Then he saw her.
The person who had run in front of his bike.
It was a young woman. She stood across the street in a white dress, staring at him. Her hair was long and black, blowing in a breeze that made no sound as it danced through the trees. Douglas was caught by her dark eyes. He stood there immobile.
“You okay, buddy?”
Douglas blinked.
A man in a red pickup truck had pulled up alongside him. He hadn’t heard him arrive, hadn’t seen him until he was there, practically on top of him. The volume had been turned back up. Crows were calling from the treetops. Mosquitoes buzzed around his ears.
Douglas turned his eyes to the man in the truck. He was leaning across the seat, talking to him through the rolled-down passenger window.
“You okay?” the man asked. “Looks like quite a spill you took there.”
Still Douglas didn’t reply. He moved his eyes past the truck to search out again the dark woman in the white dress.
But she was gone.
“Yeah, thanks,” Douglas finally managed to say. “I’m okay.”
“How’s the bike?”
Douglas turned around to inspect it. “Handlebar’s a little banged up. But it could’ve been worse.”
“What made you swerve like that? Fall asleep at the wheel?”
“No. Didn’t you see her? Some girl-” Again Douglas’s eyes panned the trees across the road. “She ran in front of me. It was all I could do to avoid hitting her.”
“Didn’t see no girl. Where is she now?”
“I don’t know,” Douglas said, looking again at his bike.
“You gonna be able to ride it?” the man asked.
Douglas shrugged. “I’m gonna have to try.”
“Here.” The man turned the ignition off in his truck and stepped outside. He was a big beefy sort, with big arms without any muscular definition and practically no neck. He wore a Red Sox baseball cap and a blue flannel shirt with the sleeves cut off. “We can put it in the back of the truck, and I can drop you off at Stu’s Mechanic Shop in town.”
“I’ll probably be all right,” Douglas said.
The man made a face. “Why take a chance, bud? The sheriff here ain’t a very forgiving man. He’ll ride your tail if he sees you.”
Douglas sighed and steered the bike over to the back of the truck. The man let down the hatch and lowered a ramp. Together they rolled the bike into the truck bed.
“Name’s Murphy,” the man said. “Reggie Murphy. You’re not from around here.”
They shook hands. “No, but I have family here,” Douglas told him. “Come to visit.” He met Reggie Murphy’s eyes with his own. “I’m Douglas Young.”
“Oh, one of the Youngs,” Murphy said. “Back to see the old man, eh?”
Douglas nodded as he slipped into the truck. Murphy returned to his place behind the wheel. He had been smoking a cigar. He placed it back in his mouth now and took a long drag.
“I was up there at the house a few months ago,” Murphy said, exhaling smoke as he started the truck. “I work for a contractor, and Mr. Young hired us to do some work on the back terrace. Man, that is one fine house.”
“It is indeed,” Douglas said, glancing out the window as they drove past the wall of maple trees. Once more he wondered where the woman had gone and why she had just stood there staring at him. That eerie silence perplexed him. He must have been stunned from the impact. That must have been why he hadn’t heard anything for several minutes, why the woman’s eyes had so entranced him.
Her dark, beautiful eyes.
“You’ve got your big family reunion coming up this fall, don’t you?” Murphy was asking. “That’s what your uncle had us doing the work for. You know, fixing up the terrace, laying down some new stonework. A lot of it had started to crumble. That’s an old house. When was it built? Like 1900, right?”
“Yes, I think so,” Douglas said, still distracted, still looking out the window.
“Mr. Young was quite excited about the family gathering. Happens only once every ten years. So it’s quite the event, eh?”
Douglas nodded. “It’s the only time all of us are together. I try to make it a point to see my uncle every year or so, and occasionally I’ll run into some of the others while I’m there. But the reunion is the one time when every Young is expected to make an appearance.”
Murphy laughed. “And if they don’t, it could mean being taken out of the will, eh?”
Douglas made no reply to that.
They had turned onto the town road. Maple trees gave way to small houses, then a convenience store, then the white clapboard post office. An American flag whipped in the breeze out front. And next to it was the mechanic shop. The word STU’S was painted in big red letters on its shingled roof.
“Well, here you go, my friend,” Murphy said, pulling the truck in for a stop and shutting off the ignition. “Let’s roll that bike in and let Stu take a look.”
The damage wasn’t serious. “I can probably have it fixed for you by tomorrow morning,” Stu told him. He was a weather-beaten old man with intense blue eyes, wearing a pair of white overalls stained nearly black with grease and oil. Douglas thanked him. Unhooking his backpack from the side of the bike, he flung it over his shoulder.
“I can give you a ride up to the house,” Murphy said.
“No, thanks,” Douglas said. “I really appreciate your help. But I can walk from here. Will do me good. Clear my head a little.” He smiled. “And it’ll be good to check out the town again. It’s been a while.”
Murphy gave him a salute and headed off in his truck. Douglas took a deep breath. His knees and forearms were starting to ache a little from the fall. But what troubled him more was how fuzzy his mind still felt. He couldn’t get over that dreamlike sensation he’d experienced right after the accident. The way that woman had looked at him. The way her eyes had held him. He hadn’t ever wanted to look away.
He began to trudge up the hill from the village. He knew there was an old stone staircase cut into the side of the cliff. It led almost all the way up to Uncle Howie’s house. He found it without too much trouble. The steps began in the mossy backyard of the town’s drugstore. When Douglas was a boy, it was called Andersen’s Pharmacy, and he’d sit there with Dad and drink strawberry milkshakes at the counter. Now the old building had been torn down and replaced with a shiny new CVS. But the old staircase was still out in back, even if it was largely grown over with ivy and grass. Douglas started up.
He wasn’t a guy who was easily spooked. He’d gone down in that shark cage off the coast of Maui many times and had witnessed plenty of fangs gnawing against the iron bars in front of him. He’d found it thrilling. On the merchant ship, he’d survived many storms; one time, they’d nearly capsized. Even when he’d found his mother’s lifeless body in the kitchen of their house, some ten months after his father had died, Douglas hadn’t freaked out. He was just fifteen years old, but he calmly called 911 and followed the operator’s instructions carefully. He shut off the gas, then checked for a pulse. When he reported that there was none, the operator told him to stay right there, that help was on its way. So he’d sat on the linoleum floor, holding his mother’s cold hand, for twenty-five minutes. He didn’t cry until the funeral, and then only for a moment.
But his famed self-control had taken a spill back there along with his bike. He couldn’t get that woman’s eyes out of his mind. Who was she? Why had she run out in front of him? Why had she stood there staring at him? And why hadn’t Murphy seen her?