I am so much looking forward to meeting you. You won't even have to double-check my photo when you step out of the jetway. I'll have so many butterflies in my stomach that all you need to do is look for the guy who's floating somewhere near the ceiling...
His name was Darren Crosby.
She wouldn't need to look at his photograph; that much was true. She had memorized his face, just as she had memorized most of his letters. The question was why. And to that question she had no answer. Not even a clue. It was just another proof of J.R.R. Tolkien's observation: you must be careful each time you step out of your door, because your front walk is really a road, and the road leads ever onward. If you aren't careful, you're apt to find yourself... well... simply swept away, a stranger in a strange land with no clue as to how you got there.
Laurel had told everyone where she was going, but she had told no one why she was going or what she was doing. She was a graduate of the University of California with a master's degree in library science. Although she was no model, she was cleanly built and pleasant enough to look at. She had a small circle of good friends, and they would have been flabbergasted by what she was up to: heading off to Boston, planning to stay with a man she knew only through correspondence, a man she had met through the extensive personals column of a magazine called Friends and Lovers.
She was, in fact, flabbergasted herself.
Darren Crosby was six-feet-one, weighed one hundred and eighty pounds, and had dark-blue eyes. He preferred Scotch (although not to excess), he had a cat named Stanley, he was a dedicated heterosexual, he was a perfect gentleman (or so he claimed), and he thought Laurel was the most beautiful name he had ever heard. The picture he had sent showed a man with a pleasant, open, intelligent face. She guessed he was the sort of man who would look sinister if he didn't shave twice a day. And that was really all she knew.
Laurel had corresponded with half a dozen men over half a dozen years - it was a hobby, she supposed - but she had never expected to take the next step - this step. She supposed that Darren's wry and self-deprecating sense of humor was part of the attraction, but she was dismally aware that her real reasons were not in him at all, but in herself. And wasn't the real attraction her own inability to understand this strong desire to step out of character? To just fly off into the unknown, hoping for the right kind of lightning to strike?
What are you doing? she asked herself again.
The plane ran through some light turbulence and back into smooth air again. Laurel stirred out of her doze and looked around. She saw the young teenaged girl had taken the seat across from her. She was looking out the window.
"What do you see?" Laurel asked. "Anything?"
"Well, the sun's up," the girl said, "but that's all."
"What about the ground?" Laurel didn't want to get up and look for herself. Dinah's head was still resting against her, and Laurel didn't want to wake her.
"Can't see it. It's all clouds down there." She looked around. Her eyes had cleared and a little color - not much, but a little - had come back into her face. "My name's Bethany Simms. What's yours?"
"Laurel Stevenson."
"Do you think we'll be all right?"
"I think so," Laurel said, and then added reluctantly: "I hope so."
"I'm scared about what might be under those clouds," Bethany said, "but I was scared anyway. About Boston. My mother all at once decided how it would be a great idea if I spent a couple of weeks with my Aunt Shawna, even though school starts again in ten days. I think the idea was for me to get off the plane, just like Mary's little lamb, and then Aunt Shawna pulls the string on me."
"What string?"
"Do not pass Go, do not collect two hundred dollars, go directly to the nearest rehab, and start drying out," Bethany said. She raked her hands through her short dark hair. "Things were already so weird that this seems like just more of the same." She looked Laurel over carefully and then added with perfect seriousness: "This is really happening,