LITMIR.BIZ

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A deep sigh escaped him. “Hell must be something like this.” He pushed the beer aside. “I’m going down to Elizabeth City. See you tomorrow.”

      “You want to take my car?”

      Marcus shrugged. “Thanks, but I’d better take the train.”

      An hour later, Marcus sat in Jacob Graham’s living room questioning him about Amanda. “Her suggestion stunned me. She doesn’t know anything about me, except that she saw me here twice and yet she makes this preposterous offer. I shouldn’t mention this to you, and I doubt I’ll do it, but as things stand now I have to give it some thought.” Marcus couldn’t think of a reason for his friend’s smile and happy mood. He frowned. “Am I to think you’re enjoying this, Jacob?” The smile dissolved into a grin.

      “Yes, I suppose I am. This is precisely the solution I wanted to propose, but you seemed to find it preposterous that anything involving Amanda would interest you. She’s a fine woman, and she’ll honor any commitment. You could do much worse.”

      He spent the next day reviewing his options and concluded that he didn’t have any. At six o’clock that evening, he forced himself to smile and walked into the intensive care room that had been his little daughter’s home for more than a year. At least, she was out of danger now. She would live, but would she ever walk? Her multitude of internal injuries had been repaired, and the web of tubes that for months had reminded him of the frailty of her life had been removed—the last one just that day—and he was thankful. But he wanted his child to be whole, to be like other children. The nurses had propped her up in bed, combed her hair and plaited it with two big yellow bows. Sometimes he thought the doctors and nurses on Amy’s ward ministered to him as carefully as they did to her. He leaned over to hug her and caught a whiff of a lovely, feminine scent. She smiled brilliantly, as if she knew he needed cheering.

      “Hi, Daddy. Tomorrow, I’m going to be in a room with other children. I don’t have to be by myself anymore.”

      “That’s wonderful. Maybe you’ll make some little friends.” He gathered his child into his arms and hugged her again. He had to do his best for her. The poor child had been in that bed so long that she’d forgotten what living in a real home with him was like. He thought about Amanda and her crazy scheme. He couldn’t, wouldn’t marry again. Marriage as he knew it was hell, and he would challenge anyone to prove differently. I can’t go that route again: I won’t. There has to be another way, he told himself.

      “Am I going to get a wheelchair like Brenda and Terry, Daddy? The nurse brought them to see me today in their new chairs.”

      Marcus crushed the child to him. “I don’t know, baby. We’ll see.” He held her until she was asleep and then slipped quickly past the nurses’ station to avoid a discussion of the inevitable. Four years old and already inured to pain and discomfort as a way of life. He let a tear roll down his face untouched. Too drained to make the trip back to Portsmouth, he decided to spend the night with his friends, Jack and Myrna Culpepper.

      He hadn’t meant to unload his dilemma on his friends. It poured out of him: his child’s health or his freedom.

      Flabbergasted, Jack stared at Marcus. “My God, man, don’t look a gift horse in the mouth. This is the answer to our prayers. It’s not ’til death do us part, man. It’s just a year out of your life, and you get more of your problems solved than the money for Amy’s operation.”

      “I’d like to know what they are,” Marcus said, losing his taste for the discussion. “What is so good about being bought by a woman for a year? It’s one thing to borrow money and another thing entirely to barter yourself. I have never been beholden to others. And since Helena, I’ve been careful not to owe any woman anything. You get screwed even if you don’t owe them. Until Amy’s accident, I didn’t owe one penny. I don’t like being indebted to anybody, much less to a woman in whose house I would be living and who, for whatever reason, would bear my name.” Myrna sat on the floor between her husband’s knees and turned to face their long-time friend, whom she regarded with sisterly affection.

      “Look,” Jack explained, “if you stay with her, you’ll be right here in Caution near Amy and won’t have that four-hour daily and expensive commute from Portsmouth. You can lease your house in Portsmouth for the year, and the income will cover the mortgage you put on it. And you can visit the factory from time to time, which is about as often as you get there these days, anyway.”

      Marcus stopped pacing and sat down. He hadn’t thought about Amanda’s problem and, suddenly, he did. “Please don’t mention any of this. I wouldn’t like to see her hurt more. As it is, she has a rough time ahead. If it’s all right with you I’m going to call Portsmouth, talk to my brother and turn in.”

      Luke Hickson listened to his younger brother’s story about Amanda and her offer. Marcus had always looked up to Luke and would be the first to acknowledge his brother’s sobering influence. He knew that he could be hotheaded at times and stubborn, and he valued Luke’s judgment. He told himself to be open-minded.

      “She needs you just as much as you need her,” Luke told him. “Sounds to me like the hand of Providence working here. Not all women are like Helena. The very fact that she wants the child and plans to have it is a major difference. Don’t forget that.” How could he? It was the reason for his divorce. Helena had blithely informed him that she wasn’t having their second baby after all and that it was a fait accompli, a done deed, giving him no choice. And then she’d left him and Amy. But he had wanted no more of her and would never forget the pain that she’d caused him.

      “Thanks, Luke. I’ll keep you posted.” He hung up. A man shouldn’t be faced with such choices; he was damned if he did and damned if he didn’t.

      The following evening, Amanda sat on her upstairs back porch looking over at the Albemarle Sound that had been a part of her life ever since she knew herself. She had stopped by the Caution Point Public Library after leaving school and collected books on the North Carolina and Virginia coast towns. Her heart wasn’t in it, but a week had passed and she hadn’t heard from Marcus, so she had to start looking for a new home. Amanda hated the thought of leaving the place where she belonged, where people knew her name and she could distinguish the churches by the ring of their bells, knew the cracks in the sidewalk, the names of the dogs that barked at night and which trees had broken limbs. She would have to move; she couldn’t expect the ultraconservative citizens of Caution Point to accept unwed motherhood from the principal of their junior high school. After all, a lot of people thought it disgraceful that fifty-six-year-old Minnie Carleton, a spinster, had gotten married. A woman in her position wasn’t supposed to think of such things.

      Amanda leafed idly through a book on the outer banks of North Carolina, listening to the swirling waters of the Albemarle Sound. She couldn’t contemplate life without it, but she knew she would have to leave if Marcus Hickson turned her down. And he might; the idea didn’t seem to have found any favor with him. But she was betting on his love for that girl, a love that she sensed was strong enough to force him to do things he didn’t want to do.

      She sniffed the air with pleasure as scents of the roasting herbed chicken, buttermilk biscuits and apple pie baking in the oven wafted up. She sat on a low hassock, and when the cool April breeze worried her bare toes, she pulled the burnt orange caftan that she wore down to cover them. She loved the color orange, because it flattered her smooth brown complexion. The wall supported her back, comforting her because it was familiar. And she needed, loved, to have familiar people, things and places around her. But for how long? The telephone ring broke into her thoughts, and her heart seemed to drop to her middle as it had with every ring since she’s encountered Marcus at the hospital cafeteria the previous week. She raced to her bedroom.

      “Hello.” That nervous squeak couldn’t be her voice.

      “Hello, Amanda. This is Marcus Hickson. If you’re not busy, I’d like to come over.” She felt shivers rush through her at the sound of his rich baritone.

      “When?” she asked, nervous and excited.

      “Now,

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