The Pilot's Wife_ A Novel - Anita Shreve [67]
“The driveway’s not plowed,” she said. “What time is it?”
He looked at his watch. “Three,” he said. “I think I’ll go for a walk.”
“In this?”
“Just to the end of the driveway and back. I need some air.” “I hope you know you don’t have to go to the inn tonight. There are plenty of beds in this house. A lot of rooms. You can sleep on the daybed in my spare room,” she added. “It’s comfortable there. That’s what it’s for.”
“For hiding, you said.”
“Yes.”
“The information you asked me for is on Jack’s desk,” he said. She started to speak, but he shook his head.
“Of all people,” he said, “this should not have happened to you.”
Kathryn dozed on the couch for a few minutes and then somewhat groggily climbed up to the bedroom with the idea of slipping into the bed and taking a long nap. She took the book of poetry with her.
She lay on the bed on her stomach and began to turn the pages, halfheartedly looking for the lines. She read bits of poems by Gerard Manley Hopkins and Wordsworth and Keats. About halfway through the book, the word betrayals suddenly caught her eye, and she realized she had found the correct poem. But then almost immediately, before she could even read the lines through, she saw a faint notation along the inner margin.
M!
Written in pencil, lightly, with an exclamation point.
And there. Unmistakably there.
She sat up sharply and looked closely at the poem, reading it through. The poem was called “Antrim” and was written by Robinson Jeffers. It seemed to be about ancient struggles on one small patch of land, presumably Antrim. About blood spilled for many causes, various ambushes and betrayals, the patriotism itself and the bodies sacrificed, all turned now to dust, the dust waiting for a resurrection.
What did it mean?
She let the book fall over the side of the bed and onto the floor. She lay down again and rolled her face into the pillow. She felt as though she had traveled a thousand miles.
When she woke, she glanced instinctively at the clock on her bedside table. It was three-thirty in the morning. She had slept nine hours. What day was it, anyway? The twenty-eighth? The twenty-ninth?
She twisted herself off the bed and half staggered out into the hallway. The door to the spare room was shut. Robert must have returned from his walk and gone in there to sleep, she thought. Or had he had a meal? Watched television? Read a book?
In the kitchen, there were no signs of anyone having cooked a meal. Kathryn made a pot of coffee and poured herself a cup. Through the windows over the sink, she could see it had stopped snowing. She moved to the back door and opened it and was immediately hit with a chilled spray of fine powder that fell from the eave. She blinked and shook her head. Adjusting to the darkness, she saw that the world was shrouded in a thick quilt of white, a candlewick quilt with shallow stitching, so that the trees and shrubs and cars were simply mounded humps. Indeed, there seemed to be so much snow that she wondered if the predictions of twelve inches hadn’t been wildly optimistic. She closed the door and leaned against it.
M at A’s.
Muire 3:30.
M!
Drawing her robe more tightly around herself, Kathryn quickly climbed the stairs to Jack’s office, its dusty emptiness still a surprise. She saw the paper Robert had spoken of on Jack’s desk.
Muire Boland, she read, had left the airline in January of 1993. Trained by Vision in London, she had been a flight attendant with the airline for three years. There was an address, a phone number, and a date of birth. Muire Boland was now thirty-one.
Robert had written a note beside the phone number. Tried this, it said. When I called, no one had ever heard of her. Beneath this information was a list of phone numbers. There were seven
M. Bolands listed in the London directory.
Kathryn tried to formulate a question, a reasonable request.
Did the person answering the phone know of a Jack Lyons? If so, could Kathryn ask a question or two? Was that such an unusual