Chapter 17

He opened the door to a bedroom and went in. The bed was made, but he didn’t pay much attention to the rest of the room, as he went to the closet. He saw Will’s suitcase on the floor, next to three or four left shoes and hanging clothes that were for a man. He turned and realized the room looked spare and only partly furnished. He left and found another bedroom. That closet had her robe in it ... and something else that was odd. Clothes he had seen Will wear were hanging up in the closet. There were two right shoes ... men’s shoes ... on the floor.

With the robe over his arm, he surveyed the room. The bed had not been made, though someone had made a half-assed attempt at putting the bedspread in place. There were two pillows on that bed, side by side, with depressions in each that suggested a head had rested there.

He looked at the vanity. Her cosmetics - the few that she apparently used - were neatly arranged. On one end were a pile of safety pins and some Old Spice underarm deodorant. A comb lay next to it that had a few brown hairs caught in the teeth.

Understanding leapt into Bobby’s mind as he realized they slept in the same bed. His mind twisted slightly, trying to imagine that, but the evidence was obvious. He cautioned himself not to jump to the obvious conclusion. He slept with his sisters sometimes ... it wasn’t difficult for him to imagine that some other brother and sister did the same thing. At the same time, his mind just would not accept that Will slept with his sister ... in the same way Bobby did.

He shook his head. It was really none of his business. But it did suggest why she might feel like she had something to hide. Hiding things was hard on a person sometimes.

He left the room, paying attention to the feel of his face. He wanted to look calm ... normal ... when he took the robe to her.

She was still in the tub.

“Can you feel your fingers and toes?” he asked.

“Yes,” she said.

“Okay, then. Here’s your robe. I’ll just put it here.” He laid it on the toilet seat. “You need to get dry as quickly as you can and then you need to go to bed. You should put on extra blankets because you need to stay warm.”

“I’m not a child,” she complained.

“Well sometimes you act like it.” He frowned. “I’m sorry. Never mind. I’ll just leave now.”

“Wait!” It was out of her mouth before she could stop it. Even worse, she’d sat up and her breasts were out of the water. She covered them with her left arm, which was a little like trying to cover a couple of cantaloupes with a twelve inch ruler.

He turned back, waiting.

“Would you put the covers on for me ... once I’m in bed?” She’d had to think of something to say, and that was the best thing she could come up with. She admitted to herself that she just didn’t want him to leave yet. She didn’t know what that meant, but she had to acknowledge it.

He looked at her, and then tilted his head, as if he were examining her.

“All right,” he said. “You want me to leave while you dry off?”

“Of course,” she said, blushing.

“I’ll be right outside,” he said.

She stood up as soon as the door closed, and felt the cool air instantly. She felt fine now, but she knew she’d start shivering any second, so she climbed out of the tub and started rubbing at her skin briskly with a towel. She shrugged into her robe, thankful that it was thick terrycloth. Her hair was wet and she wrapped another towel around it. She was still barefoot, but there was nothing she could do about that.

She looked at her clothes, scattered on the floor and bent to pick them up. She tossed them in the hamper and then remembered to take her billfold and comb out of the pants pocket. She took the towel off her head and ran the comb through her hair.

She opened the bathroom door to find Bobby leaning against the wall, with his arms folded. She walked past him to her bedroom, stopping at the linen closet in the hall to pull out two blankets. She handed them to him and went into her room. She stood by the bed, shifting from foot to foot.

She obviously couldn’t take her robe off with him in the room, so she pulled back the covers and started to get into the bed.

“Don’t wear that robe to bed,” he moaned. “It’s damp now.” He sounded like he was a frustrated parent, talking to a balky teenager.

“I’m not taking this off with you in the room!” she said, almost loudly.

“Look,” he said. “I just saw you in all your glory in the bathroom. You seem to think that if I see your body, you’ll be soiled for life or some such nonsense. Just drop the robe on the floor, climb into bed and pull the covers up, so I can put these on you and go home, okay?”

She was stung that he was in such an all fired hurry to get away from her. She was so distracted by that, that it never occurred to her to just tell him to turn around while she took the robe off. He was shaking out a blanket anyway, and didn’t seem to be paying any attention to her.

She untied the knot in the robe. She turned away from him and let the robe slide off her shoulders. It fell in a heap and she took the first step to dive for the bed, just as he said something that caught her completely by surprise.

“Do you want these all on your side, or some on Will’s side too?”

She was so concerned about him seeing her naked that her reply was automatic.

“Both.”

Time stopped, at least for Erica Bradford. In fact, everything stopped, except for her brain, which seemed to turn in a somersault inside her head. Time then seemed to go in fits and starts as she reacted to what had just happened. Her body turned to face him, while her mind tried frantically to come up with something for her to say ... anything to cover up what she had just exposed.

He was no longer unfolding the blanket, but was looking at what else was exposed ... mainly Erica’s body.

“No!” she blurted. “That’s not what I meant!”

“Get in bed, Erica,” said the man who now held her future in his hands.

“No!” she said again, but she wasn’t talking about what he had just told her to do.

He stepped toward her and her eyes registered that his own eyes had dropped to her breasts. His hands, still holding the blanket, came toward her and it looked to her like a wall of cloth was about to push against her. His hands, through the blanket, pushed at her shoulders and she leaned toward the bed.

Then, suddenly, time started up again. The bed had assumed a whole new importance in her life, but in a completely different way. Now, instead of being a place of warmth and comfort, she saw it as a place she could get into and hide in. She dove for the sheets, her hand grabbing the covers. Within seconds, she had pulled them over her head. She also started breathing again, and realized she had been holding her breath.

He was still out there. The man who had unmasked her perversion ... who knew the secret that had brought so much joy to her brother and her, but which would now destroy them both.

She heard her own choking sobs before her mind realized she was the one making the noises. Then all the emotion that had driven her from Bobby’s car, and into the frigid night, and everything that had happened since then, swooped down to crush her. Her wail was filled with a mix of frustration, anger, shame and disappointment that her life had come to this maelstrom of disaster. Her knees came up and she curled into a ball, as she cried her eyes out for everything she had just lost.

The first external thing that registered in Erica’s tortured mind was the feel of something heavy sliding up and down her back. A tiny piece of her consciousness examined that stimulus and categorized it as a hand, on the outside of the covers, just moving from the base of her neck to her lower back, and then back again. There was something wrong with that, and that tiny piece of her consciousness grabbed other brain cells and shook them, saying “Listen to me! Something isn’t right here!” Perhaps it’s pushing the analogy too far, but imagine with me some of those other brain cells saying “Of course something’s not right, you idiot! Our incest has just been discovered!“

But that tiny piece of rationality insisted on being listened to and, slowly, Erica’s sobs tapered off to intermittent shuddering sniffs, as the hand, which could only be the hand of Bobby Dalton, stroked her back.

“It’s all right, Erica,” said a soothing bass voice.

No it wasn’t! Nothing would ever be right again! She was quite sure of that.

But now the external stimulus demanded more attention.

“It’s all right,” said the voice again.

Yet another upheaval wrenched her system, as she reached for the only life preserver that seemed, somehow ... miraculously ... to have been tossed near her. He wasn’t laughing. He wasn’t crowing. He wasn’t chuckling at how much fun it would be to tell the world that the strident feminist slept with her own brother.

She reached for the covers and pushed them down off her head. He was just sitting on the edge of the bed, his hand stroking her back.

“It’s all right,” he said again as she stared, unbelieving, into his blue eyes.

The world turned again as he went on, speaking as if nothing unusual had happened at all.

“Right now, you just need to concentrate on getting warm again, and staying warm. Let me see your fingers.”

She didn’t understand. She pushed her hands out, beside her face and he reached to touch each finger, squeezing them individually.

“I don’t think you got frostbite,” he said, casually. “How are your toes?”

She wiggled them automatically. They felt fine.

“Okay ... I think,” she said, sniffing between the okay and the rest of it.

“I don’t want to let the heat out, but you need to check them,” he said. “Feel them and see if there is anything that feels too firm, or feels painful when you squeeze it. If you actually have frostbite, we need to get you to a hospital.”

She went back under the covers and felt her feet and toes. They felt completely normal. She stuck her head out of the covers again.

“I think they’re okay,” she said, her voice a little stronger now.

He reached out and brushed her still damp hair away from the side of her face.

“I’m going now,” he said. “Stay in bed and stay warm.”

“But...” She stopped, unable to believe she was about to bring it up again.

“I’ll see you tomorrow.”

Then, her world turned another few degrees as he leaned down, kissed her forehead, and then got up and walked out.

While Erica went through her torture, her brother was going through something that was almost diametrically opposed. Christy had driven him to the Wagon Wheel, where they saw the crush of people.

“Oh my,” she said, looking at the single cement step that she had never paid any attention to in the past. “Can you hop up that step?”

“Yes,” he said, “but I’m not sure it’s worth it. The place is already crammed.”

“I have chocolate cake at home,” she said. “I can make coffee.”

Will’s mind wasn’t used to dealing with evaluating this kind of information. Other than Tilly and Jake, no one had invited them anywhere. And this invitation wasn’t for him and his sister. A beautiful woman was suggesting he come to her house. He couldn’t wrap his mind around that. The male in him ... the male he had been, and which Erica had helped reawaken ... thought about it one way. His rational mind laughed at that and tried to find some other reason she might make that invitation.

“But if you want to go in, we can manage it,” she went on.

“No.” It came out of his mouth without conscious thought. It flustered him a little. “It’s too crowded already,” he said. “My chair takes up a lot of room.”

“Want some cake?” she asked.

He twisted in the seat so he could look right at her. She was just looking at him. She wasn’t grinning. There was no innuendo in her voice. His rational mind told him “It’s just an offer of a piece of fucking cake, moron!”

“Yes.” That time his answer was intentional.

“Do you see Erica anywhere?” she asked. She looked past him, peering through the front window of the diner. “Be right back,” she said.

She hopped out of the car, leaving it running, and ran into the diner. He saw her talk to several kids and look around. Then she spoke to Jimmy Conroy, who was sitting with two girls Will knew only as Sarah and Vicky. All three turned and looked through the window at the car and waved. Jimmy nodded, and Christy came running back to the car.

“She wasn’t in there,” she said. “I asked some kids to tell her where you went if they see her.”

“Okay,” said Will. Obviously she wasn’t trying to keep it a secret that she was taking him to her house. He wasn’t sure how to interpret that.

Getting him through the front door required that she step on a projection on the back of the chair and raise the front wheels. She didn’t seem to have any trouble doing that, though he heard her grunt as she lifted the bulk of his weight as the rear wheels bumped up and over the threshold, which was raised about three inches off the surface of the concrete slab that served as her porch. She pushed him into the kitchen and helped him pull his right arm out of his coat. She tugged the coat out from behind him and draped it over the back of a kitchen chair she’d removed so he could be pushed up to the table.