heart sank.
She stopped laughing abruptly. "I,m sorry," she said in a small crestfallen voice. "It wasn,t right to laugh, was it? I shouldn,t have laughed. It,s not a time for laughing at all. It,s just, well, let me put it this way: you,ve got to be one of the handsomest men I,ve ever seen."
"Oh," he whispered. He couldn,t look at her. Well, at least she hadn,t called him a kid or a boy. "Is that good?" he asked. "Or is that bad?"
"You serious?"
He shrugged.
"Well, it,s just surprising," she confessed. "I,m sorry, Reuben. I shouldn,t have laughed."
"It,s all right. It,s not important, is it?"
They had reached her gravel driveway. He turned to her. She looked so genuinely concerned. He couldn,t help but smile to reassure her, and at once her face brightened.
"You know," she said with the utmost sincerity. "In the story of the prince and the frog, there,s always a frog. This story ... it has no frog."
"Hmmm. It,s a different story, Laura," he responded. "It,s Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde."
"No, it,s not," she said reprovingly. "I don,t think it,s that story at all. It,s not ,Beauty and the Beast, either. Maybe it,s a new story."
"Yes, a new story," he agreed eagerly. "And I think the next line of the story is ,Get the hell out of Dodge now., "
She leaned forward and kissed him - him; not the big hairy wolf-beast, but him.
He took her face in both hands and kissed her slowly, lovingly. It was altogether different, the old rhythm, the old way of things, and oh, so indefinably sweet.
Chapter Eighteen
IT TOOK HER LESS than fifteen minutes to pack and call a neighbor who would pick up her car downtown and check on her house while she was gone.
The drive to Nideck Point took almost four hours, just as it had before, largely due to the rain.
On the way, they talked nonstop.
Reuben told her everything that had happened. He explained it all from the start, and in minute detail.
He told her who he,d been before it ever began - all about his family, about Celeste, about Jim, and a multitude of other things, the stories tumbling out effortlessly and sometimes without coherence, her questions always sensitive, and only slightly probing, her fascination obvious even with the things of which he,d always been a little embarrassed or downright ashamed.
"It was a fluke that I got hired by the Observer. Billie knows my mother and it started out as a favor. Then she actually liked what I wrote."
He explained how he was Sunshine Boy to Celeste, and Baby Boy to his mother, and Little Boy to Jim, and lately his editor, Billie, had been calling him Boy Wonder, and only his father called him Reuben. She broke into laughter again over that and had a bit of a time stopping herself.
But it was easy to talk to her, and agreeable to listen to her, too.
Laura had seen Dr. Grace Golding on the morning talk shows. She,d met Grace once at a black-tie benefit. The Goldings supported wildlife causes. "I,ve read all your articles in the Observer," she said. "Everybody likes what you write. I started reading you because somebody told me about your pieces."
He nodded. That might have meant something if all of this had not happened.
They talked about Laura,s years at Radcliffe, her late husband, and briefly the kids. She wasn,t going to linger on those things; Reuben picked up on that quickly. She spoke of her sister, Sandra, as if Sandra were still living. Sandra had been her best friend.
Her dad was the mentor of her life. She and Sandra had grown up in Muir Woods, gone off to eastern schools in their teens, to Europe during the summers, but the rich, near-fantastical paradise of Northern California had been their sustaining life.
Yes, she,d imagined Reuben a wild man come down out of the northern forests, some secret species at one with nature and caught off guard by the routine horrors of urban life.
The little house in the forest had belonged to her grandfather, and he,d still been alive when she was a little girl. There were four bedrooms on the second floor, all empty now. "My boys got to play in the woods for one summer," she said in a small voice.
Their stories poured out of them easily and completely.
He talked about his Berkeley days and the digs overseas, about his love of books, and she talked about her time in New York, and how her husband