“We’d like to park in your driveway, if you wouldn’t mind.”
“Why?”
“I can’t tell you that,” Alexa answered. “But it doesn’t involve you, Mr. .?”
“Latham. Charles Latham.”
A blond-haired woman wearing gray sweats appeared at the throat of the hallway. A small child came from the same direction to stand beside her, one hand gripping her mother’s pant leg.
“Charles?” the blond woman said, raising an eyebrow. “What is it?”
“It’s the FBI, Patty,” he told her, then turned back to Alexa and Charles. “Please come in,” he said. “You’re getting wet.”
Alexa stepped inside, and Winter followed her.
The woman approached them, the child shadowing her. She crossed her arms. “What can we do for you?”
“Ma’am,” Alexa said. “We were just asking for permission to park two vehicles in your driveway for a little while.”
“Our driveway? What for?”
“What’s a while?” Charles said.
Alexa shrugged. “I’m not sure.”
“And they can’t tell us why,” Charles told his wife.
“I’m sorry,” Alexa said. “I would if I could. Really.”
“I think we should tell them,” Winter said.
Alexa turned her eyes on Winter and cocked her head. After a few seconds, she nodded her approval.
“We’re part of a strike force,” Winter told the Lathams. “We’re staking out a house a few blocks away, and we have about a dozen vehicles that have to stay out of sight until it’s time to converge, when we get the order. We don’t know how long that will take, because we don’t control what the subjects do or when they do it. We’ll be long gone before you wake up in the morning.” Winter turned on his warmest smile.
Patty Latham said, “I don’t have a problem with it. Charles?”
“Fine by me,” he said. “We can sleep soundly knowing we have the FBI watching over us.”
“I’ll make you two a thermos of coffee,” Patty offered. “When you go, just leave the container on the side porch. There’s a half bath just inside the side door. I’ll leave it unlocked in case you need it. Just turn the lock before you leave.”
“That would be greatly appreciated,” Alexa said.
“The least we can do,” Charles Latham said.
“And I expect a few ham sandwiches wouldn’t hurt,” Patty said, lifting the towheaded child up onto her hip.
“I can’t see where it would hurt a thing,” Winter agreed.
Raindrops ran down the windows of Alexa’s sedan, creating diffuse golden halos around the streetlights. Winter sat in the front seat with his back against the door, so he could watch the front of Click’s house through the side window. Alexa, in the back seat, exactly mirrored his posture. Winter checked his watch. It was nine o’clock.
“So, how’s having a new baby?” Alexa asked.
“Sort of like deja vu all over again. Only I’m older by fourteen years. I guess I’m paying closer attention this time. Or maybe it just seems like I am.”
“I like Sean,” Alexa said. “I should have known I would. She is totally different than Eleanor, except that she loves your rotten hide as much.”
“You’ll get to know her better, and you’ll like her even more.”
“I thought that, after Eleanor, I would hate whoever you ended up with. Truthfully, I was prepared to dislike Sean. I should have known that anybody you picked out would be a very special person. I can see in her eyes that she worships you. . just like Eleanor did. What is it about you, Massey? Nobody gets two perfect matches. You know what it is, don’t you?”
“No,” he said. “Tell me.”
“If you get two perfect mates, then somebody out there doesn’t get their one. I was furious at you for marrying my roommate. Do you know how hard it was to find another one who was neat, entertaining, and responsible?” Alexa sniffed. “I brought Eleanor home to see the Delta, and she falls in love with you, my other best friend. I never had another roommate who wasn’t a nightmare.”
“I did apologize, and you said you forgave me.”
“I miss Eleanor,” she said, softly. “A day never goes by that I don’t see or hear something that triggers a memory of her.”
“Me too,” he said truthfully.
“I guess you think you loved her more than I did.”
He didn’t answer for a few long seconds. “I loved her as much as it is possible for me to love anyone.”
“And you love Sean that way?”
“It’s not the same and it is exactly the same. Love isn’t like some pie chart with a certain number of slices, Lex. There are degrees, but not that you can measure. I don’t love Sean any more or any less than I loved Eleanor.”
“Loved?”
“Love. I’m still in love with Eleanor.”
“She’s dead, Winter. Can you love a dead person the same as you can a live one? Isn’t it just the memories you love now? Isn’t that a different love? Sean can hold you, kiss you, laugh and cry with you. Do you feel guilty because Sean has taken Eleanor’s place in your life?”
“Lex, can we talk about something else?” Winter felt uncomfortable talking about Eleanor and Sean. Alexa was prying into his heart, and if it had been anyone else he would have been angry at the intrusion. But he knew how much Alexa had loved Eleanor, and that gave her a backstage pass.
“We used to talk about everything and anything, Winter. Have you forgotten?”
“That was a very long time ago.” He regretted the words as soon as they left his mouth. The silence that followed was bottomless and he couldn’t make himself fill it by trying to take it back, or make it right.
36
Winter Massey closed his eyes and listened to the rain drumming on the sedan’s hood.
It had been a very long time, but Winter remembered easily.
When he was asked to work on the yearbook staff his senior year, he had brought Alexa on board with him. He took her to the prom, and she was the most beautiful girl there. After graduation, while they were sitting on the eighteenth green of the local golf course drinking warm wine out of a screw-top bottle, he had kissed her. Her reaction had been instant and passionate. But a sneezing fit had ended the kiss and the mood passed, and she’d pulled back from him, joking about how close to losing their friendship they had come. A little hurt and confused, Winter had told her that he loved her and wanted her, and she had shaken her head.
“I love you, Winter,” she’d said. “I love you way more than that. We’ll always be able to trust each other. I know what you have done for me, and I will always love you for it. You showed me who I really was.”
“But we could have it all,” he had said. “Lex, we could be stars.”
She’d shaken her head slowly.
“No, Massey, it isn’t all right. I wish it could be.”
After that, it was never the same. She was accepted to Berkeley and left that summer to get an early start. Their good-bye had been painful for Winter. He wasn’t as sorry he had tried to change the ground rules as he was that he had ever made her the promise he had the day she’d come to his house for her notebook.
They had remained friends, but the closeness they had shared as teenagers was never there again.
He had thought back on their adolescent relationship thousands of times. He had been in love. Alexa hadn’t. Then he’d fallen in love with Eleanor and the direction of his life was set in stone.
He had thought about it from every angle he could look at it from.
It always came out the same way.
He and Alexa were just never meant to be.
And since the moment he’d first met Eleanor, Winter had been relieved his life had gone the way it had. Of course, he desperately regretted that Eleanor had died and that Rush had been blinded. But he didn’t regret meeting and falling in love with Sean and having Olivia. He had gone on with his life, and it had flowed from one thing to the next. .
“Massey,” Alexa said, breaking the spell. “You asleep?”
“Resting my eyes.”