“I’m telling you that this was no fly-by-night roll in the hay, Bob!” he had shouted at his brother. “Dammit, she wouldn’t have left like that without a word. Maybe she was mugged or murdered or raped or something. Have you thought of that? Huh?” The veins had stood out from his bandaged temple in a frightening way, and the nurses had been called to forcibly give him another sedative despite his Herculean struggles and vituperative curses to prevent them from doing so.
When he reawakened, Bob and Sally were with him, their nerves frayed, their expressions stricken. “Erik, she left your keys at the desk with a note attached. She couldn’t have been abducted. She left purposefully and calmly.” Bob looked to his wife for support, but Sally’s concern was directed toward her brother-in-law, for whom she felt a good deal of affection.
“Maybe… uh…” Bob stuttered, “maybe you misinterpreted her… uh… feelings.”
“Get out of here. Go home—anywhere. I don’t care,” Erik mumbled. “Just leave me alone.” Then he had turned away from them to stare bleakly out the window with that hard, bitter look on his face that was to characterize his expression for the following weeks.
Despite his indifference toward regaining his health, he recovered. He terrorized the nurses and cursed the doctors, but he recovered. The headache lessened a little each day, and the wound on his scalp hurt, th
en itched, then became unnoticeable as it healed.
Bob and Sally left after the initial danger was over, but returned to accompany him home to St. Louis. They took turns driving the Blazer while he sat in the backseat, brooding.
He had telephoned the desperately worried Harrisons each day while he was in the hospital, asking about Kathleen. They had told him nothing, swearing that they didn’t know anything. They hadn’t seen Kathleen since she had left with him that rainy morning. He told them that as soon as he could, he would return to Mountain View.
He had read the newspaper accounts of the airplane wreck and knew that he was lucky to be alive. Eleven passengers and the pilots weren’t so lucky. Still, sometimes he wondered why he considered himself fortunate. Without Kathleen…
Why had she disappeared without a trace? When she left, she hadn’t even known the extent of his injuries or if he would recover with all his faculties. Something had driven her away, but what?
He began his search for her at Mountain View after spending several frustrating weeks in St. Louis recuperating. The Harrisons swore that they had received no word from Kathleen except one handwritten note that had been mailed from her address in Atlanta.
Erik read it. It told nothing other than that she was well and would contact the couple later. She implored them not to worry about her, apologizing profusely for deserting them in the middle of the summer. That was all.
Now, on his second fruitless trip to Mountain View, where the leaves were beginning to display the paintbrush of autumn, Edna brought him back to the dismal present with a gentle urging.
“Tell us again what you found in Atlanta.”
He sighed and straightened himself slightly in the chair. “She had been there right after the accident. She bought off the lease to her apartment, paid up all her utilities, packed everything and left. With no forwarding address. I went to Mason’s Department Store. Did you know she wasn’t working there any longer?”
“No,” the couple said in shocked unison.
“She quit at the beginning of the summer. Yet every time we talked about her work, she made it sound as if she were going back this fall.”
“She loved her job, Erik. Why would she quit like that?”
“I had to bribe one of the salesgirls with lunch to find that out. It seems that one of the male employees had the hots for Kathleen. He was married.”
“Well, that explains that. Kathleen would never become involved with a married man,” Edna declared firmly.
Erik snorted rudely as he stood up and went to the window. When he faced them again, anger oozed from every pore in his body. “How do you know? Maybe she’s a scheming, lying little slut that deceived us all.”
“Now just a minute, young man.” Edna flew off the couch and rounded on Erik, shaking her finger in his face. “Don’t talk that way about Kathleen. You know it’s not true just as I do. I’ll not have you stand here in my house and bad-mouth her.”
“Then why did she run away like some guilty or frightened child?” he demanded.
Edna’s anger evaporated and her body sagged with dejection. She rubbed her temples as if they pained her. “I don’t know,” she said slowly.
“Maybe she is a frightened child,” B. J. spoke quietly from the couch. “Maybe with you lying injured, possibly dying, she couldn’t face it, she couldn’t risk it, couldn’t stand the thought that she might lose you. I think I’m safe in assuming that she had formed quite an attachment to you.” B. J. narrowed his eyes on Erik, waiting for a confession, but when none was forthcoming, he went on. “I grant you this. She’s setting a dangerous precedent in her life, always running from adversity. One day, she’ll have to meet a problem head-on. And it won’t be easy for her. She hasn’t prepared herself for it.”
Erik seemed to reflect on that for a moment, but then his features dropped back into an impenetrable mask. “Well, for whatever reason, she ran away from you and me and made it quite clear that she doesn’t want to be found.” He picked up his discarded denim jacket from the back of the chair and walked to the door. “I’ve wasted two months of my life looking for her, and I don’t intend to invest any more. I’ll let you know when the piece about the camp is going to air. Thank you for all your help.” The words were clipped, curt and, Edna thought, forced. Underneath that stern resolve, she thought she detected an unspeakably painful disillusionment.
She was sure of it when she watched Erik walk to his Dodge van, get in and slam the door. He rested his bowed head against the steering wheel in utter desolation before he seemed to gain enough initiative to turn the key and start the motor.
Chapter Nine
Kathleen tugged on the skirt that rode slightly above her crossed knees in a ladylike gesture that caused the middle-aged secretary to smile. Such an attractive girl, she thought.
Kathleen returned the smile. She was the paragon of professionalism as she sat in the beautifully decorated outer office awaiting her interview with Mr. Seth Kirchoff, owner of the exclusive department store Kirchoff’s in San Francisco.