She couldn’t find it. Searching, she hit her head on the steering wheel. Behind her Falon was bent over groaning, holding himself. She spun around and shoved him off balance. He stumbled back. She jerked the door closed and locked it, snatched the key from her pocket, jammed it in the ignition and started the car. As the engine roared she pressed her face to the window, he was getting up. She backed out fast. She’d like to put the car in low and ram him. Careening out of the parking lot she swung into traffic nearly hitting an oncoming car. Falon would be parked nearby, would be behind her in seconds, and she didn’t dare lead him to Anne’s. Turning off Peachtree she sped two blocks to a gas station and swung in. Staying in the locked car with the window half down, she asked the attendant to call the police. The grizzled old man stared at the black car swerving in behind her and raced for the office phone. Falon paused, watching the attendant, then swung a U-turn, narrowly missing the gas pumps, and took off again.
When the police arrived she told them only that a man had attacked her behind the drugstore, that he had chased her, that she didn’t know who he was. The attendant gave them the make and model of the Ford but he hadn’t been able, at the angle and speed it moved, to see the license plate. She gave the police her Rome address, she said she was in town only for the day. If Falon didn’t know where she was staying, she didn’t want him finding out by some fluke at the police station, by some clerical indiscretion. If her lies caught up with her, she’d deal with them later.
Falon would be back, she was only grateful that he had come after her and not Sammie. Driving around the business district watching behind her and watching the side streets, she kept seeing the look in his eyes.
She drove around for half an hour and didn’t see the sporty black Ford. She hurried on to Anne’s, got out quickly, opened the garage door, pulled her car in beside Anne’s Cadillac, jerked the door closed from within. Locking it, she could hear the fiery music of Stravinsky coming from the living room. Mariol had told her Anne didn’t use the record player often, usually when she was upset, perhaps after some conflict in one of her women’s club meetings. Fishing her compact from her purse, looking in the little mirror, she frowned at the bruises already darkening her forehead and cheek, wondering how she was going to explain that. Carefully she combed her hair, straightened her blouse and jacket, tried to put herself in some kind of order.
Letting herself into the foyer, she looked into the empty living room, its ivory-toned velvet furniture and pale Oriental carpet pristine and untouched. The cream-colored afghan lay tangled on the couch among the throw pillows as if Sammie might have been napping. Following the scent of hot chocolate she headed past the dining room to the kitchen, pausing just outside the half-closed door.
Sammie was crying, a shaky sniffle; then she blew her nose. Anne’s voice was soft. “I cried, too, I cried after such a dream. Oh, so many times. But she’s all right, Sammie. Your mother’s all right now.”
“But she isn’t all right. That man hurt her, that Brad Falon—the man who watches us, who broke into our house. The man who killed my Misto.”
Becky stood dismayed. Had Sammie had a daytime nightmare, had awakened from seeing Falon’s attack? Awakened frightened and crying—and Anne had been there for her, had reached out to her? Something tender in Anne had reached out?
She moved into the kitchen. Anne sat at the big kitchen table, her back to Becky, holding Sammie in her lap, cuddling her close and tenderly in a way Becky would never have guessed. “I cried, too,” Anne repeated softly, “but your mother’s all right. And you and I are all right.”
Sammie looked up at Anne and reached to touch her face. Around them the airy white kitchen was fresh and welcoming with its mullioned-glass cabinet doors, white tile counters, and the three deep-set windows crowded with pots of green herbs. Mariol stood at the double sink washing vegetables, her back to Anne and the child.
“We’re together now,” Anne said. “Now, when the nightmares come, you have not only your mother to tell, you have me and Mariol to tell, if you want to.”
When the child glanced across at Mariol, the slim, mulatto woman turned to look kindly at her. Anne said, “Until now I have trusted only Mariol to keep my secret. But you have all three of us, Mariol and me and your mama, to hold you when the ugly dreams come, to hold you and keep you safe.”
“But you can’t change what I see,” Sammie said. “No one can. He hurt Mama and he’ll try again.”
Shaken, Becky moved on into the kitchen. Sammie leaped from Anne’s lap and flew at her, hugging her. “Are you all right, Mama? He hurt you.” When Becky knelt, holding her, Sammie gently touched Becky’s bruised forehead and cheek. Pulling out a chair, Becky sat cuddling Sammie as Anne had done, smiling across at her aunt.
“He got away?” Anne said. “How badly are you hurt?”
“Just bruises,” Becky lied, not mentioning the pain where she’d fallen and where he’d hit her. She watched Mariol empty an ice tray, wrap ice in a dish towel, and hand it across to her. As she pressed the coldness to her face, the pain and bruises didn’t matter, only Anne’s words mattered. I cried, too, after such a dream. Oh, so many times. What was this, where had this come from? To hear Anne confess to the same prescience as Sammie’s left her indeed shaken. Did Sammie’s strange talent, then, belong within their family?
Two half-empty mugs of cocoa stood on the table beside Sammie’s open picture book, and a third mug where Mariol had been sitting. That was another strange thing about Anne, Becky thought, that while most Southern households would not permit colored help to sit at the table with their employers, this was not the case here. In this house, even as proper as Anne was in other matters, she and Mariol were equals, were dear friends. Mariol might, Becky thought, be the closest friend Anne had, maybe her only true friend.
Mariol poured fresh cocoa from a pan on the stove, set the mug on the table before Becky, then took her own place again, her dark eyes, when she looked up at Becky, filled with concern. “You are all right?”
Becky nodded, drawn to her kindness.
“She’s a special child,” Mariol said. “She’s fortunate to have parents who understand.” She looked at Anne companionably. “And lucky, too, to have an aunt who understands.” And Becky wondered if Anne, in her own childhood, had not been so lucky.
16
LEE PAUSED IN the doorway, watching across the visiting room where Morgan stood hugging his family. The minute Morgan entered, the little girl had flung herself at him, he’d hugged her tight and drawn his wife close. Lee couldn’t see much of the child from the back, her long blond hair, one strand caught on the collar of her blue gingham dress. Her gangly legs with several scratches, tomboy legs. And the eager way she clung to Morgan, the three of them wrapped around one another, their voices soft and caressing. Lee wanted to turn away, this emotional family reunion had nothing to do with him. Painfully out of place, he’d rather head back to his cell and crawl in his bunk.
The room itself seemed out of place, had no relationship to the rest of the prison; even the bars on the wide windows were half disguised by the potted white flowers on the sills. He stood not on hard concrete but on a tan tweed carpet, the walls painted white instead of government green. Soft-looking couches and chairs were set about in little family groupings, the effect cozy and unreal. Taking in the unnatural scene, he turned to leave—but he didn’t leave. He had promised Morgan.