Claire came to a dead stop.
“What are you doing out here?” she demanded, even asshe heard the relief in her own voice.
Tony detached himself from the shadows and approached, the cigarette still glowing in his fingers. “Sometimes nothing works but a good self-destructive habit. Ineeded a cigarette.”
So did she. She hadn’t smoked since she’d given birth to Johnny. But God, she needed a cigarette now. She needed something to settle her.
She was still trying to figure out how to ask Tony whenshe saw the pack extended before her. Claire accepted without thinking. She knew it was stupid. It wouldn’t solveanything. Even so, she thanked Tony for lighting it for her when her own hands shook too badly.
“I didn’t wake you, did I?” he asked quietly.
Claire laughed, sucking in that smoke like fresh air. Thenshe coughed, because her lungs evidently didn’t see the sameneed she did. “No,” she finally managed. “You didn’t wakeme.”
Tony nodded, standing there in his jeans and white T-shirtand bare feet as if he’d needed the feeling of real grass beneath his feet, too. Claire saw how the frail light from thekitchen picked out the curve and line of his muscles, how his face was defined in solid slashes of shadow. She saw that hislegs were long and lean and as solid as steel. She fought theurge to walk up and let him hold her, just as he had the evening before.
She was so frightened. So tired. She just wanted it all toend, and she couldn’t imagine how it could. Tony said he’d had help, and he was still out here at four in the morning.
He seemed to be considering the tops of the trees at the edge of the meadow. “I wish it were already October,” headmitted softly, and Claire thought how he seemed to besharing the surprise with her. “Most people like spring. Ineed the fall. The colors, the smells, the clouds.”
“The lack of a monsoon,” Claire added before shethought about it.
Tony’s chuckle was easy and rich, a dark music on thissoft night. “And no monsoon. I think that’s one reason I’dlike to renovate all the old buildings,” he admitted. “So Ican get rid of all the mold and mildew in the world. God, Ihate the smell of mildew.”
It was Claire’s turn to laugh, and it surprised her evenmore. “Flies,” she said, ignoring the tremor in her voice.“The kids call me ‘the Terminator.’ I spend all summer witha swatter in my hand. Ihateflies.”
Her chest didn’t hurt so badly. She didn’t need to run sofast. She looked over to see that Tony understood just whatthe sight of flies did to her without her having to explain itto him. Without having to explain why.
Why. She’d tried to explain why once. No one had wantedto hear. She’d tried to tell them all when they’d asked herabout it, to make them understand why she couldn’t talk tothem anymore, why she was so suddenly different, why theydidn’t really know what was happening ten thousand milesaway. She tried to tell them. They stopped asking her.
“To this day,” Tony said, his voice easy and friendly, “Ican’t even go in a restaurant where I might see a fish head.We lived with the villagers. Ate what they ate. I’d rather eatrats than fish heads.”
Claire didn’t have anything to say about that. She’d eatenwell. She inhaled another pull of smoke and thought that tobacco wasn’t what she’d needed after all. She’d neededthis man’s voice, his strong silhouette in the dim hours of themorning.
He wasn’t young. Untested, immortal. He wasn’t vulnerable, with his just-shaggy hair and his lush mustache and hislaugh lines. The years had etched their path across hishandsome face, leaving behind wisdom and patience. Humor. Tony Riordan made Claire want to smile. He made herfeel as if she’d just come home, and she couldn’t imagine it.She hadn’t wanted to go home for years.
“You want to talk about it?” he asked simply, his voicerich and quiet.
Claire’s laugh was harsh. “I told you. I talked about it.That didn’t work.”
“With vets?”
“With everybody but the goats at the petting zoo... no,come to think about it, I told them, too. They suggested I trymore metal in my diet.”
“Have you tried lately?”
“I don’t have time anymore,” she said. “I haven’t had time since Jessie was a baby. Besides, what am I going totalk about? Bad food? Terrible living conditions? Sacrifice and deprivation? I was there a year. I never went withoutanything except lipstick and Tampax. I ate steak and had aroof and flush toilets that worked sometimes. I could go swimming on the quiet days, and I had enough of those.After all, the VC only really made noise once every twoweeks or so. The rest of the time I worked my twelve and then played ball. So I have nightmares. It’s nothing compared to what other people brought home.”
Even as she made her big speech, Claire wrapped herhands together to keep them from shaking. She did her bestto glare at Tony when all she wanted to do was cry.
All she’d wanted to do for a long time was cry, but thatwasn’t going to do her any good.
“So you only worked twelve hours a day.”
“Most of the time.”
“Six days a week.”
“Sure.”
