HE OPENED HIS eyes to find himself lying on a sofa in an unfamiliar room. Windows looked out on a ground covered with snow. He was in Canyon City. Relief flooded through him.
“You’re awake! I’m so glad.” Sierra stood in the doorway. Behind her he could see the kitchen table and the back door. On a tray nearby was a cup of tea and dry crackers.
“That tea is cold by now. I’ll get more that’s hot. Hold on.”
She was back in a moment with a new cup, steam rising from it. He looked at her tangled white hair and the clothing she wore, different colors draped in layers, with Harry’s sweater over the lot. Her face was pale and she had faint lines around her eyes and along the sides of her mouth. He didn’t think he had ever seen anyone so beautiful.
“I’m back,” he said.
“No doubt about that. Let me call Harry and tell him you’re fine. He stayed awhile but had to get back to work.”
“How long have I—”
“About two hours. The doctor’s out of town, not that he’s here much anyway, has to travel the territory most of the time, so if you didn’t get better we’d have had to take you into the city. Harry said he thought you’d come out of it, so we waited.”
“It’s happened before,” Nathan said. “It might again.”
“Well, we’ll just have to be on the lookout, won’t we. Here, drink your tea. If you feel like getting up I’ll show you your room and then you can have an early supper and get a good night’s rest.”
It was dusk outside the window. A sudden vision of light flashing over a city entered his mind and was gone.
“I haven’t eaten since this morning. That sounds good to me.”
His room was on the second floor near the back of the house. He had a view of frozen marshland. The bare branches of trees were in silhouette against the indigo sky. The walls were papered in a pale green design with white flowers that made him think of apple orchards in bloom. Sierra had turned on a small lamp for him on top of a small bookcase that held mystery novels. He recognized the authors. That had been Jenny’s favorite kind of reading.
The thought surprised him. Remembering her had come easily this time, without tearing at him in the usual way. He could see her in their garden near the oak tree, stopping her planting to sit in the grass, absorbed in a book. Every so often she would look up at him and smile, a look of love that filled him with a happiness that was almost too much to contain.
“We aren’t ideal together, but we are perfect together,” he said into the room. That had been the way they had ended any argument, one of them saying those words. They had argued a lot, but never for long. She had an Irish temper, she would tell him with satisfaction, and he would answer in kind, telling her he was as stubborn as his Scottish father and proud of it.
Why wasn’t I there with you, Jenny? The old question still haunted him, but even that had lost some of its edge in the past hours. She had gone so fast. A driver under the influence, a classic excuse for someone who was insane to get behind the wheel of a car. He’d been off on some investigation, his cell phone losing its charge, so by the time he got the news and arrived at the hospital she had died. They said she had asked for him. Five years and the pain of the memory had always stabbed at his heart like a knife. Yet right then, in Sierra’s small guest room, he felt more at peace with it somehow.
“There you are, and looking a lot better,” Sierra said to him when he arrived in the kitchen. “Have a seat. Figured we could be casual tonight and eat in here.”
YOU ARE READING
The Magic Hour
Mystery / Thriller"It was not exactly dark, but a kind of twilight or gloaming. There were neither windows nor candles, and he could not make out where the twilight came from, if not through the walls and roof." -Childe Rowland "T...
