But her mind had started to tick again. She frowned and fretted, but hooky was over for now, her mind wanted to be active, the weight of their real-life situation had overtaken her again and there was no escaping it.
“Drat,” she muttered, and rubbed her head against his shoulder.
He said, “You, too?” He sounded amused.
“All I want to do is lie here, but my stinking brain won’t let me.”
“You want to know about the meeting.”
“Yes, damn it.” She pushed away from him and sat up. “I’ve been wanting to know about it for two days. But I did enjoy just being here.”
His head was propped on both pillows, and he was smiling indulgently at her. She moved as though to get up, but his hand moved under the blankets and cupped her thigh. “You don’t have to get out of bed,” he said. “We can talk right here.”
“All right. But give me a pillow.”
He laughed and sat up and arranged the two pillows against the scarred wooden headboard so they could sit side by side. Then he said, “The meeting didn’t come up with any answers. Mostly it was getting people like Harrison and Bradford, Jr. to—”
“BJ,” she said.
“Right. Mostly, it was getting them to believe it. Then it was decided I should take a leave of absence from school and come down here, to be handy in case brawn was needed. Also, Howard is going to move in at the estate, in case brains are needed.”
“You have brains,” she said. She didn’t like him to denigrate himself, even in fun.
“Okay, so Howard’s there for the brawn. Also—”
“Oh, phooey.”
Grinning, he reached over and tousled her hair. “Stop interrupting.”
“I definitely will,” she said, mock solemn. “At once.”
“Good. Also, Dr. Holt is going to find some excuse to come give Bradford a check-up.”
“He doesn’t need an excuse,” she said. “I made Bradford promise to have a check-up before leaving. He’s supposed to call Joe, but he keeps stalling about it.”
“Lean on him,” Robert advised.
“I will.”
“And I’ll call Holt and tell him not to worry about an excuse, but to wait for the call.”
“Good. What else?”
“We want to know how Bradford’s communicating with the Chinese,” he said. “I got the impression Wellington was going to look into that. Also Howard will see what he can find out after he moves in. He’ll probably want you to help.”
“Whatever I can do. What about when Bradford decides it’s time to go?”
“No decision yet. No ideas. We can’t even just quietly lock him away in the attic or something, because, as Howard pointed out, Bradford’s still a public man, he’s expected to still make public statements from time to time. If he suddenly became unavailable, some enterprising reporter would want to find out why.”
“That’s so awful anyway,” she said. “Locking him away somewhere. That would kill him, it really would. I think humiliation would kill Bradford faster than anything else on earth.”
“You could be right. Anyway, everybody’s supposed to think about the problem and hope somebody will come up with something in time.”
“What if nobody does?”
“We’re not asking that question yet. Oh, yes, and they want you to tell Bradford you’re going with him.”
“Tell him I am? Why?”
“So he’ll keep you up on his plans.”
She frowned. “I don’t think he will anyway, not the details. But all right. Except, how do I get him to believe it? He thinks now I’m going to stay because of you.”
He shrugged and said, “I suppose you’ll have to tell him we had a fight.”
“Over what?”
“Over him. I said he was crazy or something, and that did it.”
“I’m not good at lying like this,” she said. “The whole idea of it makes me scared.”
“I know,” he said, smiling reassuringly at her, and reached out to pat her hand, saying, “It shouldn’t be for very long.”
“God, I hope not. Was that all from the meeting?”
“So far. Has there been anything else from Bradford?”
“No. He spends almost all his time in the library these days, reading. He isn’t doing any work on The Coming of Winter at all.”
“That’s the next volume in the memoirs?”
“Yes. I don’t think he’s gone near it in over a month. Howard has a perfectly legitimate excuse to come stay for a while.”
“I suppose Bradford’s too interested in his future now,” Robert said. “He doesn’t care very much about the past any more.”
Evelyn drew her knees up, still covered by the blankets, and leaned forward to rest her folded forearms on them. “Joe thinks he’s had a stroke, doesn’t he?”
“He isn’t sure yet, but he thinks so, yes.”
“The real thing this time, not the little ones like he had before.”
“Yes.”
“That’s awful,” she said. She looked at him, feeling very strongly now a sense of the waste involved, the waste of a valuable man, a fine brain. “There’s nothing to be done, if he’s right,” she said. “Is there? The damage can’t be fixed.”
“That’s the way I understand it,” he said, and in his troubled expression she saw that he empathized with what she was feeling.
“He’ll always be like this, from now on,” she said. “Erratic, full of impractical schemes, a little impatient with people slower than he is, and never knowing there’s anything wrong.”
“Yes.”
“What if we told him?” She peered into Robert’s eyes, as though he really might have the saving answer somewhere inside his head. “What if we said, Bradford, this is what’s happened to you, this is why you’re thinking these things, acting this way, what then?”
“He wouldn’t believe you,” Robert said. “I’m sorry, Evelyn, but he’d just think you were lying for an ulterior motive, he’d think you were simply trying to thwart him.”
“I hate this,” she said, and found, to her surprise and annoyance, that she was crying.
At once he drew her in against himself, his arms around her. “I know,” he whispered. “I know, I know.”
“I hate it,” she said bitterly, words muffled against his chest as she held him tight, clutching him close because he too was impermanent, because everything ended, all good things became bad and stopped. “I hate it,” she said in helpless anger, “I hate it, I hate it, I hate it.”
ii
That evening, after putting Dinah to bed, she went to the library to talk to Bradford. She’d put it off as long as she could, but now the only thing to do was get it over with. Not letting herself pause for second thoughts, she walked into the library, shutting the door behind her, and said, “I’ve made up my mind.”
Tonight he was reading a book called China After Mao, by a well-known reporter from The New York Times, in a pre-publication copy sent to him by the publisher’s publicity department. Books were constantly being sent to Bradford, but only rarely did he respond with a comment they could use in their advertising. Now he put a green leather bookmark in to keep his place, closed the book on his lap and said, “About staying?”
“About going,” she said. The words stuck in her throat, then, until she blurted them out: “I want to go with you, Bradford.”
He was surprised, and showed it. “With me? Are you sure?”