Northern Lights

stayed, but he'd never settled.
    She'd resented him for that. Resented Meg. How could she do otherwise? She wasn't built to do otherwise. She'd been the one to work, hadn't she? To make sure there was food on the table and a roof over their heads.
    And she knew, when he'd gone off, to pick up jobs, to take a break, to climb his damn mountains, that he'd gone to whores.
    Men wanted her. She could make any man want her. And the only one she really wanted had gone to whores.
    What were his mountains but other whores? Cold, white whores that had seduced him away from her? Until he'd stayed inside one and left her alone.
    But she'd survived, hadn't she? She'd done better than survive. She'd found what she wanted here. Most of what she wanted.
    She had money now. She had her place. She had men, young, hard bodies in the night.
    So why was she so unhappy?
    She didn't like to think long thoughts, to look inside herself and worry about what she'd find there. She liked to live. To move, to keep in motion. You didn't have to think when you were dancing.
    She turned, vaguely irritated by the knock on her door. "Come on in."
    She smoothed her face out, and the sultry smile was automatic when she saw John. "Well, hi there, good-looking. School out? It's that late already?" She patted her hair as she looked at her desk. "And here I've been daydreaming, wasting the day away. I'm going to have to get out there and see what Big Mike's whipping up for tonight's special."
    "I need to talk to you, Charlene."
    "Sure, honey. I've always got time for you. I'll make us some tea, and we'll get all cozy."
    "No, don't."
    "Baby, you look all frowny and serious." She crossed to him and skimmed a finger down each of his cheeks. "Of course you know I love when you're serious. It's so sexy."
    "Don't," he said again and took her hands.
    "Is something wrong?" Her fingers tightened on his like wires. "Oh God, is someone—something else—dead around here? I don't think I can take it. I don't think I can stand it."
    "No. It's nothing like that." He let go of her hands, eased back a step. "I wanted to tell you, I'll be leaving at the end of the semester."
    "You're taking a vacation? You're going to be taking a trip just when Lunacy's at its best?"
    "I'm not taking a vacation. I'm leaving."
    "What're you talking about? Leave? For good? That's just nonsense, John." The flirty smile faded, and something hot and sharp stabbed in her belly. "Where would you go? What would you do?"
    "There are a lot of places I haven't seen, a lot of things I haven't done. I'll see them. I'll do them."
    She felt her heart sink as she looked up into his dependable face. The ones who matter, her mind whispered, leave you. "John, you live here. You work here."
    "I'll live and I'll work somewhere else."
    "You can't just . . . why? Why are you doing this?"
    "I should've done it years ago, but you get into the drift. Float your life away. Nate came to see me at school last week. Some of the things he said made me think, made me look back over . . . too many years."
    She wanted to find her anger, the sort that pushed her to shout, to break things. The sort that swept her clean. But there was only dull worry. "What does Nate have to do with this?"
    "He's the change. Or the rock in the stream that caused the change. You drift, Charlene, like water in a stream, and maybe you don't notice as much as you should what's going by."
    He touched her hair, then dropped his hand again. "Then a stone drops into the stream, and it disrupts. It changes things. Maybe a little, maybe a lot. But nothing's quite the same again."
    "I never know what you're talking about when you go on like that." She pouted as she turned around and kicked at her desk, and the gesture made him smile. "Water and rocks and streams. What does that have to do with you coming in here like this and telling me you're leaving. You're going away. Don't you even care how I feel?"
    "Entirely too much for my own good. I loved you the first minute I saw you. You knew it."
    "But not anymore."
    "Yes, then, now, all the years between. I loved you when you were with another man. And when he was gone, I thought, Now, she'll come to me. And you did. To my bed, at least. You let me have your body, but you married someone else. Even knowing I loved you, you married someone else."
    "I had to do what was right for me. I had to be practical." She did throw something now—a little crystal swan. But its destruction gave her no satisfaction. "I