you don't have enough imagination to be a coward. Nothing bad has ever happened to you. Sure, you don't tell lies - for the same reason Mrs Carroll doesn't steal cans of soup.'
She was incredible - she had convinced herself that he was in the wrong! It was impossible to talk to someone who could fool herself so thoroughly. Disgusted, he turned to leave. 'If that's how you think of me, you must be glad our relationship is over.'
'No, Fm not glad.' Tears ran down her face. 'I love you, I've never loved another guy. I'm sorry I deceived you, but I'm not going to prostrate myself with guilt because I did a bad thing in a moment of crisis.'
He did not want her to prostrate herself with guilt. He did not want her to do anything at all. He just wanted to get away from her and their friends and Admiral Carroll and this hateful house.
Somewhere in the back of his mind, a small voice told him he was throwing away the most precious thing he had ever had, and warned that this conversation would cause him a regret so- bitter that it would bum in his soul for years. But he was too angry, too humiliated, and too painfully wounded to listen.
Chapter 14
He went to the door.
'Don't leave,'she pleaded.
'Go to hell,' he said, and he went out.
2.30 A.M.
The new fuel and a larger fuel tank have boosted the Jupiter's thrust to a force of 83,000 pounds, and extended the burning time from 121 seconds to 155 seconds.
'Anthony was a true friend to me then,' Billie said. 'I was desperate. A thousand dollars! There was nowhere I could find that kind of money. He got it from his father, and he took the blame. He was a mensch. That's why it's so hard to understand what he's doing now.'
'I can't believe I gave you up,' Luke said. 'Didn't I understand what you'd been through?'
'It wasn't all your fault,' Billie said wearily. 'I thought it was, at the time, but now I can see my own role in the whole mess.' She looked as if the telling of the story had exhausted her.
They sat in silence for a while, hushed by regret Luke wondered how long it would take Bern to drive here from Georgetown; then his thoughts reverted to the story Billie had told. 'I don't much like what I'm learning about myself,' he said after a while. 'Did I really lose my two best friends, you and Bern, just by being unforgiving and pig-headed?'
Billie hesitated, then she laughed. 'Why mince words? Yes, that's exactly what you did.'
'And so you married Bern.'
She laughed again. "You can be so egocentric!' she said amiably. 'I didn't marry Bern because you left me. I married him because he's one of the best men in the world. He's smart, he's kind, and he's good in bed. It took me years to get over you, but when I did, I fell in love with Bern.'
'And you and I became friends again?'
'Slowly. We always loved you, all of us, even if you could be a stiffnecked son of a gun. I wrote to you when tarry was born, and you came to see me. Then, the following year, Anthony had a huge party on his thirtieth birthday and you showed up. You were back at Harvard, getting your doctorate, and the rest of us were in Washington - Anthony and Elspeth and Peg working for the CIA, me doing research at George Washington University, and Bern writing scripts for radio - but you came to town a couple of times a year, and we would get together.'
'When did I marry Elspeth?'
'Nineteen fifty-four - the year I divorced Bern.'
'Do you know why I married her?'
She hesitated. The answer should have been easy, Luke thought. She should have said: 'Because you loved her - of course!' But she did not. 'I'm the wrong person to answer that question,' she said at last
'I'll ask Elspeth.'
'I wish you would.'.
He looked at her. There was an edge to that last remark. Luke was figuring out how to tease out her meaning when a white Lincoln Continental pulled up outside, and Bern jumped out and came into the diner. Luke said: 'I'm sorry we woke you.'
'Forget it,' Bern said. 'Billie does not subscribe to the belief that when a man is asleep you should leave him be. If she's awake, everyone should be awake. You'd know that,