Ariel's Crossing - Bradford Morrow [31]
“What if I told you my real name wasn’t Franny?”
“Lot of people have nicknames.” What bogus ingenuousness.
“—wasn’t Franny but something completely different, then what would you think.”
The weather in his mind clouding up, Kip squinted, staring beyond her.
“Like if I made that name up for really good reasons but my name was something else.”
“Franny’s a fine name,” he said lamely, leaning away, somewhat feigning physical distress. What was it about Franny that both drew him to her yet made him want to retreat? She was speaking.
“That’s not what I mean.”
“Franny—”
“My name’s Mary.”
Kip said nothing.
“Mary from Gallup, New Mexico, not Princeton, New Jersey.”
A heavy interior squall was settling in. How many times had he done the same thing, invented a past to scuttle a future? Like when he lived in Costa Rica under the crazy pseudonym Brice McCarthy, for no other reason than to walk a mile in another man’s name.
“Mary’s a good name and Gallup is a good place,” he said, one eye closed because the sun was in it.
“Gallup’s anything but a good place.”
“Marcos doesn’t know about this—”
“No.”
“Why are you telling me?”
“I’m not sure, and that’s the truth,” recognizing that today was not going to be the day she set everything straight with Marcos after all. “Because I trust you.”
“Why trust me?”
“I’m not sure about that, either.”
Kip’s faint smile was intended to camouflage his dread. He wanted to engage her, wanted to help somehow, but the miserable failure of a father within him was afraid.
“Well, thanks for listening,” she finished, wondering whether she’d gone too far.
“But I didn’t hear you out at all, Mary.”
“Franny—better call me Franny until I sort things through.”
“Franny. Sorry.”
“We sure seem to be apologizing to each other a lot today. You’re busy, I should let you get back to what you were doing.”
“I was just going to—I’m not busy. Tell me about your name.”
“Maybe we can talk another time.”
“Now is fine.”
She looked pale, confused. “Hey, Kip.”
“Yes.”
“Remember up at the Hill that time when you offered to teach me some phrases in Vietnamese? Are you still willing?”
“I know just enough to get you into trouble and not enough to get you out. But sure, if you want.”
“That’d be great,” she said.
He watched her make her way down the leaf-cluttered path to the paddock, studied her dappled by ten thousand quivering shadows cast by elms and box elders. For her part, caught between the faded urge to speak with Marcos about how she’d run away from home and assumed this new identity, and her unanticipated confessions to Kip, Franny was seized by a twinge of guilt. She’d talked about her problems without showing the least concern over his. How pale and preoccupied he’d looked. Hatless under the Chimayó sun, working outside as he did, he should be burned not bleached. Gone was his berry-brown complexion of those first painful months on the Hill. Funny what a blend of strength and fragility Kip was. She turned back to find him. He had disappeared, though. She would have called out, but she didn’t know what more to say. He might return to where she stood—hovering between her two lives, two lies—and he might smile that knowing, unassuming smile of his. Maybe it wasn’t fair of her to expect him to do more than cope with his own quandaries.
A silver bracelet that Marcos had given her flashed in the sun as she drew her hand across her forehead. She had driven out to Nambé on an impulse to fess up, so Marcos hadn’t been expecting her. Kip, who’d vanished into the violet shadows of the portal, was the only one who knew she was here. Wind chimes hanging from the low eaves made their uncanny music as she looked around. She could retreat to her car, parked beside the adobe archway on the far side of the hacienda, without being seen. Who would be any the wiser if she simply fled? So she fled, and as she did the realization she could just keep driving west until she reached California