Passing Through Midnight Read Free Page B

nails into
her palms as she chanted, "His name is Gil Howlett. He's a Kansas
farmer. He has two sons. He doesn't want to hurt me."

    Late that night, long after the boys and Matthew had gone
to bed, Gil Howlett stood at his bedroom window, staring at a small
grouping of lights almost a mile away. The view from the window was as
familiar to him as the face in the mirror every morning. He knew every
dark curve and crest in the night as well as he knew every ripple in
the land by day. The distant lights couldn't be coming from anywhere
other than the old Averback farmhouse.
    Didn't the woman ever sleep? he wondered. For weeks the
lights had burned until dawn. Or was there some reason for her to sleep
with the lights on all night?
    He'd heard the rumors about her. He'd seen the Illinois
license plates on the forest-green Porsche parked in the garage, and
he'd been told she was from Chicago. Frank Schulman was apparently the
only one to get a good look at her the morning she wandered into his
real estate office in town asking about a house to rent by the month. A
somewhat unusual request from a stranger, from anyone really, as most
of the souls in Colby were either passing through briefly or they were
staying for the long haul.
    Still, Frank had told her there were a few places to rent
in town. But she'd insisted on something out of town, narrowing the
choices even further. Frank said he'd tried not to stare or appear
shocked when she removed her dark glasses to look at his rental book.
But the plain fact was he couldn't help himself. He'd told Gil her face
looked like the White Sox had used it for batting practice.
    Lowering his gaze from the isolated lights, he sighed and
tossed his pants over the arm of his grandmother's rocking chair, as he
had nearly every night of his adult life.
    A mystery woman in Colby, Kansas, was news indeed, but it
wasn't going to be the first time he'd disappointed his neighbors with
his lack of information regarding the only woman within eight square
miles of him. As far as he was concerned all women were mysteries. He'd
been married twice and hadn't known either woman any better than he
knew the one across the way.
    He turned out the light and nestled down between the
blankets. The sheets were cold, and he missed having a woman beside him
to keep him warm. He missed whispering in the dark and the way a woman
smelled during sex. He missed thinking he was sharing something
important with someone who cared about him. He missed the sounds women
make when they're happy and contented. He missed…
    He punched his pillow twice to get it into the right shape
for sleeping. Thinking about women never did him any good. He could go
on for days with all the things he missed about a woman, but there
wasn't a snowball's chance in hell of him taking another one into his
bed… at least not until he met one he could understand.

TWO

    April showers were sure to bring May flowers, if they
didn't drown everything first. That week of rain in Kansas was like
forty days and forty nights of rain anywhere else. Day after day was
dark and gloomy and wet, and though the radio weatherman didn't sound
too alarmed, Dorie spent one entire morning drawing plans for an ark.
    It was amazing the things she found to occupy her time.
    Still not ready to face life beyond the walls of the old
Averback farmhouse, and extremely tired of limping, she started
climbing the stairs to the second floor five and six times a day,
turning around and coming back down again.
    With no inclination toward making plans for a future and a
healthy aversion to housekeeping, she'd left most of the furniture in
the house under dustcovers. But on occasion, she would uncover a desk
or a trunk or an old toy box and explore the contents.
    The Averbacks had had three children—two sons
and a daughter—and were avid hunters. The boys played high
school sports, and one later joined the service. The daughter went to
college at KSU. One of the children had produced