'You're fucking kidding me,' I said, loud enough for the crew-a half dozen or so, plus Paula Malloy, she of the gleaming teeth and Donna Karan suits, who was doing all the on-camera stuff and voiceovers-to hear. She had her hand on the knob, turned it, was about to push the door open, when Ponytail Girl shouted, 'Okay! Good! Just hold it there!' Then, to her cameraman, 'Okay, let's set up inside, get her coming in.' An honest emotion, which meant, I guessed, that the camera would fail to catch it. But now it felt false, forced.īut as she mounted the steps to the door, reached out with her hand, I could just make out the trembling. If the camera hadn't been on, is this how she would have approached? With this mixture of deliberation and apprehension? Probably. 'Just look at the house and start walking up the drive, thinking back to that time, twenty-five years ago, when it all happened, okay?'Ĭynthia glanced across the street at me, made a face, and I smiled back weakly, a kind of mutual what-are-you-gonna-do?Īnd so she started up the driveway, slowly. 'Yeah yeah, don't look at me,' Ponytail Girl said.

She was one of three assistant producers. Kind of hesitant, you know, like it's the first time you've gone inside since you were fourteen years old.'Ĭynthia glanced over her shoulder at a woman in jeans and sneakers, her ponytail pulled down and through the opening at the back of her ball cap. I had my orders.Ĭynthia stood there, as though waiting for permission to approach. You could walk all day and never get there.īut I stayed where I was, on the other side of the street, looking at her back, at her short red hair. I was guessing, to Cynthia, it must have been like looking through the wrong end of some binoculars. It was only a thirty-foot driveway, but it stretched a quarter century into the past.

I wanted to go to her side, walk her to the door. She was rooted to the sidewalk, seemingly unable to take even one step toward the place. She'd never stood on the sidewalk and stared at the place.Īnd it had certainly been a very long time since she'd stepped through that front door.

'There it is,' she said, and kept on going. She showed me the house once before we got married, a quick drive-by. It wasn't as though she was seeing her childhood home for the first time in nearly twenty-five years. Cynthia stood out front of the two-story house on Hickory.

No Time for Goodbye by Linwood Barclay