Memories of You (19 page)

“Did he hurt you?”

She gave him another of those sad, faraway looks that tore at his heart. “No,” she said. “He didn’t hurt me. He saved my life.”

“How?”

“By showing me more kindness than I’d ever known in my life. By making me understand that my life was valuable, after all, and it was possible to escape from the horrors and make something of myself. I can never, never repay that man.”

“Did you stay with this guy?” he asked, his own desperate plans forgotten.

She shook her head. “Just for a couple of days. Then I had to leave him behind.”

“Why?”

“Because I’d told him all about my past. I couldn’t bear to be with anybody who knew the truth about me. And there was another reason. He’d been so kind to me. He deserved much more than I could give him.”

“So you ran away again?”

“Yes, but this time it was different. I was determined to become the person he thought I could be. I went to the city and stayed at a homeless shelter for a while until I got a job and a room at an old boardinghouse. During the next few years, I worked my way through college, holding down two or three jobs at a time until I got my degree and was finally hired as a graduate assistant.”

“And you’ve never told anybody this story?”

“Not a soul. After a while, because I never shared
any details about myself, people started making up stories. That suited me just fine. I let them do it, thinking myths would help to bury the reality of the past. But after a while the lies began to hurt even more. I really wished I could start over and be truthful.”

“But you couldn’t?”

“I could never bear to tell anybody. I knew people would be repelled, and I guess I was afraid their reaction might bring all my memories back somehow.”

Steven felt a hot flood of embarrassment. “I’m sorry, Dr. Pritchard. All that stuff I said, about how you couldn’t know anything about street kids…it was way out of line.”

She patted his knee. “Don’t apologize, Steven. I know your heart’s in the right place. But if you really want to help these kids, you’ve got to do it in constructive ways. You have to get yourself educated, find a job and give the street kids some of your time. What they need more than anything is people who care about them enough to get involved.”

“That’s how you know so much about Zeke and the other guys,” he said with sudden understanding. “You work with those kids, don’t you?”

“Every weekend. I’ve been doing volunteer work at one of the downtown hostels for more than five years.”

Again he felt that deep wave of shame. “God, I’m sorry,” he muttered. “I’m such a jerk.”

She put her arm around him and hugged him. “You’re certainly not a jerk. You’re a fine, sensitive,
compassionate young man. If I were your mother, Steven, I’d be so proud of you that I’d want everyone to know how terrific you are.”

Her words were unbelievably sweet to him, flowing over his wounded spirit like a healing balm. “Really?” he whispered.

“Really.”

They sat together in silence for a moment. Steven realized that the time for his appointment had come and gone, but he didn’t care. Whatever was happening on that downtown street had nothing to do with him anymore. He felt free and unburdened, so relieved that he was almost light-headed.

“That guy,” he said awkwardly, “the one who… hurt you.”

“Yes?”

“Did you really kill him?”

She shook her head, staring at the glittering chrome on the car parked near them. “I went back a few years ago, hoping to make some kind of peace with the past, but it wasn’t possible. The trailer had vanished without a trace. I talked to a woman in the trailer park who didn’t recognize me, and asked her about the people who used to live there.”

“Did she remember?”

“Oh, she remembered my mother, all right,” the professor said grimly. “And she certainly didn’t have any kind words for her. Apparently, there was a house fire a couple of months after I left, while my mother and her boyfriend were sleeping, and both of them
were killed. It was the same man. I probably didn’t even hurt him all that badly, because the woman didn’t say anything about a stabbing.”

“I can’t believe you’ve never told anybody about all this. It must be so hard to…”

“To live a lie?” she asked when Steven paused. “You’re right, it’s the hardest thing a person can do. And it’s very self-destructive, because the hidden memories gain so much power they begin to destroy you. But still, I could never bring myself to talk about them. They were too horrible.”

“So why have you told me?”

“Because you’re too fine a person to throw your life away,” she said. “And because I still owe a debt of gratitude to that man who helped me.”

“So you think…” He trailed off, searching for words. “You think by helping me, you’ll be able to pay him back somehow?”

But she was no longer listening. She lifted her head and looked beyond him toward the door.

Steven followed her gaze and saw his father standing quietly in the shadows under the eaves of the barn, watching them.

She froze, terrified, wondering how much Jon had overheard. Did he know about the planned robbery, and Steven’s involvement?

“Oh, no,” he whispered in panic. “God, no….”

His father took a few steps into the barn. The professor got to her feet and moved toward the open
door, edging away from the man as if he might be about to strike her.

Steven also watched him in fear. Surprisingly, though, Jon didn’t even seem to be aware of his son. Instead, he kept staring at the woman with such burning intensity that Steven found himself wondering why. Jon seemed to be gripped by some kind of powerful emotion, coupled with a strange look of wonder and joy.

“Callie?” he breathed, reaching for her. “Callie, is it you? Is it really you?”

She muttered something incoherent and began to run, stumbling out into the whirling snow. Jon started to follow her, then paused and glanced back at his son.

Steven could see the way his father struggled, looking first at the boy, then out at the darkness where the woman had vanished. Finally he drew himself together, shook his head and came into the barn.

Steven got to his feet and stood waiting for the anger and the terrible sadness he knew his father was going to express.

He stared down at his feet, aware that he deserved whatever happened. The silence between them lengthened, grew unbearable.

“How much did you hear?” he whispered at last, his voice husky.

“Pretty much all of it,” Jon said calmly. “Look at me, son.”

Steven forced himself to meet his father’s eyes.
“I’m sorry, Dad,” he murmured in anguish. “It was a crazy thing to get involved in. I know you’re disappointed in me, and you probably hate me, but I want you to know I’m—”

“Oh, Steve.” Jon’s voice was rough with feeling. “Son, I love you so much.”

Steven looked up in amazement Despite the emotion, his father seemed utterly transformed. His strong tanned face was gentle with affection, the blue eyes clear and full of happiness.

“You love me?” Steven whispered. “You’re not mad at me?”

For reply, Jon put out his arms. Steven moved into his father’s embrace. For the first time in years the hard knot of pain loosened and fell away, replaced by soaring happiness and a sense of homecoming unlike anything he’d ever known.

T
HE STORM RAGED
all night long, surprising everybody who’d dismissed it as a passing autumn squall. Snow began to fall more heavily after midnight, driven by a wind that howled across the prairie. Ice coated the power lines until they froze and snapped. And sculpted white drifts piled over highways and vacant lots.

When Camilla finally got home, weary after a twohour struggle to keep her car on the road and see the fleeing patches of bare highway, her phone line seemed to be dead. She unplugged both telephones anyway.

She couldn’t bear to hear Jon’s voice tonight, and suffer through his attempts to be courteous now that he knew the truth.

Camilla groped her way through the darkened apartment, searching for candles. She put one in the kitchen and one on the bathroom counter where they created a mysterious secret world, like campfires in the center of a cave. Finally, feeling unbearably lonely, she took another candle and went looking for her cats.

Elton and Madonna huddled together in a warm ball in the middle of her bed. They stirred drowsily when she approached with the flickering candle.

“That looks…cozy,” she said with a catch in her voice, gazing down at them. “I think I’ll join you. But will it bother you if I cry all night?”

Madonna yawned, her whiskered face dim and secretive in the dusky glow of candlelight. Camilla fondled the silky ears, then hurried to bathe, take out her contact lenses and put on her nightgown.

She blew out the candles and climbed into bed, snuggling closer to the warmth of her cats. The apartment heating seemed to have failed, as well, so she was grateful to have Elton and Madonna. Under a mound of quilts with the cats piled on top of her, she lay and stared at the ceiling.

In truth, she felt like a turtle stripped of its protective hard shell. The revelation of her past had left her exposed, and so vulnerable that any ray of light or wayward breeze would probably destroy her.

On some level there was also relief, but she wasn’t yet fully prepared to deal with that emotion. She only knew that the lies were all over. From now on she’d tell the truth to everybody, and let her life unfold from there.

If colleagues scorned her for having allowed the lies to go unchallenged all these years, or friends turned away…well, that was the price she’d have to pay.

At least she wouldn’t have this dreadful weight on her soul all the time.

More important, she’d managed to prevent Steven Campbell from making a life-destroying mistake. Her debt to Jon was paid in full.

Camilla rolled over and buried her face in the pillow, trying not to cry.

But when she remembered his face as he stood there in the entry to the old barn, she was overcome with sadness. In the brief glimpse she’d had of him, he looked so shocked. Obviously Jon never had the slightest inkling that his English professor was actually the girl who’d shared that long-ago weekend.

What must he be thinking of her now? She writhed under the covers and moaned aloud.

All these weeks she’d played the role of dignified academic. She’d marked his essay without comment She’d even visited his ranch and made friends with his family, recklessly believing he’d never find out the truth. But now he knew everything.

Misery welled up, too powerful to control. She gulped painfully, then began to sob.

Only now, in the depths of her humiliation, did she understand how deeply she loved Jon Campbell. For years he’d been part of a girlish fantasy, a scrap of memory, a daydream that warmed her barren life. But after meeting and talking with him again as an adult woman, drawing close to him and getting to know him, she loved him so much that her life without him would never be the same again.

She continued to cry, with deep, heartrending sobs that alarmed both cats. Sensing her need, they crept nearer and cuddled on the pillow by her face, purring raggedly.

Camilla hugged them and tried to stop crying, but the well of tears seemed bottomless. She wasn’t just crying for herself. She was mourning all the wasted years, all the loneliness and sadness in the world, all the lost and wandering people who never found their mates….

At last, after what seemed like hours, she fell into a fitful, exhausted sleep. When she woke, she couldn’t tell if it was day or night. The room was shrouded in a misty, surreal kind of half-light and none of the clocks worked properly.

She got up, pulled on a robe and stumbled to the window, where she was greeted by a remarkable sight.

Though the calendar said October, it might just as well have been January. Snow drifted over the roofs
of cars and across the streets in an unbroken sea of white. Thin shrouds of fog wrapped around the buildings, making them look like spaceships drifting in a cold gray sky.

Most of the world was muffled in stillness, but a few people were out trying to shovel their cars from under drifts and make paths to their front doors. Camilla could see Mr. Armisch, the super, laboring below, clearing a patch of sidewalk in front of the building.

She looked around vaguely, wondering if the coffeepot would work or if the power was still off, and headed for the kitchen to find out.

Amazing, she thought bleakly, how these little things still mattered. Even though your heart was broken and your world had been torn apart….

A knock sounded at the door. Camilla looked up in alarm. Just one of the neighbors from down the hall, she told herself firmly. Somebody wondering if the power had been restored.

She pulled the robe more tightly around her and went to answer.

Jon Campbell stood in the entry, looking large and handsome, the shoulders of his leather jacket dusted with snow. He carried something soft and bulky in his arms, but Camilla was too shaken to register what it was.

She stared up at him, speechless.

“Mr. Armisch let me in,” Jon said with a casual smile, entering the apartment and closing the door as
he stamped snow from his boots, “after I bribed him by promising I’d come down later and help with the shoveling. I would have been here earlier, but they closed the roads at midnight and just opened them a couple of hours ago.”

“How…how did you get here? All that snow…”

“I drove my Jeep. It’s parked beyond the campus where the road crews have done some clearing. I had to hike the last few blocks, though.”

“You didn’t have to do this, Jon,” she said. “Just because you know the truth, you didn’t have to come all the way over here through these snowdrifts. I don’t need…”

He ignored her, holding the paper-wrapped bundle in his arms as he examined her face. “Your eyes
are
gray,” he said in triumph. “I knew they were.”

“I’ve been wearing tinted contacts for years.”

He grinned. “Well, this is much better. I prefer my gray-eyed girl.”

His smile faded. He studied her so intently that she began to feel uncomfortable.