“Stewart!” she screamed. “Stewart!”
Osborne blocked her as she started forward. “Your partner is dead, lady,” he said. “Quite thoroughly dead.”
Betty pressed the knuckles of both hands against her bared teeth. Instinctively Francie turned to Clint, pressed her face against the rough topcoat texture. She heard Osborne saying, “Get her up to the car, Clint.”...
After giving her a shot the doctor sent Francie to bed in the Cudahy guestroom. As the drug took hold she let herself slip down and down, through endless layers of black velvet that folded over her, one after the other. Somewhere in the depths, in the blackness, Bob was waiting for her...
On the fourth day Clint took her from the Cudahy house back to her cabin. He helped her down the trail and pointed out where Osborne’s men had been, trying to protect her as much as possible without alarming the Jack-sons.
He lit a fire, tucked a blanket around her in the chair. And then he made coffee for them. He lounged on the bunk with coffee and cigarette. “Take tomorrow off,” he said expansively.
“Yes, boss.”
“Remember when I was going to say something in poor taste and you stopped me?”
“I remember.”
“Oh, I’m not going to try to say it again, so don’t look so worried. I’m going to say something else. Lines I memorized last night, in front of my mirror, trying to wear an appealing expression. The trouble is, they still happen to be sort of — well, previous. So I won’t say them, either. But I’ll keep practicing. You see, I’ve got to wait until you give me the go-ahead. Then I’ll say them some day. Old Reese, they always said. A patient guy. Got a master’s degree in waiting, that one has.”
“It is too soon, Clint.”
“Well, I’ll stick around and wait. The way we work it, you show up some morning one of these years with a lobster trap in your left hand and a hollyhock in your teeth, humming Hail to the Chief. That will be our little signal, just yours and mine. I’ll catch on. Then I’ll spout deathless lines you can scribble in your diary.”
He stood up and for a moment his eyes were very grave. “Is it a date?”
“It’s a date, Clint.”
“Thanks, Francie.”
He left with an exaggerated casualness that touched her heart. She pushed the blanket aside and went to the window to watch him go up the trail.
The Jackson affair had done what she had been unable to do with her own resources. It had led her brutally to the final adjustment to the fact of Bob’s death, the final realization that it was true, irrevocable. His death had now become a fact to live with, and maybe, in time, it would cease to feel like a knife being turned in her heart, would become something as distant and sweet and faded and poignant as the petals of flowers between the pages of a book.
Now the Adirondack winter was coming, and during the long months she would watch the frozen lake and let the snow fall gently on her heart. A time of whiteness and peace, and a time of healing. By spring Bob’s death would be a year old, and spring is a time of growth and change.
She recalled the look of gravity and warmth and wanting in Clint’s eyes, the look that denied the casual smile.
Possibly, with strength and luck and sanity, it might come sooner than either of them realized. For this might be the winter in which she could learn to say good-by.