"Wy-"
She shook her head fiercely, and he stopped. When she spoke again, her voice was so low and so filled with pain that he could barely hear it. "I can't do this. I can't live like this, live with it. I can't live with what we're doing, what we might do. And I hate all this sneaking around. It makes me feel cheap." After a moment, she added, "It makes us cheap."
"But-"
"No! Liam, don't." She held out her hands, and he put his own into them, the despair welling up like a black tide. "You have responsibilities. You can't turn your back on them. You shouldn't try."
"But-"
"No, Liam. You know I'm right." She paused, and he was silent. Her attempt at a smile was shaky. "You see? You know I'm right. I'm flying home tomorrow. Alone. You can take an air taxi."
He traced the back of her hand with his thumb. "All right," he said at last. "Call me in a couple of days. Or I'll call you."
She shook her head. "You know you can't." She took a deep breath, let it out, and continued in a steady voice, "And I won't be there long. I've found another job."
"What?" The panic was sharp and immediate. "Where?"
She shook her head. "I'm leaving on Wednesday."
"Wy," he said, drawing her name out. "No. Don't do this."
She put gentle fingers over his mouth. "We'll both be better off if we don't see each other after tomorrow." Again, she tried to smile. "It's not our time, Liam. Maybe in the next life."
She took him back to bed then, and they made love in a fury of pain and loss and despair, and when he woke the next morning she was curled in a ball against his chest, her shoulders shaking, her face wet against his skin.
She refused to let him drive her to Lake Hood, saying her good-byes at the car. She looked down at their clasped hands. "I've gotten used to this hand," she whispered. "This hand in mine. Your skin against mine. Warm. Strong. Holding me."
He couldn't speak. It took him three tries to get in the car, until finally she gave him a gentle push. "Go on. Go on, now. Your son is waiting."
Chin up, shoulders back, eyes blinded by tears, she walked steadily down to the intersection of Fifth and L. She did not look back. He knew, because he watched her in the rearview mirror, her hair a dark blond tumble against the blue silk scarf wrapped round her neck, until the light turned green and the car behind him gave an impatient honk. He stepped on the gas and started through the intersection.
When he looked up again, she was gone.
"Harry, dammit, I know it's not in the job description but try for a little friggin' compassion, would you!"
Wy's voice, angry, impatient, and just a little frightened, brought him back into the present with a jerk. He looked down to discover that he'd wound the scarf around his wrists, straining the delicate fabric between them. With an effort, he freed himself and replaced everything as it had been. He closed the drawer again and, still moving softly, went back out into the living room.
There was a framed poster on one wall with the title INTERNATIONAL SPACE YEAR 1992 running across the bottom. It had a couple of galleons sailing rough seas out of the bottomleft-hand corner of the frame and into space in the upper-right-hand corner of the frame, with ringed planets and gas giants and moons and comets interspersed with blueprint drawings of spacecraft.
Wy was a big follower of the space program. She wanted someday to go to Florida to watch the shuttle take off, and stay to watch it land, and in between to live at Spaceport. "Did you ever think of becoming an astronaut?" he'd asked her, and she had replied, with a twisted smile, "My parents wanted me to become a teacher. So I became a teacher."
He'd wanted to ask her how she had made the jump from teacher to pilot, but the memory was so obviously painful that he left it for another time.
In those days they were easily distracted. That other time never came, and soon afterward she left.
This time, he thought, staring at the poster, this time he would know it all.
Wy's voice became edgy and defensive. "I said you'll get it, and you will. I keep my word, Harry. And I pay my debts."
Footsteps came down the hall. Liam looked around to see Tim Gosuk standing in the doorway.
"Hey," Liam said.
Tim's expression was aloof, giving nothing away. "Hey."
They regarded each other in silence for a moment. Everything Liam knew about kids could have been written on the head of a pin. On the other hand, he'd been a trooper for over ten years and knew more about human nature than most shrinks. He was also older and tougher and probably smarter than the boy, which would help. "Finish studying for your civics exam?"
Tim looked toward the kitchen and back at Liam. He was still dressed in urban punk: bagged-out jeans, oversized plaid shirt, and backward baseball cap. At least he didn't have a do rag. "Yeah," Tim said finally. "What's it to you?"
His voice was curt but not necessarily challenging. Liam shrugged. "Just making conversation." He wasn't going to force himself on the boy, but he was equally determined not to be shut out. "What other subjects you studying this year? What grade are you in, anyway?"
"Eighth."
"Really?" Liam said, adding mendaciously, "I thought you were older. So?"
"So what?"
"So what else are you studying? English, history, what else?"
It was the boy's turn to shrug. "English, history, what else."
"Math?"
Tim made a face, the first natural expression Liam had seen there. Aha, a breakthrough. "Algebra."
"Yuck."
The boy made a noise somewhere between a snort and a grunt. "It's not so bad. Mrs. Davenport is a good teacher. It's hard, but she makes it fun."
"I was lousy at math," Liam observed. "Never got all that business about x's and y's straight in my head. Geometry was better; I liked fooling with the volume of all the figures." He grinned. "And I liked Mary Kallenberg, who sat next to me in geometry class and helped me find the area of the three different kinds of triangles. Can't for the life of me remember what they're called now."
"There aren't three, there are six," Tim said promptly. "Right, isosceles, equilateral, obtuse, acute, and scalene," and he actually smiled.
"Yikes. You're scaring me." Liam smiled back. "Not much call in the trooper business to figure out the area of a right triangle."
"You don't use it, you lose it," Tim said, his words an uncanny echo of Moses'. "Mrs. Davenport says that a lot. She loads us up on the homework like you wouldn't believe."
Inwardly Liam marveled at the way the boy's face had metamorphosed from sullen, wary, potential juvenile delinquent to animated, intelligent teenager. In this persona, it was easy to see why Wy had taken him on.
The smell of something wonderful wafted in from the kitchen, and their stomachs growled in unison. Both males were surprised into laughter. Mutual laughter, once enjoyed, is a hard thing to step back from. "Maybe if we go into the kitchen and squawk like seagulls she'll feed us," Liam said.
"Works for me."
They walked into the kitchen in time to hear Wy say into the phone, "Oh, like this phone call didn't cost me a hundred and fifty bucks! Look, Harry, I'll get you the goddamn money just as soon as I get paid myself! Okay?"
She slammed down the receiver and turned to see Liam and Tim standing in the doorway watching her. "Oh hello," she said, bright smile newly polished and back in place. "Ready for some dinner?"
When Liam looked at Tim, he saw the sullen look had descended again like a cloud.
The Constance Demby CD ended. Bon Jovi's Keeping the Faith blared out in its place. In spite of himself Liam winced, and they both saw it. Even Tim laughed, and it eased the tension.
"Feed me," Liam said, and they both recognized the line from Little Shop of Horrors and laughed some more. It got them to the table in something approaching amity, and Wy served up a kind of pork sparerib stew with pea pods in a delicious sauce. When Liam asked what went into the sauce, all Wy would say is, "Secret Filipino ingredient," and it wasn't till he helped clear the table and saw the empty can of Campbell's cream of mushroom soup in the garbage that he realized what it was.