Pet Sematary(37)

None of this had been a promising first step toward good relations with the future in-laws.

In the end Rachel had brought them around (after each man had had a chance to repent of the things he had said, although neither of them had ever changed his mind in the slightest about the other). There was no more melodrama, certainly no dismally theatrical from-this-day-forward-I-have-no-daughter scene. Goldman would have probably suffered through Rachel's marriage to the Creature from the Black Lagoon before denying her. Nevertheless the face rising above the collar of Irwin Goldman's morning coat on the day Louis married Rachel had greatly resembled the faces sometimes seen carved on Egyptian sarcophagi. Their wedding present had been a six-place setting of Spode china and a microwave oven. No money. For most of Louis's harum-scarum med school days, Rachel had worked as a clerk in a women's apparel store. And from that day to this day, Rachel only knew that things had been and continued to be "tense" between her husband and her parents... particularly between Louis and her father.

Louis could have gone to Chicago with his family, although the university schedule would have meant flying back three days earlier than Rachel and the kids. That was no great hardship. On the other hand, four days with Im-Ho-Tep and his wife the Sphinx would have been.

The children had melted his in-laws a good deal, as children often do. Louis suspected that he himself could have completed the rapprochement simply by pretending he had forgotten that evening in Goldman's study. It wouldn't even matter that Goldman knew he was pretending. But the fact was (and he at least had the guts to be up front about it with himself) that he did not quite want to make the rapprochement. Ten years was a long time, but it was not quite long enough to take away the slimy taste that had come into his mouth when, in Goldman's study over glasses of brandy, the old man had opened one side of that idiotic smoking jacket and removed the checkbook residing within. Yes, he had felt relief that the nights-five of them in all-that he and Rachel had spent in his narrow, sagging apartment bed had not been discovered, but that surprised disgust had been quite its own thing, and the years between then and now had not changed it.

He could have come, but he preferred to send his father-in-law his grandchildren, his daughter, and a message.

The Delta 727 pulled away from the rampway, turned... and he saw Ellie at one of the front windows, waving frantically. Louis waved back, smiling, and then someone-Ellie or Rachel-hiked Gage into the window. Louis waved, and Gage waved back-perhaps seeing him, perhaps only imitating Ellie.

"Fly my people safe," he muttered, then zipped his coat and went out to the parking lot. Here the wind whined and zoomed with force enough to almost tear his hunter's cap off his head, and he clapped a hand to it. He fumbled with his keys to unlock the driver's side door of his car and then turned as the jet rose beyond the terminal building, its nose tilted upward into the hard blue, its turbos thundering.

Feeling very lonely indeed now-ridiculously close to tears-Louis waved again.

He was still feeling blue that evening when he recrossed Route 15 after a couple of beers with Jud and Norma-Norma had drunk a glass of wine, something she was allowed, even encouraged to have, by Dr. Weybridge. They had moved into the kitchen tonight in deference to the season.

Jud had stoked up the small Marek stove, and they had sat around it, the beer cold, the heat good, and Jud had talked about how the Micmac Indians had staved off a British landing at Machiss two hundred years ago. In those days the Micmacs had been pretty fearsome, he said, and then added that he guessed there were a few state and federal land lawyers who thought they still were.

It should have been a fine evening, but Louis was aware of the empty house waiting for him. Crossing the lawn and feeling the frost crunching under his shoes, he heard the telephone begin to ring in the house. He broke into a run, got through the front door, sprinted through the living room (knocking over a magazine stand), and then slid most of the way across the kitchen, his frosty shoes skidding over the linoleum. He snared the phone.

"Hello?"

"Louis?" Rachel's voice, a little distant but absolutely fine. "We're here. We made it. No problems."

"Great!" he said and sat down to talk to her, thinking: I wish to God you were here.

The Thanksgiving dinner Jud and Norma put on was a fine one. When it was over, Louis went home feeling full and sleepy. He went upstairs to the bedroom, relishing the quiet a little, flipped off his loafers, and lay down. It was just after three o'clock; the day outside was lit with thin, wintry sunshine.

I'll just doze a little, he thought and fell fast asleep.

It was the bedroom extension that woke him up. He groped for it, trying to pull himself together, disoriented by the fact that it was almost dark outside. He could hear the wind whining around the corners of the house and the faint, husky mutter of the furnace.

"Hello," he said. It would be Rachel, calling from Chicago again to wish him a happy Thanksgiving. She would put Ellie on and Ellie would talk and then Gage would get on and Gage would babble-and how the hell had he managed to sleep all afternoon when he had meant to watch the football game...

But it wasn't Rachel. It was Jud.

"Louis? Fraid maybe you've got a little spot of trouble."

He swung out of bed, still trying to scrub the sleep out of his mind. "Jud? What trouble?"

"Well, there's a dead cat over here on our lawn," Jud said. "I think it might be your daughter's."