“I finished,” she says.
What does she expect, congratulations? My collar tightens up all the sudden. That book to me is like a crucifix to a vampire. I can’t seem to look at it without a cringe.
“You should have told me,” she says, her tone pure grief counselor, her eyes piercingly sincere. If my hand was on the table, she’d no doubt give it a compassionate squeeze. “It makes sense now, your obsession with the case. Trying to make all the pieces fit. I’m sorry I wasn’t more understanding, March. You should have said something.”
I pick up the book, flipping the pages with disdain, then slide it back across the table.
“It must have been so terrible,” she says.
“I don’t know what you mean.”
“You know,” she says. “About your girl.”
A twitch under the skin of my cheek, an involuntary tic I try smoothing away. She sees it and leans over the table with a pained smile on her lips. I glance away, ignoring her words.
But she won’t stop. The woman just won’t stop.
“This may sound strange, but now that I know, I feel like I get you. Before, I’ll be honest, you always seemed a little cold to me. I knew from Wanda you had a reputation, you used to be an up-and-comer, and I just thought, you know, your whole demeanor, it was bitterness. Angry at life. And that thing you said about God, wanting to kick him… now I understand.”
You don’t understand. You couldn’t possibly. You sit there with that book at your elbow and you think that because of those words, you somehow know me, that there’s a bond running deeper now between us than anything we could have established through mere contact. You think my soul is in there, my key, the pattern hidden underneath the seeming randomness of my actions. But you know nothing at all. Nothing. And if you would just stop speaking -
“I’ll be honest,” she says. “It really broke my heart when I realized. Hannah, what she means for you, what they all must mean for you…” Her bottom lip swells. “And that girl tied to the bed, the missing body.”
I’m going to say something, Theresa, if you don’t shut your mouth. You won’t like it, the words hitting you like a slap in the face.
“I thought, when they pulled you off, you’d be relieved to get back to Homicide. But now I see what you must be going through – ”
My mouth opens, the words lined up like the staggered cartridges in Thomson’s magazine, but before I let them off, before I give Cavallo what the drunk in the Paragon parking lot got, my hand snatches the book off the table and flings it, pages fluttering, across the glossy floor. She jumps. The guy in the opposite booth, reading the Chronicle in solitude, glances down at the book near his feet, then adjusts the paper so he doesn’t have to witness what’s developing next door.
Cavallo’s eyes flare. “What the – ”
“You don’t know what you’re talking about,” I say. “Don’t smother me in this cheap psychobabble of yours, telling me what Hannah Mayhew represents for a person like me. Don’t even talk about…” I can’t even form it on my lips, the feminine pronoun. “Don’t even. That book,” I say, “what’s in there,” I say, “the whole stinking,” I say, “you can’t… I don’t even…”
Now her hand reaches for mine, pulls it halfway across the table, and even though she has to know what’s at risk, she leans closer.
“I know it’s hard,” she says.
“You don’t know – ”
“March, listen to me. You lost your daughter. I get that. But the way you’re reacting, it’s not right. What it’s done to you, it’s not right.”
“I lost…?” I still can’t say it. “Lost isn’t the word. Lost is really not what happened. I didn’t lose anything. Taken, that’s what you should say. ‘I know what was taken from you.’ ”
“And that’s why you’re angry at the world,” she says, stroking my hand. “Angry at God.”
“God? I’m not angry at God, Theresa. What does God have to do with anything? I’m angry with the guy who decided to open the Paragon early that day, and I’m angry with all the people who decided to get drunk watching the national tragedy unfold on TV, and I’m really angry – I’m furious – at the woman they let leave there, they let get behind the wheel, and she wasn’t even paying attention when she hit them, and there wasn’t a scratch on her, Theresa – can you believe that? Nothing but bruises from the air bags. She walked away. I’d kill her now if I could, but – ”
“March,” she says.
“I’d kill her now, I really would. But she already saved me the trouble. With pills. Now you know what I’ve always wondered? If she was gonna do that, why’d she have to wait until after, huh? She could have done it the day before and saved us all a lot of trouble. And saved us all. A lot…”
“I’m sorry,” she says. “I didn’t realize how painful this would be for you, or I wouldn’t have said a word.”
Not good enough, Theresa. You opened this can of worms. “And you think because you read about it in a book – ”
“The book has nothing to do with it,” she says. “I just didn’t know. The book is just how I found out.”
“Wanda never told you?”
She shrugs. “It’s been six years.”
“So what, I shouldn’t be so upset about it? I shouldn’t be struggling still, or having such a hard time?”
“That’s not what I said, March. Don’t put words in my mouth.”
“And it’s seven. Seven years as of next week, remember? The big anniversary.”
Cavallo falls silent, gives me a look of pity. My forehead’s clammy. The small of my back, too. The people around us are making a point of not paying attention, which is good of them really. Indulgent. I start to wilt a little with embarrassment. Better to say nothing than to pour out all this raw, unedited self-revelation, especially in front of Cavallo, who doesn’t deserve it, and who still has to be convinced to do me an after-hours favor.
“I’m sorry,” I say.
“You don’t have to apologize.”
“I’m sorry. The thing is, it’s not something I like to talk about.
There’s no point dwelling on things. And this time of year…” Across the table she’s nodding encouragingly, and I know something more is owed to her, some compensating confession. I’ve told her off, and to make up for that, I have to trust her with some confidence.
“March,” she says, “I completely understand.”
“The hardest part…”
Her eyebrows lift. “Yes?”
“It was Charlotte driving,” I say, my voice distant, “and she was injured, too. In the crash. The car, it hit them like this.” I form a T with my hands, like a coach calling a time-out from the sidelines. “So the passenger side…” My twitch comes back. I can’t say more about that. “But Charlotte, her head hit the window hard, and there had to be surgery, you know? I wasn’t there. I was still somewhere in Louisiana. They grounded all the planes, you remember, and so me and Wilcox arranged with this detective there, Fontenot, to get a car we could drive back to Houston. We put Fauk in the back in cuffs, then hit the road.”
She nods the whole time, the details fresh on her mind from Templeton’s account.
“What’s not in the book is this…”
The doctor had offered to tell her for me, but this was my job, the one I took on without realizing the moment we married, the moment our daughter was born. Charlotte’s eyelids fluttered and then opened. She blinked at the gathered onlookers, family and friends from the four corners of Houston, bewildered by their presence. Then the surroundings dawned on her. She glanced anxiously at the tubes running into her arm, at the blinking, hissing machines over each shoulder. Finally, with a hint of panic in her eyes, she noticed me sitting at the foot of the bed. Her intubated arm reached forward.
“Roland?”
I didn’t tell the others to leave. I didn’t have to. At the sound of her voice they began to file out, all except her sister, Ann, who lingered at the doorway, thinking she might be needed, until Bridger urged her out into the corridor. She disappeared with a suppressed sob.