toward his mother. He was looking a little rattled now, taking a would-be casual sip of coffee.

“I’m wearing your mom’s pants, and your mom’s socks,” she told him. “And underneath that? I’m wearing your mom’s underwear.”

He choked on his coffee, grabbed for a napkin, coughed for a full thirty seconds while his father pounded him helpfully on the back, his grin reaching all the way to his blue eyes.

“I’ve heard,” Raylene said once Cal had got his breath back again, “that having two conflicting ideas in your head can paralyze a person.”

“You see what I’m up against?” Cal asked, wiping his watering eyes with the napkin.

“Well, yeah,” his dad said. “I think we pretty much do.”