Afterwards, as his doubts about Dooher grew, Christina made it clear she didn't want to hear them. Her own agenda with Mark, her own priorities had taken over.
Then, when it was done, Wes had felt the tug of his misguided idealism again. He had tried one last time to get to Christina, to get her to consider, in spite of the Not Guilty verdict, that their guy had done it.
Maybe his timing had been wrong – it certainly wouldn't have been the first time – but she was already wearing an engagement ring. That should have been his first clue. She had asked him for proof, for something new that they hadn't seen at the trial or during preparation for it.
And Wes had really blown it then, coming right out and telling her that Mark had told him…
'He told you? He admitted it?'
But Wes had to be honest. He always had to be honest. Someday, he was sure, it was going to do him some good. But this hadn't turned out to be the day. He said, 'In so many words.'
'You mean he didn't tell you and he didn't admit it? Is that what you're saying?'
At the time, Wes had ruefully reflected that she sounded like him on cross. So by having Christina watch him during the trial, cop some of his moves, he had probably helped turn her into a lawyer. He wished, hearing her now, that he could work up some soaring sense of accomplishment, but it just didn't come.
Instead, he admitted that Dooher had not admitted…
And that had been that. She wasn't going to consider it.
Farrell thought she probably wouldn't believe it if Mark himself told her. She'd worked herself up into being a true believer and Wes Farrell's niggling doubts only served to reinforce for her the fact that she and Mark were in this alone together.
She'd told him about his problem. He was jealous that Mark had come to depend more upon her than on him, that Wes's role in Mark's life was going to diminish, that…
He'd tried. He really had.
'I'll consider it,' he said. 'Okay, I have. No. I don't think so.'
'She asked if I would talk to you.'
'And you have.' He walked to the other end of the tiny hollow in the roof. There was really nowhere else to go. He turned back, facing her. They were going to have to expand this deck, give him someplace to hide. 'And what am I supposed to say to her that I didn't try to say last time?'
'I don't know. Maybe this time she'll be disposed to believe you.'
'I don't care if she believes me! I don't care what she believes!' His volume was rising. He heard it and didn't like it. He didn't want to yell at Sam. He loved Sam. This didn't have anything to do with the two of them. He tightened down the control button.
'She's living with a murderer, Sam. What am I supposed to tell her, exactly? Here I am, listen. "Hey, look, Christina, maybe it wouldn't be too good an idea if you kept living with your husband because, see – now how can I put a nice pleasant little spin on this for you? – he kills people once in a while. Not everyday, you understand, and I'm not saying he'll kill you, of course, but just to be safe…'" He shook his head. 'No, I don't think so.'
He put his hand up to his forehead, combed his hair back with his fingers. 'And after that, what's she going to do anyway? Leave?'
'She might. It might save her life.'
'She could leave now. Save her own life. It's not my job. No part of it is my job. Shit.'
Sam came toward him – she always did this because it so often worked – and put her arms around him. 'I think she wants to know what you know, Wes, that's all. She's carrying his baby. That's a hell of a commitment. She can't just walk out. She's got to be absolutely sure.'
'She'll never be sure, Sam. She knows everything I know already. It's all in her head, damn it.' But his arms came up around her, his head down to the hollow of her neck.
'When?' he asked.
'I told her tomorrow morning,' she said, smiling sweetly up at him, going up on her tiptoes to plant a kiss. 'Would that be a good time?'
Glitsky had moved in his deliberative way back to the land of the living.
Nat, at seventy-eight, started studying to become a rabbi. He was doing aerobic walking from Arguello to the beach every single day and was never going to die, wasn't even going to age any further, and for this Abe was grateful.
Glitsky's oldest son Isaac was graduating from high school in a couple of weeks, and he'd turned into a reasonable approximation of a young adult. On the day after graduation, he was leaving on a bicycle tour of the West Coast with three friends. He planned to be gone for most of the summer and had been accepted at UCLA in the fall.
Jacob – his hip seventeen-year-old – had gone on what Glitsky thought had been a mercy field trip to the Opera with his godmother, one of Flo's old college roommates. Over the howling derision of his brothers and his own misgivings, Jacob had spent an evening in San Francisco's Grand Hall. Then another. The experience – the grandeur, drama, emotion, tragedy – had transformed him. Before too long he was going down for Sunday matinees, standing in the back, buying discount tickets with his own money.
He'd started buying CDs. First the old duplex had been filled with the strains of the Three Tenors doing songs. But in short order he'd branched out into arias, then whole passages. He would study the scores, the librettos. He began taking Italian, of all things, as a special elective in school. Discovering that he had a rich baritone of his own, Jacob found an instructor who said it could be developed.
And the youngest boy changed his name. Living in the house of a half-black cop, the nickname O.J. had to go, so now he was Orel James, his given name. The boy looked more and more like his mother, Flo, each day.
Orel was still having a difficult time. At school, he remained withdrawn. He did a lot of headphones time, his Walkman. SEGA Genesis ruled the rest of his waking hours. And he'd developed a stutter.
His older brothers didn't play with Orel like they used to. Abe knew, heart-rending as it was, that this was how it should be – everybody was growing up. The older boys had their lives. Orel wasn't their responsibility anyway.
It fell to Glitsky, no one else. He accepted it, and sometimes thought that somebody else needing him was what saved him, what pulled him through it finally.
He had to start coming home, to help Orel with homework, to go to parent conferences about his boy, to be free on weekends. Abe had played college football – tight end at San Jose State – and Pop Warner needed coaches.
Suddenly he found himself out among humanity. Fathers, women, non-cops, other children. This was disorienting at first, but then he and Orel would go out for a shake afterwards and they'd have some things in common to talk about. Football, then – startlingly for both of them – what they were feeling.
He started making it a point whenever he could to be home in time to tuck Orel in at night, to sit and see Flo's face in his son's and realize part of her was still there, and listen to the stutter lessen as sleep closed in.
And then, gradually, starting to hear the boy himself, his own voice and identity, what he was saying – his secrets and worries and hopes – and sometimes he didn't know what this feeling was for his baby, it was so strong. Where before, he had barely known Orel.
Wondering – marveling – at the seeds that could spring up after the forest had been felled and cleared, he'd sit there, Orel sleeping with his breath coming deep, and he'd rest his hand on the boy's chest in the dark. Empty.