Cast a Pale Shadow(33)

"The punishment would be if you left me," Nicholas said in a strained whisper.

"What?"

"You don't understand at all, do you? It wasn't chance, my so-called heroism. I found you that night because I was looking for you. I'd been looking for you for so many nights. Maybe all my life."

"That's crazy," she said. "You didn't even know I existed." She finally turned to study him.

"You're only partly wrong." He leaned back on his heels and his hands were clenched in tight fists against his thighs. "It may be crazy, and I may frighten you with this confession, but I did know you. From your bus stop. I work at the camera shop on the corner where you transfer busses. I saw you every day at that bus stop."

"But.."

"I knew your name because I heard one of the others call out to you. I followed you. I walked the streets every night, all the streets the bus passed, and all the streets that connected to those streets. I walked until almost dawn some nights, listening on the wind for your voice, gazing at the swatches of light in the windows that I passed, hoping for a glimpse of your face. Something drove me. Something told me you needed me. And I knew I needed you."

The shock she felt and her failure to compose it out of her face set him reeling back. He rose unsteadily to his feet, nodding his head. Without speaking again, he shut her door and pivoted toward the house.

"Nicholas!" she called after him.

"I'll get Augusta. I'm sure she'll drive you to school," he said without turning.

"No! Stop!" She bolted from the car and ran after him. She tackled him and tugged at his sleeves until she forced him to turn, then she wrapped him in a fierce hug, her face buried against his chest. "You were sent, don't you see? I prayed and prayed. I wished for an angel, or magic, or anything to save me. And it was you. Oh, God, Nicholas it was you!"

He circled her with his arms, rested his cheek against the top of her head, and held her until her shuddering sobs were spent.





Chapter Twelve





Going back to school was not as difficult as Trissa had imagined. Her new secret life was more easily kept than her old. Once the bruises paled, no new ones took their place as they had in the past. She managed to stay awake even through World History lectures. She spent no weary nights snatching at sleep on the hard wooden floor of a closet. She had a soft bed and, more often now than not, comforting arms to cradle her as she slept.

A gang of tutors ushered her through her studying every night, and while her make-up exam grades had been the best she'd ever earned, they were low compared to those she had scored since then. She amazed her teachers and herself with her insightful contributions to class discussions. And she never mentioned that the insights were gained over the supper dishes by listening to the debates and discussions of Augusta and Roger and Hattie and Jack and Nicholas.

Well, not so much Nicholas. He was not one to join in the discussions. He seemed content to listen to them and watch her with eyes as perceptive as the lenses of his camera.

Together over the past two weeks, Trissa, Nicholas, and his cameras, had spent their free time exploring the west and south ends of town: poking through the antique shops on Cherokee Street with their dusty collections of bric-a-brac from mansions demolished to make way for high rises along Lindell and Kingshighway, through Forest Park and the Zoo, the Jewel Box greenhouse with its rocky paths through a blanket of blossoms, the boat basin and the paddle boats you could rent, and the Art Museum.

Everywhere, Nicholas worked the magic of capturing light and shadow, sunshine and smiles so that these luminous times would never fade from her memory. As if they ever could. He let her in the darkroom at the camera shop after school so she could see the magic work. He bought her a camera of her own and taught her to use it, whispering instructions in her ear as he positioned her body in the perfect stance.

"Keep your elbows tucked into your side but not too close. Relax and let the tension melt out of your arms. Keep your knees slightly flexed, legs apart for steadiness, one foot forward but with your weight distributed evenly on both."

"Is this photography or ballet?"

"Art," he whispered in her ear, sending shivers swirling through her.

But she did not have his power. She could see the beauty, but she could not capture it. It seemed she was chasing the rainbow's end. And he held it right on the tip of his fingers.

"Do you see this captivating girl with eyes like smokey skies? Do you see how she smiles for me so that it seems you can look into the corners of her soul?"

The picture he had handed her was of herself, leaning against the pillars of the Jefferson Memorial, wearing a flower-decked bonnet he had bought her at an antique shop. She shook her head, as if to deny the face that glowed with happiness was hers. "Your camera flatters her. She's not so beautiful as you made her look."

"The camera only sees what I let it see."

Her training with the camera preceded more erratically than her other apprenticeship. If it seemed she had no aptitude for photography, she could not say that about kissing. If she never touched a shutter release again-- "Press gently," Nicholas said, "Never poke or jab." --it would not bother her one bit.

But that was not true of Nicholas' kisses.

With each one, she wanted more, deeper, longer, sweeter, until it had to stop before her heart did. Like a wizard, Nicholas sent little charges through the tips of his fingers as they pressed into her hair behind her ears when their lips first touched. The charges tingled down her neck until they reached major arteries then sizzled through her veins, making them live wires. He seemed to know just when the mingling of touch and mouth and tongue were becoming too much for her and amid the chaos, he was the one who could pull back. He was the one who would stop to rest, forehead against forehead, eyes closed, until her spasmodic breathing had achieved normalcy.

Then he was the one to start kissing again, not mouths this time, but ears and cheeks and tip of nose, chin and neck and collarbone. And he was the one who set the rules... no kissing on the bed, no unfastening buttons, no asking for more when the partner said stop. He apparently knew his limits. She wished she knew hers. Never once had she been the one to say stop.

In bed, their blanket wall had been breached the night following her exams when she had snuck her hand underneath to twine her fingers with his. She had thought he was asleep, but he groaned as if he were in pain when her skin touched his skin. Static electricity, she guessed, though she had not felt the shock. Without speaking, he folded his fingers around the back of her hand and his thumb stroked the juncture where her thumb met her palm.

The next night the blanket wall was not built at all. Instead she slept under the sheets and the tartan coverlet, and he on top, wearing his terry robe knotted closed like armor and using their former barrier to keep his ankles and toes warm. With this arrangement, she could snuggle up beside him. And sometimes they would reach morning nestled so close that she could sneak a kiss before he awoke and realized that they were on the bed and she was breaking the rules.

If her new life posed any jeopardy to her school career, it was in the daydreams that Nicholas' restraint forced on her. She supposed he waited for some signal, and daily, she pondered what it was and how to give it. Such thinking could strike her during geometry and she would totally lose the point of some theorem, or during World History and whole decades could drop from the march of time.

Most welcome of all was when the daydreams overcame her in the library, and she could surrender in her struggle to understand the symbolism in Joseph Conrad's Heart of Darkness, and absorb herself in the mysteries of how to surrender to a man who seemed determined not to let her. She was deep in this reverie that afternoon when she heard someone call her name from very far away.

"Teresa. Teresa Kirk." the voice was like a dash of cold water in her face. She looked up to see one of the library aids beckoning her from the desk. "Aren't you Teresa Kirk?"

Still muddled by the abrupt end to her imagined seduction, Trissa bolted to her feet, nearly tripping over her purse in the aisle. "Yes."

"Take your books. There's an urgent message for you at the Student Resource Center."

"Yes, okay."

The Student Center was two blocks west of the library. Trissa used the journey to compose herself, to wipe all evidence of her pleasant, if unacceptably carnal, thoughts from her brain. Her mind flicked over the possible reasons she could be called to the student center in the middle of the day and tried to convince herself it was for advisement and nothing else.

She entered the building and turned a corner heading toward the office. A notebook slid off the stack of books she held clutched against her. She reached to rescue it and ran right into a man bent over the water fountain.

"Sorry, I -- Daddy!" Her heart squeezed and tumbled inside of her, and she didn't know if she should scream or run.

"Teresa, darling, we've been so worried about you, your mother and I."