“I was wondering if you’d changed your mind,” she said.
He drew her over to the split-log steps, sat down on one of them, pulled her down beside him.
She looked away, staring across the mirror of the lake at the distant blue mist of the hills. “Have you, Keith?”
“I haven’t changed my mind,” Keith said.
“Then why that look in your eyes?” She touched his chin. He jerked away.
“I beg your pardon,” Nancy murmured. She let her hands drop to her lap.
He turned to her then. “You don’t understand, Nancy.”
“I think I do.” She jumped up. “We went over all this last night. It wasn’t easy for me to come here, you know.”
“Nancy, please...”
“I suppose it’s better this way. For a while there you almost made a believer of me, bud.”
She ran toward her car. Keith rose. Let her go, he thought. Don’t say anything. Just let her go, back to the safe and normal world.
He stood slack-mouthed, sweating. She had reached her car. She was touching the door handle.
“Nancy!”
She paused then, but she did not turn to look at him. “Save it, Keith. At least you haven’t tried to postpone the elopement and substitute sex by the lakeside.”
“Listen!” he said. “You listen to me! What do you think I am?”
“I thought I knew, Keith.”
“Okay,” he said. “Remember it, will you?”
She ventured a look over her shoulder. “Do you really want me to go?”
“Why not?”
“What’s the matter with you, Keith?”
“Nothing.”
“You’re lying to me. What happened in town? Did my father get across to you?”
“No.”
“Tell me if he did, Keith. He means well. He may even be right.”
“He is, Nancy. He’s a smart man. Go back.”
“Come with me. We’ll tell him what we planned, and why. We’ll make him understand that nothing can come between us.”
He said nothing.
She was facing him now, trying to grin. “All right, let’s follow the original plan and find a justice of the peace. I prefer it to returning to town, anyway.”
He said nothing. How could he tell her?
“Lately, Keith, my bed feels cold. It isn’t a place to sleep, just to think of you. How can I be so shameless?”
“Nancy, I can’t take...” It burst out of him.
“But it’s got to be legal, Keith. The way we planned.”
“Nancy...”
“No. I can’t talk myself again into treating dad this way. It’s now or not at all, Keith. If you let me get into this car and drive away, that’s it.”
He stood with dangling arms. The wind off the lake was cold. The day began to take on the old slow-motion clarity.
“All right,” he said through stiff lips. “Here it is. They’re looking for me. They’re saying I killed Aunt Dorcas.”
She stared at him as if she were about to giggle.
He ran over and caught her arms and shook her hard. “Did you hear me, Nancy?”
She continued to stare at nothing. Holding on to her arm, he guided her toward the cottage. When they reached the porch steps, she sank down.
Then something snapped in her. With a clawing motion, she put her hands to her face and started to sob.
Keith wanted to clap his palms over his ears. The sight of her, the sounds coming from her, added to everything else, were too much to bear.
7
When she stopped sobbing, he lit two cigarettes and offered her one. He was standing on ground level, one foot on the bottom step, his shadow enveloping her.
“Please sit down, Keith.”
He eased down on the step.
“Don’t you want to tell me?”
“Would it help?”
“You owe it to me.”
“It’s really simple, Nancy. Aunt Dorcas phoned the apartment where I’m staying with the old man. She asked me to hurry over. She sounded so upset that I went right over. I knew it wouldn’t be long until you’d arrive at the lake here, but I didn’t think the few minutes would matter.”
“Of course not, Keith. I didn’t mind waiting.”
“When I got there, the place looked deserted. No sign of the servants, so I figured she’d sent them out. I called her name a couple of times, looked in her study. Even went through the kitchen and had a look out back from the windows.”
He broke off, sat looking at the ground. “You know, a funny thing happened then. I’ll remember it a long time. I got sore at her, Nancy, really miffed. I was anxious to get up here. I thought to myself, she has one hell of a nerve, jerking strings any time she feels like it, making people jump.”
“She wasn’t like that, Keith. Not at all.”
“Don’t I know it? All my life she did for me, for my mother, for that louse of a father of mine. If it hadn’t been for Aunt Dorcas, we’d have gone hungry plenty of times. My old man with his rotten liquor and his big deals that never paid off... Always Aunt Dorcas was a kind of fairy godmother to us.
“The old man... Being married to Dorcas Ferguson’s sister gave him a leg up on a pretty soft life. He could be a country club bum instead of a saloon rummy.”
“Keith.”
“No, I’ve got to say it, Nancy. The way I got so put out with her this morning, just because she wasn’t there. As if she’d ever failed me! The way she came to my rescue after that Florida nightmare, and afterward, in my home town. God, I hope she forgives me, wherever she is.
“All the time I was swearing at her, she was lying in the living room dead.”
“Keith. Don’t. No more, darling.”
He raised his head slowly. “I decided to go into the living room and wait for her. That’s when I found her.”
She took his hand and held it protectively.
“Then I heard them coming, Nancy, Aunt Ivy’s husband and your father. All of a sudden I realized the spot I was in. So I really corned the whole deal off. I hid.”
“Oh, Keith!”
He ground the cigarette under his heel, savagely. “Your father found me, skulking behind the drapes. All I could think of was making a break for it. I lost my head — what there is of it.”
An early jay berated them from a nearby sapling. Water whispered against the pier and boathouse.
“I’m in real trouble this time, Nancy.”
“Yes,” she said. “Yes, we are.”
“Not we!”
“Why not?”
“Nancy, I can’t involve you in this. You’ve got to go back.”
“Did you do it, Keith? Look at me and tell me. Did you?”
“As God is my witness, I loved Aunt Dorcas. I didn’t lay a finger on her.”
“Then how can I turn my back on you?”
“You’ve got to.”
“You don’t understand,” she said softly. “You’re everything that has meaning for me. Keith?”
“You’re crazy, Nancy,” he said in a hoarse voice. But a part of him was wildly rejoicing. He sat struggling with himself.
“I’m not being altogether unselfish,” he heard Nancy say. He wished she would get up and leave, now, while he could still let her go. “If I turned my back on you at the first sign of trouble, Keith, what would I think of myself? Keith, this is so new to you, isn’t it? Having someone... You don’t know how to react, do you?”
“I should have passed up the lake and kept going,” he muttered.
Her hand slipped from his arm. She uttered a shaky laugh. “If I were swimming naked, you’d hesitate to get your feet wet. Jump in, bud, there’s water enough for two.”
Without moving any other part of his body, he thrust out his hand. “Keys,” he said.
“Keys?”
“To your car. We’ll leave the MG. They’ll be looking for it.”
The keys clashed. His hand closed over them. He got to his feet and brushed off the seat of his pants.