Finally he spoke. “So what can I tell you that will ease your mind?”
“What do you want to tell me?”
“That I mean you no harm. A statement that is absolutely meaningless without anything to back it up.”
She couldn’t argue with that. “Seems like one of those lines in a bad sci-fi movie that always winds up being the prelude to something terrible.”
“Hey, I like those old science fiction movies. The older and more awful, the better.”
“The ones with nuclear bombs that are both the cause and the solution to whatever is ravaging the world?”
He chuckled. “Yeah, those. Science as the be-all and end-all.”
“I take it you don’t believe that.”
He hesitated. “Not anymore,” he said finally.
She eyed him directly. “What changed your mind?”
“Let’s just say I have reason to believe that science is less of an answer and more of a question. It should be a search, not a conclusion.”
“Interesting way of putting it.”
The waitress interrupted, serving their breakfasts with a smile that seemed almost obscene at this hour of the night. Either the woman was a native night owl, or the need for tips made her pretend to be one.
After a bite of pancake, which did indeed prove to be very fluffy, she posed a question. “What brings you to Conard City? Sure, the state highway runs through, but it’s not the kind of place where people usually stop and stay without a reason.”
“I’ve been on the road for a long time. Guess I finally realized you can’t outrun yourself. Seemed as good a place as any to wait for the rest to catch up.”
The answer sounded pat. Too pat. She looked down at her mug, then picked up the spoon to stir her coffee pointlessly. “Really,” she finally responded.
“Really,” he said. “Sounds like a bad novel, right?”
She met his gaze again. “No, not exactly. Just…stock.”
He nodded slowly. “There’s a difference between citing a cliché and meaning it.”
“Well, yes.”
“And clichés become clichéd because they’re often true. Otherwise people wouldn’t use them so much.”
In spite of all her suspicions, she felt more intrigued that ever, and sensed the beginnings of an actual liking for this guy. She didn’t want that.
He shrugged finally. “It’s true. I ran from myself. From an unhappy time in my life. And like all people who run, I found all the troubles and grief just came along with me. Some memories can’t be erased. They stick like burrs on your cuffs.”
“Yes, they do. Would you want to erase your memory?”
“There’ve been times I’ve actually thought that would be a good thing. But other times…well, frankly, Ms. Devlin, you can’t give up the bad without giving up the good.” He looked out the window, but there was clearly nothing to be seen beyond the reflections of the interior of the restaurant. Darkness turned the windows into mirrors.
“I had to put my favorite dog to sleep a couple of years ago,” he said slowly. “Best dog I ever had. She taught me a lot about being a better person.”
“How so?”
He looked at her again, and there was no mistaking the heaviness in his sad, dark eyes. “I could be lazy. I could be impatient. I sometimes made her wait for the smallest of her needs. Sometimes I yelled at her for no better reason than that she was asking for a simple thing like a walk, or water. Because she was interrupting something I thought was more important at that moment. But she never held it against me. She’d go away and wait quietly, and the minute I gave her the attention she had asked for, she was hopping with joy and gratitude.”
Trish nodded. “It’s been a long time since I had a dog, but I remember it.”
“Endless love. Endless forgiveness. Endless patience. Anyway, she was a lesson, and she began to get through to me about all the truly important things in being a decent human. Simple things, every one of them, but so difficult to do. Unless you’re a dog.”
“They do seem to do it naturally.”
“I have a friend who tags her e-mails with ‘WWDD: What would dogs do?’” He smiled faintly. “A little over the top, maybe, and probably offensive to some, but to some extent my dog became my touchstone, so I understand what my friend is trying to get at. Anyway, I finally had to put the dog down. I’d waited too long because I needed to hang on, but finally I realized I was hurting her to put off my own guilt at the decision I knew I had to make.”
“It’s an awful decision to have to make.”
“It is. I guess part of me hoped I’d wake up one morning and find she’d passed peacefully in her sleep, so I wouldn’t have to make a choice at all. Life doesn’t always allow us to do that.”
“No, it doesn’t.” She paused, then took another bite of pancake, waiting for whatever else he might volunteer.
“Thing was, much as I grieved for Molly, I learned another lesson from her—it hurts, but you have to remember the good times, not the very end, which was so hard.”
Despite her determination not to respond emotionally to this guy or his story, Trish felt her throat tighten. She put down her fork.
He seemed to recognize her reaction, because he said quickly, “Sorry, I’m not trying to tug your heartstrings. It’s just…you’d think having learned that with the dog, I’d be better at handling stuff. But I’m not. When the rest happened, well, I didn’t want to be around anything that reminded me of it. So here I am, on a quest for some kind of peace. Very sixties California except it’s nothing like that. I got here and saw my journey coming to an end. So I’m going to hang around until it’s over. And then I’m going home.”
She nodded. His story made sense to her, although she would have liked to know more about what had put him on the road. However, she felt it would be prying too much to just come right out and ask. As she knew herself, some things were painful to talk about, even with friends, and impossible with total strangers. And hadn’t she herself come running home to Conard County because of a past she didn’t want to face every single day?
People did things like that, rational or irrational.
He resumed eating. She followed suit, absorbing what he had told her, weighing it in her mind and deciding that on the face of it, she didn’t need to be paranoid. People had seen them together, Gage had stopped to check him out. If he meant her any harm, he was certainly on notice now that he’d be the prime suspect.
“Are you a scientist?” she asked, at once trying to learn more about him and direct the conversation to less explosive territory.
“In a way. I work in computers. Software and system design. At least I did.”
“Will you go back to that?”
He put his fork down and for an instant he looked almost eager. “You know, sometimes I think about it. I was getting into some really interesting research.”
“I didn’t think computer people did research.”
Again that half smile. “Not all of us sit in cubicles and write code. Some of us are, or were, busy looking toward the future.”
“In what ways?”
“Well, we’re approaching the possibility of quantum computers. Do you know anything about quantum physics?”
“I had a physics course both in high school and college. I wouldn’t say I’m well versed, but I have a nodding acquaintance.”