She heard his crutches clomping across the floor toward her, and then he was at her side. “Please don’t leave me, Anne,” he said. “I never thought I’d meet a girl like you who’d even give me the time of day.”

She could no longer hold back her tears. She wiped them away with the flat of her fingers as they fell. “I can’t stay here.” She reached across the bed to pull her pajamas out from under the pillow where she had left them that morning—a lifetime ago.

“Anne,” he said. “Don’t go. I’m telling you, I’ve been lonely my whole life, and that’s the truth. And all of a sudden, with you, I wasn’t lonely anymore.”

“You were just trying to get me into bed with you,” she said. She closed her suitcase, zipped it.

“Look, Anne, I never—for God’s sake, would you listen to me? I—all right, maybe at first I was just—well, look at you, you’re goddamn Rita Hayworth here, and I’ve been—all right, so I was—just at first, but once I got to know you—”

“As the saying goes,” Anne said, “fool me once, shame on you.” She picked up her suitcase. “Fool me twice, shame on me.” She dodged around him, and walked out of the room.

“Don’t be like this, Anne,” he called after her, his crutches clomping on the floor as he followed her out. “Please. Won’t you at least give me a chance? I know I’m not—whole. But I really felt—that you—that you might love me.”

She had made it to the top of the stairs, and glanced back at him. He looked miserable. But after what he’d done—to have the nerve to insist that she love him!

She wanted to hurt him the way he had hurt her. So she said the worst thing she could think of. “It’s your leg,” she said. “I couldn’t bear it.”

Devastation filled his eyes.

She turned from him, rushed down the stairs, grabbed her coat and hat. She burst out the front door into the cold rain, sobbing now, flailing down the steps to the sidewalk, puddles soaking her shoes and splashing her ankles as she turned toward downtown and the depot, clutching her coat to her chest, her suitcase bumping her knees.

Chapter 70

Very few of us know just why we like the people to whom we are attracted; our likes and dislikes are not rational or planned. The people we like are not always the folk that the social scientist would recommend for us as companions, either for a lifetime or for a few months.

—When You Marry, 1948

THE MICKELSON HOUSE
502 W. First Street, Pine Rapids
Friday, August 4, 1950