She smiled. “Hey.”
“Morning.”
Her eyes went immediately to my hands, which I’d retaped since my shower, then to the rips in my leather jacket. “Pat, what happened?”
“Fencing.”
“Fencing? You were fencing?”
“In a sense.” Somewhat awkwardly, I slipped my hands into my pocket. “It’s not a big deal.”
“Uh-huh.”
“I’m fine.”
“That’s what you always say.”
“Always, when?”
“You get hurt.”
“I don’t get hurt. That much.”
A half smile, hands on her hips, but it wasn’t a real reprimand. “How many times have you gotten injured while doing something on the city’s payroll?”
“That’s not even a fair-”
“How many times?”
“A couple. Maybe. Over the years.”
“Mm-hm.” She took my arm. “Let’s get some breakfast.”
So. Good signs so far. She was in a pleasant mood. I was in a pleasant mood. I began to relax.
She ordered a feta cheese and spinach bagel sandwich; I grabbed two chocolate muffins and two bananas so the health factor would even itself out.
She had coffee. I had tea.
Honestly, neither of us was good at chitchat, but we made our way through the obligatory small talk you’re supposed to have when you’re a couple catching up-she told me about her rounds at the hospital, I told her about driving to Fort Atkinson and back yesterday afternoon.
“So you were the one who found her in the boxcar? You and the FBI agent?”
I guessed where she’d heard it. “The news?”
She nodded toward someone nearby who was reading the paper. “I glanced at the headlines on the rack outside.”
“Yeah, that was me.”
“The public relations officers said you guys arrived just in time to save her. They’re praising you.”
“You learned that from glancing at the headlines?”
“Okay, maybe it was a little more than a glance.”
“At a little more than the headlines?”
I saw the flicker of a smile. “Possibly.”
“I’m just glad we got there when we did.” But as I said the words, I couldn’t help but think of the conversation I’d had with Ralph last night in which I’d said almost the same thing, and of course the second part of that conversation too: “But angry we didn’t get there soon enough to save Hendrich.”
Taci sighed softly, then gave a small head-shake of exasperation. “Do you ever wonder, Pat, how these people, how they come to do these things?”
“Sometimes, yes, I do.”
“What he was going to do is just unthinkable,” she said. “How could you get someone to even consider maiming someone like that?”
Actually, the answer wasn’t all that mysterious or elusive. “Make it seem natural, reasonable. Unavoidable. The only conceivable choice at that particular time.”
She had a curious look in her eyes. It might have been concern.
“Radar once told me,” I explained, “that no one does the unthinkable, because to them, in that moment, it seems like the most natural and logical thing to do-the inevitable thing. I think he’s right.”
“But how could you make something like that inevitable?”
“When people kill, when rapists rape, when people torture each other, they’re doing what seems perfectly reasonable to them in that moment. Nobody ever does something that, in his own mind, as he’s doing it, is unthinkable.”
“So, they rationalize it?”
That seemed like too mild a way to put it.
I thought for a moment. “I’d just say that behind every unspeakable act is a person who is, in his own mind, completely justified in carrying it out.”
She sipped at her coffee and let my words settle in.
“So, how are you doing through all this, Pat?”
“I’m okay.”
“They said he was going to cut off her hands, her feet.”
“Taci, I can’t really talk about the case. You know that.”
“Pat, it was on CNN.”
“I get that, but-”
“No one’s saying much at the medical center. Is she going to be okay? You can tell me that much.”
I didn’t even know she’d been in to work already this morning. “It looks like it. Yes.”
“Good.”
Silence, then: “Are you any closer to catching the guy who’s doing this?”
“Really, I can’t…” I caught myself. Even after being together for a year and going through this type of thing before, I knew it was natural for her to ask these sorts of questions. I had the sense that I should avoid addressing them entirely, but I decided I could answer this one without necessarily divulging too much.
“Honestly, I don’t know how close we are. There was some evidence there at the train yard that I think is going to help us; some things to follow up on, so that’s good. But right now we don’t have a name, a face, anything specific. Now, really-”
“You can’t talk about it.”
“Right. I’m sorry. I can’t.”
For a few minutes we both ate our breakfast in a sort of strange, quiet limbo. The light mood that’d been present when we first met seemed to have been smothered by our discussion about doing the unthinkable.
Finally, I decided to just go ahead and get to the point. “So, you mentioned…There was something else, something you wanted to talk about?”
“Yes.” But instead of telling me what it was, she was quiet once again.
She looked toward the counter and scoffed lightly, but it wasn’t derision I heard. When she went on, I sensed it was her way of, perhaps subconsciously, avoiding addressing what she’d come here to say. “See her? Over there? The tag sticking out of the back of her shirt? I’ll never understand that. A woman will spend an hour putting on makeup and getting her hair right and won’t bother to take three seconds to make sure that the tag isn’t sticking out the back of her shirt. It’s…” Her voice trailed off.
“What is it, Taci, really? What’s wrong?”
She set down her coffee, looked at me with a thread of sadness in her eyes, and said eight words, “I do love you, Pat. You know that.”
Oh, that was not good.
“Why did you put it that way?”
“What way?”
“Why did you say ‘I do love you’ and not just ‘I love you’?”
She took a deep breath and it seemed as if she was about to say something, but then she must have changed her mind, because she closed her mouth and just sat there, quietly staring past me at a spot on the wall that didn’t exist.
The longer the moment stretched out without her replying, the less I wanted her to. Instead, I wanted to take back my question. I had the strange sense that finding out the truth was going to be far more painful than just pretending everything was okay.
But in the end I had to ask. I had to find out. “What’s going on, Taci?”
“I do.”
“Love me?”
“Yes.”
“Then stop putting it that way.”
She brushed her hand across the table, slowly sweeping a few bagel crumbs to the floor.
“What is it you’re trying to say?” I watched her. Didn’t lean any closer to her; didn’t edge any farther away.
She strung the next words together, as if they were something she needed to say in one breath or she wouldn’t be able to say at alclass="underline" “I love you, but being with you is only going to hurt you.”
I felt the bottom drop out of the moment.
“How is it going to hurt me? Your being with me?”
Silence.
“Taci, I have no idea where all this is coming from. We love each other. We’ve been in a relationship for nearly a year. We’ve talked about getting-”
“Don’t say it.”
“About getting-”
“Patrick-”
“About getting married, Taci. C’mon, don’t pretend we haven’t. Don’t try to rewrite our past. Things are good, they’ve been-”
“I’m not pretending anything. And I’m not talking about how things have been or how they are. I’m saying…it’s about who we are.”
Despite myself, I could sense my words becoming sharper each time I spoke. “What does that mean-‘who we are’?”