and the guy had taken her just next door, where there was
a sports shop with an indoor range, and taught her how to shoot.
He’d then asked her to go to a motel with him. He was child’s play
to deal with after the maniac in New York. All she’d had to do was
say no very firmly. No need to draw her new gun on the guy.
She gently laid the Coonan in the top drawer of her bedside
table, a very old mahogany piece with rusted hinges. As she closed
the drawer she realized that she hadn’t cried when her mother
died. She hadn’t cried at her funeral. But now, as she gently placed
a photograph of her mother on top of the bedside table, she felt the
tears roll down her cheeks. She stood there staring down at her
mother’s picture, taken nearly twenty years before, showing a beautiful
young woman, so fair and fine-boned, laughing, hugging
Becca against her side. Becca couldn’t remember where they were,
maybe in upstate New York. They’d stayed up there for a while
when Becca was six and seven years old. “Oh, Mom, I’m so sorry.
If only you hadn’t locked your heart away with a dead man, maybe
there could have been another man to love, couldn’t there? You had
so much to offer, so much love to give. Oh God, I miss you so
much.”
She lay down on the bed, held a pillow against her chest, and
cried until there were no more tears. She got up and wiped the
light sheen of dust off the photo, then carefully set it down again.
“I’m safe now, Mom. I don’t know what’s going on, but at least I’m
safe for the time being. That man won’t find me here. How could
he? I know no one followed me.”
She realized, as she was speaking to her mother’s photo, that she
also ached for the father she’d never known, Thomas Matlock, shot
and killed in Vietnam so long ago, when she was just a baby. A war
hero. But her mother hadn’t forgotten, ever. And it was his name
that her mother had whispered before she’d fallen into the drug-induced
coma. “Thomas,Thomas.”
He’d been dead for over twenty-five years. So long ago. A different
world, but the people were the same–both good and evil,
as always–mauling one another to get the lion’s share of the spoils.
He’d seen her before he’d gone, her mother had told her, seen her
and hugged her and loved her. But Becca couldn’t remember him.
She finished hanging up her clothes and arranging her toiletries
in the old-fashioned bathroom with its claw-footed bathtub. The
teenagers had even scrubbed between the claws. Good job.
There was a knock on the door. Becca dropped the towel she
was holding and froze.
Another knock.
It wasn’t him. He had no idea where she was. There was no way
he could find her. It was probably the guy to check the one air-conditioning
unit in the living room window. Or the garbage man,
or–
“Don’t be paranoid,” she said aloud to the blue towel as she
picked it up and hung it on the very old wooden bar. “Do you also realize you’ve been talking out loud a whole lot recently? Another
thing, you don’t sound particularly bright.” But who cared if she
sang to the towel rack, she thought, as she walked down the old
creaking stairs to the front entrance hall.
She could only stare at the tall man who stood in the doorway.
It was Tyler, the boy she’d known in college. She’d been one of his
few friends. He’d been a geek loner and hadn’t managed to make
more than a few non-geek friends. Only he wasn’t a geek anymore.
No more heavy-rimmed glasses and pen protector on his
shirt pocket. No more stooped shoulders and pants worn too high,
his ankles showing his white socks. He was wearing tight jeans that
fit him very well indeed, his hair was long, and his shoulders were
wide enough to make a woman blink. He was buff, in very good
shape. Yes, he was a good-looking man. It was amazing. She had to