Firefly (41 page)

"Don't you
dare
, Wilhelm Hollstrom!" Katharine shouted above the sound of furniture being pushed against the door.  "Don't you dare!"

But a few seconds later, both she and her daughter knew that her threats went unheard, for the front door opened and then banged shut, and Wilhelm's footsteps pounded down the porch stairs.

Julie waited, her heart thudding, her breath held burning in her lungs.  She hadn't been so terrified since...since the night Willy was born.  And for some reason, she worried now about Morgan.  Would her father try the same sort of thing with him?  At the very idea, a wave of nausea slithered through her.

She had to tell him.  She had to risk everything on the slim chance that he cared, even a little.  She turned the knob and opened the door, then waited, counting to a hundred very slowly, to be sure Wilhelm was not going to return.

The landing was dim, lit only from the lights below, but it was not empty.  His face nearly as white as his nightshirt, Willy stood in the doorway to his room.

"It's all right, Willy," Julie told him, settling her own shaky voice.  "Go on back to bed."

"But I'm scared," he whined.  "What's wrong, Julie?  Are you in trouble again?"

"Yes," she answered truthfully.  "And it's none of your business.  You don't have to worry about it anyway, so get back to sleep.  I have to go see Mama."

But Willy refused to be placated, and after several failed attempts to get him into his bed again, Julie gave up and let him tag along as she went to see her mother.

She knocked tentatively on the closed door.  When there was no response, she tried the handle.  It turned, and the latch clicked free, but the door refused to yield.

"Move the chair, Mama," Julie ordered.  "I want to come in and talk to you."

"Go away," Katharine whined, sounding exactly like Willy.

"No, Mama.  I need to see you.  Are you all right?  Did Papa hurt you?"

To her surprise, Julie discovered that she felt real concern for her mother, not just the obligatory worry.  Had those few hours of comradeship this afternoon restored all that nine years of slavery had destroyed?  Or was it something else?

"I'll break the door down if I have to, Mama."

At that, there was a creak of bed followed by the tapping of high heels on the floor before Katharine slid the chair out from under the doorknob and the door swung inward.

Katharine's hair hung loosely tangled about her shoulders, as though someone had grabbed it and pulled it free of its pins in a single swipe.  Her eyes looked larger than usual in the gloomy light as she peered hesitantly around the door.

"Is he gone?" she whispered.

Julie nodded.

"But I don't know for how long."

Katharine's eyes darted about nervously, from Julie to Willy to the descending staircase and the door at its foot.

"Julie, go get Dr. Morgan, right away," she ordered in that same desperate whisper.

"Are you hurt?  Did Papa hurt you?"

"I...I don't think so, but I'm not sure.  Please, just go get the doctor."

"All right, Mama, I'll try to find him.  Just let me put some clothes on and--"

"No, Julie, please go now.  Your father may be back any second.  Here, take my robe and put it on." She handed the long velvet garment to Julie, who didn't take it right away.  "Hurry, please, Julie,
please
!"

Again Julie heard terror in her mother's voice.  Ignoring Willy, who shouted behind her, Julie raced barefoot down the stairs and opened the door.  She stopped on the porch only long enough to fit her arms into the sleeves of her mother's robe, which was inches too short, and to decide where to begin her search.

The office was dark; he wasn't there.  Ignoring the mud that clung to her feet and spattered her nightgown, Julie ran across the street and down the lane toward the adobe house.  It, too, was dark, and something about the place suggested stark emptiness.  Worried, Julie raced back towards the main street, though she had no idea where she would go next.

Lucas Carter sat on the porch in front of McCrory's, full in the light of Simon's lantern.  Staying well out of that light, Julie called to him.

"Mr. Carter, have you seen Dr. Morgan this evening?"

He squinted toward her and shot a long stream of tobacco in her general direction.

"I seen him at Leif's havin' supper, but not since.  I know he ain't at the Castle, though, Miss Julie.  Mebbe he got called out o' town on a 'mergency."

"Yes, thank you, Mr. Carter, that must be it."

She turned to head home, disappointed and afraid, because she knew there had been no emergency.  There was no sign tacked to the office door, and Del was always careful to leave word when he was called away.

And where had her father gone?  Should she go looking for him?  Would she find him with Morgan?  She shivered and swallowed more tears.  That nightmare could not possibly come again.

She didn't realize, walking in the dark, that she had passed the gate to her front yard and was nearly to the edge of town.  What brought her back to reality was the sound of crying, or maybe it was laughter, from the churchyard.  Now that her eyes had become accustomed to the near total darkness, Julie could see that the gate hung open, though there was no breeze to stir its rusty hinges.

Her feet found the same puddles Morgan's had, and she walked just as unerringly to the rose-garlanded grave where he knelt.

He had been talking, but at the sound of Julie's sloshy footsteps on the path, he stopped and held his breath.

"Dr. Morgan?"

"Julie?"

She halted a step or two from him.

"I've just been talking to Amy about you."

She retreated another step.  Was he drunk again?  Or just mad?  Had the tragedy of Alice Elroy pushed him over the precipice into insanity?

He got to his feet and, though she was hard to see in the darkness, he reached a hand out to her.  When she didn't take it, he let it fall slowly to his side.

"I'm not crazy, Julie," he told her.  "And I'm not drunk, if you thought that, too.  But sometimes I like to come and talk to her, you know?

She nodded and hugged the loose robe tighter around her.  She fumbled for the belt but it was gone, or perhaps she had never had it.

"Are you all right?" she asked, lacking anything else to say.

He laughed softly, sadly.

"Who knows?  Maybe I am, maybe I'm not.  Any man who comes to his wife's grave and talks to her for hours on end can't be too sane, can he, so I guess I'm a little crazy." He approached her again and this time she held her feet immobile.  He found her hands clutching the front of the robe and clasped them in his.  "Please, Julie, I think it's time you came to meet Amy."

She stumbled on leaden feet and slipped, falling to her knees, when she encountered the rain-dampened grass.  This was a graveyard, and though Julie had no daylight fear of the spirit world, there was something unnatural about the quiet within the railed cemetery after dark.  She held more tightly to the strong hand gripping hers.

"Humor me, Julie," he begged, the strain in his voice more and more apparent.  "I'm not sure I can get through this without your help, and if I sound a little awkward, it's because I'm scared to death."

What, her frantic mind screamed, is he going to do?  She wanted to run, to drag him with her out of this accursed ground, but she knew she couldn't.  She had to stay.

"I'm here," she reassured him in the same voice she used to calm frightened patients.  "We'll get through it together."

"Fine," he sighed.  "Then I'd like you to meet Amy, my wife of the past twelve years.  I've been telling her about you, about how you got me off the bottle and put the pieces of my life back together.  You'd have liked her, Julie.  If you had known her, you'd have been best of friends."

I don't think so
, Julie told herself. 
I'd have been too jealous of her, having you.

"Amy was such a kind person.  She teased and she flirted and sometimes she used her father's influence and money to get what she wanted, but deep down, she was warm and kind, just like you.  She had to be, to come out here and live with me in this God-forsaken part of hell.  She believed in me, just the way you do."

"Please, Dr. Morgan, it's very late," Julie dared to say when he paused for a moment.  "I only came here because my mother's been hurt and she wants you."

"In a minute, Julie, in a minute.  It's taken me all day to get up the nerve for this; don't interrupt me."

Now she was frightened, but she could not leave him.

His voice, which had been a little shaky and almost dreamy, firmed and settled into a strong timbre that sent a queer thrill down Julie's spine.

"Amy was my life, everything I lived for, Julie.  The sun, the moon, the very earth I walked on.  When she died, it was as though all the light turned dark.  I couldn't find my way through it without her.  I stumbled, I fell, I banged into things and got hurt."

Her right hand still held the edges of Katharine's robe together, but Del had wrapped both his around her left.  Warmth enveloped her, spreading upward from that tiny portion of an embrace.

"Do you see those stars up there, Julie? Amy and I used to try to count them.  But they don't hold still, and you can't reach out and pick them the way you would berries in a basket.  They just sit up there and tease with their sparkle.  They don't light up anything bright enough to see, and yet we know the night would be unbearable without them.

"But then there's the firefly."

He let go her hand long enough to pluck one of the glimmering beetles from Julie's hair.  It crawled along his finger a while before winging off into the sultry night.

"It's alive," he whispered.  "It brightens the night no more than a star, and only for a brief second, while the stars shine steadily.  But it will light on your hand and let you hold it for a while, and somehow the dark isn't so dark."

He caught another of the little creatures and imprisoned it in a loose fist.  As it lit up, the glow seeped out through his fingers.  When he flattened his palm, the firefly didn't leave, as though it were content to rest there and shimmer captively until he blew gently, and, like its companion, it flew off.

"You've been like the firefly to me, Julie.  My life has been one long night since I lost Amy.  Finally you came along and lit that night with a brilliance I could hardly remember.  Unlike the frozen, distant, teasing stars, you were right here where I could touch you and hold you...and let you go, if I had to."

"And if I didn't want to go?"

She could scarcely believe she had said those words, and yet they seemed the most natural reply to all he had told her.  No, he hadn't said a single word about love.  She kept that fact quite clear in her reeling mind.  And not a word about marriage, either.  Still, she didn't think he would resort to such poetic comparisons if he merely wanted her to stay on as his nurse.