Conversation with Stella

8

"Ricky, what's happening to us? What's happening to Milburn?"

"A terrible thing. I don't want to tell you now. There'll be time when it's all over."

"You're frightening me."

"I'm frightened too."

"Well, I'm frightened because you're frightened." For a time, the Hawthornes simply held each other.

"You know what killed Lewis, don't you?"

"I think so."

"Well, I discovered an astonishing thing about myself. I can be a coward. So please don't tell me. I know I asked, but don't. I just want to know it'll end."

"Sears and I will make it end. With young Wanderley's help."

"He can help you?"

"He can. He has already."

"If only this terrible snow would stop."

"Yes. But it won't."

"Ricky, have I given you an awful time?" Stella propped herself up on an elbow to look into his eyes.

"A worse time than most women would," he said. "But I rarely wanted any other women."

"I am sorry that I ever had to cause you pain. Ricky, I've never cared for any man as much as I have cared for you. Despite my adventures. You know that's all over, don't you?"

"I guessed."

"He was an appalling man. He was in my car, and I just overwhelmingly realized how much better than he you were. So I made him get out." Stella smiled. "He shouted at me. It seems I am a bitch."

"At times you certainly are."

"At times. You know, he must have found Lewis's body right after that."

"Ah. I wondered what he was doing up there."

Silence: Ricky held his wife's shoulder, aware of her timeless profile beside him. If she had not looked like that could he have endured it so long? Yet if she had not looked like that, she would not have been Stella- it was an impossible speculation.

"Tell me something, baby," she breathed. "Who was this other woman you used to want?"

Ricky laughed; then both of them, at least for a time, were laughing.