Mirror Image

to absorb the endless hours. She hadn’t been exaggerating when she had told Tate all those weeks earlier that she needed something constructive to do. She wasn’t accustomed to inactivity. On the other hand, she seemed to lack the energy to motivate herself into doing anything more than staring into space and worrying about him.
    She watched the evening news every night, anxiously looking for the gray-haired man in the crowd shots. Irish would wonder why she hadn’t accompanied Tate on this trip, so she had called him from a public phone booth in Kerrville and explained about the abortion crisis.
    “His advisers, starting with Eddy, recommended that I stay behind. I’m a pariah now.”
    “Even to Rutledge?”
    “To an extent, yes. He’s as polite as ever, but there’s a definite chill there.”
    “I’ve heard of political experts like Wakely and Foster. They give a command and Rutledge barks, is that it?”
    “They give a command, Tate snarls at them, then barks.”
    “Hmm, well, I’ll notify Van and tell him to keep his eye out for that guy you seem to think is significant.”
    “I
know
he’s significant. Tell Van to call me the instant he spots him.”
    “If he does.”
    Apparently he hadn’t, because Van hadn’t called. But all the news stories broadcast by KTEX featured at least one crowd shot. Van was sending her a message. Gray Hair wasn’t in the crowds surging around Tate.
    That did little to relieve Avery’s anxiety, however. She wanted to be beside Tate to see for herself that he was in no imminent danger. At night she experienced graphic visions of him dying a bloody death. During the day, when she wasn’t involved with Mandy, she wandered restlessly through the rooms of the house.
    “Still in the dumps?”
    Avery raised her head. Nelson had come into the living room without her hearing him. “Does it show?” she asked with a wan smile.
    “Plain as day.” He lowered himself into one of the easy chairs.
    “Admittedly, I haven’t been very good company lately.”
    “Missing Tate?”
    The family’s subtle snubbing had made the time pass even more slowly. It had been a little over a week since Tate had left. It seemed eons.
    “Yes, Nelson, I miss him terribly. I suppose you find that hard to believe. Zee does. She’ll barely look at me.”
    He stared straight into her eyes, hard enough and incisively enough to make her squirm. He said, “That abortion business was hideous.”
    “I had no intention of anyone ever finding out.”
    “Except Tate.”
    “Well, he had to know, didn’t he?”
    “Did he? Was the baby his?”
    She hesitated for only a second. “Yes.”
    “And you wonder why we aren’t feeling too kindly toward you?” he asked. “You destroyed our grandbaby. I find that impossible to forgive, Carole. You know how Zee feels about Tate. Did you expect her to embrace you for what you did?”
    “No.”
    “Being the kind of mother she’s been to the boys, she can’t imagine doing what you did. Frankly, neither can I.”
    Avery glanced down at the photo album that was spread open over her lap. The pictures she had been looking at when he had come in were from early years. Zee was very young and very beautiful. Nelson looked dashing and handsome in his air force blues. Jack and Tate were pictured as youngsters in various stages. They typified the all-American family.
    “It couldn’t have been easy for Zee when you went to Korea.”
    “No, it wasn’t,” he said, settling more comfortably into his chair. “I had to leave her alone with Jack, who was just a baby.”
    “Tate was born after the war, right?”
    “Just after.”
    “He was still a baby when you moved to New Mexico,” she said, consulting the album again, hoping he would elaborate on the few bare facts she knew through painstaking investigation.
    “That’s where the air force sent me, so that’s where I went,” Nelson said. “Desolate place. Zee hated the desert and the dust. She also hated the work I was doing. In those days, test pilots were disposable commodities.”
    “Like your friend Bryan Tate.”
    His features softened, as though he was mentally reliving good times. Then, sadly, he shook his head. “It was like losing one of the family. I gave up test piloting after that. My heart just wasn’t in it anymore, and if your heart’s not in it, you can get killed quicker. Maybe that’s what happened with Bryan. Anyway, I didn’t want to die. There was still too much I wanted to