Here I Stay (37 page)

I don't understand all of it yet, but I know
it has something to do with this house and her—Alice, the girl who used to live here. I had a lot of stupid ideas about her once; you know, that she was my long-lost lover, or something. It isn't anything like that. Although I think I've known her before.

I took those pills on purpose, Andy. I just couldn't stand it any longer. While I was sitting there in the dark, waiting, something happened. It was like a voice telling me I was making a dumb mistake. That this wasn't the way to get what I wanted. That I had to wait. And that I wouldn't have to wait long.

So it will happen pretty soon, I guess. I don't know when and I don't know how, but soon. I'm not where I'm supposed to be. Neither is Alice. She's like me—a little farther along the way, but held back for some reason. I think maybe the reason I'm here is so I can help her find her way home.

I can just hear you laughing when you read this, it sounds so corny. But I guess you won't be laughing, will you. I hope you won't feel bad too long. Martin will help. I'm glad he'll be with you. This year has had a lot of good things in it. I'd have hated not knowing Martin.

Do you remember how you felt when you went back to college that first year, after Christmas vacation? You were sorry to leave me and Dad, but you were anxious to get back to your friends and everything. That's how I feel, only more so. I love you, sis. Be happy.

Jim

She nodded. "Jim will probably want to sleep in the garage tonight," Martin said cheerfully. "I can't get him out from behind the wheel. What are you doing here without a coat on? It's freezing. Put
something around you and we'll go inspect the car. Jim will insist on showing you every gear in the damned thing."

He didn't give her a chance to reply, but she couldn't have spoken anyway. Every motor function in her body seemed to have halted—speech, movement, hearing. She let him nudge her back into the kitchen. He went on talking, his face flushed with cold, his lips moving, smiling. She couldn't hear what he said. He didn't seem to notice that she had stopped, like a watch someone had forgotten to wind. He draped a coat over her shoulders and led her to the door.

Jim had come out of the garage. He wasn't looking at them; head turned and hands tightly gripping the crutches, he was staring at the woodshed that adjoined the garage. He started toward it, moving quickly, avoiding the patches of ice that spotted the ground. He had almost reached the shed when the door burst open and a man staggered out.

As they learned later, Gary Joe had planned another attempt to break into the house. Hiding in the woodshed waiting for darkness to fall, he had whiled away the time with the help of the bottle he had brought with him. The sight of the car, gleaming symbol of the success and affluence he so desperately resented, brought him to the shed door, but he would have remained in concealment if Jim had not seen him.

The paralysis that had held her broke, Andrea cried out. Martin started down the steps, but he didn't hurry. Gary Joe was more of a danger to himself than anyone else; one nudge would topple him, if he didn't fall flat of his own accord. He stumbled toward Jim, but it was unlikely he realized who stood
in his way; he saw only an impediment to flight and acted to remove it.

The clumsy, ill-directed blow didn't even touch Jim. But as he sidestepped, smiling and contemptuous, the crutch slipped on the frost-hardened ground. He stumbled back, his head and shoulder hitting the wall of the garage.

The sound was so soft it was scarcely audible. Jim went rigid, arms and body pressed against the wood. Suddenly blind and unfocused, his eyes tried to move, searching, but the effort was too much. He managed to mumble three words—"Not his fault..." before he fell.

Martin reached him first. Kneeling beside him, her hands clamped over his, Andrea was scarcely aware of Martin's frantic movements, or of how much time elapsed before he raised his head. Tears slid down his face, mingling with the icy drizzle that had begun to fall.

"It's no use. It must have been an embolism— massive brain hemorrhage...I should have seen it coming. If I had paid attention to the symptoms instead of wallowing in my stupid fantasies...He was dead before he fell, Andy. He didn't feel anything..."

Andrea's fingers tightened. Heavy as earth, cold as stone, Jim's hand lay in hers. "He's not dead," she said. "He can't be. I won't let him die."

"It was quick and easy, Andy. He didn't suffer."

Andrea shook off the hand he placed on her shoulder, focusing every atom of her will on the fading, elusive shadow of identity. She had done it before. She could do it now.

"We can't let him lie here in the rain," Martin said.

She made no effort to prevent him when he lifted
the limp body, only kept her grip on Jim's hand. Martin turned blindly toward the nearest room, which happened to be Andrea's, and laid his burden on the bed before dropping to his knees, gasping with strain and grief.

"Call the rescue squad," Andrea said. "A doctor."

"It's too late."

"Call them."

Martin struggled to his feet and went out, closing the door.

The distraction of speech had cost her. It was more distant now, that flickering thread of consciousness. She flung all the force of her will after it, insistent, untiring. Come back. Come back...

Suddenly they filled the room with the soundless beat of their desperation—the frantic, flailing wings. Andrea cowered, hiding her face against the side of the bed, but never losing her hold on Jim's hand.

Help me.

Had she spoken the words or heard them spoken? No matter; the help was there. She felt its presence though her eyes were closed—a source of warmth perceived though not beheld. Her strength fed on it and fed it in return.

She raised her head. The room was dark with twilight, but she saw it plainly—the features now as familiar to her as her own, the somber widow's weeds, the small rough hands clasped over the ring of keys dangling from its waist. In its presence the desperate wings retreated, weakening now and fainter.

It was Mary's face and form—no image, no imprint, no impersonal memory of the dead past, but Mary herself. Mary was dead and rotting under the
stone in the graveyard, but Mary moved. Her tight mouth curved in a smile of welcome and fellowship. Her hands reached out.

Then, in a dazzling flash of revelation, Andrea knew what had happened to Mary Fairfax and the true nature of the bond between them. Not strength but its opposite, cowardly selfishness. For strength was renunciation and relinquishment, and only weakness would attempt to keep something limitless and free behind bars formed not by malice but by adamantine love.

There was no conscious moment of decision, only an instinctive revulsion that snapped the contact of body and mind alike. She found herself on her feet, hands empty, as she tried to communicate her denial, and her pity, to the fading shape who was no less a prisoner than the love she had tried to cage.

And they were gone—all of them—if they had ever existed except in the recesses of her own mind. The room was cold and dim and empty. She felt as if she had awakened from a long illness and endless fever-ridden nightmares.

Slowly she turned to the bed.

He was gone. For the first time she realized that the phrase was a simple statement of fact, not, as she had once believed, a euphemism concealing an unbearable truth. The form on the bed was as empty of identity as a photograph or a tinted, life-sized statue. Jim was gone. He was not there.

The long dusk deepened. Rain wept at the window, but her eyes were dry. She felt nothing. Not grief, not resignation, not even the poor comfort of self-sacrifice. That final fantasy had only been another illusion. It would have been better than nothing, but she could not even cling to that.

The sound of sleet at the window was more than she could bear. She raised her hand to close the curtains.

Sunlight gilded the world. The dogwoods along the drive were in full bloom, white star shapes tossing in a warm breeze. Jim was running down the driveway. He wore tattered old jeans and the T-shirt that said, "Where the hell is Ladiesburg, Maryland?" The gravel spurted up under his flying feet and his hair blew back with the speed of his running.

She was waiting for him by the bench beside the stone gatepost. Andrea had always pictured her as fair, but the hair cupping her small bent head had the iridescent shimmer of a blackbird's wing. She rose to meet him, hands held out and head thrown back, laughing. Before they passed out through the gate, into the road, Jim looked back. He raised one hand. Then they were gone.

At the sound of a soft knock Andrea turned from the window into the cold, winter-darkened room. The door swung open. Silhouetted against the square of light was Martin, hesitant, his shoulders sagging. She felt his grief and marveled at it; and as she went unhesitatingly into his arms she knew that finally she was capable of giving as well as receiving what they were meant to share.

He loved Jim too. One day she would tell him; he deserved that. It was of no consequence whether he believed her or not. She knew that what she had seen was not reality, but neither was it illusion. It was a symbol of a truth too profound to be comprehended by creatures with only five limited senses, but of that ultimate truth she had no doubt at all. Wherever Jim was now, he ran free in the sunlight.