Darkheart

The Present: Fish & Chips

"My sister died when she was twenty-three." Jeremiah said it apropos of nothing, as casually as if he were talking about what he wanted to order for dessert.

Kai took it in stride, helped herself to another calm bite of her meatless burger and waited for him to say more.

"It was leukemia. She'd had it since she was about ten. Practically broke my mom to find out she was sick, being only a few years after my dad had his accident." The man stared down at his half-eaten fried cod, smothered in tartar sauce, and felt suddenly ill. "I'm just telling you because you're about to meet her soon. My mom, that is, not my sister." He laughed awkwardly. "That'd be . . . that'd be weird. Not to mention impossible."

"Mmm hmm." Kai chewed delicately. She did everything delicately, perfectly, like some sort of nymph plucked out of a Greek myth. She sat across from Jeremiah, smooth brown arms extending from the sleeves of a thin T-shirt through which her braless nipples were defined. He knew what all of her looked like at that point, as free and comfortable as she was with her body. They'd put up in various motels along their road trip, and Kai felt no qualms whatsoever in stripping down for a shower right in front of him or in sleeping naked. Jeremiah knew he should've been salivating, that any normal man would've felt blessed to bear witness to that woman's lithe, nude form, but his relationship with bodies in general was far too complicated to allow himself any sort of sexual attraction to one so obviously close to perfection. A few times, he'd allowed his mind to stray, imagined Kai's form in strange positions, twisting and straining, and he'd been mortified when his anatomy had reacted, then. He'd had to get control of his thoughts or risk shaming himself, so he'd learned to find distraction when she was attending to herself in the buff. As of yet, the woman hadn't seemed to notice his discomfort with her self-display,

Jeremiah picked up a french fry and poked at the pile of ketchup on his plate. Why was this woman even with him? She'd told him things, about having nothing else to do, about feeling as if she were meant to help him, and though he'd stopped asking her, he still wondered. He certainly wouldn't have given up everything for a neurotic mess like himself. The cynic in him questioned whether her intentions had to do with money; he had, after all, pretty much emptied his bank account to return to Port Killdeer, and he was the one paying for the gas and the motels and the food. But the reality was that he didn't have much money at all--Kai knew that as well as he did--so she couldn't be hoping to get anything from him. And she couldn't be hoping for some sort of family money, either, because he'd been up front about the sort of place Port Killdeer was, the sort of town.

He hadn't been up front about the resort, though. He'd been keeping that to himself, fearful, perhaps, that she'd leave him if she knew. And as stubborn as he was in admitting it, Kai was the only thing keeping him together at that point.

"I haven't told you everything, yet, about why I'm going back."

"I know, love. When you're ready."

"But we'll be there in a couple of days. Don't you even care what you're getting into?" He rubbed at his eye, pulled an orange eyelash out of it. "I can't believe you're--"

"Wait!" Kai clutched at his hand as he made to flick the lash away. Closing her eyes for a moment, she reopened them and blew the hair off his finger, sending it to whatever afterlife airborne eyelashes ended up in.

Looking first at his half-eaten meal as if wondering whether the lash had gone there, Jeremiah then glanced back up into Kai's large brown eyes. She was smiling at him.

"What were you saying?"

"I--" But he was put off by the eyelash thing. He slumped back against the booth. "Listen, Kai, I don't think I've really come to terms yet with our situation. I've liked having you along--really--but I'm probably never going to leave Port Killdeer, once we get there. I just need you to know that. So if you want to go at any time, back to Chicago or somewhere else, I will understand completely, all right? I can get you a plane ticket, maybe go to the airport when we drive through Detroit. We can drop you there. Trust me--Port Killdeer . . . it's no place for you."