Room at the Inn

Don’t go.

Come back.

I’ll be here whenever you want me.

Her weakness disgusted her, and she said nothing.

He zipped the pack shut and dropped it on the floor by the door. Then all that was left was the tricky business of negotiating some kind of farewell.

Travel safe. Don’t get shot. You’re killing me, and I hate you for doing this.

I love you.

You bastard, I love you.

He pulled her into his arms, and it wasn’t all that difficult, after all. He was so far away already. His shirt smelled like someplace she’d never been, and he was in the air, on a jet that would take him to places Julie couldn’t imagine.

Places she’d never wanted to go.

He kissed her forehead instead of her lips.

“I’ll be back in a few months, Jules.”

She couldn’t wait for him anymore.

Chapter Twelve

It got dark and started to snow, and the cab Carson had hired to take him to the airport slipped on bald tires and plowed into a snowbank next to the interstate on-ramp.

He tried to push it out while the cab driver reversed, but the car wouldn’t budge.

Carson climbed back in. Four miles outside of Potter Falls on Christmas Eve, and he was stuck in a car with a stranger who’d told him this was his first winter in Upstate New York—a stranger who hadn’t understood the importance of either snow tires or carrying a shovel in the trunk.

An infant of a man.

At least his name wasn’t Jesus. According to the ID card, it was Bahdoon.

Carson didn’t think he’d be able to find another ride to the airport. This wasn’t cab country. It had taken him almost an hour to scare up Bahdoon and convince him to come down from Fenimore to drive eighty miles to Albany on a holiday.

He sat in the cab, staring out at the falling snow as the engine ticked cool and the driver spoke what might have been Somali into a cell phone.

Leo Potter’s Mercedes approached at a crawl and pulled to a stop on the opposite side of the road. In the pool of light beneath an arc lamp, Leo got out of the car in his dress coat and wingtips, looking as though he’d just emerged from a menswear ad. He crossed the road and peered in the back window, then tapped with one knuckle. The driver must have pushed the button, because the window lowered with an electric whir.

“You need a ride?”

Carson stared at him, but he couldn’t seem to pull his thoughts together. The wise man? he wondered, Or the ass Mary and Joseph rode into Jerusalem?

“I don’t know,” he said finally.

Leo opened the door. “Scoot over.”

Carson did, and his oldest friend and worst enemy tucked himself into the car, a blast of cold and wintergreen riding over the warm-maple-syrup smell of the cab’s heater.

“So you’re leaving?” Leo asked conversationally.

“Trying to.”

“Where are you headed?”