Firebird (The Flint Hills Novels) (20 page)

"Ethan, are you okay?"

He didn't seem to hear her.

"Hey, you don't look so good."

"Take messages for me. I need to go out." His voice sounded strange, like his throat was tied up in knots. He took his coat from the rack and settled his hat on his head.

"You sure you're okay?"

"I'm fine, Bonnie," he muttered. "Don't you worry about me." He folded the letter and slipped it into his pocket. "Let's close down for the afternoon. Go home. Looks like we have some heavy snow moving in."

After he left she began putting away her files, and she wondered what was in Katie Anne's letter. Bonnie thought she'd never seen Ethan so sad, even when his father was dying.

* * *

The damp, frigid air bit into his nostrils as he stood at the pump gassing up the truck. The skies had changed abruptly, and now low, gray clouds stretched like a lid from horizon to horizon. He headed east along dirt roads through the hills until he ran into the interstate and took it to Beto Junction. It was windy and snowing heavily when he pulled into the truck stop. For a long time he sat in the parking lot with the flakes spinning around him and the wind blowing a veil of white over the windshield so that he had to turn on the wipers to see out. The night came upon him so gently he barely noticed it. Pickups and semis came and went, and the lunatic snow danced in the beams from their headlamps. Dizzy little flakes of soft snow that somehow made him think of Katie Anne.

He was aware of a stifling sense of weight on his chest, and then suddenly some thought would sidestep into his mind and his heart would upshift a gear and pump blood through his brain, and then he'd feel like his head was on fire. Thoughts of losing Annette made him the sickest. Those were the ones that made his head burn and emptied his guts.

He sat until he was stiff and cold. Finally he went into the convenience store. He looked over the sandwiches in the refrigerated section, and he bought a packaged ham-and-cheese and a coffee and went back to his truck, but he had no appetite, and the sandwich lay on the seat beside him as he drank the coffee.

He checked his watch. Annette had said she'd be waiting for him at the old farmhouse this evening, but he thought with the snow she wouldn't come. If he turned on his phone he'd probably find a message from her, but he didn't turn it on.

He started the engine and headed back into the storm.

Even with the snow he was hoping he'd find her there so he could lay all this mess at her feet and ask her what he should do. He wondered at his powerlessness to control his own goddamn life, and he began to doubt his right to happiness. Thought perhaps a future with this woman might be an illusion, and it was time to clear his head, even though the idea made him sick to his guts again.

His thoughts messed with him and he began to think that if he showed her the letter she might settle the matter by packing up and going back to Paris, and he began to doubt that she loved him enough to suffer the mess that his life would be. Already he was beginning to mourn the dream as if it had never been anything else.

Visibility grew worse and he had to focus on driving and gave up imagining all the scenarios of how things would play out.

Afterward he made himself believe there was some hand of fate at work here, but he knew that was a damn stupid lie. Told himself it was the swirling snow that made him miss the turnoff to the Reilly house, and when he realized what he'd done it was too dangerous to make a U-turn, what with no visibility, so he crept on in the blizzard looking for a side road where he could turn off and head back to Annette. But he couldn't find a road, couldn't see anything in his headlights except a dense whiteness against the dark night. Until finally he saw what he should do. Do the right thing, which was all he'd ever tried to do, even if he'd been wrong.

And so he continued straight, down the old county road that he had traveled countless times and would travel until the end of his life. He drove on in the night, the miles between them increasing with each minute, and the more he tried to imagine his life without Annette, the stronger her image burned into his mind, like a bright star of high magnitude burning hot in a cold night sky, its warmth dissipated by a distance of years, yet its beauty outshining all others.

After a while, the darkness and the blinding snow froze his senses, and gradually a veil descended upon his heart, and it grew distant and cold, retreating into the cavernous recesses of his soul.

When he finally reached the house it was late and Katie Anne was asleep. But as he sat down on the side of the bed to take off his socks she woke up.

"Ethan?"

"Yeah."

He rose and moved around in the dark, and she said he could turn on the light, but he didn't. He got into bed and lay without touching her.

"I left the test in the bathroom if you want to see it."

He didn't answer, and she wanted to ask if he was home to stay, but she thought it would be best to wait and see.

She put a warm hand on his leg.

"You're cold," she whispered.

"Yes," he replied, and Annette burst out of his heart, flooding him the way fireworks explode in a summer sky, and children gasp and stretch their necks to catch the shock of color before it dissipates into gray smoke and floats away on the night breeze.

"Yes," he repeated, "I'm cold," and he rolled away from her and curled up like a little boy protecting a secret treasure buried deep in his chest.

In the middle of the night Katie Anne went into the bathroom and took the pregnancy test and dropped it into the drawer with her makeup. The next morning when he didn't ask to see it, she threw it away.

Chapter 20

As soon as he got to his office, Ethan called Annette and read her Katie Anne's letter over the phone.

When she didn't reply, he said, "Are you still there?"

"Yes, I'm here," she said at last.

"I don't know what to say."

After another long hesitation, Annette said, "Do you think she might have done it on purpose?"

"I don't know. We've been on the verge of breaking up several times, and this never happened before."

"I'm sorry. That's harsh of me to suspect her."

"You don't have a damn thing to apologize for."

A long silence followed.

Annette waited to hear that he was going to fight for them, to be reassured that all those passionate words of his were backed by determination and courage. But as the seconds ticked by, the silence filled with dread, and she knew this was where it would end.

"So you're going to marry her."

He didn't answer her, which was as good an answer as any.

"Then we can't see each other again," she said.

"Don't say that."

Annette didn't respond.

"Meet me tomorrow, please."

"You and your damn poetry. You filled me with dreams and hope. And then you snatched it away. I was ready to turn my life and my daughter's life upside down for you. Damn you for falling in love with me. Damn you to hell."

She hung up on him, and when he tried to call her back she wouldn't pick up.

After the night of his return, Katie Anne handled Ethan with calm and skill. She knew exactly where she could lead him, and she never tried to tempt him down a path where she might encounter resistance. She gave him nothing to worry about and nothing to dispute. He worked late every day, even Sundays, and he showed no more interest in attending mass, which was proof enough that they'd turned a corner. He never came home for dinner, but she didn't ask any questions. Patti said one evening he had come into Hannah's for dinner but that Frenchwoman was there with her father and daughter, and Ethan turned around and walked out again. Jer said Ethan had taken to driving all the way to Beto Junction for dinner.

He slept in the guest room and was often gone before she awoke in the morning. During the day they'd call each other to talk about practical matters, Ethan always a courteous gentleman and friendly the way he was with everyone. She told him she didn't want to tell her parents, or anyone else, about her pregnancy until after the wedding. Ethan agreed, and nothing else was ever said about the subject.

Nevertheless, Katie Anne felt like she was walking on eggshells. As long as the Frenchwoman was still in town, she knew she could lose him at any moment, and she counted the days until the wedding. She took to leaving Ethan notes about wedding arrangements in order to avoid speaking to him. Ethan refused the traditional bachelor party that Jer wanted to throw at the South Forty, but he dutifully made the arrangements for the groom's dinner following the rehearsal. Although Bonnie did most of the work for him.

If Katie Anne was wary, Tom and Betty Sue didn't suspect a thing, although they were disappointed that Ethan couldn't once find time in his schedule to come over for dinner in the four weeks before the wedding. Even Jer saw very little of him. Ethan called him a week before the wedding and asked him for help moving all his furniture into his new house from the storage where he had kept it while he had been living with Katie Anne. Then there was the stable to finish, and his clients to service.

His mother arrived in town the day before the ceremony, and he put them up at his new house. Ethan spent the night there with them. He said it was to keep them company, and also out of what he confessed was a twisted sense of propriety. His mother's presence was a balm to him. They played rummy until after midnight, and then, while Ethan was reading, she worked on the
Washington
Post
crossword puzzles that Ethan had clipped and saved for her. At one in the morning she finally laid down her newspaper and said, "Go to bed, son. The night will go by quickly enough." She kissed him on top of his head and went off to her bedroom. For a brief moment Ethan allowed himself to imagine an encounter between Annette and his mother. He saw her standing at the top of the stairs, listening to his mother with that quiet, intense way she had that let others know she was all there, all theirs. Then the vision departed, and he turned off the light and went to bed.

At six o'clock the next morning his mother found him in the new stable laying down fresh straw for his horses. Mary made him hang up the pitchfork and shower and shave, then they went to Hannah's for breakfast. At ten o'clock, Ethan, dressed in his tux, deposited his mother at the Mackey ranch, where the eleven o'clock ceremony was to take place, with the understanding that he would pick up Jer and be back by ten-thirty. By ten-fifty, when Ethan hadn't shown up, Jer got in his truck and drove to the church. But the groom was nowhere to be found. Jer got back in his truck and headed straight for the South Forty.

* * *

The bar was an ugly place in the morning, with its underbelly of carpet stains and grime bared to the daylight, and it looked particularly ugly to Ethan after his fifth beer. He had removed his tuxedo jacket and laid it on the stool next to him, and his starched white shirt glared back at him from the mirror behind the bar. On the countertop in a ring of beer lay his bow tie. Marty was running a vacuum somewhere behind him, so Ethan didn't hear Jer when he came in.

"Come on, buddy," Jer said. "Let's go."

The sight of his friend in a tux brought a glimmer of amusement into Ethan's eyes.

"Finally got you into that penguin suit, did she?"

"I'm doin' it for you."

"Well, if you're doin' it for me, who am I doin' it for?"

He had a crooked smile on his face as he started on his sixth beer.

"Let's go, Ethan. Everybody's waitin'."

"I'm comin'," he mumbled, and slowly brought the bottle to his mouth.

"You're gonna make a fool out of yourself. And Katie Anne too."

"I've already done that."

Jer couldn't get Marty's attention over the roar of the vacuum so he went behind the counter and found two mugs and filled them with hot coffee. He slid one over to Ethan, took his beer and dumped it into the sink.

"Is she there?" Ethan asked, staring down at the chipped mug.

"She's there. Waitin'. Got a little ticked off when I showed up without you, but she's coverin' pretty well."