The Last Storyteller by Frank Delaney

Author:Frank Delaney
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Tags: Historical
ISBN: 9780679644224
Publisher: Random House
Published: 2012-01-01T05:00:00+00:00

PART FOUR

The Pursuit of the Past

76

We got clean away. Old joke about a dog chasing a car: What does he do with it when he catches it? How long has he been treating her like that? So lewd. Bastard. Ask her. The utter, utter bastard. First question.

“Has he been doing that to you for years?”

“I don’t know where to begin.”

All the old power of her lovely voice had dwindled, faded even since I’d met her in Florida. Hands pressed between tightly closed knees, she began to shiver. I stopped on some empty street, climbed out, took off my coat, ran around to her side, and managed to get the coat wrapped around her shoulders. She began to cry, crumpled as a hurt child.

As I climbed back in, she said something. I didn’t catch it and leaned over to hear; she repeated it.

“All the years I’ve waited for this.”

I grabbed her face and pulled it to mine. We sat clamped cheek to cheek.

Which is the child, which the adult? Think, don’t feel. Logical next step? Safest move? We need to be where nobody can find her. Or me.

The police knew that I stayed at Miss Fay’s; therefore, we couldn’t go there. Goldenfields was unoccupied—the new owners wouldn’t arrive for many weeks—but it was too far away, and too empty. No hotel would take us at that hour of the night—we looked suspect.

James said to me once, “Often when only one remedy presents itself, it’s the best way. That’s why it seems the only one.” I knew what to do.

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