Free The Bookman's Wake by John Dunning Page B

little girl into a young
     woman. We went out on a road called Ballarat and soon began
     picking up numbered streets and avenues, most of them in
     the high hundreds. It was rural by nature, but the streets
     seemed linked to Seattle, as if some long-ago urban planner
     had plotted inevitable annexations well into the next
     century. We came to the intersection of Southeast 106th
     Place and 428th Avenue Southeast: I still couldn’t
     see much, but I knew we were in the country. There was a
     fenced pasture, and occasionally I could see the lights of
     houses far back from the road. “Here we are,”
     Eleanor said abruptly. “Just pull over here and
     stop.” I pulled off the road across from a gate,
     which was open. My headlights shone on a mailbox with the
     name rigby painted boldly across it, and under
     that—in smaller letters—the north bend press.
     We sat idling. I could hear her breathing heavily in the
     dark beside me. The air in the car was tense.
    “What’s happening?” I asked her.
    “What do you mean?”
    “Is there a problem?”
    “Not the kind of problem you’d imagine. I
     just hate to face them.”
    “Why would you feel like that?”
    “I’ve disappointed them badly. I’ve
     done some things…stuff I can’t talk
     about…I’ve let them down and suddenly
     it’s almost impossible for me to walk in there and
     face them. I can’t explain it. The two people I love
     best in the world are in there and I don’t know what
     to say to them.”
    “How about ‘hi’?”
    She gave a sad little laugh.
    “Seriously. If people love each other, the words
     don’t matter much.”
    “You’re very wise, Janeway. And you’re
     right. I know they’re not going to judge me.
     They’ll just offer me comfort and shelter and
     love.”
    “And you shudder at the thought.”
    “I sure do.”
    We sat for another minute. I let the car idle and the
     heater run and I didn’t push her either way. At last
     she said, “Let’s go see if Thomas Wolfe was
     right when he said you can’t go home
     again.”
    I turned into the driveway. It was a long dirt road that
     wound through the trees. The rain was beating down
     steadily, a ruthless drumbeat. In a moment I saw lights
     appear through the trees. A house rose up out of the mist,
     an old frame building with a wide front porch. It looked
     homey and warm, like home is supposed to look to a tired
     and heartsick traveler. But Eleanor had begun to shiver as
     we approached. “Th-there,” she said through
     chattering teeth. “Just pull around the house and
     park in front.” But as I did this, she gripped my
     arm: my headlights had fallen on a car.
     “Somebody’s here! Turn around, don’t
     stop, for God’s sake keep going!” Then we saw
     the lettering on the car door—the vista printing
     company—and I could almost feel the relief flooding
     over her. “It’s okay, it’s just Uncle
     Archie,” she said breathlessly. “It’s
     Mamma’s uncle,” she said, as if I had been the
     worried one. A light came on, illuminating the porch and
     casting a beam down the stairs into the yard: someone
     inside had heard us coming. I pulled up in front of the
     other car at the foot of the porch steps. A face peered
     through cupped hands at the door. “Mamma,”
     Eleanor said, “oh, God, Mamma.” She wrenched
     open the door and leaped out into the rain. The woman met
     her on the porch with a shriek and they fell into each
     other’s arms, hugging as if they hadn’t seen
     each other for a lifetime and probably wouldn’t
     again, after tonight. I heard the woman yell,
     “Gaston!…Get out here!” and then a man
     appeared and engulfed them both with bearlike arms. I had a
     sinking feeling as I watched them, like Brutus
     might’ve felt just before he stabbed Caesar.
    Now Eleanor was waving to me. I got out and walked
     through the rain and climbed the steps to the porch.
     “This is the man who saved my life,” Eleanor
     said