Kisses in the Rain (16 page)

And yet he'd gone away without a warning.

Alone in her apartment, she cried because she didn't understand. At the Bagel Barn, she kept up a cheerful front so that Randy and the rest of Ketchikan wouldn't know how Nick had disappointed her.

She would wait until Nick came home. He would explain everything then.

* * *

The ring of her cell phone woke her in the middle of the night. She reached for it blindly, jangled into confusion by the insistent ring.

"Martha?"

"Nick?" She blinked eyes gritty with sleep.

"Yes. How
are
you?"

Martha squinted at her alarm clock. It was after midnight.

"I—I'm all right. It's one o'clock in the morning, Nick. Where are you?"

"In Petersburg. I was hoping you'd still be awake."

"Well, I am now," she said. She knew that the town of Petersburg was over a hundred miles to the north. What was he doing there?

"I love you, Martha. I'll be home tomorrow."

"That's good," Martha said, lamely, but she felt a surge of anger. How did he expect her to react when he'd disappeared for four whole days without a word?

"I'd like to see you tomorrow night."

"Well, I—"

"I've missed you so much. You can't imagine."

Martha wasn't ready to give him a piece of her mind, but she could and did reply tartly, "I can't imagine, all right. I can't imagine why you disappeared without a trace for four days, especially when we had a prearranged date for lunch."

"Didn't you get my note?"

"What note?"

"The note I stuck under your door. I left on the first plane out of Ketchikan in the morning, and I didn't want to wake you up. I stuck it under your door on my way to the airport."

"I never saw any note. Why didn't you text me?"

"My cell phone battery was dead and I must have lost the charger in Juneau. Martha, I—oh, hell." He sounded disgusted, either with her or with himself. A long silence ensued, a silence during which Martha gazed up at the ceiling and clamped her mouth shut so that she wouldn't say something she'd later regret.

When she didn't speak, he said in a resigned tone, "I'll see you tomorrow night. Goodbye, Martha," whereupon he hung up, leaving Martha holding a dead phone and with a feeling of utter incredulity.

She could not for the life of her imagine what he was doing in Petersburg, nor could she understand how, if he loved her as he claimed he did, he could leave for four days without a word.

* * *

"That's Nick Novak for you," Faye said philosophically. She took a bite out of a doughnut and dunked the remains into her coffee.

"No, it's not Nick Novak for
me,"
Martha said miserably. "For somebody else, maybe, but not for me."

Martha was late for work already, but after she and Nick hung up, she'd heard Faye's laundry thumping in the dryer in their shared laundry room. When she peeked in, she found Faye and a box of fresh doughnuts. Now she was pouring her heart out, hoping that her friend would understand. She wasn't sure that Faye did understand. Instead of a shoulder to cry on, Faye offered nothing but flippant remarks.

"You can't say I didn't warn you," Faye said.

"You warned me about Davey. You warned me that no one knows whose child he is. But you didn't warn me that Nick Novak was going to disappear for days at a time."

"Face it, Martha. He's a secretive guy. You could know Nick for years and still not really know him."

"I thought I did. We've talked for hours; I know his thoughts, his longings, his ambitions, his secrets—"

Faye leveled her doughnut at Martha like a wagging finger. "But not
all
his secrets," she said.

"Don't remind me," Martha said with disgust.

"He's probably telling the truth about losing his cell phone charger. He wouldn't necessarily have noticed the phone was dead, since cell phones only work in town, and usually not out on the water."

"You're making excuses for him."

"Oh, Martha," Faye said, suddenly setting her doughnut down. "Don't take it so hard. Wait and see what Nick says. Maybe he did really leave you a note. Where did he say he left it?"

"He said he put it under my door."

"Well, perhaps he did. If it's been as windy here as it's been in the bush all week, that note could have blown clear to the Klondike before you woke up."

That idea was something of a comfort. Martha would see Nick tonight and find out what had really happened.

* * *

He greeted her at her door with a kiss, although she was less than enthusiastic. One look at her told him that she was angry; the naked pain in her eyes was eloquent testimony of her disappointment in him. He was instantly caught up in a riptide of regret. On the morning when he left, he should have awakened her and told her personally that he was leaving Ketchikan for a few days; slipping the note under her door had not, in retrospect, been a good idea. He admitted to himself that in a way he was a coward. He hadn't wanted to face her questions.

But now he must face her anger. He didn't relish that.

"Let's go out and get dinner someplace," he said.

"I don't think I could eat," she said.

"Please? I'm hungry because I had to skip lunch to catch up on things at the plant." Besides, he'd much rather sit across a table from her for the quiz session she had in mind. He had an idea that being out in public would decrease the tension between them. He'd had no experience with Martha's anger before, but in case she turned out to be the type who yelled and threw things, a restaurant seemed like a good idea. He knew she'd never make a scene in public.

Martha considered the restaurant idea for a moment. "All right," she conceded. She disappeared into the bedroom to get a jacket.

Nick had the nightmarish premonition that Martha's icy anger was going to last for weeks. They drove to the restaurant, a place on Front Street where he could order a big steak. On the way, she sat immobile on her side of the car, the hurt radiating from her in waves. The trouble was that the two of them didn't have weeks for Martha to indulge her anger. They had a little over two months left to be together at all. It seemed ridiculous to him for them to quarrel and spoil everything.

Over cocktails, after the dining-room waiter had taken their order, Nick said carefully, "I
did
leave you a note before I left. I'm surprised you didn't find it." He always thought it was better to take the offensive rather than to be placed on the defensive. He saw a darting flash of pain in her eyes, like a strike of lightning.

"I never found the note," she said.

"I did finally call you," he pointed out.

"By the time you phoned you had already been gone four days."

"In my note I mentioned that I'd call you as soon as I knew when I'd be home. I didn't know for sure until last night," he said, feeling a little desperate. Obviously she was not going to relax and accept his apology.

"Why didn't you know? Where were you the rest of the time?" Martha asked in a determined voice.

"I was—on business."

"Business?"

"Yes."

She shifted uneasily in her chair. She looked like an icicle, ready to drop and shatter at any minute. He knew that she didn't believe him, and he longed to reassure her. But he didn't know how.

"Something's wrong," she said. "Isn't it?"

"The only thing that's wrong is that you don't believe me when I say I was away on business. Do you?"

Martha bit her lip. "I'm not sure," she said, watching his face.

He sighed and leaned back in his chair. The silence stretched between them, tight as a haul line on a trolling rig. He'd missed her terribly, and he'd hated the fact that this most recent separation had come so soon after his trip to Juneau with Davey. Still, there hadn't been anything he could do. He'd had to go.

Martha leaned forward in her chair, and a muscle twitched in her left eyelid. "Nick," she said quietly, "this isn't like us. I have the feeling that you're not leveling with me. You're not
talking
to me, Nick, and I feel left out and lonely. I feel abandoned. And I'm furious because we had plans and then you disappeared into thin air. I got what sounded very much like a brush-off from your assistant, and I've been miserable for days. If you'd tell me where you've been and what you've been doing—"

"I can't tell you," he said, more curtly than he'd intended.

"You can't tell me," she repeated slowly in disbelief.

"No."

"Then what am I supposed to think?" Martha shot back. Her face paled and her eyes filled with tears.

He rested his hand on her fist, which was clenched on top of the table. "Dear Cheechako, think that I love you and that I'm telling the truth."

His use of the endearment he had coined for her almost melted her cold detachment. She paused for a few seconds to blink the tears from her eyes. "I'll only believe you if you tell me where you were and what you were doing," she said.

"There are parts of my life that I can't talk about," he said, giving her a look that would have drawn blood from a stone.

"That's not good enough," she said. A hard, cold knot was growing where her heart had been.

"I'm afraid it will have to be." Nick hated what he was doing to her, and he hated what he was doing to them as a couple.

"Nick, under the circumstances it's hard for me to believe that you care about me at all," she said sadly.

"I care," he said slowly. "I love you."

"What does that mean to you?" Her eyes beseeched him.

"That I—that I—" He found it difficult to put his feelings for her into words when confronted by her anger.

"I'll tell you what love means to me," Martha said. "It means that we trust one another. It means sharing, Nick—sharing our joys and our sorrows. Our
feelings."

"I've shared my feelings," he said evenly.

"Something happened to make you leave town suddenly, and it was important enough so that you'd leave me and our supposed relationship behind. You tell me that we can't talk about where you went or what you were doing. This is not communication, Nick."

He knew she was right, but he could do nothing about it. "I know it's a lot to ask," he said desperately. "Please, try to understand."

She stood up. Her eyes were the gray of thunderclouds.

"Martha!"

"I can't eat anything," she said, tossing her napkin down. "I'm sorry." And, unbelievably, she walked out.

In that moment, he felt as if she'd ripped his heart out. And worse yet, maybe he deserved it.

* * *

He ran after her, but by the time he'd paid for their drinks she was nowhere in sight. He couldn't figure out where she'd gone. A few couples, probably tourists, roamed the streets, and a car full of rowdy young men lurched past, but there was no sign of Martha. He stood for a moment on the cold, dark, rain-wet street, his collar turned up to protect his neck from the fierce and biting wind. Then, numb over the way this had gone, he drove to his office.

He sat in the chair at his desk and punched out her telephone number, letting the phone ring until she answered.

"I wanted to make sure you're safely home," he said gruffly.

"Faye was in the bar having a drink with friends. They were getting ready to leave, and they drove me home."

"I want to see you soon," he said.

"I need time to calm down. Time to think it over."

"Martha, it goes against my grain not to tell you everything. But there are things you cannot know. Not now, not ever. I'm asking you to trust me enough not to ask me about them." Remembering how cold she'd been when she walked out of the restaurant, he felt desolate and more lonely than he'd been in his entire life.

"That's a lot to ask, Nick." She gave no sign of relenting.

"Maybe. But I'm asking it anyway. I love you, Martha. I'll call you soon."

With his heart in his throat, he hung up and pushed his desk chair back until he could prop his feet on top of the desk. From the cannery came the clatter of the machines, the shouts of the employees. For Nick they didn't exist. He was thinking unhappily of the past four days and the ordeal that he was honor-bound not to discuss with anyone.

* * *

The call had come to his office early in the morning five days ago, and Nick, who had slept there overnight because of a dense fog between Ketchikan and Mooseleg Bay, answered it.

"Nick Novak?"

He recognized the voice and his heart sank. When he heard that gravelly voice, it usually meant trouble.

"This is Billy Long. Granny's bad again."

"How bad?"

"In the hospital. This time they don't think she'll last."

Nick sighed. He knew what Billy wanted—money. And Nick's presence.

"Can you come? She's been asking for you. And for Dolores."

"Well—"