Which wasn’t strictly true, he realized. He respected Hal and liked him and he thought Hal was also worth listening to. But he wasn’t like Pat. He didn’t see as clearly and harshly and truthfully as Pat did. Hal told the truth as far as he knew it-but Pat was far more likely to know true things, so her honesty was more valuable. More reliable.
Meaning I can use her.
Danny hated the thought as soon as it came to his mind. It was an ugly bit of self-knowledge. He broke off the kiss.
“Please,” said Pat, and tried to resume it.
“No,” said Danny.
Pat nodded and sat back, facing forward, like a scolded schoolgirl.
“Oh, I want to kiss you,” said Danny. “You’re the only woman I’ve actually felt this way about, though I didn’t realize it until just now. I really do trust you and respect you and you’re my true friend, which is what you came to say and you said it and you’re right and I believe you. But here’s the thing. I’m not as good as you. I use people. I can count on you, but can you count on me?”
She gave a little shrug. “I can’t control that,” she said. “I can only control what I do.”
“Well, I can control what I do,” said Danny. “My body wants you right now. Tonight. You understand me? And if I hadn’t stopped kissing you just now, you would have let me sleep with you, am I right?”
She bent forward and hid her face in her hands again. “I’m a terrible Christian,” she said.
“But I don’t want to be that guy,” said Danny.
“What guy?”
“The guy who sleeps with a woman because he can. Like most of the guys in our Family history. Those gods who got women pregnant all over mythology. I’m not as good as you are, Pat, but I’m better than they are. Loving me is going to do nothing but make you miserable.”
Pat got up from the couch.
“Please,” said Danny.
“I have to get home to bed,” said Pat. “My folks will worry. They’re worriers.”
“But you would have stayed the night with me.”
“Because then you would be my family. But you’re not. They are. I have to go.”
“I didn’t lie to you,” said Danny. “I could have.”
She stood at the partly open door. “I know that,” she said. “You’ve been straight with me. You’re even better than I thought you were. I love you more than I thought I did. You love me more than either of us thought you could. We’re never going to sleep together, I’m not going to be the woman in your life, and yet right now I’m as happy as I’ve ever been in my whole life. Go figure.” Then she went through the door and closed it behind her.
I am the stupidest guy in the whole world, thought Danny. I let her go out that door without saying a single word more.
But Danny also knew that his decision was the right one. His desire for her was far more than the fleeting interest he had had in Xena, which was based entirely on Xena’s eagerness. What he didn’t know was whether his desire for Pat was also based on her availability. Maybe Pat was simply more the kind of woman that he was attracted to-quiet, smart, truthful, a little sharp-tongued but also kind-hearted. Sort of like Leslie. Sort of like Mama. Maybe that’s the kind of woman he would always fall for, and she simply happened to be the first.
He was about to do the most dangerous things in his already-dangerous life. Whether his attraction to her was just momentary or he really loved her in a stay-true-your-whole-life kind of way, this was not the time to complicate things. Besides, what if the Families had spies watching him? What if she had stayed the night? Then he’d be putting her in danger of being used as a hostage. Or of being tortured or killed because that would be a way to hurt him, the Gatefather that was always out of their direct reach.
He was right to break off that kiss and she was right to leave and that was how it had to be.
And how did it begin? With him touching her as he ushered her to sit down.
Did he unconsciously know even then where her visit to him was going to lead? Did he know deep inside that he felt something stronger for her than for any other woman he knew?
No.
He touched Pat because that’s what Marion did when he was bringing a guest into his house. Always the hand on the back, guiding them in. Marion was something of a toucher. Danny wasn’t. But without realizing it, he had picked up the idea that when you have a guest, and you want to bring them in, you put your hand on their back to guide and accompany them.
Danny had never had an actual guest at his house before, and so when Pat showed up alone, unexpected, Danny, in his nervousness, unconsciously followed the pattern he had observed with Marion Silverman.
That’s all it had been.
But where it led was to a place much deeper than that. Pat was the smartest of his friends, the most mature. Her caustic nature partly came from the fact that she stood outside everything, observing. The way Danny had always been a permanent outsider. She was the one who was most like Danny, at least in the way she dealt with people. Always detached. Always cautious, analyzing.
Except I’m not cautious. And where she’s silent, I talk, I say things. In fact, Pat is nothing like me and I’m nothing like her, but I’d be a better person if I were.
Then again, she’d be a happier person if she were a little more like me. Wouldn’t she? She always seems so sour.
Stop thinking about it, he told himself as he took his pants back off, and his underwear and socks, and slid into bed to try to sleep. Stop thinking about it.
But he didn’t stop. Pat was all over his thoughts before he slept, and while he slept, and he woke up thinking about her in the morning, cursing himself for a fool as he prepared to head over to Coach Lieder’s house. The last thing he needed was to have a woman on his mind.
10
Wad gated to the farming village in the high country of Iceway. He appeared near the public well, so that there was no chance that his manner of arrival would go unremarked. He came showing his power: A gatemage is in the world, and he came here, and he walked from this well directly to the house where the strange woman and her two damaged, terrified sons were brought only a few days ago.
It was the house of Roop and Levet where Wad walked. Inside, he found-as he expected-that the eldest daughter, Eko, was tending to Anonoei, the onetime concubine of King Prayard, and her two sons, eight-year-old Eluik and six-year-old Enopp.
The boys had spent the past two years in total isolation, living like tortured animals. For Enopp especially, the two-year imprisonment had been more than half his life, for who remembers anything before the age of three? Their imprisonment had ended in terror and violence, with soldiers stabbing at them; and then they had been magically gated to this high mountain place, to be cared for by strangers, and their wounds healed, and their mother restored to them, and her children restored to her, and all was …
Not well. Wad did not expect things to be well at all.
The boys did not speak, but they saw him come in. They did not fear him. If they thought of him in any way, it would come from the fact that they had seen him magically heal wounds, that he had arranged for them to be fed and kept warm. They would think of him as the great mage who had rescued them from hell. If they were capable of rational thought at all.
Wad was looking at the boys, who were looking at him. Anonoei was looking down at the table, where she was chopping an onion. Chopping it very, very fine.
It was Eko, the eldest daughter of the house, who spoke first. “The man in the tree,” she said. “Have I done well with them? Do they look strong to you?”