Lightfall Read Free Page A

shivered through her. He was gone before she could make a sign—some gesture of withdrawal, so he would always know she’d stayed to say good-bye. If only she had some moment of the past to give him back. Yet the years, it seemed, had fallen off a tree. The snow had bedded them deep, like sheets on summer furniture. She stood at the back door watching Tim go off. The air was smoked with his breathing, all the way to the barn. He backed his black car out and drove away. He receded like the far horizon, sweeping her out to sea.
    She must not linger. She must not care. She had to be on a plane at four o’clock. Except for this—her one tenacious deadline—the amnesia lay like cotton on her brain. As she reached a canvas suitcase down off the closet shelf, she understood she was not allowed to search out any memories. The details were all off limits, as well as the taking of souvenirs.
    When she passed her desk in the dining room she felt as if a wall of fire had sprung up out of the carpet, holding her at bay. In the hall behind the stairs, where the books rose floor to ceiling, she found she couldn’t recollect a single title. She picked up papers here and there—letters and lists and homework, strewn across the parlor. A blur had flared like a virus in her head till her finer vision was slightly off. The words wouldn’t hold together. The simplest phrases didn’t work anymore.
    She realized she was meant to pack for rainy weather. The outer gear—knee-high boots and a yellow slicker—took up all the room. There was hardly space left over for a heavy sweater and sheepskin vest. No fancy clothes required. No personal effects. Yet even here she would not give up the past without a fight. She found that when she happened on the odds and ends of this life—came on them incidentally, without the will to know—there occurred a moment’s break in the fog. As she went to get her checkbook out of a drawer beside the bed she uncovered a wrinkled calling card. She caught a quick glimpse as she turned away: Timothy Ammons, Rector, St. Andrew’s, Killingworth Common. Episcopal, it looked like.
    A few minutes later she stood in the bathroom, stocking a quilted bag with necessaries. Toothbrush, aspirin, soap, and a fistful of pills for any number of overnight conditions. She might have been planning a weekend jaunt. Turning to go, she noticed a pile of magazines on the ledge behind the toilet, Vogue on top. The mailing label on the cover was printed with her name: Dr. Iris Ammons.
    Doctor of what, she wondered. As she went to the bed to zip her suitcase, she cast about in her mind to figure what she had the power to heal. Her hands were numb; her aim was squeamish. She shied from sickness generally, as being too like death for comfort. Who’d ever pay good money to a doctor who was scared?
    The dog stuck close to her heels when she left the house. He seemed to think she’d let him come along. She found his air of expectation vaguely threatening. The wagging tail, the panting tongue—what was he anyway, some kind of spaniel? He scratched at the door of the station wagon as she slipped inside and started it. He appeared to have some notion she would need him.
    A wolf perhaps, or a red-eyed owl, but not this eunuch sentimental mutt. He clearly didn’t have it in him to go for the vitals. As she wheeled around the drive and picked up speed, he trotted close to the car. He gave a playful yap, still sure she was only kidding. Just at the last, she gunned the engine and swerved—so he had to scramble squealing out of the path of the racing wheel.
    She drove to town over roads she could have sworn she’d seen in photographs. She didn’t know how she knew the way, but this was sure: she would never be able to retrace it. She skirted a grove of birches, crested a hill, and saw the village square spread out below. That’s not it at all, she thought. Not what? She