“She’s not going to—”
“Zac.” Simon’s voice lowered. “Would you leave one of us in the position you’re trying to put yourself in?”
“I …”
Tiana propped her hands on her hips. “Let me tell you something, Zac Wilson. I could knock you flat right now with one finger. That woman is unstable, and you know it, and I get that you’re trying to help her, but you don’t get to risk your life to do it.”
He looked over his shoulder. Rachel stood watching through the glass door. He turned back to his friends. All three of them were glowering at him, and a smile tugged his mouth.
“You should see yourselves.”
“We’re right, and you know it,” Tiana said.
“Right,” Simon said. “So, couch again for me. We’ll stay awake in shifts. She’s to be guarded around the clock until I’m satisfied she’s not a danger to herself or anyone else.”
Zac sighed. “That’ll take you a decade at least.”
THIRTY-THREE
Rachel drew back when Simon followed Zac inside, but before Zac could attempt an explanation, she nodded.
“Smart. I might be lying.” She took a few steps farther into the foyer. Then she froze. Her arms tightened around her body. “Could I stand here a minute?”
“Sure.”
Her gaze roamed from nineties gray-and-teal carpet to cobwebbed vaulted ceiling. She stepped to the center of the room and looked up at the chandelier. Its bulbs were yellow incandescent, the fixture made before the existence of LED.
She seemed inclined to stand there all night, so after a minute Zac said quietly, “How you doing, kiddo?”
“Petrified. Both definitions.”
“Turned to stone?”
“And extremely terrified.”
Simon hadn’t moved. He stood just inside the door, watching, and an old thought returned to Zac that on a battlefield, in a flood or fire, trapped or stranded, he would choose this guy to have his back. It was a truth he’d known while lifetimes passed, while he went skydiving with Colm, while he met Colm for drinks and idle philosophizing. In a catastrophe Colm would be for himself. Simon and Zac would be for each other.
Whether Simon was ready to agree or not, David had joined their team. The Three Musketeers. Zac buried a grin. Before Simon could demand to know what was going through his head, he made a motion of welcome.
Simon shrugged and approached, eyes on Rachel.
“Let me show you my place,” Zac said, and she nodded. So far so good.
She stared at everything, starting with the mat she stepped onto, gray and unremarkable except in the world of Rachel. She shuffled through the doorway into the living room, gazed up at its high ceiling, gazed out the big windows onto the porch. She touched the back of a kitchen chair, the edge of the counter, the light switch by the door wall, and each graze of her palm seemed reverent.
She was too quiet, so Zac spoke up. “I guess it’s been a while since you were inside a house.”
“James and Anna’s, briefly.”
“Before that?”
“My own house, 1949. A friend’s house, 1955.”
His chest hurt. He rubbed his knuckles against it.
“Is this where I’ll sleep?” She pointed to the couch.
“You’ll get the bedroom,” Zac said. “One of us will sleep there.”
A slow nod. “And the other will keep watch.”
“Best for everyone.”
“I get it. I’ve been erratic since you met me.”
Zac nodded her toward the couch, and she sat. He sank beside her, waited for Simon to take one of the chairs, but of course the man stayed on his feet.
“We should get some sleep,” Zac said. “Anything you need?”
“I need to know what you’re going to do with me.”
“With you? Nothing. You’re a person, not an object.”
“Will I be sent away?”
“Not by me.”
“You make very little sense.” She stood and picked up her duffel from where she had dropped it. “Good night.”
She retreated to the bedroom and shut the door without looking back. Clean linens apparently did not concern her. The door locked with a soft click. Zac looked up. Simon was starting to seem like a bodyguard, but he couldn’t tell for whom.
“Thoughts?”
“Get some sleep,” Simon said. “I’ll wake you in four hours.”
“I mean about Rachel.”
“What’s stopping her from slipping out the window in there?”
Zac nodded at her car keys resting on the kitchen counter. “Keep an eye on those. I locked the vehicle.”
“So she leaves with the duffel.”
“Her car is her life. She loves the thing, and she was careful with her possessions, even cheap stuff. Every last thing matters to her because things are all she has.”
“Hmm.” Simon strode to the table, picked up the keys, and shoved them into his pocket. “Fear of reprisal is a strong motivator.”
“You heard her, man. She thinks she deserves whatever Cady dishes out.”
Simon paced in the stretch between living room and kitchen. “And she wants to keep you.”
“Uh, sure, I guess.”
“Don’t tell me you missed that part.”
“Well … wait, you mean …?”
Simon gave a quiet chuckle. “Platonic, I think, but she won’t throw away the first human bond she’s experienced in sixty-plus years.”
Zac pushed his knuckles against his chest.
“Yeah,” Simon said. “I can’t feel it like you do, but I can see it.”
Zac nodded, words blocked by the cracks in Rachel. He had to help her. He had to pray for her.
An unexpected thought.
“Enough chitchat,” Simon said as if they’d been debating restaurant options. “The faster you get to sleep, the faster I get to sleep.”
Zac lay down on the couch, found the flattest throw pillow to support his ribs and another for his head. He tugged the afghan over him and closed his eyes, and Simon switched off the lamp.
Hours later Zac lay as still as possible and drifted up from the tunnel of slumber for what had to be the tenth time. Rib pain had its pros and its cons. The main benefit was shallow sleep, which kept his mind from the grasp of a nightmare. The main drawback was shallow sleep, which kept his body from restoration.
Something moved near him. He pushed up on the couch and listened. Simon? The toilet flushed down the hall. Papers rustled in the kitchen. Where they’d left the research folder. Zac was on his feet without conscious thought, flipping on the lights.
Rachel stood with one hand thrust into the folder. She was shaking so hard she could barely stand.
He was going to punch Simon’s lights out. He rushed to her and grasped her shoulders, and the physical touch brought her agony into him with no less force than he’d felt Ruth Wister’s joy. This too was a waterfall.
“Did you take it?” His voice rasped with her pain.
“Zac, please.” It was a wail. “Please, I need to.”
“Why?”
“The picture at the fair, when they were laughing, when they were living.”
Zac sat her at one of the chairs. Rachel brought her arms up to hide her face, and he kept his hand on her shoulder though he needed for his own sake to pull away from a darkness so thick he could choke on it. Rachel lived in this. He didn’t intend to pray aloud, but the need was too raw for silence.
“Help us, Father. Bring Your light.”
“God? You’re talking to God?” Rachel’s words came out like sobs. “What, you’re worried I’ll go to hell? Hell would be a reprieve from their dead eyes.”
“No,” he said.
“Let me go find out for myself.”
He didn’t know what else to do. He crouched by her chair and wrapped her in his arms, and she caved into him and let him carry her like a child back to her room. He sat with her on the side of the bed until she stopp
ed shaking.
“I’m not conflicted,” she said at last. “I swear to you, Zac. There’s no part of me that wants to live with what I’ve done.”
“I know, kiddo.”
“But you won’t let me go.”
“I won’t.”
He hugged her, expecting her to push away, but instead she clung to him. He closed his eyes and prayed. Part of Rachel could still cling. Part of her knew she needed help.
When she sat back and met his eyes, hers were dry. “I have to be alone now.”
He got up. “I won’t be far.”
He shut the bedroom door softly and made it all the way to the kitchen before his legs gave out. He caught himself on the table edge and lowered his trembling frame into a chair. In the opposite chair Simon sat waiting for him.
Zac lowered his head to his arms on the tabletop. He spoke into them. “Some bodyguard you turned out to be.”
Something glass rubbed over the surface of the table. Zac looked up. Simon positioned the vials in a row, as Rachel had done in the cottage.
“What …?”
“I kept them with me. She would’ve figured it out in another few seconds if you hadn’t flipped the lights on.”
Zac buried his face again. “Oh.”
“Go back to sleep.”
“What time is it?”
“Around four.”
“It’s my turn for watch anyway.” But he couldn’t lift his head.
“You’re done in, Zac. Go on.”
“Maybe another hour, if you don’t mind.”
“What’d I just say? Go.”
He trudged to the couch and lay down, certain he wouldn’t sleep. When Simon shook him awake, he couldn’t force his eyelids open. He groaned.
“Come on, man.”
“Tired,” Zac slurred.
“Join the club. Come on, wake up.”
Zac blinked a few times and rubbed a palm down his face. Dawn was in the room, gray and reticent, withholding sunshine from behind low, cold clouds. He pushed himself up. Ouch.
“Just let me get a couple hours, and I’ll be fine.”
Zac got his feet under him and threw the pillow at Simon. “G’night.”
“Thanks for nothing, pillow skimper.”
“Whiner.”
Taciturn and macho, right. Cady would learn differently.
He shuffled into the kitchen, the scent of coffee luring him. Simon must have made a whole pot, judging from the recent dark line on the carafe. He’d drunk half of it. Zac poured himself a mug and sat at the table.
He hoped Cady was sleeping or at least had been able to at some point. Hoped she could feel God near her tonight. That her soul belonged to Him filled Zac with thankfulness. Ironic, given his reaction to the fact a few days ago. But she might feel He had left her in her grief. Zac didn’t know what determined something like that, why his memories in the German grave still festered with separation. With desertion.
He sipped his coffee. Good stuff. His own never turned out this palatable, though he’d never stop denying spurious longevite claims that his efforts tasted worse than an alkali spring. Rain began to patter the roof and drizzle down the sliding glass door across from the table. He sighed. Rain was a cheerful thing when he was cheerful too. Today he wouldn’t mind the comfort of sunshine.
Bare feet scuffed at the edge of the kitchen. He looked up. Rachel was mussed with sleep, especially her long hair, which she’d braided but not carefully. She wore modest blue cotton pajamas and looked innocent as a baby rabbit, her eyes only half open and foggy with sleep.
“Good morning,” she whispered.
“Hey. Come in.” He kept his voice as low as hers, though Simon likely wouldn’t wake for anything now.
She sat across from him, watched him sip his coffee, watched raindrops trickle down the glass door.
“Hungry?” he said. “And Simon made coffee.”
“In a little while.”
They sat and watched the rain. Minutes crept by, and neither of them spoke. At last he leaned back in his chair and closed his eyes. Motrin. That’s what he needed. He’d get up in a minute and take some. Most accident-prone human being alive. Statistically, compared to every other human being alive … but his stats weren’t fairly matched.
“I’m not sure what happened last night,” Rachel said quietly.
He sat up carefully and waited for more.
“I couldn’t think anything except If I die, I won’t have to face any of them ever again. It was playing like a record loop in my head.”
He waited, but she was quiet again. At last he said, “Was last night the first time it’s happened?”
“I told you I’m tired.”
“Yeah, but this was different.”
She gave a slow nod. “I was safe before. By myself. I keep picturing everyone there on the steps looking at me, knowing me. Last night with the cure right there if I could just get my hands on it … It was the best solution.”
“Do you still believe that this morning?”
“I don’t think so. But I asked myself just now, sitting here, if I’d rather have stayed alone forever. Years and years of more and more aloneness. And the answer is yes.”
“Okay.”
She blinked, maybe surprised at his acceptance. “I think I want it to be no. But today it’s yes.”
“You’ve got time to figure it out.”
“I never wanted time, Zac. I wanted a husband and children and a few good horses and land enough to ride fast and far. That’s all I ever wanted.”
He had no answer for her. That God’s ways were higher would be no comfort to a soul who had begged for hell less than twelve hours ago.
“I’d like to keep talking,” she said at last. “But I can’t take any more hard things right now.”
“We could turn this conversation upside down. Truly flippant. If you want.”
“I would relish something truly flippant.”
“Then it’s time for This or That.”
“Um, what?”
He explained the concept, then asked, “Book or film?”
The shadow in her eyes half lifted. “Film.”
A glut of words was stored up in her, and he’d tug until he freed a few more. “You might be the only one of us with that preference.”
“Oh, I’ve been crazy for motion pictures ever since we got sound.”
“When you were, what, twenty-six?”
“Mm-hmm. Two years after the accident, still thinking I was mortal.”
“I was seventy-two.”
“Oh my.”
A smile tugged his mouth from deep inside, and she smiled back.
“My turn,” she said. “Do you prefer live music or recorded music?”
“I love both. But recorded, I guess.”
“Why?”
“I mean, now that we can get it. Performance can be captured in something more solid than a memory. Live recordings are the best.”
Her eyes lit. “That’s like my photography. So much beauty everywhere that I never want to forget. I didn’t really get into it until the sixties, but even since then the advances are amazing—digital storage of course, but also quality, sharpness, contrast, filters—there’s so much to do with it these days.”
Aha, there was the word glut. “You’ll have to show me your work sometime.”
“Oh yes.” But the lightness left her in a moment, and she reached out and gripped the table edge. “I was berating myself last night for leaving a trail.”
He stood and came around the table to sit next to her. “Why did you?”
She flattened her hands on the tabletop as if to plant herself there. At last she looked up. Her eyes held youth and age in equal measure, a longing for contradicting things.
“I made the cure with me in mind,” she said. “All the time passing, all the people walking past me all the time, just walking past while their hair turns gray and their skin turns to paper and they have spouses and children and grandchildre
n and friends and it hurts so much the way they keep walking past.”
He nodded. It did hurt. The Life Buoys accumulated over a century testified to that. He prayed for help, kept praying for it. He was only a man. A flawed and wrung-out man. Bungling this was practically inevitable.
“Cady thinks it would be justice. Doesn’t she.” Triumph lifted a corner of her mouth.
“I haven’t asked her.”
“Victim’s next of kin. She chooses my fate. That’s in the Old Testament, isn’t it?”
“Um, not exactly.”
“Close enough. How about this: if she agrees, you let me die.”
“Rachel.” He dropped his voice even lower than they’d been speaking for Simon’s benefit. “I think you ought to see her and Finn.”
“Wh–why?”
“Because you’re dreading it. Wouldn’t it be better to face them and have it done?”
She ducked her head. “I don’t think so. But you can tell them for me … that I know it was grievous.”
“Okay.” He wouldn’t push. Not about this and not about the question she’d left unanswered a minute ago.
“And tell them I stayed. With James and Anna. In case something went wrong, I stayed. They weren’t alone.”
She’d said she didn’t want any hard topics, but hard was all they had. “I went to Missouri. To their home.”
She seemed to shrink deeper into herself. “You saw their graves.”
“Yeah.”
“On their own land, beside their family. It was all I could do for them.”
“I’m sorry it was on you.”
“I deserved the task.” A few quiet minutes, and then she sighed. “I don’t think I can get back to flippant.”
“There’s another thing we need to do,” he said.
“What is it?”
“Let’s take a look at what’s left of the research. If you think you can deal with that right now.”
Her posture relaxed, and he wondered what she’d expected him to say. “Of course.”
He had stowed the research folder in his bedroom, on the closet shelf above a rack of hangers he hadn’t put to use. When things calmed down for a full twenty-four hours, he would take a few days to drive to Denver and back again. He would ship his nonessential belongings including the rest of his clothes. Maybe he’d quit apartment living altogether, sell the RV, and buy a house here. A house with a beach for a backyard.
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