Passing Through Midnight Read Online Free PDF Page B

closer to the grandchildren. They visit three or four times
a year, but they usually stay over at our place," he said. "I think
there are just too many memories for them over here."
    Bending her knees and lowering herself into the space on
the swing beside him, she asked softly, "Did Beth die here?"
    He nodded.
    "How sad," she said, leaning against the back of the
swing, feeling a deep and wholly unexpected sympathy for the Averbacks.
    She had received a considerable amount of on-the-job
training in dealing with other people's grief, along with a certain
sense of failure in herself when she was a part of it—but she
didn't know the Averbacks, had never met them. And yet she felt Beth's
loss as if it were very much in the here and now, and very close to
home.
    Perhaps it was the new view of death she'd been given
during the accident that was affecting her objectivity.
    "Was she very young?"
    "Too young to die, but at the end, it was almost a
relief," he said, looking out into the night, seeming to speak from far
away. "Sometimes it's hard to remember all the good times. All the
years before she got sick."
    Her feet were cold. She pulled them up and buried them in
her bathrobe, pulling the muscles of her left leg to the point of
aching.
    "The two of you remained close then, after the prom." It
was more a question than a comment, but for some strange reason he was
frowning when he turned to look at her.
    Slowly his lips twisted into an ironic little smile and
his brow cleared and he nodded. "Yeah," he said, almost amused. "I
guess you could say we stayed close after the prom. We made Fletcher
together."

THREE

    Dorie held her breath. She felt as if she'd stumbled into
a minefield and was afraid to take her next step.
    "I'm sorry. I didn't know."
    He shrugged. "I thought you did. Thought maybe Fletch told
you this afternoon."
    "No, he… No. He didn't mention it."
    "It was a long time ago. I remarried. Had Baxter after
that. Sometimes it doesn't feel like anything more than a dream," he
said. Then under his breath, so softly that it could have been the wind
whispering across the open fields, he muttered, "A nightmare really."
    "Well, this seems like a nice farm," she said, standing up
abruptly as she changed the subject, unprepared for a snap in her leg
muscles that brought tears to her eyes. She bit down on her lower lip,
waiting for the pain to pass and her vision to clear. She couldn't see
much beyond the dim shaft of light from the living room window, save
shadows and sky. But she walked to the railing and gazed far into the
darkness, distancing herself both physically and emotionally.
    She didn't want to hear about his nightmares. She didn't
want to know about his pain. She had her own demons to dispel. Her own
wounds to mend.
    "Do you suppose the Averbacks will ever come back here?"
she asked, taking in the clean fertile smell of the High Plains,
wondering at its agelessness, speculating on its indifference to the
lives of those who work it.
    "No," he said, leaning back in the swing, stretching his
arm across the back. His gaze took a slow upward slant along her
terry-covered spine. She was tall and perhaps a little too thin. Her
dark hair, the longer side facing him, caught the dull beams of light
from the window, turning it into dark, lustrous strands of red. Her
profile, painted with shadows and light, was fine and delicate with
large almond-shaped eyes and high, prominent cheekbones. He guessed she
was very beautiful once, though he thought Fletcher had understated a
little when he said she "wasn't half-bad to look at" now.
    "If Fletcher decides to hang around, they'll probably
leave it to him," he said.
    She'd been watching the Howlett men for over a month, and
aside from an almost daily skirmish about driving privileges, there
didn't seem to be an inordinate amount of tension between the father
and the son.
    "Why wouldn't he hang around?" she asked.
    "Kansas exports." She turned her head to look at him. He
went on.