She walked back up Mission toward her car. The climb was steep, even in mild weather and casual shoes. She stopped across from where George had been hit near the post office, which is where she’d parked her car. Then Evelyn got a sudden idea, and stepped off the curb.
It was nearly seven and almost dark now and to her left headlights charged uphill toward her while on her right brake lights snaked downhill in the far lanes. The median lay between. Waiting for an opening, she glanced down at the trees and rooftops of las latas. At forty-six, Evelyn was nearsighted but hadn’t seen a doctor because most of her work was up close, and because she could practically drive the streets of Fallbrook in her sleep. When they left town at night, Brian did the driving. So as she looked into the oncoming traffic she saw headlights and cars and the spaces between them, but to judge their speed and threat level was difficult. Cars were just way faster when you weren’t in one. She thought of her old tennis injury, the torn ACL in her knee, and how an ill-timed twist could put her on the ground with a bullet of pain.
She chose her moment and took her first step. She planned to take the near lane when the last car in a knot of five or six was safely past. When it whizzed by she accelerated into the lane, accelerated somewhat, she found, suddenly worried about her knee. She was almost to the next lane when a pickup truck burned rubber from one of the many driveways that lined the other side of Mission, turning left against the traffic. The truck jumped and the tires screamed as it peeled across lanes for the median to which Evelyn had committed herself. The speed of the truck seemed to nullify her own; she was in less than slow motion now, even though she had run cross-country at Fallbrook High School just a few short years ago. No, she realized, a few long years ago — long, long, long years ago! She calculated that the truck would kill her in the median in mere seconds unless she stopped right here and let it go by first, which would also mean certain death by another vehicle. She saw the onrushing constellation of headlights coming up Mission toward her and she knew those drivers were looking into headlights coming at them, and a pedestrian was practically invisible until too late. She lifted her knees and lengthened her stride, cutting across lane two at a perilous angle, trying to cut behind the truck.
Suddenly the world synchronized: the pickup truck blew into the median right in front of her, the driver’s eyes wide with surprise; the closest of the uphill cars swerved into the next lane to miss her; tires squealed and horns blasted and somehow that car skidded, screeching sideways across the far lane and the narrow shoulder, jumped the curb, and came to a stop blocking the sidewalk.
Evelyn, aware of all this and of nothing else, stood panting in the median. The pickup truck stopped not twenty feet from her and the emergency flashers went on and the door flew open. Down from the cab came a stocky blond woman in jeans and a plaid flannel shirt. She crunched across the median dirt and gravel and took Evelyn by the arm. “Are you okay?”
“Halfway there!” She sounded daft even to herself.
“I couldn’t see you. I’m so sorry. Let’s get you outta here.”
“Ready when you are.” Evelyn watched the downhill cars slow for the flashing truck lights. Two of the drivers stopped and Evelyn, released by the woman, crossed the lanes and stepped onto the sidewalk. She turned to see the southbound drivers allowing the woman in the pickup truck back into the lanes, the flashers going off, and the truck pulling away.
Still trembling she called Brian from her car in the post office parking lot. He heard her fear immediately. She explained what happened in a detached voice, her adrenaline-moderated panic only now free to bust loose. Brian was the calmest and most capable man she knew, her rock and anchor. Evelyn felt as if she hadn’t seen him in weeks, maybe years. Had she? Really seen? He said he would be there in two minutes to bring her home.
“No,” she said. “The Econo.”
“The Econo?”
“Please.”
“The kids are done eating and homework is light. Give me ten.”
“I’ll get number twelve.”
She was waiting for him at the door of room twelve of the Fallbrook Econo Suites when Brian knocked. Her heart thumped crazily and her nerves buzzed. He came in, set a bottle of wine on the table, and Evelyn attacked.
Chapter twenty
Iris Cash lived in a freshly painted green bungalow with white columns, a spacious front porch and late-season flowers still nodding in the planters. A pumpkin carved with a toothy grimace stood on the railing, candlelight steady within. Patrick parked in the steep short driveway and set the brake and looked at the house. It was up on Skyline in an older part of Fallbrook and when Patrick got out of his truck he could see the rooftops of downtown and the cars on Main, headlights on in the near darkness. He went around and got the bouquet off the passenger seat.
She met him at the door wearing a forthright smile and a snug yellow dress. Her hair was up. She made a fuss over the flowers, which were sunflowers, protea, and purple statice. Once inside Patrick liked the burnished walnut floor, the stout beams and wrought-iron brackets above, the framed paintings and photographs, the built-in bookcase.
“Mom said I’m supposed to put those in a vase for you,” he said.
“Right this way.”
“Great house.”
“I grew up on a farm so I like the old things.”
“You’re the farmer’s daughter.”
“Except I don’t like farming and don’t want any part of that life.”
“I feel the same way, except I do have a part of it.”
“You have a disaster to deal with. That’s a little different.”
In the kitchen she handed him a heavy cut-glass vase and Patrick filled half of it with water. She handed him a pair of curve-bladed pruners and Patrick looked at them and figured he was supposed to trim the flower stalks. Advanced manners were something he hadn’t learned, having gone from high school straight into the Marines then to Afghanistan. He’d graduated from a laptop to a machine gun in a matter of months. So he’d also missed a lot of everyday things, like how to balance a checkbook or make something to eat other than a sandwich. Or how to pick out cool clothes or order a decent haircut. Or how to talk to a pretty woman without your blood pressure spiking. “Maybe just like an inch or so?”
“Perfect. I see you got your head fixed. The stitches, I mean.”
“Good as new, Iris.”
She showed him the house, though he got just a peek of her bedroom. The house reminded him of an old TV show or maybe a magazine feature on the homes of yesterday. There was no stainless steel and few hard edges. Lots of fabric and curves. He liked the aerial photograph of the Cash family farm that hung in the dining room. Also in the dining room stood a majestic china cabinet, lit from within. “Great-grandma’s,” said Iris. “Handmade. Mom let me have it early.” Through the cabinet windows Patrick saw plates and bowls of all sizes, flower vases, platters and mugs. Iris’s place reminded him of the Norris home, although some of Iris’s artwork was modern and baffling. He wondered what Iris would make of the big portrait of his grandfather and great-uncle glaring down from above the mantel. He pictured her standing in that room in the yellow dress she now wore, and in his imagination she drew all the light and the room was dim — she alone was specific and clear.