That ended their attempts at any more talk. Wolf went upstairs, while Cassius allowed he probably needed some rest too.
Outside the thunderstorm had moved into the far distance, but the rain was keeping up with a moderate pelting.
Wolf found Tom and Terri in bed, her arm around him, and with their eyes closed. She opened hers and signed to Wolf not to talk, she’d just got the boy asleep.
Wolf brought his lips close to her cheek. “We’ll be leaving tomorrow,” he whispered. “Stay somewhere in San Francisco. Okay?”
She nodded and smiled agreement and they softly kissed goodnight and he went around and carefully slid into bed on the other side of Tommy.
That was the ticket, Wolf told himself. Leave tomorrow and let the storm decide how fast they moved, the storm and (he grinned to himself) “the authorities.” Right now the former seemed to be slackening and the latter to have signed off for the night. This lazy thought pleased him and suited his weariness. What had really happened the past few days, anyway? Why, he’d simply pushed his reconciliation with his father too far, involved himself too much in the old man’s ruined life-end, and as a result got Tommy and Terri (and Loni too!) entangled in the dismal wreckage of a marriage (and all its ghosts) which was all Cassius could ever be to anyone. And the solution to this was the same as it had been when Wolf was a youngster: get away from it! Yes, that was the ticket.
His thoughts in the dark grew desultory, he dozed, and after a while slumbered.
Morning revealed the storm still firmly in charge of things. No thunder-and-lightning histrionics, but its rain persistently pelted. TV and radio glumly reported a slowly worsening weather situation.
The Martinezes called in early to say they wouldn’t be making it. They had storm troubles of their own down in the city.
Wolf took that call. Overflowing ashtrays told him Cassius had been up most of the night and he let the old man sleep. He made breakfast for the rest of them and served it in the kitchen. Simpler that way, he told himself, and avoided confrontation of Tommy with a certain painting.
Tilly called with updatings of last night’s news and admonitions. Terri took that call and she and the older woman spun it out.
Packing occupied some more time. Wolf didn’t want to rush things, but it seemed a chore best gotten out of the way.
He gave Terri the job of making them reservations at a San Francisco hotel or motel. She settled down with the phone and big directory.
Taking a rain-armored Tommy with him, he went down to the garage and found, as he’d feared, that the gas tank was a little too near empty for comfort. They drove to the nearest gas station that was open (the first and second weren’t) and filled her up, made all other checks. Wolf noted that the big flashlight he kept in the glove compartment was dim and he bought new batteries for it.
Driving back, he took more note of the rain damage: fallen branches, scatters of rock and gravel, small runs of water crosswise of the road. In the garage he reminded himself to check out Cassius’ Buick somehow before they left.
Terri had managed to make them a reservation at a motel on Lombard after getting “No vacancies” from a half dozen other places.
Cassius was up and on his best best behavior, though rather reserved (chastened? to borrow Tilly’s word) and not inclined to talk much except to grumble half comically that people as usual were making too much of the storm and its dangers, decry the TV and radio reports, and in general put on a crusty-old-man act. However, he seemed quite reconciled to Wolfs departure and the visit’s end, and also, despite his grumbles, to his own going down to Tilly’s to stay out the end of the storm.
Wolf took advantage of this mood of acquiescence to get Cassius to go down to the garage with him and check out the Buick and its gas supply. Once there, and the Buick’s motor starting readily enough, Wolf badgered the old man into backing it out of the garage and then into it again, so the car’d be facing forward for easiest eventual departure. Cassius groused about “having to prove to my own son I can still drive,” but complied in the end, though in no more mood than before for any close conversation.
Back once more in the house, there came at long last the expected phone call with the order, or rather advisement, that all dwellers in it get out of Goodland Valley. Wolf carried their bags and things down to the car, while Cassius, still grumbling a little, prepared an overnight bag and made a call to Tilly, telling her he would be arriving shortly.
“But I’m not going to get out until you’re all on your way,” he gruffly warned his son’s family. “Enough’s enough. If I left at the same time you did, I’d lose completely the feeling—a very good one, let me assure you!—of having been your host in my own house for a most pleasant week.”
Except for that show of warmth, Cassius continued his reserve in his good-bye, contenting himself with silently shaking hands first with Wolf, then Tommy, and giving each a curt nod of approval. Terri saw a tear in his eye and was touched, she felt a sudden swing in her feelings toward him, and impulsively threw her arms around his neck and kissed him. He started to wince away from her, then submitted with some grace and a murmured “M’dear. Thank you, Terri.”
Wolf noted on her face a look of utter surprise and shock, but it was quickly replaced with a smile. It stuck in his mind, though he forgot to ask her about it, mostly because as they were pulling out of the garage, a highway patrol car stopped across the road and hailed them.
“Are you leaving the Kruger residence?” one of the officers asked, consulting a list, and when Wolf affirmed that, continued with, “Anyone else up there?”
“Yes, my father, the owner,” Wolf called back. “He’s leaving shortly, in another car.”
They thanked him, but as he drove off, he saw them get out and start trudging up the hill.
“I’m glad they’re doing that,” he told Terri. “Make sure Cassius is rooted out.”
But the incident left a bad taste in his mouth, because it reminded him of what he’d heard about the two policemen calling there the morning after his mother died.
At the first sizable intersection a roadblock was being set up to stop cars entering Goodland Valley. That didn’t hold them back, but the drive into San Francisco took half again as long as he’d anticipated, what with the rain and slow traffic and a mudslide blocking two lanes of the freeway near Waldo Tunnel just north of the bridge.
Lombard Street, when they reached it just south of the bridge, reminded Wolf and Terri of western towns built along main highways in the days before freeways. Wide, but with stoplights every block and the sides garish with the neon of gas stations, chain restaurants, and motels. They located theirs and checked in with relief. Tommy had been starting to get cranky and the storm was making late afternoon seem like night.
Only Terri didn’t seem to Wolf as relieved as she should be. Tommy was running a bath for himself and his boats. Wolf asked her, “Something bothering you, Hon?”
She was scowling nervously at the floor. “No, I guess I’ve just got to tell you,” she decided reluctantly. “Wolf, when I kissed your father—”
“I know!” he interjected. “I was going to ask you about it, if he’d goosed you, tried to cop some other sort of feel, or what? You looked so strange.”
“Wolf,” she said tragically, “it was simply that his breath was reeking with alcohol. That was why he was making such a point of keeping a distance from us all day.”
“Oh God,” he said despondently, closing his eyes and slumping.