THE CLOUDS WERE GONE. Stars spangled the black sky. Anne stared at their patterns, looking for answers, finding none.
A car pulled very very slowly into the parking lot. A car she knew very well. She knew every ripple of the corduroy upholstery and every scratch on the crimson finish. Con’s car.
At the foot of the steps, the car idled. She stood still. Con saw her. A full minute later he turned off the ignition, got out of the car, and slowly walked up the steps toward her. Anne looked at him. She was so drained of emotion that she felt none, looking at him, and no expression crossed her face because there was no feeling left in her heart.
“You don’t have a coat on,” Con said to her. “It’s freezing out here. Why are you standing outside without your coat?”
She didn’t answer. He pulled his own jacket off and draped it over her shoulders. She didn’t react. “Are you waiting for your mother?” he said. “Did you call her?”
She shook her head.
“Well, stand inside. You’re going to die of hypothermia.” He walked her inside the school and the warmth hit her. Now she realized how cold she was. She looked at her hands: transparently blue, trembling. Con took them in his own and began to rub them. She watched the friction of their hands.
After a while Anne looked into his eyes, trying to see past the dark pools of iris into the mind that made Con drive back. His eyes told her nothing. She looked away.
Con drew a deep breath and stopped rubbing her hands. He simply pressed them between his own, as if they were both praying. “I’m sorry.”
She nodded. “Me, too.”
He couldn’t seem to think of anything to add. He didn’t touch her in his old way, either. He stood apart, and when he began rubbing the still-cold hands again, it was more like a medic with a stranger.
Inside the school, down the hall, they heard the music spring to life. Moments later the television crew rushed down the same hall, elbowing Anne and Con out of the way in their rush to get to the studio on time. Anne had never seen them to start with and barely saw them now. Con saw, but could not fathom what a tv crew could be doing at the school and forgot them the instant he looked back at Anne.
“I’m sorry,” he said again.
“Once I broke a piece of my mother’s wedding crystal, and I said ‘I’m sorry’ and she said ‘Being sorry doesn’t make the crystal whole.’”
Con swallowed. “Okay. Okay. You threw it at me so fast I couldn’t think. I couldn’t believe I had to handle that in front of everybody I’ve ever known. I just had to get out of there. I’m sorry, Anne. I really am.”
Is he sorry he walked out of the dance? Sorry I told him so quickly? Sorry I’m pregnant? Sorry he has to get involved? Anne thought, I will have to interrogate him to know, and I don’t have the strength.
Con had never seen Anne like this. Stunned. Cold inside as well as outside. “I’ll drive you home, Anne,” he said finally. “I don’t—I don’t want any part of this. I want it not to be. But—but okay. I’ll go home with you. I’ll be there when you tell your mother.”
Anne looked at him again and narrowed her eyes trying to focus on him. But she couldn’t see him clearly. She shivered.
“Okay,” he said, drawing a deep breath. “Okay. We’ll tell your mother.”
She tilted her head slightly and the beginnings of a slight smile touched her lips. “You’re pretty brave, fella.”
“Yeah. That’s me. Pure raw courage.”
“I like that in a man.”
“Let’s go, then. Let’s get it over with.”
“No,” said Anne Stephens. “I don’t want to go. We’ve missed the whole dance. I want to go back to the dance.”
It was Con’s turn to freeze. “Anne,” he said, dreading the sentence he had to speak, “they all know in there. There was gossip starting when I left. Molly started it. I guess she heard you telling Kip about it. There’s not a person in the cafeteria that doesn’t know.”
Nothing could have amazed Con more than Anne’s sudden happy smile. “Really? I thought it was Kip. I thought Kip told.”
“No. Kip wouldn’t do this to us. Molly started the rumor.”
Anne’s smile faded. “Oh, it’s a rumor now?” she said in a hard voice.
Oh, Con thought, and we have her mother and grandmother to go. “No. It’s not a rumor. You’re pregnant and I walked away from it. Left you here alone.” The muscle began twitching in his cheek again. He tried to relax, letting go of each muscle the way they learned in gym, but it didn’t work. The muscle twitched involuntarily.
And after I face her family, I have to face mine, he thought. He knew what his mother and father would say. Con, we trusted you absolutely. We gave you freedom in which to be responsible. And look what you’ve done. …
Anne’s chin lifted. “I don’t care what everybody is thinking. We’re going back in there and dance the last dance, Con. Together.”
He would rather have fought a world war with his bare hands. Five hundred kids in there, all quoting Molly who described him—rightly—as the rat who abandoned Anne?
“Okay,” he said. His stomach knotted like chicken wire. Calm down, he told himself. You’re walking in together. She had to walk out of there alone. Con put his arm around her, feeling very shy, as if Anne were a woman he had never met. “You warm enough now?” he said, because temperature was a safe topic.
“I’m okay.”
They walked toward the cafeteria door.
The muscle in his cheek throbbed until his jaw hurt.
Anne leaned on him.
Con seriously considered picking her up bodily and hauling her to the car. The car! “The car,” he said happily, “is not in a real parking space. We have to go move it. And since we’re moving it anyway, we might as well just drive on to your—”
“So we get a parking ticket. Big deal. What’s a ticket at a time like this?”
“Right,” said Con, who was having to take such deep breaths his own breathing winded him. My parents told me one more ticket and they’d ground me, he thought. That’ll be the pits. I’m the father of this baby, I’m the rat who abandoned her, and I also don’t have a car to drive.
He swung open the door to escort her in and it was the most difficult motion in his life. Walking away was a snap. Staying was pretty grim.
Everybody was dancing. Good. They’d be too busy to look up. Anne and Con could just slide along the wall, hopping over the apple barrels and the—
But they were not too busy to look up. Sue and Jimmy looked up, Bob and Jennie, Gary and Beth Rose, Kip and Roddy.
“You had to do this to me,” Con said. “You had to give me an audience.”
“I’m sorry. Bad timing. I couldn’t help it. I was going insane and I split apart at the wrong moment.
“Next time tell me sooner.”
“Next time?” she snorted. “If you think there’s going to be a next time, you’re out of your mind!”
He laughed. It was a real laugh, and so was Anne’s. He kissed her, and it was a real kiss, and so was hers. “I love you, Anne,” he whispered.
She began to cry.
“Oh, no, don’t cry on me!” he begged.
“I’m not,” she whispered back. “I’m really laughing.”
“Then why are there tears running down your cheeks?” he murmured.
“You’re fibbing,” she said. “There aren’t any.”
He wiped them away with his right hand and held her chin lightly the way he often did before a kiss. “You’re right,” he said. “There aren’t any.”
They had gotten halfway across the room and reached the edge of the dancers. Con prayed the music wouldn’t stop. He could not talk to a single person right now and that included Anne. The music was fast, which was bad, because he could hardly move, let alone dance fast.
“Wish it was a slow one,” he mumbled to Anne. He was out of breath, as if they’d climbed into the cafeteria.
“So we’ll dance slow.” She leaned on him and they danced slow, paying no attention to the drums that whipped the rest along. He was glad they were the same height because her golden hair partially shielded his face, and when he saw kids looking at him, he simply moved her fractionally to the side, and her hair gave him privacy from the stares.
“First test,” Anne said to him.
Con groaned. “Out of how many?”
“I don’t know. I’m trying not to think that far ahead.”
The music stopped.
Gary and Beth Rose walked over. Con felt panicky. Gary said, “You missed a good pumpkin fight, Con. I was the one who got to shovel it all up, ankle deep in pumpkin pulp.”
“Kip give you a medal?” Con asked.
“No, but I got a pat on the back and that’s something from Kip.” Gary talked about the power blackout Con had missed. The tv crew, and Emily and Matt’s rescue of the dying stranger. Con was able to look only at Gary, and not see the rest of the kids, and Anne was able to look only at Beth Rose.
The music began again and after that it was easier.
Beth Rose wondered if Gary knew how many gifts he had given that evening. Had he seen that he gave Emily a breather so she wouldn’t have to talk into a terrifying microphone? Had he seen that he gave Beth herself a moment to cherish all her life—a moment of being utterly irresistible and beautiful? Had he planned to rescue Con from a whole room of curiosity seekers?
She had a sense that Gary was kind unawares. That he had a knack for doing nice things without noticing himself doing them. Perhaps that was the definition of charity: to do good without ordering yourself to do it.
“You keep doing this to me,” Gary said.
“What?” Beth Rose asked.
“Just standing there in a daydream when I want to dance.”
“I’m sorry.”
“It doesn’t matter. I’m used to it now. Doesn’t throw me.”
We’re getting used to each other, she thought. Does that mean something? Do I dare read something into that?