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Authors: John D. MacDonald
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most physically powerful people I’ve ever seen. And I tried to toughen myself up to his standards when I was a kid. I guess I’m still looking for his approval. And I lost a wife too—not in the same way, but as completely. And that gives you a funny feeling. If Janey was dead, then there would be that finality you mentioned. I mean a finality you can’t argue with. But she’s alive and in Texas. In the Hill Country. Kerrville. I know there’ll never be any contact with her ever again. But she’s still in the world, and I dream sometimes about seeing her, but when I wake up I know it’s the last damn thing I want to do.”
“Are you talking like this to help me?”
“Or myself. I don’t know, Barbara.”
“I shouldn’t have said that. It makes it harder to talk. For both of us. I should have just let it happen. Tell me about Janey.”
“It isn’t dramatic at all. Her people made her feel that she was very very precious and unique. And she had lessons in everything you can possibly teach a kid. And so her people thought it was a hell of a waste to throw it all away on a cop. Like in a primitive tribe, she’d have been the one worth the most head of cattle. But she didn’t seem to think that way. And if we’d had children, she might have stayed too busy to notice. Or gotten a job that would have been demanding. I guess she got the feeling after awhile life wasn’t making much use of her. When she wanted out, I let her go. What can you do? She was plain bored, and it made her irritable and sad. Now she has the big house and the entertainment and the kids and a hand in running some kind of an angora goat ranch. Everybody always liked her.”
“She didn’t love you.”
“That was the thing they didn’t give her any lessons in. She’d tell you she did, and believe it. And tell you that now she loves this Texan. But I don’t know. Maybe if any person has absolute self-confidence, they can’t really love anybody else.”
She laughed abruptly. “That isn’t my problem.”
After he had passed a slower car he looked over at her. When he had first met her he had mistaken her habitual expression for one of petulance, of a kind of permanent sulkiness. But now it seemed to him that the small frown lines and the set of her mouth indicated a resolute endurance. The sun was almost gone and she squinted ahead into the light, her head thrust forward, her hands placid in her lap. Her hair was a glossy brown with paler highlights, her forehead high, her eyes green-gray, her face a long oval, slightly plump. She had called Lucille the pretty sister, and from the pictures he had been given of Lucille, there was a conditional accuracy to that statement. This younger woman was attractive in her own way, less obvious. Her long round arms and legs and a kind of placidity of her body in repose gave an impression of indolence, of low vital forces, yet she moved with a deft swiftness at any small task. In the first talk with her he had thought her rather neutral, without sensual impact. But in the car with her now, he began to sense his own awareness of her, to see in the placement of an ear, hinge of the wrist, roundness of knee, those gentle perfections which eluded a hasty scrutiny.
By the time they were half-finished with dinner he knew she had recovered enough of her normal spirit to be told of the interrogation of Doctor Nile. He found himself describing Nile in ways that would make her laugh. But she sobered when he told her of Nile’s guess as to why Lucille had seemed troubled during the past few weeks.
“It fits the letter,” Barbara said. “Mr. Kimber trusted her with some kind of secret, and then she was trapped into telling somebody else. And maybe the kind of secret was bothering her—I mean if Mr. Kimber explained it one way and she found out there was some other way to explain it.… It gets vague doesn’t it.”
“There’s a lot more people to talk to.”
“But how can you find out what the
“Are you talking like this to help me?”
“Or myself. I don’t know, Barbara.”
“I shouldn’t have said that. It makes it harder to talk. For both of us. I should have just let it happen. Tell me about Janey.”
“It isn’t dramatic at all. Her people made her feel that she was very very precious and unique. And she had lessons in everything you can possibly teach a kid. And so her people thought it was a hell of a waste to throw it all away on a cop. Like in a primitive tribe, she’d have been the one worth the most head of cattle. But she didn’t seem to think that way. And if we’d had children, she might have stayed too busy to notice. Or gotten a job that would have been demanding. I guess she got the feeling after awhile life wasn’t making much use of her. When she wanted out, I let her go. What can you do? She was plain bored, and it made her irritable and sad. Now she has the big house and the entertainment and the kids and a hand in running some kind of an angora goat ranch. Everybody always liked her.”
“She didn’t love you.”
“That was the thing they didn’t give her any lessons in. She’d tell you she did, and believe it. And tell you that now she loves this Texan. But I don’t know. Maybe if any person has absolute self-confidence, they can’t really love anybody else.”
She laughed abruptly. “That isn’t my problem.”
After he had passed a slower car he looked over at her. When he had first met her he had mistaken her habitual expression for one of petulance, of a kind of permanent sulkiness. But now it seemed to him that the small frown lines and the set of her mouth indicated a resolute endurance. The sun was almost gone and she squinted ahead into the light, her head thrust forward, her hands placid in her lap. Her hair was a glossy brown with paler highlights, her forehead high, her eyes green-gray, her face a long oval, slightly plump. She had called Lucille the pretty sister, and from the pictures he had been given of Lucille, there was a conditional accuracy to that statement. This younger woman was attractive in her own way, less obvious. Her long round arms and legs and a kind of placidity of her body in repose gave an impression of indolence, of low vital forces, yet she moved with a deft swiftness at any small task. In the first talk with her he had thought her rather neutral, without sensual impact. But in the car with her now, he began to sense his own awareness of her, to see in the placement of an ear, hinge of the wrist, roundness of knee, those gentle perfections which eluded a hasty scrutiny.
By the time they were half-finished with dinner he knew she had recovered enough of her normal spirit to be told of the interrogation of Doctor Nile. He found himself describing Nile in ways that would make her laugh. But she sobered when he told her of Nile’s guess as to why Lucille had seemed troubled during the past few weeks.
“It fits the letter,” Barbara said. “Mr. Kimber trusted her with some kind of secret, and then she was trapped into telling somebody else. And maybe the kind of secret was bothering her—I mean if Mr. Kimber explained it one way and she found out there was some other way to explain it.… It gets vague doesn’t it.”
“There’s a lot more people to talk to.”
“But how can you find out what the
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