T. Bunn - Drummer in the Dark

She knew Wynn was bitterly unhappy at being here. She also knew she had the capacity to help him. It was hard, so very hard. But the night was too beautiful to do otherwise. She turned and waited for him to glance her way, then she smiled. Not with her mouth. With her heart. Showed him a glimpse of the joy she had found in this day. Though it left her naked and far too frightened for this public place, though she had to swiftly turn away, though her mind shrilled a lifetime of warning. Still she was glad she had done it. And gladder still when she sensed him relax a trifle. The night held that much power.

After the service, Wynn stood by a side alcove and seemed uncertain what to do, until a smiling young woman no taller than a child approached. He showed no pleasure at her appearance. “Father Libretto isn’t here?”

“He came and he left again. He sends you greetings.” She smiled at Jackie. “Hello, I am Anna.”

“Jackie.”

“Your first time at Sant’Egidio?”

“Very first.”

“You are most welcome.” Back to Wynn. “He has left you a message. Perhaps you wish to come with me?”

“I’ll take it here.”

“The message, it is confidential.”

“Here is fine.”

“Bene.” She tucked her hands into her shapeless sweater. “Your sister has already left.”

“She’s gone back home?”

Anna smiled. “In a sense. Yes.”

The air whooshed out of him, as though the candles and the incense and this small quiet woman had combined to deliver a vicious blow. “You can’t be serious.”

“The priest says, your sister gives to you the excuse to travel. Now you have two choices. Follow her, or return to safety and blindness.” She withdrew one hand long enough to pass over a slip of paper. “But to go forward means great risk. You understand?”

Tuesday

They left the church, crossed the piazza, and caught a taxi back to the hotel. The streetlights painted Wynn’s face into lines as bleak and hard as night-cut stone. Jackie leaned against the taxi door and studied what even in despondency was a very handsome man. Darkly chiseled features, eyes like the melancholy clouds of pending gales. A man who would age well. But she had long since learned that good looks were not such great shakes. “Your sister’s not in Rome any more?”

“No.”

“Do you know where to find her?”

Slowly, he raised and lowered his head. Not a nod so much as an admission of nightmares still to come. Jackie said, “You don’t mind me saying, you take an amazing amount of trouble for your sister.”

The taxi drummed across the Tiber and joined the flow about yet more ruins out of time. Spotlights drilled the tableau into black and silver etchings, frozen there against the backdrop of night. Wynn remained blind to it all. “My parents died when I was five and we went to live with relatives. They were a miserable lot. Do you know Lakeland?”

“Sure. Out on the other side of Orlando.”

“Back then it was nothing but orange groves and hot rods and beer joints. The Vitalis crowd at its worst. My dad’s family owned a packing plant. Dad was the only one of them who ever made it out, the only one to finish high school, much less go to college. He was everything they despised-a professor at a university, smart, married to a Yankee from New Hampshire who was a teacher herself. They mocked our accents, they mocked our parents.”

Jackie pressed herself more tightly against the taxi’s opposite door. The guy was too close to the bone just then, the reasons to care all too obvious.

Wynn gave no notice to her movements. “The day Sybel turned eighteen, she forced the family lawyer to hand over our inheritance. Much as my dad’s folks didn’t like having us around, they still fought tooth and nail to keep us. So Sybel went to court and officially adopted me. There wasn’t much in the way of money. Back then no life insurance company would cover my folks, since they lived in Egypt. What there had been in the way of savings was pretty much drained away. But enough was left to get us settled in Gainesville. She started school, and then she met Grant.”

Everything he said fueled her hopeless attraction, no matter what she thought or wanted to have happen. “Have you ever wondered if maybe life makes a random selection, chooses a person and just pegs them to the dart board of that particular time? Let everybody throw sharp pointy objects your way.”

He grew very still. “No.”

“Don’t mind me. I’m a font of useless ideas.” She forced herself to turn around and stare out her window, drawn by the loud drumming of tires upon cobblestones and the sight of the Coliseum up ahead. “And look where they got me.”

When they left the taxi, Wynn watched as the doorman tipped his hat to Jackie. She entered the lobby before him, with shoulders squared and chin held rigidly high. The chandeliers illuminated an internal struggle, which finally gave in to the confession, “This day has held so much I don’t even know what to say.”

“My thoughts exactly, but for entirely different reasons.” He did what she least expected, which was to take her hand and bow. Not drawing it completely to his lips. But doing as he had seen others do, giving her all the respect he could muster. Then explaining why. “The only nice thing about my entire journey is having you here.”

She softened then. For the first time, he saw beneath her bulletproof shell and glimpsed another woman entirely. “I can’t even remember the last time a man said something that sweet to me. Thank you, Wynn.”

“Do you know, that’s the first time you have ever spoken my name.”

She parted her lips, uncertain, torn. A shaky breath, then, “You,” she said, for his ears alone, “are a very dangerous man.”

“Only to myself.”

She turned and crossed the lobby, the light caught and held by her hair. She nodded her thanks to the bellhop, who used a white-gloved hand to hold the elevator door for her. She pressed the button for her floor. Only then did she look up. Catch his eye. And whisper his name yet again.

Wynn scarcely had time to step over to the concierge desk and make his travel requests before a too-familiar voice behind him said, “I can scarcely believe my eyes.” Hearing those dulcet English tones in this place, at this time, raised the hairs on the back of his neck. Like the mockingbird’s song heard at midnight. Lovely, perhaps, but in such a place the sound became a warning. He turned to Valerie nonetheless, with as much surprise as he could muster. “What on earth are you doing here?”

“Hoping to see you, of course.” Anger shone in eyes flecked with an improper season, autumn perhaps, or the facile passion of easier times. “I scurry about like a madwoman, putting my affairs in order, racing against the clock. A mad dash to the airport, barely making the last flight out. Arrive shattered, scarcely aware of where I am. Expecting to find you in misery and panic, searching high and low for your sister. Instead, what do I discover?”

But Valerie did not look shattered. She looked as if she had just stepped off a yacht. Sleek and lovely and alert as ever. Wynn said, “I’ve found Sybel. At least, I know where she is.”

A vehement shake of her head, hair spilling about in lovely disorder. “Don’t you dare try to tell me that was your sister I saw you giving the little bow and scrape upon farewell.”

“No.”

“I saw that woman at Esther Hutchings’ apartment, remember? I was there with you. Right at your side.”

“Esther sent her here.”

Valerie caught herself in midbreath. “I beg your pardon?”

“Esther thinks I’m working for the enemy. She sent Jackie Havilland to spy on me.”