looking inside Rainy Day People

He'd taken her hand and they'd remained silent, occasionally looking at each other in the moonlight. It was she who had broken the spell. Impulsively, as all her movements seemed to be, she'd started the car, cranked up her music and driven him, fast, back toward the coast and home.

When stopped in front of his son's place, she tore a page out of a notebook in her purse and quickly jotted down an address and phone number. He'd looked at it, put it into his pocket, and then got out of the car.

"Thanks for everything," he said. "I really enjoyed tonight."

"So did I, and thank you for the coffee and the pointers." She smiled up at him, but modestly.

He was staring at her again and it had made her feel awkward; why, she didn't know.

"Later babe." He smiled as he turned to go. That was all, as if he'd somehow known her need to be away from him, or from herself. She waved goodbye as she pulled away, and so they'd parted, her driving home to her world, him climbing the stairs to his.

She pulled into her driveway, parked, and lingered in the car. Part of her was dreading going in the house. Acceptance of the emptiness of life without Jeff had come only by crawling on her knees through the desert of despair in that house. Yet, another part of her yearned for the comfort of its walls because her answers were found in that desert.

Now, her mind held a new question. This no-longer-stranger would never really leave her life again. She knew that. But, her rational mind kept asking how could he not? She lived in one world, he in another. Without it being spoken, she knew his life was different than her own. He'd have to return to it and deal with it, because a rage or a sadness, she wasn't sure which, seemed to boil within him. She'd felt it in his touch, an almost trembling inside.

She climbed the stairs, inserted the key in the lock, then looked up for a last glance at the heavens. A lone star shooting across the sky from east to west caught her attention. It seemed to hang there just above the treetops, winking brightly in the black velvet sky as if smiling at her. She smiled back, then pushed the door open and went in.