Harder not to resent the fact that I once again had a team of babysitters-a set of bodyguards that rotated between Frank, our neighbor Jack, Rachel, and if none of them were available, one of Frank’s off-duty friends from the department. Working out a way to be an effective journalist under these conditions was a more difficult challenge.
My feelings about the protection were, to say the least, mixed. I could easily admit I felt safer knowing that someone was watching my back. But Ethan and Lydia were quite obviously assigning me to stories on the political scene that would kept me in public places or on the phone. I couldn’t work the way I usually did, and I wasn’t willing to expose the sources I had in city hall to police scrutiny-even from off-duty, friendly officers who probably couldn’t have cared less about politics.
And eventually, there was the problem of a lack of solitude. I first began to feel my longing for it on the beach. I liked my runs on the beach with my dogs. Alone. Having Frank along or a friend was fine, but not every day, not every time. For the first two or three weeks after Parrish escaped, I was scared even when someone was with me. After that, I began to chafe at the bit.
It wasn’t just on runs, of course. I began to feel as if I were a bug in a jar. I started to notice avoidance behavior on my part-I canceled dinners with friends, begged off when invited on outings. I slept more, found reasons to linger anywhere I might be able to be alone. At home, instead of talking to my minders, who were, in fact, close friends, I pretended to get lost in working on the computer or moved to other rooms and shut the door.
In public, I didn’t have that option, and I realized how pathetic this longing for privacy had become when I noticed that I now looked forward to trips to the restroom and dawdled there.
I found some sympathy from Ben, although his work was so different from mine-he seldom traveled alone or made appointments to meet with complete (and often hostile) strangers. Still, he didn’t like being constantly accompanied any more than I did. That said, we were both aware of the bull’s-eyes on our backs, so there was a limit to our complaints.
As the first month went by, I could see the task of watching over me wearing on those who had taken it on, even if they wouldn’t admit it to me. By the end of the second month, little gaps were appearing in the schedule. By the autumn, I was just being warned to be careful.
I was, for all the good that did me.
One afternoon in late September, I was talking to Ethan in my small, shared office, waiting for Ben to show up for lunch with us, when the receptionist buzzed my desk and told me I had a pair of visitors in the lobby.
“Who?” Ethan said over the speaker, before I could ask.
I shot him a frown as the receptionist answered-in much warmer tones-that it was a man named Josh Enwill, who was here with his wife, Andrea.
Ethan raised his brows in inquiry. I was pondering two questions almost simultaneously:
Is Ethan stupid enough to be fooling around with the receptionist?
and
Where have I heard the name Josh Enwill before?
The answer to the second question came to me at the same time it occurred to Ethan: the injured prison guard.
“Escort them to the conference room, please,” he said, in a businesslike way that still left me undecided about the first question.
TWENTY-TWO
The conference room was closer to the lobby than my office was, but it took a while for the Enwills to make the short trip. He was walking with a cane, making determined progress, his right side seeming to drag the left half of his body along with it. The counterpoint to this slouched figure was Andrea Enwill, a tall blonde who walked behind him carrying a canvas backpack, her chin up, spine straight. She silently willed him down the hall with a nearly tangible force.
Ethan and I shook hands with them, then Ethan pulled out a chair for Josh but didn’t offer other assistance. He looked at Ethan for a moment, then said, with painstaking care but only slightly slurring his words, “Are you the one who got hurt, up in the mountains?”
“No,” Ethan and Andrea said at the same time.
“I think you mean Ben Sheridan,” I said.
“Oh, yes, of course,” he said, ducking his head.
“We’ll go over there next,” Andrea assured him.
“As it happens,” I said, “he’s on his way here. He’s meeting us for lunch.”
Josh looked up at that. “Really?”
“Yes.”
“If you don’t mind,” Andrea said, “could we wait for him? If it won’t ruin your plans?”
“No problem,” I said.
Ethan offered beverages to each of us, then stepped out to fetch them. I could see the Enwills were ill-at-ease, so I asked them if it was their first visit to Las Piernas. Yes, their first time here. They had driven down from Bakersfield, where they had moved after Josh left the Department of Corrections. There was a world of hurt lurking behind those last few words, so I quickly mentioned that I used to live in Bakersfield and worked for the Californian, and that most of Frank’s family lived there. So we made Bakersfield small talk and they relaxed a bit. Ethan came back with the drinks-and Ben in tow.
After the next round of introductions, Andrea reached into the backpack and pulled out a notebook and a manila folder. She kept the folder, but she opened the notebook to a page with writing on it and handed it to Josh.
He positioned it with his right hand, and studied it for a moment. He looked up and said, “Excuse me. Since-since I was hurt, I have…”
He looked helplessly at Andrea.
“Short-term memory loss,” she said.
He stared at her for a moment, then laughed. “As demonstrated!”
She smiled at him. The tension in the room went down another few notches.
“Right.” He looked at the notebook again, then said, “I came to Las Piernas for three reasons. Andrea has a sister here who has been wanting us to visit. I wanted to talk to the police here. And I wanted to see Ms. Kelly and Dr. Sheridan.”
“Irene and Ben,” I said, and Ben nodded.
He wrote our names in the margins of the notebook, then said, “Okay. Irene and Ben, I want to apologize.”
“Apologize?” I said. “For what?”
“I let him get away.”
“No, you didn’t,” I said. “It wasn’t your fault.”
“Irene is right,” Ben said, “neither of us blames you for his escape.”
“I should have known,” he said stubbornly. “Never should have turned my back on them.”
“Josh,” Ben said, “Irene and I were in the mountains with him when he was shackled and heavily guarded-more people guarding him than you had available. He escaped then, and he didn’t have a team to help him do it. We’re the last people who will ever believe you were responsible for his escape. We’re glad you survived.”
Enwill winced and lowered his gaze.
I felt a rush of a familiar, half-forgotten emotion-a feeling that once upon a time had nearly drowned me where I stood. I swallowed hard, failed to fight tears, and said, “It’s the hardest part, Josh. Forgiving yourself for surviving.”
He looked up at me.
“It took me a long time,” I said, “and it damned near drove me out of my head until I realized it was what I had to do. You get so busy healing-”
“At first just dealing with injuries-” Ben said and pulled up his pant leg to show his prosthesis. “Just getting through the next day. So you set aside everything else.”
“But the whole time,” I said, “it’s as if someone’s winding up this jack-in-the-box inside you. The tension mounts, and then from wherever inside you all this stuff is buried, that jack-inthe-box flies open, and brings out a memory.”
“Sometimes it plays a movie in your head,” Ben said. “The if-only-I-had movie.”