Lightning That Lingers by Sharon Curtis, Tom Curtis Page A

cross-stitch: black sky, airy starlight, trees moving in time to a wind that rang like clear crystal.
    He almost decided not to come home.
    Michele called him to the phone just after he came offstage from the second show. The caller was from his security service with the news that they were picking up an intrusion alarm from his house and asking if he wanted them to notify the police. He told them no, because most of the time it was something innocent. He didn’t want the police to have to be chasing around on his property every time the wind tossed a branch on his roof or a wild owl heard Chaucer and went into a territorial frenzy against the kitchen window pane.
    He was tired, and sweaty, and tense, and in nomood to rush outside in arctic temperatures to hunt down a false alarm. But what if it was a group of kids, breaking into the abandoned west wing to party? A commotion would rub Chaucer the wrong way and when roused, the little owl was quite capable of descending, razor-sharp talons poised, on a threatening stranger. Could you live with it, Brooks, if a kid on a lark lost one of his eyes because you didn’t want to go out in the cold to check out an alarm?
    He arranged for a stand-in and put himself in the car.
    The first thing he saw was the ditched Volkswagen, keys in the dead ignition, doors locked, the headlights faded to the pencil-beams of twin flashlights. It could have belonged to anyone. But somehow he knew it was Jennifer’s.
    The wind’s savagery had nearly destroyed the slight dents of her footprints leading up his drive. Fear nourished his impulse to break out in a run, following them. But he made himself get back into the station wagon; he made himself go slowly up the drive to be sure the dim trail didn’t lead off into the trees. He had spent years learning to decipher tracks, and as though she had left a story for him in copperplate, he could see each stumble, each time she had rested or paused in confusion. The pressure of an accelerating pulse stabbed his throat; his heartbeat became militant, electric. The phrase, his phrase “come see me—you know where to look” came back at him like a whip. Where had he expected her to come? The Cougar Club?
    Her waifish figure finally appeared in his headlights, limping in a ragged ellipse about twentyyards from his front door. He floored the accelerator and spun up the drive, slamming the transmission into park, running up to her.
    Frost covered her in sparkling dust. It rimmed her eyes with blue-white lashes. It was imbedded into her clothing like mica in a sidewalk. When he lifted her face, her pansy petal eyes stared up at him unknowingly.
    “I’m looking at …” She squinted at the shining ice crystals on her sleeve. “Snowflakes.” Her voice was hoarse, small and slurred.
    Shock? Delirium? He tried to remember everything he knew about hypothermia. His mind threw up a blank screen. His shooting heartbeat set the rhythm for his instinctive response. He swept her up in his arms and began racing with her toward the house. In his adrenalized state, she was no heavier than a toy.
    Her arms came sloppily around his neck, falling like broken pieces of stick candy. “I’m a penguin.” Her head flopped hard onto his shoulder. “I like cold weather.”
    Jenny. Jenny. Hang on, darling. Hypothermia. What do I know about hypothermia? In warmblooded animals, enzymatic reactions take place properly only within a set range of temperatures. When prolonged chilling forced the body’s temperature down too long, the chemical processes began to misfire. Muscles grew lax—the heart was a muscle.…
    Supporting her limp weight in one hand, he dragged open the front door and lifted her inside. She murmured incoherently as he carried her upstairs through the blocks of indigo moonlight on the landing. He booted open his bedroom doorand set her down on his bed where she lay on his yellow quilt like a broken doll. His hand slipped under the muffler to touch her