Night Moves: Dream Man/After the Night by Linda Howard Page B

smoothed his hair, terrified by the faint blue tinge of his lips.
    She rocked back and forth on the stump, her eyes stark with misery as she stared at nothing. Mama was gone, and Scottie was dying. There was no telling how much longer he could last, but she didn’t think it would be more than a year. As bad as things had been, at least there had been a kind of security, because things were the same day after day and she knew what to expect. Now everything had come apart, and she was terrified. She had learned how to get along, how to manage Pa and the boys, but nothing was going according to plan now and she was helpless. She hated the feeling, hated it with a ferocity that made her stomach knot.
    Damn Mama, she thought rebelliously. And damn Guy Rouillard. All they had thought about was themselves, not their families, nor about the turmoil they would leave behind.
    She hadn’t felt like a child in a long time. Responsibility had been pushed onto her frail shoulders at an early age, giving her eyes a solemn maturity that jarred with her youth, but now she acutely felt her lack of years. She was too young to do anything. She couldn’t take Scottie and leave, because she was too young to work and support them. She was tooyoung even to live by herself, according to law. She was helpless, her life controlled totally by the whim of the adults around her.
    She couldn’t even run away, because she couldn’t leave Scottie. No one else would look after him, and he was almost as helpless as an infant. She had to stay.
    So she sat on the stump as the afternoon hours slid away, too miserable to go inside and do any of her regular chores. She felt as if she were on a guillotine, waiting for the blade to fall, and as evening approached the tension grew and stretched until every nerve ending felt raw and exposed, until she felt like screaming to shatter the waiting stillness. Scottie had awakened from his nap and played close by her legs, as if afraid to get too far from her.
    But evening came, and the blade didn’t fall. Scottie was hungry, pulling at her, wanting to go in. Reluctantly Faith got up from the stump and took him inside just as Russ and Nicky left to go about their nightly carousing. Jodie dressed in the yellow dress she had coveted, and left too.
    Maybe Jodie was right, Faith thought. Maybe Gray had just been blowing off steam, and hadn’t meant what he’d said. Maybe Guy had gotten in touch with his family sometime during the day, and somehow defused the situation. He could have changed his mind about leaving, and denied having Renee with him. Anything was possible.
    No matter what, though, she didn’t expect Renee to come back. And without Renee, even if Guy did return to his family, there wouldn’t be any reason for him to let them stay on in the shack. It wasn’t much, but it was a roof over their heads, and it was free. No, it was no use hoping; she had to use her common sense. One way or another, maybe not right away but pretty soon, they were going to have to leave. If she knew Pa, though, he wouldn’t make a move to get out until he was forced. He would milk every free hour he could from the Rouillards.
    She fed Scottie and bathed him, then put him to bed. For the second night in a row she had blessed privacy, and she hurried to take her own bath and put on her nightgown. But when she pulled out her precious book, she couldn’t concentrate enough to read. The scene that morning withGray continually replayed itself in her mind, like film on a mental tape that just kept running. Every time she thought of that look of contempt in his eyes, pain expanded in her chest until she could barely breathe. She rolled over and buried her face in her pillow, fighting the hot tears. She loved him so, and he despised her, because she was a Devlin.
    She dozed, exhausted by the restless night before and the trauma of the day. Always a light sleeper, as alert as a cat, she awakened and mentally checked the roll every time a