He kept one arm around her as they walked into the living room with its
blazing fire. He said, "Sorry. Mother wanted to talk."
"Is she terribly worried about me?" Eve asked. Her face, in inquiry, was
like a half-opened rose.
Coulter hesitated, then replied, "I think so, darling. She was afraid
your stock had gone to seed. I had to remind her that your great, great,
great grandfather outranked mine."
The odd, in her case beautiful, blankness of fear smoothed Eve's
forehead. She said, her voice low, her eyes not meeting his, "Yesterday
you'd never have noticed what she was thinking."
"Yesterday?" He forced her to look at him. "Yesterday I was another
man--a whole twenty-four hours younger." He added the last hastily, so
as not to rouse suspicion. Eve, he both knew at once and remembered, was
highly sensitive, intuitively brilliant.
"I know," she said simply, and for the second time since the amazing
transformation of the afternoon he felt the tight grip of terror.
Watching her as she turned from him and began to stoke the fire, he
wondered just what she did know.
The album rested on the table against the back of the sofa in front of
the fireplace. It was a massive leather-and-parchment tome, with
imitation medieval brass clasps and hinges. He opened it carelessly,
seeking reassurance in idle action.
He flipped the pages idly, in bunches. There was Eve, a lacy little
moppet, held in the arms of her drunkard farming father. A sort of local
mad-Edison whose inventions never worked or, if they did, were promptly
stolen from him by more profit-minded promoters. Her brother Jim,
sturdy, cowlicked, squinting into the sun, stood at his father's knee.
He wondered what had happened to Jim but didn't dare ask. Presumably he
should know since Jim shared the house with his sister and an ancient
housekeeper, doubtless long since asleep.
He flipped more pages, came to a snapshot of Eve in a bathing suit at
Lake Tahoe. Bill Something-or-other, Lincolnville High School football
hero of five years before, had an arm around Eve's slim, wool-covered
waist. Two-piece suits and bikinis were still a long way in the future.
He said, "What's become of Bill?"
She said, "Don't you remember? He was killed in that auto crash coming
home from the city last year." There was an odd questing flatness in her
voice.
Coulter remembered the incident now, of course. There had been a girl in
the car, who had been disfigured for life. Plastic surgery, like
bikinis, still lay well ahead. He and Eve had begun going together right
after that accident....
Something about Eve's tone, some urgency, disturbed him. He looked at
her quickly. She was standing by the fireplace, watching him, watching
him as if he were doing something important. The fright within him
renewed itself. Quickly he turned back to the album, flipped further
pages.
He was close to the end of the album. What he saw was a newspaper
clipping, a clipping showing himself and Harvey MacIlwaine of
Consolidated Motors shaking hands at a banquet table. The headline above
the picture read, AUTHOR AND AUTO MAGNATE CELEBRATE BIOGRAPHY.
Above the headline was the date: _January 16, 1947_.
With hard-forced deliberation, because every nerve in his body was
singing its song of fear like a banjo string, Coulter closed the album.
The honeymoon, if that was the right term for it, was over. He knew now
which was the dream, which the reality.
He said, "All of this is your doing, Eve." It was not a question.
She said quietly, "That's right, Banning, it's my doing." She looked at
him with a cool detachment that added to his bewilderment--and to his
fright.