'What? Tell me.'
'You can't do that.'
'I can. I'll go back and tell him.'
'And Grace? You think you can tell Grace?'
She peered at him, searching his eyes. Why was he doing this? She'd hoped for validation and he'd proffered only doubt, thrusting at her immediately the one issue she'd dared not confront. And now Annie realized that in her deliberation she'd resorted to that old self-shielding habit of hers and rationalized it: of course children were upset by these things, she'd told herself, it was inevitable; but if it was done in a civilized, sensitive way there need be no lasting trauma; neither parent was lost, only some obsolete geography. In theory Annie knew this to be so; more than that, the divorces of several friends had proven it possible. Applied here and now, to them and Grace, it was of course nonsense.
He said, 'After what she's suffered—'
'You think I don't know!'
'Of course you do. What I was going to say is that because of that, because you know, you'll never let yourself do this, even if now you think you can.'
She felt tears coming and knew she couldn't stop them.
'I have no choice.' It was uttered in a small cry that echoed around the bare walls like a lament.
He said, 'That's what you said about Pilgrim, but you were wrong.'
'The only other choice is losing you!' He nodded. 'That's not a choice, can't you see? Could you choose to lose me?'
'No,' he said simply. 'But I don't have to.'
'Remember what you said about Pilgrim? You said he went to the brink and saw what was beyond and then chose to accept it.'
'But if what you see there is pain and suffering, then only a fool would choose to accept it.'
'But for us it wouldn't be pain and suffering.'
He shook his head. Annie felt a rush of anger now. At him for uttering what she knew in her heart to be right and at herself for the sobs now racking her body.
'You don't want me,' she said and hated herself at once for her maudlin self-pity, then even more for the triumph she felt as his eyes welled with tears.
'Oh Annie. You'll never know how much I want you.'
She cried in his arms and lost all sense of time and place. She told him she couldn't live without him and saw no portent when he told her this was true for him but not for her. He said that in time she would assess these days not with regret but as some gift of nature that had left all their lives the better.
When she could cry no more, she washed her face in the cool water of the pool and he found a towel and helped her mop the mascara that had swum from her eyes. They waited, saying little more, while the blotching faded from her cheeks. Then separately, when all seemed safe, they left.
Chapter Thirty-five
Annie felt like some mudbound creature viewing the world from the bottom of a pond. It was the first time she had taken a sleeping pill in months. They were the ones airline pilots were rumored to use, which was supposed to make you confident about the pills, not doubtful of the pilots. It was true that in the past, when she'd taken them regularly, the after-effects seemed minimal. This morning they lay draped over her brain like a thick, dulling blanket she was powerless to shrug, though sufficiently translucent for her to remember why she'd taken the pill and be grateful that she had.
Grace had come up to her soon after she and Tom came out of the barn and said bluntly that she wanted to go. She looked pale and troubled, but when Annie asked what was wrong she said nothing was, she was just tired. She didn't seem to want to look her in the eyes. On the way back up to the creek house, after they'd said their good-nights, Annie tried to chat about the party but barely got a sentence in reply. She asked her again if she was alright and Grace said she felt tired and a little sick.
'From the punch?'
'I don't know.'
'How many glasses did you have?'
'I don't know! It's no big deal, don't go on about it.'
She went straight up to bed and when Annie went in to kiss her good-night she just muttered and stayed facing the wall. Just as she used to when they first got here. Annie had gone straight to her sleeping pills.
She reached for her watch now and had to force her muffled brain to focus on it. It was coming up to eight o'clock. She remembered Frank, as they left last night, asking if they'd be coming to church this morning and because it seemed appropriate, somehow punishingly final, she'd said yes. She hauled her reluctant body out of bed and along to the bathroom. Grace's door was slightly ajar. Annie decided to have a bath, then take in a glass of juice and wake her.
She lay in the steaming water and tried to hold on to the last lacing of the sleeping pill. Through it she could feel already a cold geometry of pain configuring within her. These are the shapes which now inhabit you, she told herself, and to whose points and lines and angles you must become accustomed.
She dressed and went to the kitchen to get Grace's juice. It was eight-thirty. Since her drowsiness had gone she'd sought distraction in compiling mental lists of what needed to be done on this last day at the Double Divide. They had to pack; clean the house up; get the oil and tires checked; get some food and drink for the journey; settle up with the Bookers…