Necessity

  Now then. Any other possibilities? Somebody over there in the coffee shop watching through the window?

  Come on. Caution’s one thing. Paranoia’s another. Like the man said, you’ve got to learn to trust. Trust people and trust your instincts.

  Given the vagaries of the postal service I wonder when that $30,000 will arrive at Doug’s house in Birmingham. I expect his wife will be a little surprised. She’s already asked a thousand questions, you know. While he heals he’ll tell her the truth and it’ll sound outlandishly far-fetched.

  Well Mrs. Hershey will just have to trust him, won’t she.

  She opens the window and switches off the engine and the air conditioner. Then she gathers up the baby.

  “Christ, you’re getting to weigh a ton, you know that?”

  Ellen replies with a sequence of cryptic noises.

  She carries the baby across the field and hesitates outside the door. The rumble of his voice penetrates through from inside; she can’t make out the words but the timbre is as precisely identifiable as a telegrapher’s fist. She pushes inside. He has his profile to her and his feet up against the wall; he’s on the phone but he looks around to see who just came in and all the planes and angles of his face sort themselves into a whole new arrangement as if a kaleidoscope had been turned.

  “I’ll call you back.” He hangs up. Drops his feet off the wall and swivels to face her and thinks about getting up out of the chair.

  For a long interval he sits that way, poised, staring at her, and it’s hard to credit but there are tears welling in Charlie’s eyes.

  She says, “I want you to meet my daughter.”

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  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  copyright © 1984 by Brian Garfield

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