Текст книги "The First Prophet"

Автор книги: Kay Hooper

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In a conversational tone, Mason said, “Go on running if you have to. But it’s no use, Sarah, you know that. They’ll win. They always win.”

“You mean the mysterious enemy that doesn’t exist?” Her voice was still only a whisper.

His mouth twisted. “Yeah. Them.”

“I’m sorry,” she said.

Mason looked away suddenly. “So am I. Oh, put the gun away, Mackenzie. You have nothing to fear from me. Go on, get her out of here.”

Tucker got her out of there. But he didn’t take Mason’s word for it that he was no threat, keeping the gun in hand until he and Sarah safely reached the street. He was wary even then, half-expecting long black cars to be waiting for them out there. But the neighborhood looked as quiet as before.

He put Sarah in the passenger side of the Jeep, one glance at her face telling him that she was in bad shape. She was so pale that her skin had a bluish cast, and her too-dark eyes were enormous and unseeing, the pupils so dilated that only a rim of gold showed around them. He got a blanket from the backseat and covered her because she was shaking so violently, then quickly got in the driver’s seat and got the engine and heat going. He also didn’t waste any time in driving away from Mason’s house.

“Sarah, are you all right?”

She didn’t move, didn’t look at him.

“Sarah? Goddammit, say something or I’m taking you straight to the nearest hospital.”

As if the effort demanded was almost too much, she turned her head and looked at him then, and her voice was whispery when she said, “They couldn’t help me. The doctors. They wouldn’t know what was wrong. I just need…to rest. Sleep. I’ll be fine after I sleep.”

He wasn’t so sure about that, but in any case he had to ask, “What the hell went on back there?”

“It was…a skirmish.”

“A skirmish? Jesus, Sarah…”

“Just a skirmish,” she insisted wearily. “He wasn’t even one of them, really. He was a tool they tried to use against me. A…pale echo of what they are. And even so, as ineffective as he is compared to them…look what it did to me to fight him. Look what it cost me just to hold my own with one of their tools.”

“It was your first…skirmish,” he reminded her. “You’ll be better at it next time.”

A little sound escaped Sarah, not a laugh or a cry but something in between. “No, I won’t. I can’t do that again.”

“Sarah—”

“I can’t. You don’t know what it’s like. You don’t know what it does to me.”

Tucker was beginning to understand but nevertheless said, “What was all that about kids?”

“I wanted to find out if he knew,” she murmured.

“Knew what?”

“That they’d taken another child. Early this morning.”

“How do you know?”

Starkly, her voice full of horror, Sarah said, “I heard him scream. In my mind.”

Tucker nearly pulled off the road, every instinct urging him to put his arms around Sarah and offer some kind of comfort. But he kept driving. For one thing, something in her posture warned him that right now she didn’t want to be touched by anyone. And since she had kept from him this knowledge of another abducted child, he was even more sure that she especially didn’t want to be touched by him.

But he could, and did, change the subject to what he thought was a lesser horror. “You said that Mason was trying to get into your head—why?”

“To…convert me. To try to make me think the way they want me to.”

“Which is?”

“That I can’t fight them and win. That they’ll always be stronger. That I already belong to them. That I’m…destined to lose.”

Tucker glanced at her quickly, then turned his attention back to the road ahead of them. “But he failed.”

“He didn’t get inside my head.”

“Did you get inside his?”

Sarah was quiet for a moment, then said, “Not enough to help us.”

Tucker sent her another glance, this one a bit hard. More secrets. “What are you not telling me?”

“Nothing that matters.”

“On a need-to-know basis, I think I need to know.”

Again, she was silent, minutes passing before she finally said, in a curiously hollow voice, “It only matters to me. I know something I didn’t know before. I know what it will cost me to survive if they get their hands on me. And it’s not a price I want to pay.”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean that I looked inside Mason’s head, inside him, and there was nothing there.”

“I don’t—”

“He was telling the truth, Tucker. He did pay a high price for life. He paid with his soul.”

Neil Mason sat there on the couch for some time after Gallagher and Mackenzie left and gazed at nothing. He was a little tired. More than a little, if the truth be told. He lifted one hand, holding it out in front of him and, dispassionately, watched it shake.

I’m getting too old for this. Hell, I was always too old for this.

His hand fell to rest on his thigh, and he looked around the living room almost curiously. Had it been worth it? Funny that he hadn’t asked himself before. Hadn’t been able to, maybe. Afraid of the answer, probably.

The phone rang, and Mason rose to get the portable from its place out in the hall. “Hello?” Idly, he walked back into the living room.

“Report.”

That cool, incongruously pleasant voice had the usual effect of removing the solid bone and cartilage from his knees, and Mason sat down abruptly in the chair Sarah Gallagher had occupied. God, how did I let him do this to me?

“I have nothing to report,” he said formally.

“Then you have something to explain.”

“She’s stronger than I was told. Much stronger.” Maybe stronger than you knew, you son of a bitch. “And smarter. She managed to block me very effectively.”

“And the drug?”

“She never touched the coffee.”

“You should have put it in something else.”

Mason smiled, glad he was not visible to the other man. “When I offered coffee, she accepted. Took the cup—and set it down. She wouldn’t have tasted anything I gave her.”

“What made her suspicious of you?”

“Oh, I don’t know. Unless it was the fact that her abilities are just about the best I’ve ever encountered. Lots of raw talent there.”

There was a short silence. Mason waited patiently.

“I see. Is she aware of her own potential?”

“I’d say not. Still scared of it. And that says something, you know. Even scared, she did pretty damn good. When she gets her feet under her, she won’t be a tool you can use. She’ll be a weapon. If, that is, she’s brought over by then.”

“And how long do you estimate we have before she…gets her feet under her?”

“Hard to say. If the status remains quo, maybe a week or two. If you keep her rattled and off balance, maybe longer. On the other hand, she’s awfully close to the edge now. Push her the wrong way and that weapon won’t be yours—it’ll be hers. And she’ll be out of your reach for good.”

There was a soft click, and then the dial tone.

Mason turned off his portable phone and set it on the coffee table. Half to himself, he muttered, “Don’t ask if you don’t want to know.”

Then he sat there looking absently around his pleasant living room and waited for them to come for him.

“A tool may fail even in the hand of a master,” Varden said.

Duran turned from the window and gave him a look that warned him not to bother sucking up, but all he said was, “Bring Mason in.”

“Yes, sir.” Not making a second mistake, Varden left.

She had gone to sleep with the suddenness of an exhausted child just moments after telling him that Mason had sold his soul for life, and Tucker let her sleep. He needed to concentrate on getting them out of Syracuse, and he needed to think.

There was a lot to think about, not the least of which was Sarah’s clearly expanding abilities. She had begun by having visions of the future, but unlike any precognitive psychic Tucker had ever heard of, she was also, at the very least, telepathic to some extent. And that was becoming more obvious as time passed. Last night she had accused him of failing to keep his promises and had cited a broken promise to Lydia—which she could only have known by looking into his own mind telepathically. Or reaching across distance and possibly time to look into Lydia’s mind, as she had appeared to do once before.

Lydia. Jesus Christ.

He pushed that away, concentrating on what Sarah had done this morning. She had, she said, heard the mental scream of a child being abducted—and she had managed to hide her shock and distress from him. And as for Neil Mason, she had somehow managed to block his efforts to influence her telepathically. And she had looked inside him to find nothing.

He did pay a high price for life. He paid with his soul.

Tucker hoped she hadn’t meant that literally. He really hoped so. He wasn’t at all sure he believed that some evil entity could capture a soul—or even take one in payment for…anything.

No, surely she hadn’t meant it literally. She’d meant it the way anyone would, using the phrase as a yardstick to measure how badly someone could want something. Mason willing to sell his soul for life meant simply that he was willing to give up just about everything else that mattered to him in order to live.

That was what she’d meant.

Except that Tucker had a crawly feeling it wasn’t. Because the look on Sarah’s face when she’d said it wasn’t a price she was willing to pay had spoke of something truly terrible. More than the loss of possessions or even a way of life. The loss of a soul.

Literally the loss of a soul.

Which means—what? That we’re fighting the devil?

No. No, there was nothing supernatural about the other side. So far, nothing that had been done by them could not be explained logically and rationally. In fact, everything he’d found out about this conspiracy—with the exception of its bizarre focus on psychics—smacked of all-too-human violence, and felonious intentions rather than mystical behavior.

Sure, the other side was or appeared to be all around them—though that perception was probably more paranoid than real. And they did seem to have vast, even limitless resources. But Tucker was still convinced that what lay at the heart of this conspiracy was a very ordinary and even unimaginative (if presently inexplicable) plan to profit in some way. To gain something—power, perhaps.

Even as those thoughts took form in his mind, Tucker was reminded of crossing a graveyard at night as a young boy. Whistling, as boys would, to prove to himself there was nothing wrong. Not looking to the left or the right, and surely to God not looking back, but only straight ahead. Marching briskly. Because there was nothing hiding in the graveyard, nothing about to jump out at him from behind a headstone.

Nothing was going to get him.

Half-consciously, Tucker turned up the Jeep’s heater.

They had been on the road about an hour when Sarah stirred and opened her eyes drowsily. Tucker had been waiting for her to wake and spoke immediately, hoping to use the unexpectedness of the question to tap into that odd well of knowledge she couldn’t seem to reach into deliberately—or, at least didn’t admit she could.

“Sarah, where are we going?”

“Hmm?” she murmured.

“Where are we going?”

“Holcomb. It’s a little town northwest of Bangor.”

The answer surprised him, but he tried to keep his voice calm and without any particular inflection. “Why there?”

“Because that’s where it ended.”

“Ended? Past tense?”

Sarah’s eyes opened wider and she turned her head to look at him. For a moment she looked a little lost and more than a little puzzled, the pupils of her eyes wide like a cat’s in the dark as they always seemed to be now. Then she shrugged and half-closed her eyes. “I don’t know what I meant. A slip of the tongue, probably.”

Tucker didn’t think so. Her too-dark eyes were veiled against him, and her voice held an evasive note. He wanted to push, to insist that she tell him whatever it was she was holding back. But he couldn’t quite bring himself to, not now. She was still exhausted, strained, and even in the delicate bones of her face was the finely honed look of unspeakable stress and pressure; he was afraid that if he pushed her now, forced her now, she would simply break.

So he forced himself to be patient. For now.

“But it is Holcomb we’re headed for?”

“I– Yes. Yes, I think so.”

Tucker thought about it, then shook his head. “The only city of any size roughly between here and Bangor is Portland.”

“But that’s on the coast.”

“Yeah…but from there it’ll be less than a hundred and fifty miles to Bangor. We can be in Portland in a few hours, spend the night there. Then go on to Holcomb tomorrow.”

“On the last day of September,” Sarah said.

“We’re safer in large cities, and you’re in no shape to drive straight through to Bangor.”

“I’m fine.”

“No, you’re not. You need to sleep about twelve hours.”

“I don’t want to sleep that long. It wouldn’t help anyway.”

He glanced at her, then turned his gaze forward once again. “All right. But you do need to rest. And we need to decide if we want to look up another psychic. There are three on the list who presently live in Portland.”

“I don’t know.” Her voice was evasive again. “We’re running out of time.”

“Maybe we should risk spending a few extra hours in Portland, Sarah. Visit at least one more psychic. If we go on to Holcomb with no idea of what to expect there…”

“What if the next psychic is…another of their tools? What if they all are?”

That hadn’t occurred to Tucker, and he felt a chill. “They can’t all be on the other side. Surely…”

“No?” Sarah closed her eyes again, and added softly, “But what if they are, Tucker? What if they are?”

TWELVE

Duran glanced back over his shoulder when Varden came into the room, then turned and faced the other man. “I’ve decided to deal with Mason myself.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Which means you’ll be continuing on to Portland without me.”

Varden nodded. “I understand.”

“Do you? Then don’t fail me, Varden. I want Sarah Gallagher.”

“I will get her for you, sir,” Varden said coolly.

“Will you? We’ll see, Varden. We will see. In the meantime, I’ll rejoin you at the next stage of the operation.”

“Yes, sir.” Alone at last, Varden went to the window for a moment and looked out. But there was nothing much to look at, and he turned back into the room with a faintly irritated shrug.

He was pleased, though. It had worked out better than he could have hoped for. He had time now, and a chance to run the operation the way he wanted, the way it needed to be run.

He picked up the phone and placed a call to a number he knew well. “Astrid. I want you in Portland, immediately.”

“You want me?” Her voice was, just faintly, mocking. “Does Duran know about this?”

Varden kept a rein on his temper. “Of course.”

“Well, in that case, I’m on my way.” Definite mockery now.

Varden allowed the disrespect to pass unchallenged. It hardly mattered, after all. When his plan worked, Astrid would have no doubt at all who was her superior.

And neither would Duran.

By four o’clock that afternoon, they were checked into yet another chain hotel in another small suite. Sarah, who had said nothing else after their brief conversation and had at least appeared to sleep all the way to Portland, agreed only reluctantly to eat something before retreating to the bedroom and going to sleep once again. Despite what she’d said about sleep not helping, it seemed her body or mind demanded it.

Tucker checked on her several times during the next few hours, only to find her so deeply asleep that she never even changed position on the bed. That the depth of her sleep bordered on unconsciousness disturbed him, but he was reluctant to force her awake before she was ready. Especially given what lay ahead of them.

He was left with far too many hours alone in which to brood. He tried to occupy himself in searching for and gathering more information about the conspiracy surrounding them, but everything he found was more nebulous confirmation of his beliefs and theories—but no proof whatsoever. He finally turned off the laptop and slouched back in the uncomfortable chair at the desk near the window, staring across the room at the muted MSNBC on television without noticing what had gone on in the world today.

It was maddening that he’d been unable to find a shred of solid proof to confirm what they suspected. Yes, psychics had seemingly died or disappeared, all over the country and for years, yet each instance appeared accidental or at least explicable. There had even been people convicted in abduction cases and put away—and in at least a couple of cases executed—for murders, despite the absence of bodies. As far as the legal system was concerned, each was an isolated incident. Despite all the various databases beginning to connect diverse law enforcement agencies across the country, none had, apparently, noticed any kind of pattern.

There was no evidence of a conspiracy. No evidence, that is, that anyone not involved in this would believe.

Tucker began to feel some sympathy for the conspiracy “nuts” he’d heard about for years, those who insisted that someone else had fired at JFK from the grassy knoll, or that the government was hiding the existence of extraterrestrials, or that Elvis was alive and well and living in Topeka.

The very idea of yet another vast, inexplicable, and secretive conspiracy sounded so absurd that the tendency was to laugh or shrug it off, or at the very least greet each new conspiracy theory with a roll of the eyes and patent disbelief. You could pile the facts one on top of the other, list a long string of events too similar to be coincidence, and come up with a neat (if bizarre) theory to explain it all—and there was absolutely no concrete evidence to back up your claims.

Even more, there was no explanation, no reason you could offer to add weight to the theory. Psychics were being taken. Why? Who was taking them? Where were they being taken?

And—oh, by the way—how come nobody but you noticed them being taken?

For something so vast and long-lived, this thing had left few tracks for anyone to follow and no fingerprints at all. There was no clue as to who was behind it. No clue as to the reasoning or purpose behind it. No evidence other than speculation, and precious little of that.

There was just this growing list of dead and vanished people whose only connection to one another was the fact that each was reputed to have some sort of psychic ability. And in most cases, even that connection was very nebulous for the simple reason that psychic ability was difficult, if not impossible, to prove.

Tucker was also just beginning to realize that, one way or another, he and Sarah were nearing journey’s end. September was all but over. Whatever Sarah had foreseen for herself, it seemed clear that the conclusion was due to take place sometime in October, possibly in the first few days of the month.

And in, apparently, a little town called Holcomb. A town where something had ended, or would end.

Sarah’s life?

Tucker rubbed his forehead with the tips of his fingers, vaguely conscious of the dull ache there. He felt damned helpless, and it wasn’t a feeling he was accustomed to. In most areas of his life, success was a frequent if not constant companion, but he had one very bad failure haunting him, and he was beginning to fear that Sarah would be another.

Why the hell did he always fail the women in his life?

The question was too painful, and he pushed it away. God knew there were plenty of other questions just as pressing. Like the question of what awaited them in Holcomb. A face-to-face confrontation with the other side? The ending Sarah had foreseen, her own death?

Tucker leaned his head back and closed his eyes. Sarah. Too much depended on her. Too much weight lay across shoulders too frail and inexperienced to carry the burden. In the next room, she lay virtually unconscious, drained by the effort of holding her own with another psychic, and when she woke he would have to push her to do it again.

I’m sorry, Sarah. I thought I could keep you safe, that I could find out who’s behind this, but it’s beyond my ken. I’m not sure I can protect you anymore. I don’t even know how to help you. All I know how to do is watch…and wait…and push you toward some ending I’m terrified will be final…

The sound of the bedroom door opening brought his head up, and he looked at Sarah as she stood blinking drowsily in the doorway. For once, she had not put on a robe, and the white sleep shirt she wore made her look very small, very young, and almost ethereal.

“What?” she asked.

He shook his head slightly and only then realized what had happened.

“Didn’t you call me?” Her eyes were no longer as dark as they had been, the pupils normal, and her voice was slowly losing the sleepiness.

“No.” He drew a breath. “But I was thinking about you.”

She frowned for a puzzled moment, and then her gaze slid away from his and she came a bit farther into the room to sit down on one end of the couch. “Oh. Then obviously, I was just…dreaming.”

“I don’t think so.”

She sat bolt upright, her fingers tangled but still in her lap, her head bent. “Don’t you?”

“No.”

Sarah shook her head just a little. “No. Neither do I. It’s getting even stronger. It doesn’t go…dormant…when I sleep anymore. I was asleep, not even dreaming, and…and I heard your voice very clearly. You said, ‘I’m sorry, Sarah.’ It woke me up.”

Tucker wanted to go to her but held himself still. “I’m sorry I woke you up.”

She looked at him, expressionless, but didn’t allow him to change the focus. “I’m sorry this bothers you so much.”

“What?”

“This situation. Me. You aren’t responsible for me, Tucker. There’s no reason to feel guilty if…if I don’t make it.”

“You’re going to make it.”

She ignored that. “And I don’t mind that I make you uncomfortable. Really, I don’t. It’s unnerving for me to find your thoughts in my head; it must be horrible for you to find them there.”

“Sarah, you don’t make me uncomfortable. I’ve been…caught off guard more than once, but if I gave you the impression—”

“You keep forgetting.” Her smile was twisted. “You’re talking to a psychic, Tucker. You’ve been very good at—at guarding yourself these last days, but I know damned well that you’ve seen or sensed this alien thing in me. This thing that’s getting stronger and doesn’t sleep now.”

“There’s nothing alien in you. Unusual, sure. But your abilities are a part of you now, Sarah. We both know that.”

She shrugged. “If you say so. All I know is that I’ve made you uncomfortable. And will again. And I want you to know that I really don’t mind if you need to keep some distance between us. I even—” She broke off abruptly.

“Want me to,” he finished.

“Expect you to.” Her gaze was steady. “I don’t want my life or…or my soul on your conscience, Tucker. I don’t want you to believe you could have done more, or something different, to change what’s going to happen. I don’t want you to carry that burden.”

“What have you seen?” he asked slowly.

“Nothing new. Except…a kind of clarity. The struggle with Neil Mason seems to have stripped something away. It all seems so clear to me now, so inevitable. I know that what’s going to happen is going to happen soon. Very soon. And I know that you’re going to blame yourself for what happens. You’ll think it was because of some choice you made, some decision that you could have made differently. But you’ll be wrong, Tucker. There’s nothing you can do to change what’s going to happen to me. Nothing.”

“Because of destiny.” His voice was flat.

“Because a sequence of events was set in motion months ago, long before I met you. The sequence has to play itself out. You can’t stop it.”

“I can damned well try. And so can you.”

“No, I can’t. I know that now.”

“Goddammit, Sarah, don’t you give up on me. Not now. We’ve come too far for that. You said you needed my confidence, my belief that we could change the future. I still believe that.”

“I don’t think so.” She hesitated, then added quietly, “How can you even look to the future when you’ve spent your entire adult life chasing the past? How can you face one when you haven’t finished with the other?”

“Where are they?”

“Next door.”

“You don’t ask for much, do you?”

“This is as close as I could get. Can you do it, or not?”

“Yes. But it’s going to take some time.”

“Then go ahead.”

Tucker wanted to deny her accusation. He wanted to change the subject, to once more avoid the painful memories and painful admissions he would have to reveal to her. To push it away, turn away, as he had so many times since he had met Sarah. But somehow, in this quiet room in the quiet hours before midnight, with so much uncertainty and possible violence lying just ahead of them, somehow he could avoid it no longer.

“You want me to ask you about Lydia,” he said.

“I want you to tell me about her. You need to, Tucker.”

She was right. He needed to. He had never told anyone the truth, not his family, not his best friend, and it had all been dammed up inside him for nearly twenty years. Once he began, the words poured out of him in a fast, jerky stream.

“We were high school sweethearts. Went steady all during our senior year. Lydia had been raised by her mother and an aunt; her father had died when she was just a baby. Her mother had invested the insurance money wisely, so there was plenty for college; we were both planning to go to UVA. We…made a lot of plans.

“A few months before graduation, her mother became ill. Very ill. Lydia was spending a lot of time at the hospital, but her mother insisted she stay in school and graduate with the class. With finals coming up, I helped her all I could. She’d go to school, then to visit at the hospital, and every night we were together at my house or hers, studying. Or trying to. We were both under a lot of stress and we…weren’t as careful as we should have been.”

“She got pregnant.”

Tucker barely heard Sarah’s quiet voice, but nodded slowly. “She told me right after graduation. And she was…so happy about it. So full of plans. We’d get married right away. She’d put off college, use the money to get a little apartment near UVA, furnish it, bank the rest for living expenses. And medical expenses. I could go on to college, maybe change my major to something a little more practical than English lit and, anyway, maybe that book I was working on would sell. Her mother might live long enough to see her first grandchild and her aunt would surely help out…Christ, she was so happy.”

“And how did you feel about it?” Sarah asked.

He looked at her and, as vividly as if it had been yesterday, felt the shock and panic, the wild urge to run. Resentment and anger rising in him like bile, choking him…

“I felt…trapped. As rosy as she painted the picture, I knew reality would be different. Neither of us had medical insurance and babies are expensive, so the money wouldn’t last long at all. I’d have to get a job before long, and even if I managed to finish college, I’d have to take some practical courses, just like she’d said, aim for a job that would support a family right away. Everybody knew writers didn’t make much money, and a degree in literature isn’t much good for anything. I could see my life laid out all neat and tidy ahead of me, a job I hated, a wife I resented, a child I didn’t want…and all my dreams in pieces behind me.”

“And Lydia knew. Saw it in your face.”

He nodded. “It had never occurred to her that I wouldn’t be as happy about it as she was. All she’d ever really wanted was to be a wife and mother, to have a little house she could take care of. She’d planned on college mostly because of me, because I wanted it, figured she’d major in child psychology or development, something like that. She didn’t want to teach. She just wanted to be a good mother.”

Tucker drew a deep breath. “I’ll never forget the shock on her face, the way she backed away from me as if I’d turned into a stranger.”

“You couldn’t let her go thinking that.”

“No. I…told her it was just surprise, that she’d imagined the rest. She believed me. She wanted to believe me.” He focused on Sarah’s face and was vaguely surprised to find no condemnation there. But she hadn’t heard the worst, of course.

Then, gazing into her eyes, he realized that she didn’t need to hear him say it. She knew. She knew what he’d done. Sarah had known for a long time. And there was still no condemnation in her face.

Hoarsely, forcing the words out because he needed to, he said, “We made plans to elope the next week. Nobody’d be surprised, with her mother so ill. We’d just do it and then come back and tell everyone.” He swallowed. “I told her everything would be fine. I promised her I wouldn’t let her down.”

Sarah waited silently.

“I meant what I said. I had every intention of meeting her at her house as planned, and going to get married.” He looked away from Sarah and fixed his unseeing gaze on a lamp. It was so hard to say the rest, admit the rest, but he had to. “Then the days passed and…and it was suddenly time to do that. And somehow, instead of packing to meet Lydia, I packed to head to Florida with a buddy for a couple of weeks of sand and sun. I didn’t tell Lydia I wasn’t going to marry her. I just didn’t show up.”

“You were eighteen,” Sarah said, not in an excusing tone, but matter-of-factly.

“Yeah, well, my father was eighteen when he married my mother, and nineteen when I was born. He was responsible, worked his ass off, and as far as I can see, never regretted any of it. I was old enough to be a father, so I was damned sure old enough to be responsible for the child I’d helped create. Some things can’t be excused by youth. I was a cruel, selfish bastard to run out on her like that. And without a word, without even telling her I was sorry or that I’d help with the baby even if I couldn’t marry her. Nothing.”

“You came back a few days later,” Sarah said.

He nodded. “I wasn’t having much fun down in Florida; all I could think about was the way I’d run out on her. Finally I couldn’t stand it anymore and came home. But it was too late. Lydia was gone. She’d left a note for her aunt, taken her college money and her car. Her mother was in a coma by then, and never knew what had happened. Her aunt was devastated. She showed me the note. Lydia hadn’t mentioned the baby, or blamed me in any way. She just said she couldn’t watch her mother die, that she had to get away, start a new life somewhere else. And to tell me…she was sorry, but that I’d be better off without her.”