Part 29 (1/2)

”You okay?”

He shrugged his shoulders.

She scanned his face, dropped the knife, and crossed the kitchen to embrace him. She held him for a time, then asked again, ”Sure you're okay?”

”Okay,” he said, holding her tight, then pulling back.

A worried look came over Mary.

”How long's it been since you talked to your folks?”

She stammered something.

He waited.

”A long time,” she finally said.

”Want to go home?”

Mary backed up, placed the knife on the counter, breathing deeply. Finally, with the faintest of smiles coming over her, she said, ”Yes.”

A Future Time, A Future Memory.

Robert and Mary Lieber were taking their first vacation in years, a cross country drive across the states that would end in Sacramento, home of one of Robert's long-lost uncles. Jenn had just started her last year of college, while they had not quite finished paying for it. They had been working like mad for years now, and they decided on a whim one day to just take off, visit Uncle Henry, who was something of a black sheep, which excited Robert to no end. Perhaps Uncle Henry belonged to his mother's side of the family.

On the third day of their drive, they crossed into Arizona, where the world changed. Dust hung in clouds on the horizon; the sun burned down on the bowl of the earth. The road was two-lanes, surrounded by desert and the clay ridges of mountains and canyons. As the landscape became more desolate, Robert began looking at the line of mountains and thought of bones, the slight crescent of a back. Mary awoke from a nap, cradled her pregnant belly, rubbing it, and said, ”I can't believe she's almost done with school. She's almost gone.”

”Hey, we've got her successor coming,” said Robert. They'd been looking forward for the past few years to Jenn starting college, of beginning that long road toward adulthood, but once she actually left, they'd both felt a strange vacancy at the center of their life. So they began trying.

”You know what I mean.”

”Yeah,” he said, grabbing her hand. ”I do.”

Mary flipped on the radio. It took her a while to find a station playing something other than old-time country, but finally she happened onto cla.s.sic rock, an old Led Zeppelin tune about a stairway to heaven.

Pa.s.sing what appeared to be a deserted filling station, Robert checked his gauge-three quarters of a tank-and when he looked up he thought he saw a town on the horizon. This seemed odd because he hadn't expected anything for nearly a hundred miles. He sped up, keeping his eyes on what appeared to be some kind of small settlement. Nearing it, he could make out a few large buildings on opposite sides of a central street that led to one more structure at the far edge of the town. Above it, a wooden cross proclaimed Christ.

”Wow,” said Robert, pointing. ”Either that's a movie set or a ghost town.” Mary sat up, rubbed her eyes.