Dana, looking him over head to toe, held out a mug. “Coffee?”
A peek at his ring finger revealed that it was bare.
Not that it mattered to Hailey.
“You’re probably wondering why I’m here.”
“To borrow a cup of sugar?” Dana asked him, openly flirting, and he smiled…at Hailey.
“Sugar?” He recoiled in playful horror. “Do you have any idea what that stuff does to teeth?”
Hailey couldn’t help but grin, and Dana laughed as if it were the funniest thing she’d ever heard.
“No, actually, we’ve got a leak in the ceiling right underneath this”-he indicated Hailey’s sink-“and I was wondering if you’d mind if someone came up to take a look at the pipes.”
“No problem. I’ll be here till six tonight, so…”
“Great. See you later, then, Hailey.”
She and Dana exchanged a startled glance.
“You’re going to inspect the pipes yourself?” Dana asked dubiously.
“Oh-no. Of course not. Maybe I’ll just come back up and see what the plumber finds. And to say hello again.”
“Hello again?” Dana echoed when he’d walked out, closing the door behind him. “Did you hear that? What did he mean by that?”
“Who knows?” Hailey turned away, taking a mug from the cabinet.
“Hailey! Don’t be so clueless. It means he’s interested in you.”
“How am I clueless when you’re the one who asked me what he meant?”
“We both know what he meant. And in the first place, don’t you think it’s a little strange that a dentist himself comes all the way up here to talk about the pipes, check out your office and you? Not one of those old birds that works in his office?”
“I don’t know…maybe.”
“I bet there’s not even a leak down there. It was probably just an excuse for him to come up and introduce himself.”
“That’s crazy.”
“So you’re not interested?”
“I hadn’t even thought about it…”
“So you are interested?”
Maybe…but she’d never let on to Dana. The next thing she knew, Dana would skip Theresa’s party to stick around here and play matchmaker.
“You know I’m not looking for anyone, Dana. I don’t want that in my life right now.”
“If you found the right person, I bet you’d change your mind.”
Hailey thought of Will. She already found the right person. And lost him.
“Maybe,” she told Dana. “But I don’t think so.”
27
Atlanta, Georgia
THE GREYHOUND TOOK OFF FROM THE REIDSVILLE BUS STATION, kicking up gravel and heading north in a cloud of dark gray exhaust.
It was headed directly to its main hub in inner-city Atlanta.
How many times had he poached the place like a fox…waiting for just the right woman to step off a bus from nowhere? How many times had he lurked a half block away, watching as a new crop of waitresses, hotel domestics, mall sales-clerks, secretaries, and showbiz wannabes hit town?
The bus stopped and the familiar smell of the hot, congested city’s downtown slinked its way through the heavy automatic doors, stealing all the way to the back row, where Cruise sat at an angle against the bus’s wall.
It hit him hard…the smell of the heat radiating off pavement, diesel fumes, and something else…something sweet and hot and familiar.
Downtown Atlanta, where it all mixed together: the heat, the exhaust, the whiff of downtown department stores full of pink-faced salesgirls meandering heavily air-conditioned aisles…the new steel and concrete sky-rises looking down on old flophouses right next door on the same city block, the smell of fresh boiled collard greens and cornbread served up on dinette four-tops at the cafeteria next to the station.
He was home.
Unlike the drifters pouring onto the sidewalk from all corners, this was his town.
He knew where to go, how to get by, where to have fun, and where to lay low when he needed to…when he was disgusted with the sickening presence of other people. He knew where to find everything he wanted.
But not now.
It took every fiber of his being not to walk down the narrow center aisle and down the two bus steps, leave the bus behind, and melt back into his old haunts.
But instinct told him no.
Instead, Cruise stayed rooted to his seat, staring down at the gray-and-blue pattern woven into the upholstery, knowing that if he kept looking out the window into the city’s night, he’d walk out onto the sidewalk and fade into the hundreds of drifters milling around the bus terminal. He’d disappear right back into his own world, the world he had known before Reidsville Pen.
Twenty minutes later, the bus motor churned and they were off again.
He watched the last streaks of light leave the sky, replaced by total darkness.
Time seemed suspended as they headed north…far from the city’s core, through the suburbs and cul-de-sacs of cluster homes. Past the ball fields, the shopping malls, the Starbucks, the gas stations. They fell away from the highway like empty husks, like they’d never existed.
He’d be back…he knew it. He’d pick up his old life again. It was all just a matter of time.
First, he had business to take care of; business he’d dreamed of for all these years, business that gave him a reason to keep breathing in the cement crate he’d been crammed into.
28
St. Simons Island, Georgia
IT WAS PITCH DARK OUTSIDE, BUT THE MOON WAS SO BRIGHT VIRGINIA could see in clear detail the separate limbs of tall, thin, lanky pine saplings near the entrance to an unpaved two-mile access road that ended at the Island’s southernmost beaches.
She eased her beat-up gray Jeep onto the dirt lane, then glanced into the rearview mirror.
Good. Nobody behind her. Nobody ahead of her.
She slowed to a full stop and took her time staring down the road as far as she could, until it took a rounded curve.
Just beyond her view were the most beautiful beaches on the Island, where the Atlantic first kissed the Georgia sand good morning each day.
On Saturdays, children played pirates and Civil War heroes and Indians there, hiding from parents back at home, closeted behind screen doors keeping out the onslaught of summer bugs, their curtains drawn shut against the heat.
It was to these same quiet, wind blown dunes that those very children, as high-schoolers, stole away to make love for the first time, each thinking they were the first to discover the once-in-a-lifetime spot under the Island sky.
And then even later, they would return to the familiar stretch of sea and sand as life crept up on them, the years suddenly grown too many. They came back to drink in the water and sand, and remember youth.
Then, at the end, there were last requests to see the south dunes and the ocean one more time. When Virginia’s time came, she wouldn’t mind if it happened right there, too; if her own last look at this earth was the Island dunes and ocean.
With a sigh, she turned off the engine, crunched down on the emergency brake, and got out of the Jeep.
She couldn’t help but look up and name the constellations in her mind, an old habit. She always imagined that somewhere in the world, the people she loved both dead and alive were looking at those same stars.
Suddenly remembering why she was creeping around a dirt road at midnight, she crawled under a thick metal chain draped across the road.
She took off into the dark, keeping an eye out for wildlife off the dunes, confident that, between her and the animals, if anyone were about to be caught off-guard and take off running, it would be them, not her.
No sooner than three or four minutes in, she turned the curve in the road and stopped cold.