The tunnel was repaired and the time travelers came through it from their unimaginable future: Tom was allowed a glimpse of them. He stood at the foot of the basement stairs as they emerged from the tunnel, a man and a woman, or apparently so—Ben said they changed themselves to seem more human than they really were. Their eyes, Tom thought, were very striking. Gray eyes, frankly curious. They looked at him a long time. Looked at him, Tom supposed, the way he might look at a living specimen of Australopithecus—with the peculiar affection we feel for our dim-witted ancestors.
Then they turned to Ben and spoke too softly for Tom to understand; he took this as his cue to leave.
Archer and Catherine made room for him in the Simmons house at the top of the hill. The bed was comfortable but he planned to leave; he felt too much like an intruder here. They made allowances for his disorientation, tiptoed around his isolation. It wasn’t a role he wanted to play.
The Simmons house was for sale, in any case. Archer had left his job with Belltower Realty but refused to employ another agent; the property was “for sale by owner.”
“It’s full of important memories,” Catherine said, “but without Gram Peggy this place would be a mausoleum. Better to let it go.” She gave him a curious half-sad little smile. “I guess we all came out of this with new ideas about past and future. What we can cling to and what we can’t.”
Archer said they were moving up to Seattle, where Catherine had a market for her painting. He could find some kind of work there—maybe even audit some college courses. Tom said, “Leaving Belltower after all these years?”
“Cutting that knot, yeah. It’s easier now.”
“It rained morning glories,” Tom said.
“All up and down the Post Road. Morning glories a foot deep.”
“Nobody knows it but us.”
“Nope. But we know it.”
August had ended. It was September now, still hot, but a little bit of winter in the air, colder these nights.
He took his car out of the garage and drove it down to Brack’s Auto Body for a tune-up. The mechanic changed the oil, cleaned the plugs, adjusted the choke, charged too much. He ran Tom’s Visa card through the slider and said, “Planning a trip?” Tom nodded.
“Where you headed?”
“Don’t know. Maybe back east. Thought I’d just drive.”
“No shit?”
“No shit.”
“That’s wild,” the mechanic said. “Hey, freedom, right?”
“Freedom. Right.”
He made a couple of phone calls from the booth outside.
He called Tony. It was Saturday; Tony was home and the TV was playing in the background. He heard Tricia crying, Loreen soothing her.
“I was passing through town,” Tom said. “Thought I’d call.”
“Holy shit,” Tony said. “I thought you were dead, I really did. Are you all right? What do you mean, passing through town?”
“I can’t stay, Tony. You were right about the house. Not a good investment.”
“Passing through on the way to where?”
He repeated what he’d told the mechanic: someplace east.
“This is extremely adolescent behavior. Immature, Tom. This is life, not ‘Route 66.’ ”
“I’ll keep that in mind. Listen, is Loreen around?”
“You want to talk to her?” He seemed surprised.
“Just to say hi.”
“Well. Take care of yourself, anyhow. Stay in touch this time. If you need anything, if you need money—”
“Thanks, Tony. I appreciate that.”
Muffled silence, then Loreen got on the line. “Just checking in on my way through town,” Tom said. “Wanted to thank you folks.”
They chatted a while. Barry had been down with chicken pox, home from school for two weeks. Tricia was cutting a tooth. Tom said he’d been traveling and that he’d be traveling awhile longer.
“You sound different,” Loreen said.
“Do I?”
“You do. I don’t know how to describe it. Like you’re making peace with something.” He couldn’t formulate an answer. She added, “It’s been a long time since that accident. Since your mama and daddy died. Life goes on, Tom. Days and years. But I guess you know that.”
A last call, long distance to Seattle; he charged it to his credit card. A male voice answered. Tom said, “Is Barbara there?”
“Just a second.” Clatter and mumble. Then her voice.
She said she was glad to hear from him. She’d been worried. It was a relief to know he was all right. He thanked her for coming to see him back in the spring. It was good that she cared.
“I don’t think a person stops caring. We didn’t work too well together but we weren’t the Borgias, either.”
“It was good when it was good,” Tom said. “Yes.”
“You’re still hooked up with Rafe?”
“We’re working things out. I think it’s solid, yeah.”
“There were times I wanted you back so bad I tried to pretend you didn’t exist. Can you understand that?”
“Perfectly,” she said. “But those were real years.”
“Yes.”
“Good and bad.”
“Yes.”
“Thank you for those years,” he said. She said, “You’re going away again?”
“I’m not sure where. I’ll call.”
“Please do that,” she said.
He drove out of town along the coast highway until he came to the narrow switchback where his parents had died. He turned off the road at a scenic overlook some yards up the highway, stepped out of his car and sat awhile at the stone barricade where the hillside sloped away into scrub pine and down to the ocean. He had passed this place a dozen times since the accident but had never stopped, never allowed himself to contemplate the event. The knock on the door, the inconceivable announcement of their death—he had considered and reconsidered those things, but never this place. The mythology but never the fact. He reminded himself that the tumbling of their vehicle down this embankment had happened on a rainy day, that the car had crushed itself against the rocks, the ambulance had arrived and departed, the wreckage had been lifted by crane and towed away, night fell, the clouds parted, stars wheeled overhead, the sun rose. Two people died; but their dying was an event among all the other events of their lives, no more or less significant than marriage, childbirth, ambition, disappointment, love. Maybe Loreen was right. Time to take this bone of bereavement and inter it with all the other bones. Not bury it but put it in its place, in the vault of time, the irretrievable past, where memory lived.
He climbed into the car and drove back toward Belltower.
To the hollow central mystery of his life now: Joyce.
He found her on the Post Road, hiking to the little grocery up by the highway.
He stopped the car and opened the passenger door for her. She climbed inside.
By Tom’s calculation she had turned fifty in February of this year. She’d gained some weight, gained some lines, gained some gray. She wore a pair of faded jeans a little too tight around her thighs; a plain yellow sweatshirt; sneakers for the long hike up the road. The marks of time, Tom thought. Her voice was throaty and pitched lower than he remembered it; maybe time or maybe some hard living had done that. Her eyes suggested the latter.
She looked at him cautiously. “I wasn’t sure you’d be back.”
“Neither was I.”
“Still planning on leaving town?”
He nodded.
“I was hoping we could talk.”
“We can talk,” Tom said.
“You haven’t been around much. Well, hell. It must be a shock, seeing me like this.”
It was true, but it sounded terrible. He told her she looked fine. She said, “I look my age, for better or worse. Tom, I lived those twenty-seven years. I know what to expect when I look in the mirror. You woke up expecting something else.”