Rainbow's End by James M. Cain

until later. Sure enough, side by side on page 1 of all the papers, there was Jill and there was me—me in my sheepskin jacket, she in her hospital bed. There were also pictures of Shaw, a small inset blown up from a snapshot, and one of Russell Morgan with a pipe, looking important. How that happened, how all the papers had pictures when only three had sent reporters, had been explained by the Times reporter. They were wired to the papers. “It’s a regular gold mine for us,” the reporter said. “Boy, we’ll clean up on this—on top of the special we’ll send, signed by me under my personal byline.”
    After a while we remembered breakfast. I made eggs and fritters. Then at last she asked:
    â€œWhat was it, Dave, that you wanted to tell me?”
    â€œI’ll get to it.”
    â€œWell? I’m listening.”
    But for some reason, to tell it that way was tough. I couldn’t seem to do it. A little later, though, when we were back on the living room sofa, her head on my shoulder, her hair brushing my nose, I began edging toward it. “Something’s come up,” I said. “Something Mom told me last night. Or this morning, whenever it was. Before she blew with the car.”
    â€œTold you? About what?”
    â€œWho I am.”
    That was when I knew that what was between us two was a whole lot more than how pretty she was or how we loved each other. She twisted to look at me, then squinched her eyes up, and whispered: “OK, Dave, I’m with it. What is this?”
    â€œShe’s not my mother.”
    â€œI wondered about that.”
    â€œHow did you catch on?”
    â€œShe didn’t act like a mother.”
    â€œYou can say that again.”
    â€œWhat’s the rest?”
    I told it little by little, going back to Aunt Myra—how beautiful she was, how wonderful she’d been to me, the things that had happened with her, like the time my cart got busted, when one of the wheels came off, and she took it to a garage to get it fixed. But I kept shying away from my father, until she cut in to say: “Dave, you can trust me. Say what’s on your mind, what you’re leaving out.”
    â€œYou mean, about him ?”
    â€œWho is ‘him’? Did she say?”
    â€œShe swore she doesn’t know.”
    â€œYou believe her?”
    â€œI think if she’d known, she’d have said so. From what she said, he’s not from the Big Sandy country. Could be she never heard his name.”
    â€œHe must be somebody, though.”
    We talked then, me with that wonderful feeling that I could talk it out with her. Sometimes we’d think of some angle together, like the deal that must have been made for my board and keep and expenses and how my father must have it, have plenty to lay on the line, to make such an arrangement as that, and how much he must love Aunt Myra.
    Then she said: “Dave, something’s on my mind, my locket. I hadn’t expected to mention it, on account of her, her being here, I mean. It would have meant I’d have to come in, and I couldn’t have. But now that she’s not here—?”
    â€œYour locket, you said?”
    â€œI had it on a chain around my neck when Shaw pulled me out of that plane. It could be out there on the island! If we went out and looked now—?”
    â€œRight away now, quick.”
    We went down the path to the river, to row out in the johnboat. But when we got to where the boat had been pulled out on the bank, it wasn’t there any more. It was half-capsized on a tree, a snag from upriver, between island and bank, that had washed down some years before in the flood that made the island and which moved a few feet each year as a rise would lift it along. There had been a rise in the night, perhaps from Saturday’s rain, that had not only moved the tree but also the boat. “That’s nice,” I said. “You lend someone