During the next few months she tried not to notice what he was doing at work, and pretended at home that their relationship was getting better. It was only after she missed a period, and then another, then a third, that Christine awoke from the trance. She bought the pregnancy test, and the little X turned bright blue, and she was pregnant. She didn't need to spend much time thinking about the implications, because they were already in the back of her mind waiting. She couldn't stay with Richard. She couldn't give birth to a baby as Richard's girlfriend. She couldn't live in Richard's house where he could use the baby as a hostage to control her. She had to get out. But she wasted more time trying to think of a way to do it. Soon she was desperate, because she couldn't hide the pregnancy much longer, and she had to leave before he found out.
One day Christine pretended to be sick and waited until Richard went to the office. She packed a small overnight bag. Then she left her keys on the kitchen counter and her car in the driveway, walked to a pay phone at a nearby restaurant, and called a cab to take her to Sharon Curtis's house. Christine had a natural sneakiness that must have been developed when she was young, trying to outwit the Divine Delia. She knew from intense observation how the minds of tyrants worked. Neither Delia nor Richard would ever walk off and leave a car. For Richard, seeing her car still at his house would be the same as seeing Christine there. It would never occur to him that Christine would leave most of her possessions and a car behind. He would spend days in complete confidence that she was just in a snit and that she would return.
Christine knew that she should have called Sharon in advance, but she was already afraid of leaving that telephone call as the last one on the bill that Richard received. Sharon had been her favorite teacher at Poway High School. She had been younger and more glamorous than any of the others. She taught science—all kinds of science, from first-year biology to advanced placement physics. Science was messy, so she was invulnerable to the formal dress requirements for teachers. She wore the same brands of jeans that students wore, white lab coats so clean they glowed, and had an array of bright-colored sneakers. She had a set of safety goggles around her neck most of the time. She was bright and tough, and kept her students alert by keeping up an ongoing conversation in which she addressed first one, then another. Christine loved her. Watching her was like seeing herself in ten years and being really pleased at how she was going to turn out.
When Christine's family troubles finally caused the household to collapse, she had confided in Sharon Curtis, and Sharon listened to each stage of the disaster and to each of the revelations about Christine's father, but she never made a comment until she was asked. After Christine left school and went to work, she and Sharon met for lunch about once a month. Each time, Sharon would find a way to remind Christine that she should go back to school and then go to college.
The day Christine ran away, she told Sharon all the things about the relationship with Richard that she had been withholding—the growing violence, the dishonesty, the dangerous people working for him—and Sharon changed. She said, "I'm going to tell you something that nobody knows, and when you hear it, you'll understand why you can't tell anyone. I wasn't always called Sharon Curtis. I lived somewhere far away from here. There was a boyfriend, and some of the things that have been happening to you happened to me, too. I always found a way to fool myself into thinking I should stay with him. Things got worse. They can get a whole lot worse than I ever imagined in about a second."
"What's your real name? Who are you?"
"Sharon Curtis is my real name. It's the one I agreed to, and it's the name of the person I am now. We don't really have time for questions about the person I used to be. Not if Richard is in the habit of hurting you and knows you could reveal things that will get him arrested."
"I don't know what to do. He has those people I told you about. They sometimes hunt people down for him, ones who don't pay what they owe or something. I know he'll send them after me."
"Then you've got to be gone before that happens." Sharon looked at Christine with a sad expression. "You've got to disappear."
"But I don't know how."
"There's a woman. About ten years ago, somebody sent me to her. If they hadn't, I'd be dead."
"Who is she?"
"Her name is Jane. You have to go to her. The first thing you do is tell her that I sent you. Then you tell her about yourself, and about Richard and his people." Sharon tore a piece of scrap paper from a pad beside her telephone and wrote the name Jane Whitefield and an address on it in her neat schoolteacher handwriting, then handed it to Christine. "Memorize this and then give it back and I'll destroy the paper."
"Like in the movies."
"Not like the movies. This is real. Don't be careless. The address on that paper has been more precious to some people than anything in any bank. If anything happens to her, a door will close, and nobody will ever be able to go through again."
"I'll be careful. I promise."
"I'm going to drive you to the L.A. airport, just in case he's noticed you're gone and he's watching the San Diego airport. Fly to Buffalo, New York, tonight, and take a cab. If she's not there, wait for her."
"What if she doesn't come?"
"Then try going to Buffalo General Hospital and asking for her. There are people there who know her."
"What does she look like?"
"Tall and thin, with black hair. She wore it long when I last saw her. She has dark skin, and eyes that look as though she can see through you. They're the part that might help. They're blue—bright, clear blue, like water is supposed to look but doesn't. And that reminds me. Don't ever lie to her, not even an innocent little lie."
As Christine thought about that night, she missed Sharon even more than before. Now that she'd had the experience that Sharon had prepared her for, she wanted to tell her about it. She wanted to thank Sharon for taking the risk of telling her she was living under a name she'd only had for ten years. Now that Christine had become Linda Welles, she knew what an extravagant gift that information was. But there was one extra question that hadn't existed for Christine before. She wanted to know why Sharon, the person in her life who always seemed to be in complete control, had ever needed the kind of help that Jane Whitefield offered.
There had been hints that night, but Christine wanted the whole story. Now it was important to Christine to know. Maybe Sharon Curtis was somebody Jane had invented because she wasn't much like the young girl whose life was in danger, and the young girl had worked and studied until she had grown into being Sharon. Christine hoped so. Sharon had a stronger sense of who she was and how that person was supposed to behave than anyone else Christine had met. Was that something Sharon started with, or something she had been able to earn? After ten years, was her identity a disguise, or was it the person she had grown to be?
Christine was up off the couch and pacing, ranging the room the way Sharon did when she was running a science lab. Without really thinking about it, Christine went to the telephone and picked it up. The loud dial tone startled her. She had half-expected the phone to be dead, because nobody had ever called her. The message from Jane about her father was the only call she'd had since she'd bought the phone, and she had missed even that one. All she had heard was the voice mail Jane had recorded.
As Christine stared at the telephone, the dial tone seemed to get even louder and more insistent. She dialed Sharon's number and waited. It was ten here in Minnesota, so it was only eight in San Diego, a perfect time to call on a weeknight, when Sharon probably hadn't gone out.
"Hello?" It was Sharon's voice, sounding a bit tired from a day of teaching, and yet, there was something else. It was something Christine had never been sensitive enough to hear before. The tone was guarded, as though some small part of Sharon was prepared for a voice from the distant past.