Local Hero

could regret it, but she couldn’t stop it. “I don’t want to.”
    “But you are.” This time, it was he who pulled away. “It only took a phone call.”
    “Mitch, please try to understand.”
    “I’ve been trying to understand.” There was an edge to his voice now that she hadn’t heard before. “The man left you, and it hurt, but it’s been over a long time.”
    “It’s not the hurt,” she began, then dragged a hand through her hair. “Or maybe it is, partly. I don’t want to go through that ever again, the fear, the emptiness. I loved him. You have to understand that maybe I was young, maybe I was stupid, but I loved him.”
    “I’ve always understood that,” he said, though he didn’t like to hear it. “A woman like you doesn’t make promises lightly.”
    “No, when I make them, I mean to keep them. I wanted to keep this one.” She picked up the coffee again, wrapping both hands around the cup to keep them warm. “I can’t tell you how badly I wanted to keep my marriage together, how hard I tried. I gave up part of myself when I married Allan. He told me we were going to move to New York, we were going to do things in a big way, and I went. Leaving my home, my family and friends was the most terrifying thing I’d ever done, but I went because he wanted it. Almost everything I did during our marriage I did because he wanted it. And because it was easier to go along than to refuse. I built my life around his. Then, at the age of twenty, I discovered I didn’t have a life at all.”
    “So you made one, for yourself and for Radley. That’s something to be proud of.”
    “I am. It’s taken me eight years, eight years to feel I’m really on solid ground again. Now there’s you.”
    “Now there’s me,” he said slowly, watching her. “And you just can’t get past the idea that I’ll pull the rug out from under you again.”
    “I don’t want to be that woman again.” She said the words desperately, searching for the answers even as she struggled to give them to him. “A woman who focuses all her needs and goals around someone else. If I found myself alone this time, I’m not sure I could stand up again.”
    “Listen to yourself. You’d rather be alone now than risk the fact that things might not work out for the next fifty years? Take a good look at me, Hester, I’m not Allan Wallace. I’m not asking you to bury yourself to make me happy. It’s the woman you are today who I love, the woman you are today who I want to spend my life with.”
    “People change, Mitch.”
    “And they can change together.” He drew a deep breath. “Or they can change separately. Why don’t you let me know when you make up your mind what you want to do?”
    She opened her mouth, then closed it again when he walked away. She didn’t have the right to call him back.
    ***
    He shouldn’t complain, Mitch thought as he sat at his new keyboard and toyed with the next scene in his script. The work was going better than he’d expected—and faster. It was becoming easy for him to bury himself in Zark’s problems and let his own stew.
    At this point, Zark was waiting by Leilah’s bedside, praying that she would survive the freak accident that had left her beauty intact but her brain damaged. Of course, when she awoke, she would be a stranger. His wife of two years would become his greatest enemy, her mind as brilliant as ever but warped and evil. All his plans and dreams would be shattered forever. Whole galaxies would be in peril.
    “You think you’ve got problems?” Mitch muttered. “Things aren’t exactly bouncing along for me, either.”
    Eyes narrowed, he studied the screen. The atmosphere was good, he thought as he tipped back. Mitch didn’t have any problem imagining a twenty-third-century hospital room. He didn’t have any trouble imagining Zark’s distress or the madness brewing in Leilah’s unconscious brain. What he did have trouble imagining was his life without Hester.
    “Stupid.” The dog at his feet yawned in agreement. “What I should do is go down to that damn bank and drag her out. She’d love that, wouldn’t she?” he said with a laugh as he pushed away from the machine and stretched. “I could beg.” Mitch rolled that around in his mind and found it uncomfortable. “I could, but we’d probably both be sorry. There’s not much left after reasoning, and I’ve tried that. What would Zark do?”
    Mitch rocked back on his heels and closed his eyes. Would