This morning, to be exact.
Her hand crept under the table and she pinched herself (not for the first time) just to make sure she wasn't dreaming. But after the pinch she was still here in Maurice, sitting in a bar of bright October sunshine, and Danforth was still there, across the table from her, eating with hearty good appetite, his face wreathed in a smile that looked almost alien to her, because she hadn't seen one there in such a long time.
She didn't know what had caused the change and was afraid to ask.
She knew he had gone off to Lewiston Raceway last night, just as he almost always did during the evening (presumably because the people he met there were more interesting than the people he met every day in Castle Rock-his wife, for instance), and when she woke up this morning, she expected to find his half of the bed empty (or not slept in at all, which would mean that he had spent the rest of the night dozing in his study chair) and to hear him downstairs, muttering to himself in his bad-tempered way.
Instead, he had been in bed beside her, wearing the striped red pajamas she had given him for Christmas last year. This was the first time she had ever seen him wear them-the first time they'd been out of the box, as far as she knew. He was awake. He rolled over on his side to face her, already smiling. At first the smile frightened her. She thought it might mean he was getting ready to kill her.
Then he touched her breast and winked. "Want to, Myrt? Or is it too early in the day for you?"
So they had made love, for the first time in over five months they had made love, and he had been absolutely magnificent, and now here they were, lunching at Maurice on an early Sunday afternoon like a pair of young lovers. She didn't know what had happened to work this wondrous change in her husband, and didn't care. She only wanted to enjoy it, and to hope it would last.
"Everything okay, Myrt?" Keeton asked, looking up from his plate and scrubbing vigorously at his face with his napkin.
She reached shyly across the table and touched his hand.
"Everything's fine. Everything is just... just wonderful."
She had to take her hand away so she could dab hastily at her eyes with her napkin.
2
Keeton went on chowing into his hoof borgnine, or whatever it was the Froggies called it, with great appetite. The reason for his happiness was simple. Every horse he had picked yesterday afternoon with the help of Winning Ticket had come in for him last night. Even Malabar, the thirty-to-one shot in the tenth race. He had come back to Castle Rock not so much driving as floating on air, with better than eighteen thousand dollars stuffed into his overcoat pockets. His bookie was probably still wondering where the money went. Keeton knew; it was safely tucked away in the back of his study closet. It was in an envelope. The envelope was in the Winning Ticket box, along with the precious game itself.
He had slept well for the first time in months, and when he woke up, he had a glimmering of an idea about the audit. A glimmering wasn't much, of course, but it was better than the confused darkness that had been roaring through his head since that awful letter came.
All he had needed to get his brain out of neutral, it seemed, was one winning night at the track.
He could not make total restitution before the axe fell, that much was clear. Lewiston Raceway was the only track which ran nightly during the fall season, for one thing, and it was pretty small potatoes. He could tour the local county fairs and make a few thousand at the races there, but that wouldn't be enough, either.
Nor could he risk many nights like last night, even at the Raceway.
His bookie would grow wary, then refuse to accept his bets at all.
But he believed he could make partial restitution and minimize the size of the fiddles at the same time. He could also spin a tale.
A sure-fire development prospect that hadn't come off. A terrible mistake... but one for which he had taken complete responsibility and for which he was now making good. He could point out that a really unscrupulous man, if placed in such a position as this, might well have used the grace period to scoop even more money out of the town treasury-as much as he possibly could-and then to run for a place (some sunny place with lots of palm trees and lots of white beaches and lots of young girls in string bikinis) from which extradition was difficult or downright impossible.
He could wax Christlike and invite those among them without sin to cast the first stone. That should give them pause. If there was a man-jack among them who had not had his fingers in the state pie from time to time, Keeton would eat that man's shorts.