Smoke in Mirrors

“Don’t say it.” She did not open her eyes.

“Don’t say what?” he asked.

“Don’t say that you owe me for sleeping with you or I will never, ever forgive you.”

“I wasn’t going to say that.”

She opened her eyes and saw that he was gazing thoughtfully at her toes.

“What were you going to say?” she asked.

“I believe that I was about to thank you for agreeing to stay on here in Wing Cove for a while.”

“Oh, that.”

“Yeah, that.” He took another swallow of brandy. “I need to ask you something.”

“Ummm?”

“What you said earlier tonight. About me being a good father. You really think so?”

“Yes.” She waited. When he said nothing more, she risked a quick glance at his hard profile. “Why?”

“Just wondered what made you say it.”

“You know how to make a commitment and stick with it. That’s the most important element of fatherhood, as far as I’m concerned.”

“You don’t think maybe I’m a little old for fatherhood?”

“No.”

He took the brandy glass out of her hand and set it beside his own on the table. He eased her down onto the sofa and lowered himself gently along the length of her. He was warm and heavy and unmistakably aroused.

She caught the trailing ends of his tie in her hands. “I love you, Thomas.”

“I fell in love with you the first time I saw you.”

“Impossible.” She wrinkled her nose. “You thought I was a liar and a thief.”

“Didn’t change the situation.” He framed her face between his hands. “Just made me worry about things for a while.”

He kissed her, long and deep.

They were sitting in her living room looking out into the gardens. She had poured a shot of the fancy orange-flavored liqueur Leonora had given her on Mother’s Day for both of them. The television was still on but she had turned down the sound an hour ago.

She and Herb had both seen the late-night movie when it first aired forty years earlier. It was a romantic comedy. They knew how it ended. Neither of them had lived lives that had even remotely resembled the Hollywood version, but that was okay.

The older you got, Gloria figured, the more you understood that reality and fiction didn’t have to match up. They were mirror images, not exact duplicates. They each had a place. Both were important. But they were not the same. A smart person didn’t try to make one into the other. That way lay disaster.

She checked her ankles and was pleased. They were hardly swollen at all tonight. In fact, they looked pretty good, if she did say so herself.

She glanced at Herb. He looked pretty good tonight, too. Relaxed. A little younger, maybe. More energetic, at any rate. She was feeling rather lively herself.

“What do you think?” she said. “Are they in bed yet?”

Herb checked his watch. “Damn well better be. If they aren’t, you can’t hold me responsible. An advice columnist can only do so much. After that, it’s up to the advisees to take action.”

She thought about the humming excitement she had heard in Leonora’s voice that afternoon when they had discussed what her friends would wear to the reception.

“I think she’s in love, Herb. For real this time. Not trying to fake it the way she did with Kyle Delling just because it looks right on the surface.”

Herb raised his glass in a small salute. “To love.”

They both drank to that.

Herb checked his watch again. “Speaking of getting to bed, we’d better get a move on. I took that little blue pill forty minutes ago. The effects don’t last forever you know.”

“Nothing lasts forever, Herb. That’s why you’ve got to reach out and grab life when it comes along.”

“I know. What do you say we go grab us a little right now?”

She smiled. “You’re a real smooth talker, Herb.”

She put down her glass and pushed herself up out of the chair.

She didn’t use the walker. Herb took her arm to steady her.

Together they walked into the shadowed bedroom.

“About our deal,” Herb said sometime later.

She chuckled. “Relax, you’ve finally managed to sleep your way to the top, Herb. Your name and photo go on the column tomorrow.”

Chapter Twenty-two

The phone in the librarian’s office warbled at a quarter past three on Monday afternoon. It was the first time it had rung all day. Leonora started at the unexpected sound. She did not like the unpleasant jolt of adrenaline.

She had told herself that the strange, nervy sensation was a direct result of the stress she had been under in the past few days and the fact that she’d had the mirror dream again last night. But now she wondered if it had something to do with the eerie gloom that had descended on Mirror House this afternoon.

She and Roberta were the only ones here. In the wake of the activity that had prevailed downstairs for the past few days, the brooding silence that welled up from the first floor had a hollow quality as if it came from a distant place that was not of this world.

The phone rang a second time. Leonora closed the little treatise on the use of mirrors as symbols in art that she had been examining and got to her feet. She went into the small office and scooped up the receiver.

“Hello?”

“Awfully quiet around here today, isn’t it?” Roberta said.

Leonora relaxed a little. “Downright spooky.”

“It’s always this way the Monday after alumni weekend. I just made some coffee. Thought I’d take a short break. Care to join me?”

The thought of drinking Roberta’s coffee made her cringe, but she needed something to help her shake off this edgy feeling.

“Thanks. I’ll be right down.”

She hung up the phone and walked quickly out into the shadows of the hall. When she started down the main staircase, the somber gloom from the ground floor seemed to rise up to meet her in a relentless tide. Mirror House was a different world today. The glitz and glamour that had prevailed on Saturday night had vanished. The time-warped quality was back.

The sensation of impending dread grew stronger as she made her way down the stairs. She was conscious of having to push herself to go down the last few steps.

This was crazy. What was wrong with her? Maybe she was coming down with something.

She needed that cup of coffee, she thought. She craved the company of another human being even more than the stimulant.