Olympus: It's Not Just a Game

Chapter 36

           

It was a long drive through the night to Boston, made faster by Mr. Huber's late model car and radar detector.  Wheeler sacked out in the back, but Mrs. Morrison sat bolt upright in the passenger seat.  She gulped as he threaded his way through the herds of tractor-trailers. It was late – far too late for her to be awake – but she couldn't sleep. Each time she closed her eyes, her mind replayed the accident that had taken Wheeler's legs.  Ss she tried to make conversation.  "What are you going to do with Karl when you find him?"

            "Tell him what a fool he's been," snorted Mr. Huber.

            Mrs. Morrison raised her eyebrows.  "Do you know why he ran away?" she probed.

            "Because he's a fool," Mr. Huber barked.

            Mrs. Morrison pulled out her hand bag and flipped down the cosmetic mirror on the sun visor.  She studiously applied mascara to her long lashes.  "I take you two don't get on that well," she continued cautiously.

            "We get on great," Karl's father snapped.  "I tell him what to do, and he does it."  Mrs. Morrison shot herself a skeptical glance in the mirror.  "Well, most of the time we get on great," Mr. Huber hedged.

            "What about his mother?" Mrs. Morrison asked.  "Does he listen to her?"

            There was silence.  Mrs. Morrison glanced cautiously at his face.  It was pale.  "Painful subject, is it?" she apologized.  Mr. Huber merely nodded.  Mrs. Morrison was embarrassed, and babbled on to hide it.  "I've got one of those painful subjects, myself," she confessed.  "Mine left me with a sixty thousand dollar debt.  How about yours?"

            "Mine left me with a hospital bill and the funeral expenses," Mr. Huber answered, fiercely.  "Lenore didn't leave me.  She was taken."

            "Oh my gosh!  I'm sorry," she said, flustered.  "I assumed you were divorced."  His jaws clenched and he stared ahead up the road.  She wondered what to say.  "When did it happen?"

            "When the boys were eight," he answered.  He struggled with emotions.  "None of this would have happened, if she had been here.  Ever since—you know—it's been different."

            He was not a man who talked about his feelings, but she drew him out.  She felt the pain of the little boy who had been a stranger in a strange land.  She tasted his bitterness toward his father, who put his Moravian faith ahead of his family until the night the secret police had taken him away.  She knew his fierce joy as he fought his way through school and forced his way into life.  And her heart beat faster as his voice grew soft – for the first time – when he mentioned the name, "Lenore."

            "Was that her?" Sheila asked.  "Their mother?"

            "Yes," Mr. Huber breathed softly.  "She's the one."  Then the present returned, and a cloud shadowed his face.  "She was the one," he corrected.

            "I'm sorry," Sheila Morrison whispered.

            "Don't be," he blurted.  He looked over at her, a little surprised at himself.  "Thank you for listening."

            There was a pause; not an uncomfortable one, just a pause.  Finally, he asked, "What about you?"

            She grimaced.  "Not a romantic story, I'm afraid," she answered.  "I didn't come over on the boat, but my parents did.  I grew up in Brighton.  That's part of Boston—the real part, where the real people live.  Everybody on my street went to the same parochial school and most of us were related, one way or another."  She smiled at that memory.  "I was going to be a paralegal and was taking courses at nights.  Then I got into the party scene, and started hanging out with folks across the river."  She looked at him, but he seemed vague on Boston geography.  "You know, Cambridge.  Harvard.  MIT."