CHAPTER 6
Jason came awake in the night, aware that some small sound had aroused him. Throwing on a robe, he opened his bedroom door cautiously. A light showed somewhere in the house. He followed it soundlessly down the hall to the kitchen. Farah was sitting at the counter sipping a glass of milk.
He stood for a moment looking at her. The deep pink of her negligee set off the freshness of her face. Her satin skin was deepening to a warm tan, without a trace of burn. Apparently her body chemistry had changed to protect her from the sun's rays. Below her dark hair her brown eyes were haunted.
"Is something wrong?" He sat down at the counter beside her, looking like a rumpled bear. "Can't sleep?"
"Oh, did I wake you? I'm sorry. I tried to be so quiet."
"It's okay. I've lived alone for so long that if someone breathes in the house I hear it." He poured himself a glass of milk from the carton.
"Can I warm it for you?" Farah asked.
"It's fine."
"I seem to be messing up your life," she said.
"Why do you say that? I'm enjoying all this. I hoped you were beginning to."
"It's just that things keep happening," she said. "I'm beginning to see problems I hadn't antipated. Trying to be Farah, I mean. I'd thought just to disappear into the crowd with no questions asked. But there are people who knew Farah. She had relatives who may pop up. It's the uncertainty.
"Maybe it would've been better if we had just picked a name out of a hat and let things like birth certificates and fingerprints take care of themselves," Jason said. "But when you violate customary procedure you feel you have to cover your tracks."
"Don't blame yourself, Jason. I went into this of my own free will." She rose and rinsed out her glass. "I think we both bit off more than we could chew, as my father would have said."
"The trouble is the way you look. You're bound to attract attention. No, I think you're better off being Farah. You can't just appear out of nowhere, with no background."
"You're probably right." She covered a yawn. "I'm going back to bed. I think I can sleep now."
She wondered as she got in bed why it hadn't seemed strange to her before that a man of Jason's position had been willing to "violate customary procedure" as he had said. Surely it would have been better to work within the system.
After Farah left the room Jason sat on at the counter. He knew Farah was deeply troubled. Funny, he thought, it didn't occur to me to wonder what would happen to her after the transformation. I was prepared to perform a miracle on a stranger. I considered only the consequences to me.
I've been living too much to myself, he thought, and I've been happy that way. My work has been enough for me. It astonished him to realize how this girl had crept into his life. The feeling of her belonging to him that had welled up in him as he watched her in a coma had not left him; rather, it had deepened.
And another thing, he thought. I've accepted her so completely as Farah that I seldom remember her as Donna, that miserable person I fished out of the ocean. That's why I'm inclined to forget the complications.
What she needs is a family background. Well, there's one way of dealing with that situation, he thought. She might not go for it. But he knew suddenly how important it would be to him. Tomorrow he would talk to her about it, he told himself, as he rose and padded back to his room.
A lively breeze in the night that had swept away the smog seemed to have swept away Farah's misgivings, and she decided to go for a swim before breakfast. The abundance of energy that Jason had predicted was changing her personality, making it almost impossible for her not to be cheerful and active.
As she stood for awhile breathing in the beauty of the morning before plunging into the pool, Jason came to join her. Jason, who on land appeared somewhat clumsy and heavy-footed, was like a seal in water, fleet and graceful. They laughed and splashed and raced each other until both emerged panting.
Resting on the flagstones, Farah said, "Don't you have any neighbors? It's so isolated here."
"Oh, sure, there are houses all over the canyon. Most of them are invisible from theroad. I don't know many of the people except to wave to, and I don't want to. The isolation is one of the reasons I like it here."
"You should have been a monk, Jason. Everybody ought to have neighbors."
He stretched out on his back, his beard pointing upward. "I do have one neighbor. A loner like me who lives about a mile up the road. He's an archeologist, name of Hackaby. Teaches at the University when he's not off digging somewhere. Right now he's in Europe."
"As I said, you should have been a monk." She put on a beach coat and started for the house. "I'll get breakfast. What would you like?"
"Surprise me." Jason shaded his eyes from the sun and promptly fell asleep.
As they sat drinking coffee after breakfast, Jason said, "You seem to have recovered from your midnight gloom."
"I do feel a lot better. Even though it just occurred to me that you're the only person in the world who knows who I really am. I'm not Donna any more, even to you. My former friends wouldn't recognize me if they met me on the street. The real Farah's friends wouldn't know me. It makes me feel spookey."
"I've been mulling over our conversation of last night," Jason began, when the doorbell rang. "Who could that be?" he wondered, and got up to find out. "Hack," Farah heard him say in surprise. "I thought you were still in Europe."
"We ran out of funds," a deep voice answered. "The brass thinks we're wasting our time."
"That's a damn shame," said Jason. "When did you get back?"
"Yesterday. Just dropped by to say hello and let you know I'm home."
Jason came back followed by an attractive man with intelligent hazel eyes and a shock of reddish hair. It surprised Farah that he appeared to be in his middle thirties. She was expecting someone nearer Jason's age. Hack's tall, lean frame and rather weatherbeaten skin gave evidence of long hours in the sun. He stopped in astonishment at the sight of Farah.
Farah, said Jason, "this is my old friend and neighbor, Dr. Warner Hackaby." He turned to Hack. "I'm sure you remember my speaking of Louise's ward."
Hack stood rooted to the floor, looking at Farah. She had never had a man look at her in that way before. Taking her out-stretched hand, he smiled into her eyes, and without turning his head said to Jason, "You old goat, Jason. You never mentioned how beautiful she is. How long have you been hiding her here?" There was something in his voice that made Farah's cheeks burn.
Jason must have heard it, too, for he said quickly, "Farah's decided to go to college here. She's new to these parts and is staying with me until she gets settled in."
"Great," said Hack. "We'll have to take her out on the town."
"Let's do that," Jason agreed.
But just as Monica had a few days previously, Hack had now remembered. He looked at Jason in shock. "Didn't you tell me ...." he began.
So Jason told him the story about Farah's life having been thought in danger and the false report of her death. FaRAH felt embarrassed at this perfidy, but Hack's face mirrored belief and concern that she had been subjected to such an ordeal.
After Hack left, Jason sat at the table looking thoughtful. "I'm beginning to see what frightens you," he said finally. "A really fine guy like Hack jumping to such conclusions. He knows me better than that. I'm no saint, Farah. But I'm not a dirty old man, either."
"Anybody who knows you knows that, Jason."
"I don't see how anyone could look at you and think ..." he broke off, his expression changing. "I've come up with an idea. Before Hack came I was getting ready to tell you about it. You need a family background." He pushed back his chair and stood up, as if needing space to continue. "If you think it's crazy, just say so. But don't laugh. Or be insulted. I mean it in the very best way."
"Mean what, Jason?" Without moving a muscle she appeared to have withdrawn.
"It would keep people from making the same judgment Hack did. And also protect your identity." Jason was floundering. "Well, I don't know how to say this."
"Why don't you just come right out with it?" Oh, no, she thought, he couldn't possible mean ...."
"Farah, how would you feel about letting me adopt you?"
Jason's offer caught Farah completely off guard. She had thought he was leading up to a proposal of marriage. She gaped at him, speechless, her mind in a turmoil.
He looked hurt. "Does the idea offend you?"
"Of course not. You took me by surprise. I keep thinking of myself as old Donna, not as a young girl someone would want to adopt." Her expression changed and she laughed in relief. "Give me a little time to consider it. It might be a good idea. How did it happen to occur to you?"
"I was just thinking of you ... about how vulnerable you are in your new identity, with no family ..." He broke off and pushed back his chair roughly. "That's not true." He walked over to the counter and braced his arms against it, his back to her. "It's true as far as it goes. But there's more." He groped for words; this was harder than he had expected.
"Farah," he said finally, "as I sat there all those days and nights watching you as you slept and saw you changing miraculously into a young girl, I felt that I had created you. That in some way you belong to me."
At the look of consternation on her face her said quickly, his face red with embarrassment. "Look, Farah, I want you to know I'm not lusting after you, as Hack seemed to think. You'll never have any trouble on that score. Hell, I'm pushing sixty. When I want a woman I want a mature woman. It's not my style to go chasing after young girls."
"I know that, Jason."
"I guess what happened was that I started feeling ... uh ... Fatherly. I've grown fond of you. You fill a void in my life I didn't know was there. It would make me happy to have a daughter."
She was stunned. As she looked up at him her eyes filled with tears. "I think I'm going to cry," she whispered. She had been without a protector for so long. Now a comparative stranger had opened his heart and his home to her. She covered her face with her hands.
She had long ago learned to bear pain by making light of her wounds. She didn't know how to handle such happiness. She looked up at him through her teasrs, searching for something to say. Then she smiled a crooked smile and said, "What can I possibly say but yes? You're a hard act to follow, Jason Fuller."