“You didn’t do it,” she said. “I know that. Fault’s mine for letting Ms. Porovsky talk me into letting Darrell spend time with you. I should have known what kind of business you were into. I should have asked. And then Darrell started liking you, talking ’bout you, changing, gettin’ better in school and such. You find the man who shot my only boy. You find him and shoot him back before you give him up to the police. You hear?”
“I hear,” I said, acknowledging that there was nothing wrong with my hearing but not that I was agreeing with her order for me to commit murder. I owned no gun and wanted none. As long as Ames was nearby, I wouldn’t need one.
“How is he?” asked Ames.
“Poorly,” she said. “Poorly. That BB or whatever it was infected him. Poorly.”
Victor had driven Ames and me to the hospital. It was not the car he had driven when he had killed my wife, but he was the driver. Once again I searched for anger. Ann Hurwitz had urged me to find the anger, to purge it, to deal with it. Though she couldn’t tell me, I had the distinct impression that she would have considered it a step forward if I suddenly attacked Victor in a bitter rage. It wasn’t in me. The hate button in my psyche didn’t seem to exist. I had witnessed much in my life that would put others into squinting anger. I should probably have felt that way about whoever had shot Darrell. Nothing came except a sad determination to confront the person who had put Darrell in that hospital bed.
It was still raining. Flo, Adele, and Catherine went home, and I promised to stop by the house and report.
Darrell’s mother went back into the intensive care unit with us. Darrell lay on his side, knees up near his chest, hands under his face on the pillow, eyes closed. Curled up, he looked like a dark, peaceful baby. The usual machines were blinking and beeping in the darkened room.
“She’s right,” Ames whispered. “We should shoot him when we catch up with him.”
Darrell’s mother couldn’t hear the whisper, and I chose not to respond.
The rain was down to a steady shower with a full bright sun shining round, red-orange, and happy when we got back to the place I was now expected to call home. Victor parked on the gravel path next to the stairs.
All three of us got out slowly, ignoring the rain. A clump of small white and yellow flowers yielded to rain drops and then popped up again for another gentle assault. Before I hit the first step, I heard her.
Parked on the street was a familiar car. When the window rolled down I saw Sally Porovsky looking at me. She didn’t call out or wave. She just looked at me.
“You’ve got work to do,” Ames said.
“I know.”
Victor stood silently, a thin trail of rain wending its way down his nose. Ames nodded at me and said no more. My door was open. Ames knew it. He led Victor upward, their shoes clapping on each wooden step.
I went to the street and moved around Sally’s car to the passenger door. It was open. I got in and sat.
“You’re wet,” she said.
I nodded.
“There’s a beach towel in the trunk. You want to get it?”
“No.”
Her hands were tight on the steering wheel as if she were about to peel into a drag race. She looked forward. The shadow of rain rolling down the front window danced against her face. She looked pretty. She was pretty. Her skin was clear and pale, her hair dark and cut short. She was slightly plump and normally totally in control of herself, but not at this moment.
“I was going to call you,” I said.
“I remember,” she said. “I decided not to wait. How is Darrell?”
“I don’t really know.”
“His mother won’t answer my calls.”
I didn’t know what to say.
She went on. “I think she blames me for getting Darrell involved with you.”
“She does.”
“She told you that?”
“Yes.”
We went silent for about half a minute and then she said, “Let’s go someplace where we can talk.”
I could have said, “What’s wrong with right here,” but I sensed that she wanted to talk about something other than Darrell.
“FourGees?”
FourGees is a coffee shop, a decent place for lunch and late-night live music, at Beneva and Webber. It was dark in the daytime, with amber shadows and places to talk quietly.
“I can’t stay long,” she said as she drove. “I have to go back to the office.”
The office was children’s services, about ten minutes from FourGees.
I nodded. She drove. I like company when I drive alone. I’ll listen to conservative talk shows, ball games, religious evangelists, but not music. I want no music. I want company. When I’m with other people in a car, I like to listen to them talk, which they seem to do whether or not I’m doing the driving.
Look at your watch or the time on your cell phone and count off a minute, then two, then three. Minutes become interminable when you count them. Silences become an anticipation of bad news.
We said not a word as Sally drove to FourGees and found a space directly in front of the shop.
The rain had stopped.
Silently, we got out of the car and went inside. Only two of the tables in the front room were occupied, one by a man and a small boy, and the other by three older women. The boy was playing with the straw in his drink. The women were eating slices of cake and drinking coffee. They seemed happy with one another’s company.
Sally and I marched solemnly past the counter near the rear, where a tattooed girl in her twenties said, “I’ll be right with you.”
The second room was empty. Sally hesitated as if this wasn’t what she had had in mind, and then she decided to sit on a wooden chair as far from the window as she could get. I sat too. I sat, and I waited.
“I have to tell you something, Lewis.”
She leaned over and put a hand on mine.
“Your husband isn’t dead,” I guessed.
“He’s still dead,” she said.
“You have cancer.”
“No. I think you should stop guessing.”
The girl with the tattoos appeared and asked if we had made up our minds. I ordered a plain black coffee and a slice of the same kind of cake the women in the other room were having.
“Nothing for me,” Sally said. “No, wait. Tea. Hot. Mint if you have it.”
“We have it,” the girl said. “Two forks for the cake? It’s big.”
“Sure,” Sally said.
When she was gone, Sally looked down and said, “Lewis, I’m moving.”
“I’ll help.”
“No, I’m moving to Montpelier.”
“France?”
“Vermont.”
This time, the silence almost insisted that no one break it.
“For good?” I asked.
“For good.”
“People move here from Montpelier. They don’t move from Florida to Vermont. Why?”
“My family, cousins, brother, people I’ve known all my life, people I went to school with. Besides, I have a good job offer at a hospital as social services director. Double my present salary.”
“And?”
“And,” she said, “I’ve been doing what I do for more than twenty years. I’m burned out, Lewis. I can’t stand getting up in the morning and facing children who keep getting sent back to drug-addicted parents, kids who are hurt, abused, ignored, and dumped on the system, on me, with no resources other than whatever we can get by with off the books and paperwork. I don’t want to think about the pile of cases on my desk that keeps growing. I want to be with my kids more, come home without feeling the footsteps of those kids behind me, silently calling for attention.”
“I understand.”
All the things she said were true, but I felt that something was missing, another reason that haunted her, a reason she didn’t want to share.
“Do you? Do you understand without just feeling sorry for yourself because you’re going to have to deal with another loss?”