Runaway

unfamiliar way. When she did, she became more frightened than she had been in all the nine miles. It was one thing to drive in unknown territory, another to turn in at the inn gates.
    He was awake when she got stopped in the parking lot. He didn’t show any surprise at where they were, or at what she had done. In fact, he told her, the honking had wakened him, miles back, but he had pretended to be still asleep, because the important thing was not to startle her. He hadn’t been worried, though. He knew she would make it.
    She asked if he was awake enough to drive now.
    “Wide-awake. Bright as a dollar.”
    He told her to slip her foot out of its sandal, and he felt and pressed it here and there before saying, “Nice. No heat. No swelling. Your arm hurt? Maybe it won’t.” He walked her to the door, and thanked her for her company. She was still amazed to be safely back. She hardly realized it was time to say good-bye.
    As a matter of fact she does not know to this day if those words were spoken, or if he only caught her, wound his arms around her, held her so tightly, with such continual, changing pressures that it seemed more than two arms were needed, that she was surrounded by him, his body strong and light, demanding and renouncing all at once, as if he was telling her she was wrong to give up on him, everything was possible, but then again that she was not wrong, he meant to stamp himself on her and go.
    Early in the morning, the manager knocked on the dormitory door, calling for Grace.
    “Somebody on the phone,” he said. “Don’t bother, they just wanted to know if you were here. I said I’d go and check. Okay now.”
    It would be Maury, she thought. One of them, anyway. But probably Maury. Now she’d have to deal with Maury.
    When she went down to serve breakfast—wearing her canvas shoes—she heard about the accident. A car had gone into a bridge abutment halfway down the road to Little Sabot Lake. It had been rammed right in, it was totally smashed and burned up. There were no other cars involved, and apparently no passengers. The driver would have to be identified by dental records. Or probably had been, by this time.
    “One hell of a way,” the manager said. “Better to go and cut your throat.”
    “It could’ve been an accident,” said the cook, who had an optimistic nature. “Could’ve just fell asleep.”
    “Yeah. Sure.”
    Her arm hurt now as if it had taken a wicked blow. She couldn’t balance her tray but had to carry it in front of her, using both hands.
    She did not have to deal with Maury face-to-face. He wrote her a letter.
    Just say he made you do it. Just say you didn’t want to go.
    She wrote back five words.
I did want to go.
She was going to add
I’m sorry,
but stopped herself.
    Mr. Travers came to the inn to see her. He was polite and businesslike, firm, cool, not unkind. She saw him now in circumstances that let him come into his own. A man who could take charge, who could tidy things up. He said that it was very sad, they were all very sad, but that alcoholism was a terrible thing. When Mrs. Travers was a little better he was going to take her on a trip, a vacation, somewhere warm.
    Then he said that he had to be going, many things to do. As he shook her hand good-bye he put an envelope into it.
    “We both hope you’ll make good use of this,” he said.
    The cheque was for one thousand dollars. Immediately she thought of sending it back or tearing it up, and sometimes even now she thinks that would have been a grand thing to do. But in the end, of course, she was not able to do it. In those days, it was enough money to insure her a start in life.

TRESPASSES

    They drove out of town around midnight—Harry and Delphine in the front seat and Eileen and Lauren in the back. The sky was clear and the snow had slid off the trees but had not melted underneath them or on the rocks that jutted out beside the road. Harry stopped the car by a bridge.
    “This’ll do.”
    “Somebody might see us stopped here,” Eileen said. “They might stop to check out what we’re up to.”
    He started to drive again. They turned onto the first little country road, where they all got out of the car and walked carefully down the bank, just a short way, among black lacy cedars. There was a slight crackle to the snow, though the ground underneath was soft and mucky. Lauren was still wearing her pajamas under her coat, but Eileen had made her put on her boots.
    “Okay here?”