“I’m serious,” I said. “I’ll be back.”
She didn’t say anything.
“I think it’s snowing outside,” I said.
She looked up at the skylight.
“Are you going to be all right?” I said. It was a weak offering, but I didn’t know what else to say.
“No,” she said.
“You drank a lot of champagne,” I said, putting my shirt on. I looked around the room for my shoes and socks.
She sat up in the bed, keeping the blanket wrapped around her body. “Are you going to say anything else? Or are you just going to run away again?”
I sat down on the bed. “What do you mean, again? When did I ever run away before?”
“You always did,” she said. “Every time.”
“That’s because Edwin was usually on his way home, remember?”
“He’s not coming home this time,” she said. In an instant, she had that look in her eyes again. That sudden flame.
“I have to go now,” I said.
“Do you expect me to beg you to stay?”
“No,” I said. “I don’t expect anything.”
I was ready for something painful. A cold silence, more venom, violence. Instead, she just looked down at her hands. “Do you think I married Edwin for his money?”
I didn’t know what to say.
“I suppose you must think that. Did I ever tell you how I met him?”
“No.”
“I had a flower shop in Southfield. I opened the store myself. I guess I wanted to show everybody that I could do it. You know, my family and everybody. I didn’t realize what a tough business it was, but I was getting by. I was doing all right. One day, Edwin Fulton walks in the store. He’s got this suit on that must have cost five thousand dollars. These incredible leather shoes. The works. So right away, I’m thinking, okay, this guy is gonna come on smooth, try to impress me with how much money he has. He comes up to the counter and he asks me what kind of flower would look good in his boutonnisre. Says he’s terrible with colors, he’s got no idea what would look good with his tie. I had these roses from Central America. Real nice, real expensive. I said, here, you probably want one of these. You know what he said?”
“What did he say?”
“He said no, it looks too expensive. It’ll look like I’m showing off. So he buys a big red carnation instead. Seventy-five cents.”
I smiled.
“The next day, he comes back, buys another carnation. And then the next day and the next day. He always seemed like he wanted to talk to me, but I don’t know, he was just shy. Which was weird, because you don’t expect rich people to be shy. Anyway, a few days later, he finally comes in and orders this huge bouquet. Every rose I had in the store. Three hundred dollars’ worth. It took me forever to put it together. When I was finally done with it, he asked me to fill in the card for him. He said, please make this card out to the most wonderful woman who ever walked the earth. Those were his exact words. And of course, I’m thinking, oh God, how original is this? He’s going to make me fill in this card and then he’s going to tell me the flowers are for me. So I’m pissed off, because now he’s just throwing his money away trying to impress me, and I’m going to say thanks but no thanks and end up putting all the flowers back. But that’s not what he did.”
“No?”
“No. They were for his mother. It was her birthday. He could see I was surprised, so he asked me if I thought he was going to give them to me. I said yes, to be honest, that’s what I was thinking. You know what he said? He said when he finally worked up the nerve to ask me out, he’d buy the flowers at another store. That way he could take them back and demand a refund if I didn’t fall in love with him.”
“That’s great.”
She looked up at the skylight. “Do you think he can see us now?”
“God, I don’t know.”
“You should have heard him talk about you,” she said. “He told me you were the best friend he ever had. Did he ever tell you that?”
“Yes, he did.”
“I hope he can,” she said. “I hope he can see us.”
“Why?”
“All that time, he never knew about us,” she said. “I should have told him. Not because I wanted to hurt him. Just because he had the right to know.”
“Maybe some things you don’t want to know.”
“I don’t believe in that,” she said. “I don’t like things to happen to me without knowing why.”
“I suppose I feel the same way,” I said. “That’s why I need to leave now. I’ve got one more thing I need to know.”
She watched me put my coat on.
“Tell me the truth,” I said. “Do you want me to come back or not?”
“No,” she said. “Not yet anyway.”
“Fair enough.”
“I don’t think we can just start over,” she said. “We can’t pretend none of this happened.”
“No,” I said.
She looked up at the skylight again. The snow was beginning to collect in the corners. I sat there watching her.
“Thank you for being Edwin’s friend,” she said.
“I don’t think I did a very good job of that.”
She smiled. It wasn’t much of a smile, but it was the first one I had seen from her in months. “He would have forgiven you anything. Even this.”
I left. I didn’t kiss her. I didn’t touch her. As I drove away, I wondered if I would ever touch her again.
I swung by my cabin, took a shower, changed my clothes, had some coffee. And then I got right back into the truck and gunned it into the Soo. The snow was building into a flurry, but none of it was sticking to the ground yet. Some flakes blew into the truck through the open window.
When I got to Uttley’s office, I found him packing up a large cardboard box. He looked like his old self again, clean-shaven, his hair slicked back. A nice shirt and tie.
“Alex, there you are,” he said. “I was looking for you last night. I figured your phone was still out, so I stopped by your cabin.”
“What time was that?”
“Had to be about midnight. I couldn’t sleep, so I figured I’d come out and see you.”
“You must have just missed me,” I said. “I couldn’t sleep, either. So I went out looking for Raymond Julius’s house.”
“Raymond Julius? The man you…” He stopped.
“The man I killed, yes. Turns out he did some work for Leon Prudell.”
He stopped his packing. “He worked for Prudell? Are you serious?”
“He ran errands for him,” I said. “Did you ever meet him?”
“No, I didn’t,” he said. “I don’t remember even hearing his name.”
“Prudell says he helped him out on that job he did over at the resort, watching the lifeguards.”
“Oh, wait a minute,” he said. “I remember that. He said he had a guy helping him, covering for him when he went to the bathroom, stuff like that. I don’t think he told me his name. I probably wasn’t listening too well. That was toward the end, after I had already decided to fire him. But how does this guy figure into your thing with Rose?”
“He was upset that he lost his job. He blamed me. Started stalking me, looking into my past. He found the newspaper clippings. The rest is kind of crazy.”
“My God,” he said. “This all happened because I fired Prudell?”
“No,” I said. “This all happened because the guy was insane. You didn’t do anything wrong.”
“I can’t believe any of this,” he said. “This just keeps getting worse.”
“There’s one thing that’s still bothering me,” I said. “This business of how he contacted Rose.”
“You mean about whether he visited him or wrote to him?”
“Yes,” I said. “In his diary he just said that he ‘communicated’ with Rose. But he didn’t say how.”
“How did you see his diary?”
“You don’t want to know that,” I said.
He raised his hands. “Say no more.”
“I’m just wondering how it happened. How did he get through to Rose? How did he find out all the things he wrote about in his notes?”
He shrugged. “Who knows, Alex? Why does it even matter?”
“It just bothers me,” I said. “Maybe I should call that Browning guy down at the prison again.”
“You won’t get anywhere,” he said. “You know that.”