Part 11 (1/2)

The voice brought Thurlow back from a far distance. Ruth's voice? he wondered. He turned.

She stood at his left just behind the car, a slender woman in a black silk suit that smoothed her full curves. Her red hair, usually worn close around her oval face, was tied in a severe coil at the back of her neck. The hair bound so tightly -- Thurlow tried to put out of his mind all memory of the mother's hair spread on the driveway.

Ruth's green eyes stared at him with a look of hurt expectancy. She had the appearance of a tired elf.

Thurlow opened his door, slipped out to the wet gra.s.s beside the road.

”I didn't hear your car,” he said.

”I've been staying with Sarah, living with her. I walked up from the house. That's why I'm so late.”

He could hear the tears in her voice and wondered at the inanity of their conversation.

”Ruth . . . d.a.m.n it all! I don't know what to say.” Without thinking about it, he crossed to her, took her in his arms. He could feel her muscles resisting him. ”I don't know what to say.”

She pulled out of his embrace. ”Then . . . don't say anything. It's all been said anyway.” She looked up at his eyes. ”Aren't you still wearing your special gla.s.ses?”

”To h.e.l.l with my gla.s.ses. Why wouldn't you speak to me on the phone? Was that Sarah's number they gave me at the hospital?” Her words were coming back to him, ”. . . living with her.” What did it mean?

”Father said . . .” She bit her lower lip, shook her head. ”Andy, oh, Andy, he's insane and they're going to execute him . . .” She looked up at Thurlow, her lashes wet with tears. ”Andy, I don't know how to feel about him. I don't know . . .”

Again, he took her in his arms. She came willingly this time. How familiar and right it felt for her to be there. She began to sob gently against his shoulder. Her crying felt like the spent aftermath of sorrow.

”Oh, I wish you could take me away from here,” she whispered.

What was she saying? he asked himself. She was no longer Ruth Murphey. She was Mrs. Neville Hudson. He wanted to push her away, start throwing questions at her. But that wouldn't be professional, not the right psychological thing to do. He decided it wasn't what he wanted to do after all. Still, she was another man's wife. d.a.m.n! d.a.m.n! d.a.m.n! What had happened? The fight. He remembered their fight -- the night he'd told her about the fellows.h.i.+p grant. She hadn't wanted him to take it, to be separated for a year. Denver had sounded so far away in her words. ”It's only a year.” He could hear his own voice saying it. ”You think more of your d.a.m.n career than you do of me!” The temper matched her hair.

He'd left on that sour note. His letters had gone into a void -- unanswered. She'd been ”not home” to his telephone calls. And he'd learned he could be angry, too -- and hurt. But what had really happened?

Again, she said: ”I don't know how to feel about him.”

”What can I do to help?” It was all he could say, but the words felt inadequate.

She pushed away from him. ”Anthony Bondelli, the attorney -- we've hired him. He wants to talk to you. I . . . I told him about your report on . . . father -- the time he turned in the false fire alarm.” Her face crumpled. ”Oh, Andy -- why did you go away? I needed you. We needed you.”

”Ruth . . . your father wouldn't take any help from me.”

”I know. He hated you . . . because of . . . what you said. But he still needed you.”

”n.o.body listened to me, Ruth. He was too important a man for . . .”

”Bondelli thinks you can help with the insanity plea. He asked me to see you, to . . .” She shrugged, pulled a handkerchief from her pocket, wiped her cheeks.

So that's it, Thurlow thought. She's making up to me to get my help, buying my help!

He turned away to hide his sudden anger and the pain. For a moment, his eyes didn't focus, then he grew aware (quite slowly, it seemed) of a subtle brownian movement at the edge of the grove. It was like a swarm of gnats, but unlike them too. His gla.s.ses. Where were his gla.s.ses? In the car! The gnats dissolved away upward. Their retreat coincided with the lifting of an odd pressure from his senses, as though a sound or something like a sound had been wearing on his nerves, but now was gone.

”You will help?” Ruth asked.

Was that the same sort of thing I saw at Murphey's window? Thurlow asked himself. What is it?