Home Before Dark.

The miles that separate us

I hope this doesn't sound like a boring start. I've decided to take my time on this story and not rush things just to get votes, because this sory means alot to me. So please stay with me, it does pick up.

CHAPTER ONE

For the hundredth time since flinging her belongings into a bag, Addeline Kress wondered what the hell she was doing. Evans, her boyfriend, had tried to stop her- It's madness, Addie, you can't just go dashing off to somewhere in Texas just because Gary asked you to- but Evans was wrong, this wasn't just a selfless act. There was every bit of selfishness as well.

The back tire rippled over the line of yellow discs marking the center of the highway. She slowed, checked the rearview mirror and pulled off. Blast these cheap tires. She was lost. Again.

The glint of the sun over the jagged silhousette of the hills blinded her briefly, and she flipped down the visor. She ran her fingers through her burnette hair in exhaustion. Grabbing the map, she studied the route highlighted by the counter clerk at Petes Rent-a-car. Southwest along the interstate to exit 146-A, state highway 450 to Farm-to-Market Route 1239, following the little red thread of road to a place few folks had heard of and even fewer were inclined to visit. She had followed directions. Or had she?

She got out of car and checked the back tires. There was no way she could get the flat tire changed in time and still make it to the town before it got dark. That also depended on if she even knew how to change one. She kicked at the tire in annoyance. Now what?

A few hours later, after many tries and a broken nail, she finally changed the flat. She got into the car and waited. She had solved one problem, but what about the other? Getting back on the right track. An incoming car crested the steep hill ahead of her. She squinted at the approaching vehicle. A pickup truck. Of course. What else did you find out here? As it slowed and then stopped on the opposite shoulder, she felt a slick thrill of danger. She was completely alone, lost in the middle of Texas, miles from civilization.

The window rolled down. Shading her eyes against the glare, she could make out only the outline of the driver- big shoulders, baseball cap, and a fishing rod lay across the gun rack.

"Everything alright, ma'am?" he asked in a faint Texas drawl. She couldn't get a good look at his face with the sun in her eyes.

"I'm headed for Grannard," she said. "But I think I'm lost."

"You're almost there," he said, jerking his thumb in the direction he'd come from. "This is the right road. You just haven't gone far enough."

"Thanks."

"No problem, ma'am. You take care now." The pickup truck moved off, backfiring as it headed in the opposite direction.

As she pulled back into the road, she fiddled with the radio, finding mostly news and tears-in-my-beer country music. At last she discovered a decent rock station and turned it up. She passed a Texaco station and a few bedroom communities. Soon she saw it, the weatherbeaten Welcome To Grannard sign.

The tree-shaded town had the eerie feeling of a place stuck in the mid-century; slowly moving charaters, a town content to lag bahind while time sped past like traffic on the interstate bypass. Fives miles along a narrow lane, she past the preternaturally green Yellow-weed golf course and driving range, and then, took a left turn onto the Lake road.

As Addie drew nearer to her destination, she tried to remember the events that had lead her to this moment. Three weeks ago, she recalled.

* * * * *

Addie reread Gary's bone-marrow biopsy, chest X-ray and CT scan results, and for all she could tell, it might as well've been written in German. She had somehow managed to convince herself that the cancer in his lymph nodes was very little to worry about. That if the disease diddn't show up in his chest, bone-marrow or internal organs, Gary was as good as cured. She had read whatever she could find on the subject of Hodgkin's disease and bought every book on alternative healing she could get her hands on.