Mean Streak

“Six thirty. You pretty much slept the day away.”

“I can’t believe I slept that long.”

“You had a rough go of it last night. I didn’t know whether to wake you or not.”

“I’m glad you did.”

“Your tights.” He passed them to her.

She threw off the covers, got up, and went into the bathroom. She used the toilet, pulled on her tights, rinsed her mouth out, and ran a hand through her hair, which had dried crazily and in tangles because she had gone to bed with it damp.

When she came out of the bathroom, he was standing in front of the bookshelves, perusing the titles. She went over to the fireplace and checked her running top an

d jacket. “Still damp,” she said. “I’ll have to wear your shirt for a while longer.”

He didn’t say anything. There was a broodiness to his silence that compelled her to fill it. “In fact, I’m a right mess. No moisturizer for three days. My hair a riot. If you ever saw me looking like my normal self, you wouldn’t recognize me.”

Keeping his back to her, he said, “I’d recognize you.”

His somber tone and standoffishness implied a subtext to his simple statement, and when she realized what it was, dejection settled over her as heavily as his coat had felt earlier. “But that will never happen, will it? Once I go home, we’ll never see each other again.”

“No.”

He didn’t elaborate. He didn’t make it conditional. He declared it as a foregone conclusion.

She didn’t know what to say, and even if she had, she wasn’t sure she could speak. Her throat was tight with an emotion she shouldn’t be feeling. At the prospect of returning home, she should be experiencing a sense of relief and happy anticipation. Instead, she felt desolate.

Of course, once she resumed her life, she would get over this silly and inexplicable sadness. She loved her work and her patients. She had the marathon to look forward to. People were counting on her. Once she got home, she would have no time to waste. She would need to plunge right in and make up for lost time, for the time she’d spent here.

Soon, these past few days would seem like a dream.

But why did she feel as if she were waking up before the dream reached a satisfying conclusion?

Breaking into her thoughts, he said, “If you want something to eat, help yourself.”

“I’m not hungry.”

Apparently he wasn’t either. The kitchen area was dark. He pulled a book from one of the shelves and carried it with him to the recliner.

She said, “Perhaps you aren’t as confident of the Floyds’ intentions as you wanted me to believe.”

When he looked up at her, she nodded down at the pistol that was on the end table, the lamp shining down on it, well within his reach. “No sign of them,” he said. “But I might have been wrong.”

She sat down on the sofa. “How did you know it was Lisa’s brothers?”

Absently, he ran his fingertips over the title embossed on the book cover. “I didn’t until she told me. She was so dead set against anyone knowing about the baby, even though she’d lost it. I guess any fifteen-year-old in that situation would be afraid of being found out. But she was particularly insistent that Pauline not know about it.

“Meanwhile, those two jackasses were drinking beer and actually seemed amused over her situation. Suddenly I realized why. It was their inside joke. I hoped I was wrong. But when I asked Lisa straight out, she started crying and told me.”

Emory hugged her elbows. “Was it an isolated incident?” she asked hopefully.

“No. Been going on for a long time, she said.”

“How could Pauline be blind to it?”

“She knows, Doc. Of course she does. She hasn’t acknowledged it, probably not even to herself, but she knows. Why do you think she sent Lisa to live with her sister and brother-in-law in town?”

Emory propped her elbows on her knees and held her head between her hands. “It’s obscene. You read about it, hear stories about it on the news, but it’s hard for me to believe that things like this actually happen.”