Cast a Pale Shadow(16)

It was easy to convince himself that no one was home. He did not want to risk a confrontation. The restraints on his fury were still too fragile, too freshly forged. Nicholas eased his car down the block and around the corner to the alley.

Fenced backyards with lawns the faded, nearly colorless, khaki of a colder than usual March just ending, ramshackle garages, and rusting trash bins lined the narrow alley. Trissa's mother was not bluffing. He saw the jumbled pile next to the trash bin behind her house immediately. A sad assortment of tattered shopping bags, a dilapidated black suitcase, and an old, red portable record player were this mother's parting gifts to her daughter.

Nicholas loaded them into the trunk, sorting out one change of clothing for Trissa to wear home from the hospital, and two gowns, and a robe and slippers in case she had to stay for a while. Remembering Judy's sour, accusing questions from last night, he looked for a coat but could find none. And where were her shoes and the blue backpack she always toted on the bus? Before he could let his common sense overtake his anger, he slammed the trunk lid shut and charged up the back walk.

The sound of his own fist racketing against the metal storm door of the back porch jolted his brain to think a moment. What if Trissa's father answered the door? Would he be able to keep himself from throttling the man?

And assuming he succeeded in giving him the beating he deserved, what would it accomplish? He was the trespasser here, and it would not be too difficult to persuade the police that he was also the kidnapper, or worse. He had no witness to say otherwise. Trissa didn't know him. Tom and Judy would be no help, and Dr. Edmonds considered him the perpetrator already. He could buy Trissa a new coat and shoes, and schoolbooks could be replaced. Was it cowardice or discretion that made him back down the steps and turn again toward the alley?

He heard the rattle of the Venetian blinds on the back door as someone pulled it open, and he decided not to run. "Yes? What do you want?" There was no mistaking this was Trissa's mother. He hoped the cool disdain he had maintained for her over the phone would return to his voice for this confrontation. But he had forgotten the sorry condition of his own face. She stepped back into the porch and dropped the chain across the door when she saw him. "Who are you? What do you want?" she inquired through the crack.

He remained in his position on the walk to answer her, wondering if her husband lurked nearby watching him. "We spoke over the phone. I am Nicholas Brewer. As I promised, I've come for your daughter's things."

"The hell you have. I have never seen you before in my life. What business do you have getting Trissa's things?"

"I see," Nicholas said coldly. Her skewed priorities, more concerned that a stranger take her daughter's things than for her daughter, dissolved the last of his doubts about his judgment of her. "You would rather the trash hauler take them. It would ease your conscience to see them dumped as easily as you have dumped your daughter."

"How dare you! Where do you know my daughter from? Where is she?" The woman threw open the door and challenged him with her hands on her hips. She was a bit taller than Trissa with a build that may once have been as petite as her daughter's but had filled out to plumpness, making the extra inches in height almost undetectable. Her hair was a short, curly copper, and in her anger, her face was a nearly identical shade.

Nicholas chose to answer her second question. "I know Trissa from the railroad tracks, Mrs. Kirk, where, you may be interested to know, she tried to kill herself last night."

The high color drained from her face and she let the door slam behind her. "What?"

Nicholas pressed his advantage and stepped up two steps so they were eye to eye. "And however you have chosen to explain away your husband's role in driving her to that desperate act, I trust you will see the advantage in keeping them apart."

She said nothing but stepped up and away from him, her hand gripping the rail to steady herself.

"Now, Trissa needs her coat, shoes, and school books. If you will supply those items, I will be on my way." The calm forcefulness of his voice belied his quaking knees and when she turned and fled into the house, it was he who had to steady himself by leaning against the railing. She could, at this very moment, be calling the police, or fetching her husband with a shotgun.

The long minutes ticked away as his courage wavered. By the time he heard the door open again, he had convinced himself it would be Mr. Kirk and the gun. He pulled himself straight to face his fate like a man.

But it was Mrs. Kirk, her arms filled with coats, a bundle of shoes, and Trissa's book bag, her cheeks streaked with tears. "I -- I don't know if I've found everything. If there's anything else she -- what am I to do, Mr. Brewer? I don't know what to do. He is my husband."

Nicholas took on her burden and answered quietly, "She is your daughter, Mrs. Kirk." He could see nothing but confusion in her eyes. If there had been one spark of conscience, one flicker of self-recrimination that she was making the wrong choice, he might have had a word of comfort for her. But there was only confusion, and Trissa deserved better than that. He was halfway down the walk when she spoke again.

"Where -- where is she?"

He didn't look back when he answered her, "Where she is safe."

Of course, it was wrong to think that he loved her already. She would never accept it. Too soon. Too reckless. He was a stranger whose motives -- What were his motives? And if this was not love, what was it? Pity? Compassion? The affinity that one heart in need has for another?

It was love to him, whatever others chose to call it. She was no stranger to him. He had loved her from very nearly the first moment he had seen her. He had loved her before he knew her name and for two weeks since then. And before that, he had loved the pieces of her in Cynthia and Janey and even Beth.

It was best when love came quickly, however shallow that might seem to others. Others had the luxury of time that he did not. Time could not be wasted when he knew it could be snatched away from him at any moment.

Yet, he refused to be rushed by its relentlessness. Nicholas saw the future as treacherously pockmarked as the past, a rugged terrain with gaping holes for which he could give no account. Living for him was like traversing a minefield, one misstep and life and memory were blown away. It was a process in which only the present could be counted on, each foot planted firmly, awaiting the patient and careful consideration of the next step, and just as satisfied if it never came. If he could hold that step at the peak of its arc, he would be content.

Driving back to the hospital, he felt that peak, the heady rush of success that made failure seem impossible. In the parking lot, he carefully arranged the articles of clothing he had sorted out for Trissa in the shabby, little black suitcase along with the comb, brush and toiletries which her mother had not thought to provide but which he had stopped and purchased at Walgreens. He ducked into the hospital gift shop for a bunch of pink rosebuds and baby's breath. With that in one hand and her suitcase and coat in the other, he approached her room feeling as romantically high-strung as an eloping bridegroom.

He had not prepared himself to find her bed empty, to see it made up starched and white and taut as if it had never known the warmth of a human body. The plummet was dizzying and at the bottom, he had only the energy to drag himself to her bed and sit there, his back to the door, staring out the window at the blue nothing of the sky, clutching the flowers, her coat and suitcase like the last remnants of her existence.

One by one, the roses fell from his grasp to his lap. His mind snatched at possibilities and doggedly gripped the worst of them so that as the minutes wore on, he began to lose a sense of them. This was the way it started sometimes, the next inevitable step in the minefield, the lifting of the foot from the triggering device.

"Ummm -- mister -- uh -- hello."

Her hesitant, almost-whisper reached into the void and pulled him back. He jumped up, scattering the rosebuds from his lap to the floor, and turned to see her, fragile and pale and black and blue, and as welcome and wonderful a sight as he ever hoped to see.

"Hello," he answered. A silly word and all he could manage at the moment, but in that one word he wanted her to hear I love you. I'll take care of you. And please, never think that this world could go on without you again. He poured all of that into the awkward silence that followed his one silly word.



*****



God, this man frightened her. This man she did not know, yet who knew her soul better than anyone else ever had. This man had risked his life to save one she was not sure was worth saving. This man looked at her now, and Trissa felt herself melting under the unbearable warmth of his gaze. She suddenly wished she had not insisted on walking alone the few feet from the nurse's station. She wished she had let Moira wheel her all the way from x-ray as she had cautioned her would be best. She wished the room wasn't spinning and her legs weren't disintegrating and....

"Up, up, up, Little One, I've gotcha! Oops, we've gotcha!" Trissa felt Moira's sturdy presence from behind, but it was her stranger-savior who scooped her up and carried her to the bed. Moira pulled the covers aside, but he tucked her in. It was Moira who adjusted the shade to block the sun from her pillow, but it was the glare of his unwavering eyes that blinded her, making her shelter her own eyes with the palm of her hand.