The Night Travellers

14. Kate on Kate

14 Kate on Kate It was as Kate was leaving that Sally asked her that question: "Does he love her?" "Love?" Kate echoed. "Oh, Sally, what an old-fashioned word. Not to me, I mean. But to them." She floundered. "Well," said Sally, "it may be, but I just thought I'd ask." Whenever Kate got too close to Jeff Blaise, even in speaking, she remembered that day with him alone. Just across the table. Talking. Then, touching him as they stood. A terrible attraction. However would Mary Kerr know what to do with him? What could the child understand about the nature I know he has? They had both known, he and she; they had known together. It was only a moment, passing quickly. And yet— Kate got into her car and started it. Sally would get her the money. Kate had dreamed violently of Jeff. One other conviction she had kept totally to herself: When the keys had fallen from her, erupting from her bag onto the concrete sidewalk before the lab, she had seen her own house keys hanging in place in the leather case that had burst open, her car keys as well— but not the lab keys. Time and time again, she remembered her sighting of them at that moment. Where were they, if not taken already? The lab door had opened before anyone could possibly have gotten there with her keys. That meant they had them already. True, they had thrust them back into her hands when leaving, keys allwrenched from the clamps. There was nothing to stop her thinking that, but for Mary Kerr knowing Jeff Blaise, that lab would never have been touched. In him she knew an adversary, combatant. (But 83 8 4 T H E N I G H T T R A V E L L E R S lovers, too, fight each other.) "They forced the keys from me," she had lied to the police. So Sally would get the money and Mary Kerr would go up to Winston. The family spoiled Kate—distrusted her, did not know what entirely to make of her, both loved and disliked her, but with her very difference as a drawing card, they kept on spoiling her. She would get the money. ...