Текст книги "A Different Blue "
Автор книги: Amy Harmon
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“See ya in the morning, Blue. Tell Wilson I said cheerio.”
Wilson was waiting for me outside, his hands shoved in his pockets and his face raised toward the sunset. One of my favorite things about the desert were the sunsets. The sky above the low-lying western hills cast pink and purple ripples up into the descending night sky. Maybe it was because there was nothing to obscure the view – Las Vegas sat down in the valley, and Boulder City sat higher, to the southeast, around the bend of the eastern hills – but the sunsets never failed to move me and remind me of times with Jimmy when I wasn't so hard, when I hadn't had to grow up so fast. Wilson didn't speak as I approached, and we began to walk in silence. My increasing size forced me to waddle, but Wilson adjusted his stride as we made our way toward home.
“Why do you do that?” Wilson bit out eventually. I knew he'd been working up a good mad.
“Do what?”
“Assume the worst. Put words in my mouth, call yourself names, all of it. Why?”
I thought for a minute, wondering how I could possibly make someone like Wilson understand how if felt to be a “girl like me.”
“The first time I had sex I was fourteen, Wilson. I didn't necessarily want it, but there you go. He was an older boy, and I liked his attention. He was nineteen, and I was easy pickings.” I shrugged. “I've had sex many times since then. Some people might say that makes me a slut, and the fact that I make no apologies for it might qualify me as a bitch. Calling myself a mean skank is mild, if you look at it that way. I'm not proud of it – and I'm trying to change it – but it's the truth, and I'm not really interested in making excuses for myself.”
Wilson had stopped walking and was staring at me. “Fourteen?! That's not sex. It's statutory rape, Blue.”
“Yeah, Wilson. In many ways, it was.”
“Bugger!” Wilson whispered, incredulous. “I don't bloody believe this!” Then he yelled, “Bugger!” again, this time so loudly that some people crossing the street stopped and stared. A woman was driving by in her car with her window down as he yelled, and she frowned at us. The poor woman thought Wilson was yelling at her.
“Let me guess, nothing happened to him? Right?” Wilson turned on me as if it were me he was angry with. I knew it wasn't. In fact, Wilson's anger was incredibly validating. I found that telling him did not upset me and, for the first time, remembering didn't make my insides quake.
“What do you mean? Of course not. I told Cheryl, she made sure I was on the pill, and I . . . got over it.”
“Aaargh!” Wilson yelled again, kicking at a rock and sending it flying. He mumbled and swore and seemed incapable of rational speech, so I walked along beside him, waiting him out. After a couple of blocks, he reached out and took my hand in his. I had never held a boy's hand while walking beside him. Wilson's hand was much bigger than mine, and it engulfed mine, making me feel delicate and cherished. It was incredibly . . . sexy. If I hadn't been hugely pregnant, if I hadn't just confessed my ugly past, I might have made a move on Wilson right then. I might have taken his wonderful face in my hands and kissed him until we were both wrapped around each other in the middle of the sidewalk.
I laughed silently at myself and pushed the thought away. I was pretty sure Wilson would run screaming for the hills if I ever made a move on him. That wasn't the nature of our relationship. It definitely wasn't the nature of his feelings for me. Plus, with my belly sticking out the way it did, getting close might be impossible. We walked until the sunset faded and dusk dimmed our view. The streetlights began to flicker on as we neared Pemberley.
“Make a wish!” I cried, pulling on Wilson's hand. “Quick! Before all the lights come on!” In the Vegas area, the night sky always had an orange cast. Neon and night life combined to make star-gazing almost impossible. So I had created my own variation of wishing on stars. I wished on streetlights instead.
I squeezed my eyes shut and clung to Wilson's hand, encouraging him to do the same. I mentally ran through a litany of wishes, some of them the same wishes I always made – riches, fame, never having to shave my legs again – but there were new ones, too. I snapped my eyes open to see if I'd gotten them in before the last streetlight flickered on. The last one buzzed and glimmered as I watched.
“Boo–yah!” I hip bumped Wilson. “Those wishes are definitely coming true.”
“I can't keep up, Blue.” Wilson said softly. “I'm always reeling with you. Just when I think I know all there is to know, you reveal something that absolutely guts me. I don't know how you've survived, Echohawk. I really don't. The fact that you're still making jokes and wishing on streetlights is a bit of a miracle.” Wilson reached out as if to touch my face, but let his hand fall at the last second. “Remember that time in class when I asked you why you were so angry?”
I remembered. I'd been such a brat. I nodded.
“I thought I had you all figured out, thought you needed to be brought down a peg. And then I found out why you were having such a struggle with writing your personal history. I felt like a complete tosser.”
I laughed and did a fist pump with my free hand. “That was the goal, Wilson. Make the teacher feel sorry for you. It really helps the grade.”
Wilson just gazed down at me, and I could tell he wasn't buying it. He started climbing the steps to the house, letting go of my hand as he felt for his keys.
“For the record, Blue, I don't think you're a mean skank,” Wilson said soberly, and I almost laughed at the way those words sounded coming out of his mouth. “I'll admit, when you walked into my class that first day, I thought that's exactly what you were. But you surprised me. There's a whole lot more to you than meets the eye.”
“There's a whole lot more to most people than meets the eye, Wilson. Unfortunately, a lot of times it isn't good stuff. It's scary stuff, painful stuff. By now, you know so much scary, painful stuff about me, it's a wonder you're still around. You had me pegged pretty well right from the start, I'd say. You're wrong about one thing, though. Girls like me notice guys like you. We just don't think we deserve them.”
Wilson immediately dropped his keys. I groaned inwardly and wished I had kept my big mouth shut. He leaned down and retrieved the keys and after several attempts, he unlocked the entry door and pushed it open. He waited until I entered and then followed me in, shutting the door behind us. Always the gentleman, he stopped outside my apartment. He seemed to be searching for the right words, and for once I didn't tease him or try to be funny. I just waited, feeling a little despondent that he knew my darkest secrets and seemed to be struggling with them.
He found his voice at last, and he trained his melancholy eyes on a spot beyond me, as if he was reluctant to meet my gaze.
“I keep wishing you had had a better life . . . a different life. But a different life would have made you a different Blue.” He looked at me then. “And that would be the biggest tragedy of all.” With a little quirk of a smile he raised my hand to his lips – Mr. Darcy to the very end – and then he turned and walked up the stairs.
That night I sat in the dark, waiting for Wilson to play. But there were no strings to tie me up in silken knots. I wondered if Pamela, the pretty blonde with pearly skin and perfect teeth, was with him. Maybe that's why there was no music. I supposed I should be grateful that there weren't moans and professions of love coming through the duct work. I winced at the thought and the baby kicked, causing me to catch my breath and lift my shirt so I could watch my stomach. It was so alien . . . and so cool. My stomach rolled, lifting and lowering like an ocean wave.
“No tunes yet, sugar. Wilson's holding out on us. I would sing, but I promise that's worse than no music. My stomach rolled again, and I eased myself into a different position, trying to get comfortable, trying to appreciate the discomfort. It wouldn't be long. Moments like these were trickling away. I felt them sliding away into yesterdays, and the yesterdays were stacking up. Eventually, this moment would join the others. The final tomorrow would come, and my baby would be born. And I would just be Blue again.
I was tired, and my eyes grew heavy. Somewhere between wakefulness and sleep, a memory shimmered to the surface, and I watched it like a dream, playing out like an old rerun on the T.V.
“Jimmy, how about we find a new mom?” I had pulled myself up into a tree with low hanging branches and climbed out until I lay on the branch above Jimmy. His hands slid along the gnarled hunk of juniper he was striping of bark.
“Why?” Jimmy answered after several seconds.
“Don't you wish we had a mommy?” I asked, enjoying the scenery from above. It gave me an interesting view of Jimmy's greying head. I dropped a pine cone on him, and it bounced off his head harmlessly. He didn't even swat at it.
“I had a mommy,” he grunted.
“But I don't! And I want one!” Two more pine cones hit their target.
“Put an apron on Icas.” Jimmy picked up his hat and put it on, his answer to the barrage of pine cones.
“Icas smells and has slobbery kisses. Mommies don't have dog breath.” I looped my knee over the branch and swung from one arm and one leg. Reaching down, I swooped Jimmy's hat from his head. “Maybe Bev could be our new mom. She likes you and she likes me, and she makes really good cheese sandwiches.” I put Jimmy's hat on my own head and dropped to the ground, not really minding the pins and needles sensation in my feet when I hit the dirt.
“I guess I like things the way they are, Blue.”
“Yeah. I guess.” I picked up a smaller piece of juniper, a mallet, and a chisel and started stripping the bark, mimicking the steady movements of my father.
“Maybe we could just adopt a baby,” I suggested.
Jimmy's chisel bit deeply into the wood and he cursed under his breath . . . something about hell freezing over.
“I would be a good mommy, I think,” I said seriously, ticking off my accomplishments. “I would share my bed with her. I could teach her to crawl. I obviously know how to walk, so that wouldn't be a problem. You would have to change the diapers, though. Or maybe we could teach her to poo outside, like Icas.”
“Hmmm,” Jimmy sighed, tuning me out.
“I could be the mommy, you could be the grandpa. Would you like being a grandpa, Jimmy?”
Jimmy stopped chiseling, his hands falling to his sides. He looked at me soberly, and I wondered at the deep lines around his mouth that I hadn't really noticed before. Jimmy already sort of looked like a grandpa.
Strains of music found their way through the vent and I shook myself drowsily, the memory/dream still hanging in the air like a hint of perfume. I had grandparents somewhere. My mother must have had some family. And if not, what about my father's family? Had they even known about me? Had they looked for me?
I lay in the dark, listening as Wilson played the songs that I now had names for. I could identify many of them within the first few notes. Yet I could walk by my own grandfather – even my own father! – tomorrow and not recognize him. My baby shifted within me again. Someday my baby would want to know, no matter how deeply he or she was swathed in love and family. Someday he or she would need to know. And that meant I had to find out.
Chapter Nineteen
The precinct smelled like you would expect a precinct to smell. It smelled official. Coffee, cologne, a hint of bleach, and electronics . . . you know the smell. I didn't smell donuts, though. I guess the cops and donuts thing is just a bad stereotype. More labels.
I approached the front desk, manned by a enormous woman with a severe bun and a hint of a mustache. Her looks did not encourage secret spilling.
“Can I help you?” Her voice was a complete contrast to her appearance. It was sugary and kind, and reminded me of Betty White. I felt better almost immediately.
“I don't know if you can help me, but maybe you can direct me. I wondered if there is a policeman here with the last name of Bowles? I think he will remember me if he is. It involves a missing persons case he was in involved with about ten years ago.”
“We do have a Detective Bowles. Would you like me to see if he is on the premises?”
Bowles wasn't a terribly uncommon name, and I knew there was a chance it wasn't the same guy, but I nodded anyway. It was a start.
“Could I have your name please?”
“Blue Echohawk.” That would make it simple. If Detective Bowles didn't recognize my name, he wasn't the same officer I had known.
The woman who swallowed Betty White spoke sweetly into her headset, obviously trying to locate Detective Bowles. I looked away, taking in my surroundings. This building was much older than the police station they'd taken me to in 2001. That station had been in Las Vegas somewhere, and it had been brand new. It had smelled like paint and sawdust, which at the time had been very comforting. For me, the smell of sawdust was probably the equivalent of homemade chocolate chip cookies hot out of the oven.
“Blue Echohawk?” I turned as a muscular, middle-aged man approached. He was instantly familiar, and I resisted the urge to turn and run as my heart began to pound. Would I get in trouble for not coming forward with this information sooner? Would Cheryl? A smile broke out across his face as surprise had him chuckling and reaching a hand out in greeting.
“I'll be damned. When all that stuff went down at the high school last January, I wanted to get in touch and say hello and let you know how proud I was of you, but thought maybe you would be overwhelmed with all the hype and media attention at the time.”
“I thought I saw you that day. That's why I'm here. I figured you had to be working here in Boulder City now and – I know this is a little strange – I think you might be able to help me. I'm not in trouble!” I hurried to add, and he smiled again. He seemed genuinely pleased to see me.
“I knew there couldn't be two Blue Echohawks in the world, but I admit, I still pictured you at ten years old.” He eyed my protruding stomach in surprise. “And you're going to be a mother soon, looks like!” My hand fluttered to my belly awkwardly. I nodded and reached for the hand he held toward me, shaking it firmly before I let it drop.
“Candy?” Detective Bowles directed his question to the helpful lady at the front desk. “Is room D available?”
Candy?? Oh, that poor woman. She needed a strong name to go with that strong upper lip.
Candy smiled and nodded, all the while speaking into her headset.
“Right this way.” Detective Bowles began walking. “Can I just call you Blue?”
“Sure. What do I call you?”
“Detective . . . or Andy's fine, too.”
He led me into a little room and pulled out a chair. I wondered if they used these rooms to question murderers and gang members. Strangely, I had felt a lot more nervous at Planned Parenthood.
“So talk to me. What brings you to me after all this time?” Detective Bowles crossed his bulging biceps over his chest and leaned back in his chair.
“My father's body was found three years after he disappeared. I don't know if you knew that. I was told by my social worker, and I don't know what happened on your end of things . . . what exactly the police did, if anything. I'm guessing it was documented and the case was closed at some point?” I didn't know if I was using the correct terminology. Like most people, I had watched a few cop shows. I felt a little silly trying to sound like I had any clue what I was talking about.
“I did know, actually. I'm sorry for your loss.” Detective Bowles tipped his head, knowing there was more to come.
“My . . . aunt . . .” My voice trailed off. She wasn't my aunt, but for the sake of the story I needed to keep it simple but honest. I adjusted slightly. “Uh . . . the woman who took me in told me something at that time that I don't think the police ever knew. I didn't know . . . you see.” I wasn't making any sense.
Detective Bowles just waited.
“I don't want to get her in trouble. She should have spoken up . . . but she had her reasons, I guess.”
“Do you want a lawyer?” Detective Bowles asked softly. I looked at him in confusion.
“No . . . I don't think so. I didn't commit a crime. I was a kid. It never even occurred to me that I could go to the police with what she told me. And I'm hoping that this won't be about Cheryl Sheevers or anybody else. This is about me. I'm trying to find out who my mother was.”
“If I remember right, nobody seemed to know who your mother was, correct?”
I nodded. “But after Jimmy Echohawk's body was found, Cheryl told me that he wasn't my father.”
Detective Bowles was sitting up a little straighter. I definitely had his attention. “How did she know that?”
“She told me that Jimmy stopped for the night at a truckstop in Reno. He sat down in a big booth in the restaurant to have a bite to eat, and about twenty minutes into his meal a little girl sat up across from him. She had apparently been asleep on the far side of this big round booth, and he hadn't even seen her there. He offered the little girl his french fries. She didn't cry, but she was hungry and ate everything he gave her. He ended up sitting there with her, hoping someone would claim her.” I looked up at Detective Bowles whose eyes had grown wide, jumping to the obvious conclusion.
“You would have to know Jimmy. He definitely walked to a different drum. He didn't live like other people lived, and he definitely didn't respond they way someone else would have responded. He was kind, but he was also reserved . . . and very . . . quiet and..and unassuming. I can just picture him, looking around, trying to figure out what in the world to do with this child, but not saying a word. I swear, he wouldn't have spoken up in an emergency room if he had a hatchet in his head.”
Andy Moody nodded, listening, urging me on.
I paused, the memory poised at the edges of my mind . . . but hazy. I didn't really know if it was an actual memory, or if I had just pictured it so many times that it felt that way. “Anyway, eventually a woman came for the little girl. Jimmy thought maybe the little girl was lost and had climbed into the booth on her own. But from the way the woman acted, she had laid the little girl down in the booth on purpose, and let her sleep while she went off and played the slots.”
Detective Bowles shook his head in disbelief. “And this little girl was you.”
“Yes,” I said frankly. I proceeded to tell him what Cheryl had told me, about Jimmy's belief that my mother had followed him back to his trailer and about the faulty passenger side door. I told him how I'd been found the next morning, how Jimmy had recognized me, and how he hadn't known what to do. “A few days later, the cops showed up at the truckstop, showing a flyer with the woman's face on it, asking about a child. The owner of the truckstop, who had purchased some carvings from Jimmy and was fairly friendly with him, told him the woman had turned up dead at local hotel. The cops had come around because the woman was wearing a T-shirt with the truckstop logo on it. At that point, Jimmy moved on and took me with him.”
By this point, Detective Bowles was scribbling wildly, his eyes darting up from his paper to my face as I spoke.
“Bottom line, my mother abandoned me at a truckstop in Reno. She turned up dead in a motel in the area a few days later. With that information, I wondered if you could find out who she was.”
Detective Bowles stared at me, his jaw working, blinking rapidly. He didn't have a great poker face. “Do you know approximately when this would have been?”
“August. I always thought my birthday was August 2. But how would Jimmy have known when my birthday was? I think he just marked my birthday by the day my mother abandoned me. I can't be sure of that, but it's my best guess. Cheryl said she thought I was about two when this all went down. It would have to have been 1992 or 1993. Does that help?”
“Yeah. It does. August of '92 or '93. Hotel room. Missing child. T-shirt with a truckstop logo. What else can you give me? Anything at all?”
“She was young . . . maybe younger than I am now.” The thought had struck me often in the last few months. “She was Native American, like Jimmy. I think that might be one of the reasons she left me with him.” Maybe I was kidding myself. But it was something to hold onto.
“I'm gonna make some calls. This case was obviously never solved because they never found you, did they? Reno P.D. will have to hit the archives, do a little digging, might take a few days, but we'll find out who your mother was, Blue.”
“And find out who I am.”
Detective Bowles stared at me and then slowly shook his head, as if the realization was staggering. “Yeah. You poor girl. And we'll find out who you are, too.”
“I'm going to Reno.”
“Reno?”
“Reno, Nevada.” Wilson was British. Maybe he didn't know where Reno was. “It's in Nevada, but it's way up North. It's about an eight hour drive. I could fly, but I'm too far along for that to be safe. I don't even know it they'd let me on a plane.”
“Why Reno?”
“I went to the police department on Monday.”
Wilson's eyes widened and he was very still.
“I told them everything I knew . . . about myself, about my mother . . . about Jimmy.” I felt oddly like crying. I hadn't felt that way when I spoke with Detective Bowles on Monday. But he had called me back this morning. And he had been excited. And I had a feeling that the life I was trying to build for myself was going to unravel yet again.
“The Detective who I spoke with . . . he says there was a woman who was found dead in a hotel room in Reno in 1993. This woman apparently had a child. The child was never found. The details match up with what Cheryl told me. They want me to come to Reno, give a DNA sample, and see if I'm the missing child.”
“They will be able to tell you that?” Wilson sounded as stunned as I felt.
“Not right away. Apparently, when they realized there was a child unaccounted for, they took a DNA sample from the woman and it's in some national database.”
“How soon will they know?”
“Months. It isn't like TV, I guess. Detective Bowles said he's had to wait a year for DNA results before, but he thinks this will be a priority, so it shouldn't be that long.”
Wilson huffed out. “Well, the sooner you get up there and give them a sample, the sooner you'll know, yeah?”
“Yeah.” I felt queasy.
“I'll come with you.”
“You will?” I was surprised and oddly touched.
“You can't go alone. Not when you're this close.”
“I've got two weeks.”
Wilson waved that away and whipped his cell phone out, making arrangements for a substitute for Thursday and Friday as well as reservations at a Reno hotel, all in a matter of minutes.
“Did you tell Tiffa?” He paused, phone in hand, glancing up at me. “She's going to want to know.”
I called Tiffa, and, as it turned out, Tiffa didn't just want to know, she wanted to come. She actually didn't want me to go at all, but Wilson just shook his head and took the phone from me.
“She has to go, Tiff. She has to.” So Tiffa decided the next best thing was to just come along. Jack was going to be in Reno for a medical convention on Saturday and Sunday anyway, and she had debated joining him. She would just leave a couple of days early so she could be with me. Baby Mama status was getting a wee bit old, I told myself grumpily. I had been so independent for so long, it felt strange needing to clear my comings and goings with anyone. Secretly, though, I was thrilled that she cared so much.
“Road trip!” she squealed, coming through my door two hours later, suitcase in hand, sunglasses on, wearing one of those big hats you wear on the beach. She looked ready for a day on a yacht. I giggled and allowed her to pull me in for a big squeeze, a smooch to my belly, and a kiss to my cheek. I'd always thought the English were supposed to be less effusive, less demonstrative, than Americans. It definitely wasn't true where Tiffa was concerned.
“We're taking the Mercedes! I'm not squeezing these long legs in the back of the Subaru, Darcy!”
“Fine. But I'm driving, and you are still sitting in the back,” Wilson said agreeably.
“Please do! I'm just going to sit back and relax, maybe read, maybe kip a bit.”
She didn't read a word. Or sit back. And she definitely didn't kip . . . which I learned meant to sleep. She talked and laughed and teased. And I learned a few things about Wilson.
“Did Darcy ever tell you how he wanted to trace the steps of St. Patrick?”
“Tiffa..please, can you just fall asleep already?” Wilson groaned, sounding a lot like one of his students.
“Alice had just turned eighteen – done with school, wanting an exciting holiday. I wasn't even living at home then. I was twenty-two and working at a little art gallery in London, but every year we had a family holiday. We would go somewhere for a couple of weeks, usually somewhere sunny and warm where Dad could unwind a little. Alice and I wanted to go to the south of France, and Dad was on board. However, little Darcy had gotten a wee bee in his bonnet. He wanted to go to Ireland – cold, wet, and WINDY just like Manchester was that time of year. Why? Because the precocious lad had just read a book about Saint Patrick. Mum, of course, thought that was wonderful, and we all ended up traipsing all over a bloody hill in sloshy boots, reading pamphlets.”
I giggled and tossed a look at poor Wilson. “St. Patrick was fascinating.” He shrugged, grinning.
“Oh, Cor! Here we go!” Tiffa groaned theatrically.
“He was kidnapped from his home at fourteen, chained, marched onto a boat, and kept as a slave in Ireland until he was twenty years old. Then he managed to walk across Ireland, get on a boat, with nothing more than the clothes on his back, and make it back to England, a miracle in itself. His family was overjoyed at his return. Patrick's family was wealthy and educated, and Patrick would have had a comfortable life. But he couldn't get Ireland out of his head. He dreamed about it. In his dreams, he claimed God told him to go back to Ireland to serve the people there. He went back . . . and ended up serving the people in Ireland for the rest of his life!” Wilson shook his head in wonder, as if the story still moved him.
I thought St. Patrick was just an Irish leprechaun. I'd never even thought about him as an actual person. Or an actual saint. It was just a holiday.
“So, how old were you when you discovered St. Patrick?” I teased.
“Twelve! He was bloody twelve!” Tiffa bellowed from the backseat, making everyone laugh. “When Darcy was born, he was wearing a tiny little bow tie and braces.”
“Braces?” I giggled.
“Suspenders,” Wilson supplied dryly.
“He has always been an absolute geek,” Tiffa chortled. “That, my dear Blue, is why he's brilliant. And wonderful.”
“Don't try to be nice to me now, Tiff,” Wilson smiled, catching her gaze in his rear view mirror.
“All right. I won't. Did you know he was going to be a doctor, Blue?”
“Tiffa!” Wilson moaned.
“Yes . . . actually. I did know that.” I patted Wilson's shoulder.
“He wasn't cut out for it. He would have been completely miserable. Dad saw how brilliant Darcy was and just assumed that meant he should be a 'man of medicine' like he was, and his father before him, and his father before him. But Darcy was brilliant in all the ways that had nothing to do with science, right luv?”
Wilson just sighed and shook his head.
“Darcy always had his nose in a book. He used enormous words and used them correctly . . . at least I think he did. He loved history, literature, poetry.”
“Have you heard him quote Dante?” I interrupted.
Wilson's eyes shot to mine.
“What was that lovely poem you shared with us . . . about harpies?” I questioned.
Wilson chuckled at the memory and quoted the lines obediently.
Tiffa moaned, “That's awful!”
“I thought so, too,” I laughed. “I couldn't forget it, though. I ended up carving 'Bird Woman' as a result.”
“That's what inspired 'Bird Woman?'” Wilson asked, astonishment coloring his voice.
“Your history lessons seemed to find their way into my carvings more often than not.”
“How many? How many carvings were inspired by my history class?”
“Counting 'The Arc?'” I counted them in my head. “Ten. Tiffa bought a couple of them the first time she came to the cafe.”
Tiffa and Wilson seemed stunned, and the car was quiet for the first time since we'd set out. I fidgeted uncomfortably, not sure what the silence meant.
“Blue!” I should have known Tiffa would find her tongue first. “Blue, I have to see all of them. We should do something big, a big display with all of the pieces together. It would be brilliant!”
My cheeks flushed and I looked down at my hands, not wanting to get excited over something that hadn't even happened. “Some of them I sold at the cafe, but you are welcome to see the rest.”
“Darcy can die a happy man now,” Tiffa added after a moment. “His teaching has inspired art.” She leaned up and hoisted herself over the seat and kissed Wilson's cheek with a loud smack of her lips.
“Actually. For once, Tiffa is absolutely right. That might be the best compliment anyone has ever paid me.” Wilson smiled at me. Warmth pooled inside me, and the baby kicked in response.
“I saw that! The baby kicked!” Tiffa was still hanging over the front seat and she laid her hands against my belly, a look of intense rapture on her face. The baby rolled and nudged a few more times, inducing squeals of delight from Tiffa.
For the rest of the ride we talked, listened to music – I introduced them to Willie Nelson – and took turns driving and dozing off. But I couldn't get the image of a young Darcy Wilson out of my head, plodding over Irish hills in search of a saint who had lived many hundreds of years before. It was easy to see how a boy like that could go to Africa for two years or shun a medical profession for something simpler and less glamorous. It was harder to see how a boy like that, so inspired by a saint, could be attracted to a sinner like me.
