My Deja Vu Lover (22 page)

  
If he was lying to me now, tired of me, trying to push me away, I knew why. He was sick of hearing me talk about Laurence. And why shouldn’t he be? What kind of deal is that, competing with a dead memory?
 

  
If I could get this whole story of Millie sorted out, then maybe I would stop having the visions and get back to being April full time. And never mention Laurence again. That’s what needed to happen to get Graham and myself together.

  
In the other bed Tom snored softly. “Should have fallen in love with Tommy,” I told myself. “Would have been a lot less complicated.”

  
Oh right. He was here with me now because he’d skipped town to avoid a stalker girlfriend. Falling seriously in love with Tommy could be a soap opera plot.

  
In the morning, Tom rolled over slowly in the other bed and groaned.

  
“Need something?” I asked.

 
 
“A new body,” he mumbled and reached for the pill bottle. He swallowed a couple of somethings whole, painkillers, I guessed. Then he stretched out to pick up his cell phone.

  
“I could help you with whatever you’re trying to do,” I said.

  
“No, I’m okay.” Lying on his side, he punched on his phone and hit a number in its directory. “Human resources? Deirdre?”
 

  
He closed his eyes and waited.

  
A half minute later he said, “Hi, Deirdre, Tom here. I’m in Minnesota, had to catch a redeye, death in the family, meant to call yesterday morning as soon as I got here but I fell and broke something in my leg. Yeah, the doctor’s been to see me, no kidding, they do house calls here, yes... could you?
 
Bless you, I really mean... sure, I’ll phone you as soon as I get in.”

  
While he talked, I pulled on jeans and a couple of layers of sweaters.

  
When he phoned his mother, I left the room, because I figured it’s hard enough without an audience, explaining to Mom why she needs to lie if his employer phones. I could guess the questions. Why would they phone? Hadn’t he told them he was going on vacation to visit a friend? What on earth had he been thinking? Funeral, why a funeral?
 

  
Yup, easier to head down to the little room that provided a free breakfast buffet and busy myself loading up a tray for the both of us. I put together enough to see us through until supper, because I certainly hadn’t seen a likely lunch source on Main Street, Nowheresville.

  
There was one man with a traveling businessman look about him. I watched him while I waited for the pastries to warm in the microwave, a ten second job. He sat in the far corner hunched over a tray and a newspaper. So this was not the hotel’s roaring season.

  
By the time I climbed back up the stairs, Tom was off the phone. He looked exhausted. Spinning those tangled webs will do that.

  
“Okay,” I said in my most chipper and annoying voice, “what’s on our day planner?”

  
He gulped coffee and ate his way through a sugary breakfast roll before he answered. I was immediately sorry I’d asked.

  
“Going down the basement stairs in the library is maybe not going to work for me today. We could try that friend of the librarian.”

  
“I have her phone number. Do you want to call her or shall I?”

  
“I will. Just one little problem. Wherever she lives, I can’t walk there.”

  
“We have a car,” I said.

  
“And Mac taught you how to drive, so that’s okay.”

  
I shrieked. “We drove around a parking lot! That’s all! I don’t have a license!”

  
Tom said, “Doesn’t matter, I’m not sending you off alone. I’ll be the licensed driver and you’re the learner.”

  
“You’re insane!”

  
“Look out the window, lovey. See any traffic?”

  
I walked over to the window. Below us the street was a stretch of dry pavement lined on both curbsides with piled snow. Not a car in sight.

  
“About as much traffic as in the parking lot, right?” he said.

  
“Tom, I can’t!”

  
“We came an awfully long way to quit now. You’ll be driving in town at like five miles an hour. You can stop at every intersection. There won’t be anyone behind you to honk. And if there is, you roll down your window and wave them around you. Honest, you can do it.”

  
The rest of the argument was long and boring and I knew about halfway through that I was losing. So against all my better judgment, which is limited on my best days and nonexistent on the rest, I helped Tom bundle up in layers of heavy clothes.

  
While he phoned Mrs. Abbie Thornton, I fitted and fastened the brace on the outside of his jeans around his knee. Anything else would have required slitting the jeans open or cutting off the one pant leg at shorts length, slightly chilly in Seattle, out of the question in Minnesota.

  
I tried to be very careful, working slowly, and Tom tried not to growl at me.

 
 
He turned off his phone and said,
 
“Mrs. Thornton lives three blocks west of the library, so it’s a really short drive. We’ll be fine.”

  
Uh huh.

  
Leaning heavily on the cane, he made it out to the elevator, through the lobby and out the door, with me running circles around him to hold doors. A couple of times he raised his hand, ready to clamp it down on my shoulder, then didn’t.

  
His face still looked drained and I took pity, grabbed his elbow when we got outside. The sidewalk was clear but still, it had looked clear yesterday when he’d hit that patch of ice. He gave me a thank you look, small smile.

  
At the car I said, “You really can’t drive?”

  
“It’s my right knee, April. If it was my left we’d be okay. Hmm, I suppose I could bend my right leg out of the way and drive with my left foot.”

  
I looked in the driver side window, at the narrow floor space, at the console which made it impossible to stretch his right leg out of the way, and then at Tom’s long legs. “No you couldn’t,” I admitted.

 
 
The alternative was to leave Tom at the hotel and go visit Mrs. Thornton alone but we both knew that wouldn’t work, not that Tom would ever say so. I am not good at remembering facts, probably why college and me were a rotten mix. He would ask the right questions and remember the answers and if I was going to learn anything at all, I needed him with me.

  
Besides, how awful would it be to sit alone on a bed all day in a hotel room with nothing to think about except how much he ached all over?

  
“I can do this,” I said and felt like looking around to see who had made that stupid statement.

  
After walking him around to the passenger side and pushing the seat back as far as possible and finally helping him lift his right leg into place, I went back and stared at the driver side door. I had never done this, opened the driver’s door and intentionally put myself in the driver’s seat of a car. Only under pressure, the pressure of Macbeth’s hand on my back, had I accomplished what probably the rest of the world thought was an easy maneuver.

  
Okay, suck it up, April, I told myself, opened the door, took a deep breath, and then there I was, shaking key in shaking hand.

  
“The key works better if you put it in the ignition,” Tom said.

  
“Ignition?”

  
“The keyhole beneath the steering wheel.”

  
“Right.” I found it, did that, then said, “This isn’t exactly like Macbeth’s car. Tell me what to do.”

  
He muttered either an oath or a prayer, then talked me through until the motor hummed and the gear was in reverse.

  
“I don’t do reverse,” I said.

  
“Not an option. If you go forward, you’ll flatten the nice desk clerk. Come on, lovey, there’s no way to get out of this parking space without driving a few very short feet in reverse. You can do it.”

  
I backed the car very slowly and inched away from the parking space. Okay, under duress I could do reverse.

  
And that’s how it went for the next eight blocks, inch up to the intersection, stop, peer in all directions, inch on across. I expected to hear sirens because surely the town had a policeman who had seen every kind of driver but me. They’d arrest me out of curiosity.

  
We pulled up to the curb in front of Mrs. Thornton’s address, well, not exactly, we were maybe two feet out from the curb and its blanket of snow.

  
“Quit here,” Tom said. “I need room to get out.”

  
Which was sweet of him, blaming the sloppy parking on himself, but mostly I think he was too exhausted by eight blocks of inching me through town to give one more instruction.

  
I helped him out, that is, picked up his foot and swung his leg and held the door and grabbed at his shoulder while he arranged the cane. And then I held onto his other arm.

  
“I can do this all by myself,” he said.

  
“No, you can’t,” I said.

CHAPTER 22

  
When we followed Mrs. Abbie Thornton into her front room, I fell in love with her house. It was arts and crafts, mahogany trim everywhere, even in a wide molding that edged the ceiling. Gleaming wood floors were covered with richly colored oriental rugs. Old creamy tiles with a raised pattern of blue flowers framed the fireplace. A heavy mantel held rows of photos in silver frames. And filling the bay window, there was a baby grand piano draped in fringed scarves. The overstuffed furniture was velvet in warm tones that picked up the colors of the rugs.

  
Actually, Mrs. Thornton was nice, too, dressed in a wool skirt and a sweater set and what I think are called sensible shoes of leather with short wide heels. She had a small powdery face and white flyaway hair. Her thin hands twinkled with diamond rings.

  
She bent forward, stared at Tom’s knee brace. “Now, dear, you take the big chair, that was my husband’s favorite, and you, dear,” she looked at me, “bring him the footstool. I leave it by the wall because I never use it.”

  
I lugged the footstool over, set it down in front of Tom, lifted his foot onto it while he watched with his best lord of the manor smile. Mrs. Thornton fussed a bit, offering pillows and a blanket. She insisted on hearing about his fall, then did a lot of gentle shoulder patting and made soothing noises.

  
He might as well get attention here, I decided, because when we returned to Seattle, he’d get hell from his parents.

  
It took a while for Mrs. Thornton to fix tea and bring it in on a tray, complete with the loveliest china cups and saucers, and no doubt for Tom’s benefit, she included a platter of small sandwiches. The ladies in this town were obviously short on men to pamper.

  
When she had arranged everything in easy reach for Tom, she sat down on a straight backed chair, motioned me to the couch, and gave us both a long slow look.