Silent Masquerade

Cara wriggled uncomfortably and frowned. “I just thought, since I don’t know anyone there, it would be nice...”

“Look, kid, when this trip is over, we’re history. I travel fast and I travel alone, and I don’t take on any cargo along the way.”

Cara flushed. “I’m not a kid, for one thing, Bill Hamlin, and I wasn’t suggesting you `take me on,’ so you can drop the Humphrey Bogart routine. I just thought it would be nice to know there was someone I knew in the same city with me while I’m getting settled.”

He hadn’t meant to snap at her like that, and he knew he’d sounded like a real jerk. But as the hours they spent together sped by, he was beginning to feel more and more at risk. There was something so compelling about her—a combination of vulnerability and recklessness. Something in him yearned to reach out and either shake her or grab her and hold her tight. And that was exactly the kind of emotional involvement that could make him lose sight of his own safety concerns, make him careless.

They had another day and a half on the bus, another night of falling asleep smelling her shampoo, her sweet, clean fragrance, feeling her arm against his, her leg brushing his when she turned to say something to him. He was, first and foremost a man, one who hadn’t held a woman in longer than he cared to remember. It might be years before it was safe for him to get involved again—if ever—but while they were traveling across the country, suspended in the limbo of continuous movement, he could almost pretend they were just two normal people who were on the verge of becoming friends.

“Order something filling,” he said gruffly to Cara. “And don’t be so thin-skinned. I didn’t mean to insult you.”

He hid a smile behind his menu. He could tell from the play of emotions he’d seen across her face that she was torn between indignation and hunger.

She ordered eggs and pancakes and a large glass of milk.

“That’s more like it,” Bill said, nodding in approval. “Now, let’s talk about you. What are you going to do in San Francisco?”

He had a day and a half in which to enjoy this young woman’s company. He decided that as long as he was on the bus it was safe for him to let his guard down enough to make it a congenial trip. She intrigued him, with her soft prettiness, her feisty temper, her hint of sad mystery. He would have liked to encourage her to reveal the source of that mystery but he knew that if he did, she’d feel justified in questioning him in return. He couldn’t have that.

Cara played with her cutlery and looked out the window of the café, staring off into the distance, where the desert met the horizon like a great sand-colored ocean.

“Look for a job, a place to live,” she said dreamily. “Start a new life.”

“Wipe out the old one,” Bill said, almost to himself.

“What?” Cara returned her gaze to Bill, startled by his remark. How could she respond to that? How could she tell a stranger about her mother’s obsession with a younger man whose own obsession was with her daughter? How could she explain the guilt, the shame, she felt every time she entered a room with her mother and Doug in it. And, worst of all, how could she explain how Doug had manipulated her with emotional blackmail, knowing she wouldn’t be able to bear to hurt her mother by telling her the truth about the man her mother loved?

“I...I just felt the need to try someplace new,” she said weakly.

“And you’re traveling clear across the country to find it?”

Cara nodded and returned her gaze to the window.

Doug was going to be furious when he discovered she’d finally found the courage to escape his advances. Would he look for her, risk losing her mother? She prayed that her opinion of Doug was correct, that he was just a bit more obsessed with her mother’s money than he was with Cara, that that little edge might keep him in Greensville, keep him from looking for her.

She pushed away the stab of guilt she felt over leaving her mother at Doug’s mercy. She’d turned the situation over in her mind, considered her options, made her choice. She’d live by it.

Their food arrived before Bill could ply her with more questions. Cara picked up her fork almost before the waitress set her plate down, glad for the diversion and for the bounty of food before her.

They were almost finished with the meal when the driver came in and called for everyone’s attention.

“We’re going to have a slight delay, folks. Nothing to worry about, but you’re going to have a couple of extra hours here, so take your time and enjoy the scenery. If you want to go for walks or look around the town, be sure you’re back by ten.”

“Oh, let’s go for a walk,” Cara said, excited at the prospect of seeing something of the countryside that was passing by her almost as soon as her gaze fell on it.

Bill studied her face, enjoying the flush of excitement in her cheeks, the shine in her eyes. Great eyes, he thought. Not just dark brown, but more the color of burned caramel. They glinted with golden lights every time her face changed expression.

He glanced out at the parking lot. Apart from three Greyhound buses, there was an eighteen-wheeler, a pick-up truck with a load of vegetables in the back, and two compact cars. He looked around the café. Nobody who could remotely be connected with the mob.

He looked back at Cara, whose smile was beguiling. “Okay, you’re on,” he said, rising and throwing a couple of bills on the food check.

But as they were strolling the streets of the small town, Bill was already beginning to question the reckless manner in which he was getting involved with this girl. Something about her tugged at him, at some long-buried part of him that preceded his years in the Service, his brief but disastrous marriage, even the pseudocynical years of college. She took him back to his true beginnings, to halcyon days of family and growing up in middle America with nothing to threaten the peace but the seasonal attacks of weather.

It was that life, hidden away from the rest of the country, that had made him want to make a career out of defending and protecting the things he loved and believed in.

“Look at that,” Cara said breathlessly, pointing to the mountain rise that suddenly appeared out of nowhere, making a magnificent backdrop for the row of low buildings they’d come upon.

“Makes a person feel...insignificant,” Bill said, absorbing the feeling as he stared at the mountain.

“Because it’s been there forever and will be there forever,” Cara stated solemnly. She turned from the awe-inspiring sight and looked up at her companion. “Doesn’t it make you want to stay right here and let it stand guard over your life?”

Bill glanced at Cara and then back at the mountain, shaking his head. “There are some things it can’t protect you from. There are people out there who would never stop to look at that mountain, never notice its beauty or its magnificence. People who wouldn’t hesitate to blow up the mountain if it stood in the way of what they wanted to achieve.”

Cara stared at Bill, aghast. She’d never heard such cynical talk before, never heard that note of utter futility in another person’s voice.

She would have liked to probe, to find out what it was that had made this man so bitter; it was a sharp contrast to the gentle, generous man he’d shown her.

But there was also a dark aspect to his nature, one that warned her that she must not overstep certain boundaries in their brief, temporary relationship.

“Even if all that’s true, it doesn’t keep us from enjoying the beauty,” she said, and turned away from the view. “It must be nearly time to head back,” she added quietly.

He fell into step beside her, and they remained silent, both lost in their own thoughts, on the walk back.

The silence continued, almost by mutual consent, for the next leg of their journey. When they stopped for lunch, Cara pleaded a headache as an excuse for not joining Bill in the café.

“Just bring me back some coffee, please,” she said, handing him a dollar bill.

He gave her a skeptical look, but didn’t argue. He just took her money and nodded.

Cara laid her head against the window and let her eyes close against the noon sunshine. Something about Bill Hamlin’s carefully guarded pain had struck a chord in Cara and made the reality of her situation all the more frightening. It wasn’t that she wasn’t capable of fending for herself or being alone. After all, she was an only child, whose parents had been loving and giving, but also very involved with one another.

Her father had become ill when she graduated from high school, and despite his protests, she’d put off going to college in order to spend as much time with him as his illness would allow. The shared nursing duties, plus the feeling of pending doom in the house, had brought Cara and her mother closer.

But after her father’s death, her mother had shut Cara out while she mourned the loss of her husband. And Cara had gone off to start her college years, feeling orphaned and lonely, so that even though she was a couple of years older than the other freshmen, she seemed younger, shier. It had taken her a full year to get past her own grief and begin to make friends and enjoy the campus ambience.

By the time Cara’s mother came out of mourning, Cara had already been in her last year of graduate school. A few months later, Doug had come into their lives.

No, the problem wasn’t encroaching loneliness—that was an emotion she’d lived with most of her life. It was more the reminder that she was leaving everything she’d considered safe and familiar and was about to enter a strange world without access to any of the comforts of her past, and where she couldn’t even use her given name. Could she carve out a niche for herself while living like an illegal alien? And was the sacrifice she was making worthwhile?

Because of her parents’ obvious closeness, she’d grown up believing that the biggest event in her life was going to be falling in love and becoming a wife and mother. Only in her case, she’d planned to love her husband and her children equally, so that none of them ever felt left out.

Was such a future possible for her now? Could she be legally married under an assumed name? And where would she meet the ideal man, if she was forced to take odd jobs that didn’t require references or close scrutiny of her qualifications?

Her reverie was interrupted by Bill’s return. He handed her a bag that obviously contained something more than the cup of coffee she’d asked for.

“You’ll feel hungry later,” he said, shrugging off her protest. “Did you take some aspirin for that headache?”

Cara nodded, avoiding his eyes so that he couldn’t see the lie. She was sure she could have told him the truth, that she had just wanted to be alone, but then he might have asked questions she wasn’t prepared to answer.