A Bridge of Years

Mr. Shank left the light on in case inspiration struck in the depths of the night … but Mr. Shank was probably asleep by now too. Everyone in Billy’s building was lonely and asleep. Everyone but Billy.

He whistled a formless tune between his teeth and stepped into the entranceway. The paint on the walls had faded to gray a long time ago. The mirrored wall by the stairs was fogged and chipped and some of the floor tiles had turned up at the corners, like leaves.

Billy went directly to the basement.

The stairway leading down smelled hot and stale. These old wooden steps had grown leathery in the humid air. Silent in the dim light, Billy passed the bizarre and inefficient oil furnace with its many arms, the groaning water heater; through an unmarked access door and deeper, past the storage cellar with its lime-green calcinated walls and its crusted cans of paint, to the door he had sealed with a sturdy Yale padlock. The light was dim—the light here was always dim. Billy took a chrome Zippo lighter out of his hip pocket.

He felt strange down here so close to the tu

He flicked the igniter on the Zippo. Time for a new flint, Billy told himself.

He brought the light down closer to the padlock—then drew a sharp breath and stepped back.

Dear God! After all these years—! The lock had been broken open.

Billy’s first thought was of Krakow gazing down at him through another door, the night he was recruited. He had the same feeling now: discovered in hiding.

He was defenseless, weaponless, and the walls were much too close.

He touched his throat, instinctively reaching for the touch-plate that would trigger his armor—but the armor was at home.

He backed away from the door.

Someone had been here! Someone had come for him!

He considered going upstairs, dragging Mrs. Korzybski out of her sleep, Amos Shank from his senile slumber, beating them until they told him who had come and who had gone. But they might not know. Probably didn’t. Maybe no one had seen.

I need help, Billy told himself. The sense of imminent danger had closed around him like a noose. (Not alone anymore!) He pocketed his lighter, climbed the stairs, and left the building.

He stood alone in the sweaty darkness of the street, his eyes patrolling the sawtooth shadows between the tenement stoops.

He hurried away, avoiding streetlights. The armor, Billy thought. The armor would know what to do.

Ten

Catherine Simmons drove into Belltower after the cremation of her grandmother, Peggy Simmons, who had lived out along the Post Road for many years and who had died a week ago in her sleep.

Summer made Belltower a pretty little town, at least when the wind wasn’t blowing from the mill. Catherine knew the town from her many visits; she didn’t have any trouble finding the Carstairs Funeral Home on a side street off Brierley, between an antique shop and a marine electronics store. She parked and sat in her Honda a few minutes—she was early for her appointment.

Gram Peggy’s fatal stroke had been unexpected and the news of her death still seemed fresh and unreasonable. Of all Catherine’s family, Gram Peggy had seemed most like a fixture—the solidest and most fun of the sorry lot. But Gram Peggy was dead and Catherine supposed she would have to adjust to that fact.

She sighed and climbed out of the car. The afternoon was su

There was no ceremony pla

The funeral director at Carstairs turned out not to be the unctuous vulture Catherine was expecting; he was a big-shouldered man who looked a little like a football coach. He handed Catherine the bronze urn containing Gram Peggy’s ashes in a gesture that was almost apologetic. “This is the way your grandmother wanted it, Miss Simmons. No ceremony, nothing solemn. She arranged all this in advance.”

“Gram Peggy was very practical,” Catherine said.

“That she was.” He managed a sympathetic smile. “Everything’s been paid for through her lawyer. I hope we’ve been of some small help?”

“You did fine,” Catherine said. “Thank you.”

There was a woman in the lobby as Catherine left, a gray-haired woman roughly Gram Peggy’s age; she stepped forward and said, “I’m Nancy Horton—a friend of your grandmother’s. I just want to say how sorry I am.”

“Thank you,” Catherine said. Apparently death involved thanking people a lot.

“I knew Peggy from the shopping trips we took. She still drove, you see. I don’t drive if I can help it. She used to drive me down to the mall on the highway, Wednesday mornings usually. We’d talk. Though she was never a big talker. I liked her a lot, though. You must be Catherine.”

“Yes.”

“Are you going to be staying in the house?”

“Gram’s house? For a little while. Maybe for the summer.”

“Well, I’m not far away if you need anything.” She glanced at the urn in Catherine’s hand. “I don’t know about cremation. It seems—oh, I’m sorry! I shouldn’t be saying this, should I? But it seems like so little to leave behind.”

“That’s okay,” Catherine said. “This isn’t Gram Peggy. We talked about that before she died. These are just some ashes.”

“Of course,” Nancy Horton said. “Will you keep them? Oh, my curiosity! I’m sorry—”

“Gram loved the forest out in back of her property,” Catherine said. “She once asked me to scatter her ashes there.” She took the urn protectively into the crook of her left arm. “That’s what I’ll do.”

Of course, she couldn’t keep the house. It was a big old house up along the Post Road and a long way from anywhere Catherine wanted to live, as much as she sometimes liked Belltower. Once the will was probated, she would probably try to sell the property. She had said as much to Dick Parsons, who had given her the number of the local realty company. One of their agents was supposed to meet her outside the funeral home.

The agent turned out to be the man lounging against a mailbox by the front steps—he straightened up and a

“The funeral director doesn’t look like a funeral director. You don’t look much like a real estate agent.”

“I’ll take that as flattery,” Archer said.

But it was true, Catherine thought. He was a little too young, a little too careless about his clothes. He wore floppy high-top Reeboks tied too low, and he gri

“It’s a firm decision,” Catherine said. “I’m just not sure about when. I’m thinking of spending the rest of the summer here.”

“It may not be a quick sale in any case. The market’s a little slow, and those houses out on the Post Road are kind of lonely. But I’m sure we can find a buyer for it.”