"Now I dream about walking away, but if I leave, I leave with nothing. That's the understanding we have, and maybe that's the way it'll have to be. He wants me to stay, or so he says, but I've learned a lot too these last few years. I've learned that men hunger. They hunger and they want, but after a while they stop feeling that hunger for what they have so they look elsewhere. I've seen the way he stares at other women, at the girls in their tight dresses when they come through town. He thinks that one of them will fill whatever he aches for, but they can't and then he comes back and says that he's sorry, that he knows now. But he only knows for as long as the guilt is sharp and alive, and then it passes and he starts to want again.
"Men are so stupid, so self-absorbed. Each of them thinks he's different, that this ache, this emptiness inside him, is unique to him and him alone, and that it somehow excuses whatever he does. But it doesn't, and then he blames the woman for somehow holding him back, as if, without her, he would be better than he is, more than he is. And the hunger grows and, sooner or later, it starts to feed on itself and the whole sorry mess falls apart like muscle and tendon separated from the bone."
"And don't women hunger too?" I asked.
"Oh, we hunger all right. And, most of the time, we starve. At least, we do around these parts. You hunger too, Charlie Parker. And you want, maybe more than most. You wanted me, once, because I was different, because I was older and because you shouldn't have been able to have me, but you could. You wanted me because I seemed unobtainable."
"I wanted you because I loved you."
Lorna smiled at the memory. "You'd have left me. Maybe not immediately-it might have taken years-but you'd have left me. As I got older, as the wrinkles started to appear, when I dried up inside and you found I couldn't have children, when some pretty thing came along and flashed you a smile and you started to think, 'I'm still young, I can do better than this.' Then you'd have gone, or strayed and come back with your tail between your legs and your dick in your hand. And I couldn't have taken that pain, Charlie, not from you. I'd have died. I'd have curled up and died inside."
"That shouldn't have been the reason that you stayed with him." I stopped myself, because no good could come of this. "Anyway, that was in the past. What's done is done."
She looked away, and there were furrows of hurt at her brow. "Were you ever unfaithful to your wife?" she asked.
"Only with a bottle."
She laughed softly, and looked up at me from beneath her hair. "I don't know whether that's better or worse than a woman. Worse, I think." The smile disappeared but a kind of tenderness stayed in her eyes. "You were full of pain, even then. How much more pain have you taken on since?"
"It wasn't of my choosing, but I was to blame for what led to it."
It seemed as if all of the other people around us had faded away, had become mere shadows, and the small circle of daylight around the table represented the boundary of the world, with darkness beyond in which pale figures drifted and flickered like the ghosts of stars.
"And what did you do?" And softly, so softly, I felt her hand touch my own.
"Like you say, I hurt people. And now I'm trying to make up for what I've done."
And in the gloom around us, the figures seemed to draw closer, but they were not the folks eating in a small-town diner, filled with gossip and the tiny tendernesses of a close-knit community. They were the figures of the lost and the damned, and there were those among them whom I had once called friend, lover, child.
Lorna stood and around us the diner came into focus again, and the specters of the past became the substance of the present. She looked down upon me and my hand burned gently where she had touched me.
"'What's done is done,'" she said, repeating my words. "Is that how you feel about us?"
It seemed that the lines between our past and our present had become blurred, somehow, and we were digging at old wounds that should have healed long before. I didn't reply, so she shrugged on her jacket, took five bucks from her purse and left it on the table. Then she turned and walked away, leaving me with the memory of her touch and the faint lingering of her scent, like a promise made but not yet fulfilled. She knew that Rand would hear that we had been seen together, that we had spoken at length in the diner. I think, even then, she was pushing him. She was pushing us both. I could almost hear the clock ticking, counting down the hours and minutes until their marriage finally self-destructed.
In front of her, the door opened and Angel and Louis stepped into the diner. They glanced at me, and I nodded back. Lorna caught the gesture as she left, and as she passed, she acknowledged them with a small smile. They sat opposite me as I watched her cross the street and head north in her white jacket, her head low like a swan.
Angel called for two coffees and whistled softly as he waited for them to arrive. He was whistling "The Way We Were."
After they had eaten breakfast, I went over with them in detail the discovery of Chute's body the night before and we divided out what we were going to do that day. Louis would head up to the lake and try to find a vantage point from which to continue watching the Payne house, since the previous night's scouting party had proved unproductive. Before heading out, he would drop Angel in Greenville, where we had arranged for him to rent an ancient Plymouth at a gas station. From Greenville, he would head out to Rockwood, Seboomook, Pittston Farm and Jackman, West Forks and Bingham, all of the towns to the west and southwest of Moosehead Lake. I would take Monson, Abbot Village, Guilford and Dover-Foxcroft to the south and southeast. In each town, we would show photographs of Ellen Cole, checking stores and motels, coffee shops and diners, bars and tourist information offices. Wherever possible, we would talk to local law enforcement and the old-timers who occupied their favorite booths in the bars and diners, the ones who would be sure to notice strangers in town. It would be tiring, frustrating work, but it had to be done.
I noticed Louis was edgy as we spoke, his eyes moving swiftly around the diner and out onto the street beyond.
"He won't come at us in daylight," I said.
"Could have taken us last night," he replied.
"But he didn't."
"He wants us to know he's here. He likes the fear."
We said nothing more about him.
Before heading down to my assigned towns, I decided to follow the route Ellen and her boyfriend might have taken on the day they left town. On the way, I stopped off at a service station and got a mechanic to fit the Mustang with chains. I wasn't sure how bad the roads might get as I headed north.
I kept glancing in my rearview mirror as I drove, conscious now that Stritch might be somewhere in the area, but no cars followed me and I passed no other vehicle on the road. A couple of miles outside the town was a sign for the scenic ridge. The road up to it was steep and the Mustang struggled a little on some of the bends. Two minor roads snaked east and west at one point but I stuck with the main route until it came to a small parking lot that looked out over an expanse of hill and mountain, with Ragged Lake shimmering to the west and Baxter State Park and Katahdin to the northeast. The parking lot marked the end of the public access road. After that, the roads were for the use of the timber company, and would have played hell with the shocks of most cars. The land was startling in its whiteness, cold and beautiful. I could see why the woman at the motel had sent them up here, could imagine how wonderful the lake looked when it was bathed in gold.