Rapture

No there isn't, Georgianne agreed silently. Just as well, too. She didn't want to stay in Chicago, or anywhere, but neither did she want to leave. She had nowhere to go, nowhere else to be. She didn't want to do anything but drift along with the days, bother no one, and sleep as much as possible. She would stay until she began to feel awkward and then, perhaps, she would move on or try to make some definite plan for herself.

"Yes," she said finally. "I am thinking about it."

The day Georgianne returned to the cemetery was bright, clear, and crisp, the picture of early autumn. The grass was still a rich green but it wore a scattering of leaves, the first to mark the season's change. In less than a year, she had buried a husband and a daughter there. It seemed impossible. A family had ceased to exist. As simple as that. Both stones were in place now. The names and dates told everything, and nothing. Georgianne imagined someone stopping there a hundred years in the future. Would that person notice that the man had died young? That the woman had died still a girl, less than a year later? Would that person even wonder about it? A mystery. A story lost in time. The names would mean nothing, but would merely indicate two more human beings restored to the anonymity of the earth. Maybe that is the story, the only story. It hurt to think that if she lived out a normal life span, Georgianne would eventually be the odd one of the three buried there, and sometimes she wondered if it wouldn't be better to join them now. Get it over with, accept the last portion of an abrupt fate. But they wouldn't want her like that. She could almost see Sean and Bonnie shaking their heads, saying, No, stay away, live. Georgianne arranged the flowers she had brought and sat for a while on the grass, thinking about all the good days and nights, the years she'd had with Sean and Bonnie, telling herself that in spite of what had happened she had for a long time been very lucky.

Georgianne sipped the hot drink carefully. Exquisite. The glass held Irish whiskey, a slice of lemon, sugar, cloves, a silver spoon, and water that had just boiled. She wanted to let the liquor take hold of her and make her feel better. But it was like drinking after a funeral-it didn't quite work. She'd been trying, with Bobbie Maddox's help, for several days now. They'd gotten tipsy, they'd even fallen asleep drunk a couple of times, but it still didn't quite work. Nothing did, nothing ever would. Georgianne was beginning to reconcile herself to that. But drinking with a friend was a distraction at least, sometimes fun and occasionally enough to diffuse the pain a little.

She had concluded all her business in Foxrock that day. She'd kept a few trunks of personal items in storage in Danbury, but everything else that had been in her home on Indian Hill Road was sold and gone. The last of the bills were paid, the papers signed and filed away.

Georgianne had more money in her checking account than ever before, and much larger sums secure in certificates of deposit. Burt wanted her to see a friend of his about investment planning. Money, money, money-not a cent of which she wanted or knew how to spend. It gave her nothing but a spurious, meaningless freedom.

Burt and Bobbie, like almost everyone else, had been more than kind. Georgianne stayed with them for five days, taking care of her personal business but mostly just talking, joking, and reminiscing over drinks. It was pleasant enough, and in some ways easier than being with relatives. She, however, grew increasingly aware of a difference. She was an odd person now, a detached wheel rolling about aimlessly.

Bobbie wanted her to buy a condo in the area, perhaps get her job back at the nursery school or take some courses at Western Connecticut State University in Danbury. Mrs. Slaton had suggested something like that in Tampa, Jack in Chicago. The options were always about the same, only the people and places varied. There was something wrong about it. Georgianne didn't know what, but she didn't like it. Freedom had a way of seeming to narrow down to practically nothing at all. It was true that she had more friends and acquaintances in the Danbury area than anywhere else, but after a few days at the Maddoxes, she'd begun to feel restless again. She didn't know if it was Foxrock, all the painful memories and the new feeling that she didn't, couldn't, belong there any more, or if it was some psychological compulsion to keep moving, but in either case she knew she had to leave.

"But why?" Bobbie asked, turning on the front burner to boil more water for the next round.

"I don't know," Georgianne said. "I've just seen my mother and my brothers, and their families, but I feel I have to go see them again. And there are other people and places I have to go. Friends I haven't seen in a while. I have to stay in touch, I have to see them."

"Whatever happened to that friend of yours?" Bobbie asked. "Oh ... I can't remember his name now."