Night.
Back in the hotel room they didn’t talk. Not about Charlie Rutherford, nor about Shining City or what it might mean. That was for later. Keller turned off the lamp and they lay together in the darkness. Finally, her voice searching for him, she said, “I’m scared.”
She felt his gaze. Felt his touch on her. She closed her eyes.
“I’ll protect you,” Keller whispered.
He kissed her. She had a thought that it was ending. It had already ended, perhaps, on the night she walked into Aldiss’s classroom for the first time. Something would happen that would tear them apart. It was like driving a car in the dark, the feeling that something was plunging at them but they just couldn’t see what it was. Then Keller was touching her and Alex closed her eyes and gave in. Let go. He was the first man to have done this, to have gotten this far, this deep: here, then, it all flipped inside out. The guilt, the fear that she wasn’t doing something with what she had learned, that two girls were dead and she still hadn’t figured out why—it turned itself to a sharpness, an electric kind of pain, and she held on to him and lost herself completely.
I love you, she said when they were finished. She wasn’t sure if she’d said it aloud but Keller pulled her closer nonetheless. He too saw that object in the distance. He knew what was bound to happen when the morning came and the night class ended, and so he held her. He held her but gently, cautiously.
* * *
She slept. She did not dream of Aldiss, but when she awoke in the postdawn gray, she felt as if he’d been there in that room. Guiding her. Pushing her. She slipped out of bed, gently enough to not wake Keller, and said to herself, Okay. Okay, Professor, I hear you.
* * *
Alex started the car and let the heat rush over her face. She wasn’t totally awake. Not yet. She’d spent the past few hours thinking, debating whether or not to go back to the house on Olive Street. After they left Shining City she wanted to return there, but it had been late. Keller felt it was too dangerous. There were too many unanswered questions, he thought, too many loose threads.
But no. Alex knew that was wrong. So many questions had been answered now.
She had dressed and showered, returned to the room and stared at Keller. He slept peacefully. It was just before seven in the morning. When are you going to tell him? she thought. When are you going to show him the book you found in the library?
But she wasn’t ready. Alex was learning something about herself that maybe Aldiss had known all along. She wanted to win. She felt like the night class was hers. Hers and hers alone. The only way she could truly finish the class was to exhaust every angle. To go back to where she knew Aldiss was leading her. To return to Olive Street.
Alone.