The Burying Place

He didn't look when he heard her footsteps in the snow behind him. She sat down in the chair next to him and didn't say anything. The two of them spent a minute of silence, putting off the inevitable.

'You're ready?' Stride asked finally, when he couldn't stand the tension anymore.

Serena nodded without looking at him. 'Yeah.'

'You don't have to go,' he told her. 'You can stay in a separate bedroom for a few weeks if you like.'

'We've talked about this, Jonny.'

'I know.'

That was the reality staring him in the face. It was done between them. Over. At least for now. At least for a while. 'You know I love you,' he told her.

'I love you too, but you need time, and I need time. I don't know whether it was just the heat of the moment, but you're more comfortable with Maggie than you are with me. You opened up to her, and you shut me out. That doesn’t work for me.'

'I'm sorry.'

'So am I. I'm not blaming you, Jonny. It's my problem, too.'

'What's next?' Stride asked.

Serena shook her head. 'I don't know yet.'

'Are you going back to Las Vegas?'

'No,' she told him. 'Not now, anyway. I could go back there and get a job, but it's not really home anymore. I'm not sure where home is to me. I'm not like you. I don't have roots.'

'So what will you do?'

Serena shrugged her shoulders, as if the future were a small thing compared to the present. 'Denise asked me to stay on with the Sheriff's office in Grand Rapids. I may do that for a while. Valerie's getting settled on her own with Callie, and I'd like to help her. She's renting a house and said I could use one of the spare bedrooms.'

'I like the idea of you staying close by,' Stride said.

It was an olive branch, but she left it where it was. He watched the sadness in her face and wished he could wipe it away. He knew there had always been something missing in Serena, some part of her unfulfilled. Maybe she just needed to be on her own. The prospect didn't seem to scare her as much as it scared him.

'I have to go,' she told him, standing up. She cast her eyes out toward the lake and then at the cold sand of the beach. Three years ago, on a hot summer night, they had made love out there for the first time.

'If you need anything at all, call me,' Stride said. 'Any time, day or night. You know that, right?'

'You're always trying to protect the women in your life, Jonny,' she murmured. 'We don't all need protection.'

'I'm just saying.'

'I know. If I do need someone, you're my first call.'

'I may show up on your doorstep someday,' he said.

She gave him a weak smile. 'You never know, I may show up on yours first.'

Serena put a hand on his shoulder as she turned away to walk over the snowy slope toward the cottage. He didn't watch her go. The lake was loud, and he couldn't hear the sound of her car engine on the street as she drove off. He waited on the beach, not moving, getting colder and feeling numbness on his face. Time passed, and by the time he got up, the sun had climbed over the edge of the water.

The Detective Bureau in City Hall was mostly empty. No one was there to greet him. He had been gone, and now he was back. He went inside his office the way he had done thousands of times over the years and hung up his coat. The room still held a trace of Maggie's perfume about it. Otherwise, nothing had changed. Time had stood still while he was away.

Stride didn't sit down immediately. He ran his fingers over the framed photos on his credenza and picked up the one of himself and Serena, taken atop the Stratosphere tower in Las Vegas. He remembered thinking back then that he had borrowed time with her and that one day someone would ask for it back. Suddenly, unexpectedly, that time was now. He put the picture back down where it had always been, so he could still see her face.

Leaning against the window frame, he looked out at the traffic on First Street and at the lake beyond the city buildings. Duluth was a city of struggle, of faded glory, of the new always colored by the old. It was small enough that you could wrap your arms around it and big enough that you could never quite hold it in your grasp. It was bitter cold, primitive, and intimidating, like an outpost on the border of the frontier.

He realized he had an advantage that Serena didn't. He knew where his home was. Home was here. Home was Duluth.

Stride sat down in his chair. He hadn't replaced it in years. It molded to his body the way old jeans did, moving when he moved. The three months he had spent away from this place felt like the longest, ugliest detour of his life. It had been a mistake to take refuge in a cabin in the woods; he should have followed his instincts and come back early. This was where he belonged.

'Welcome back, boss.'

He looked up and saw Maggie in his doorway. Her neck was bandaged, and she grimaced in pain as she came into his office, but she slid sideways into the chair in front of his desk the way she always did. It had been the same for more than a decade.

Boss, she said.

Was that how it was going to be? Partners, not lovers? He wondered if they could really stay that way. Or if either of them wanted it that way.

He pointed at the bandage. 'Shouldn't you be flat on your back right now?'

'Is that the way you want me?' she asked with a wink. She was serious but not serious. Joking but not joking. Things were already complicated.

'You're such a pain in the ass,' he said.

'Actually, that's the one place where I don't have any pain.'

He shook his head and looked away. Maggie read the soberness in his face and followed his eyes, which had wandered to the photograph of Serena.

'So?' she asked.

'She's gone.'

Maggie swore softly. 'I'm really, really sorry.'

'It's not your fault.'

'Yeah? Then why do I feel like it is?'

'Don't go there, Mags. It won't change anything.' After a moment, he added, 'Maybe things happen the way they do for a reason.'

'Or maybe things just suck on a completely random basis,' she replied. 'Did you think about that?'

'I'm trying not to think about it at all right now.'

She nodded. 'Understood.'

He dragged his eyes away from the photograph and changed the subject. 'Did you see the news? Kasey's lawyer is going to use an insanity defense. He claims the death of her child and the manipulation by Regan Conrad left her incapable of distinguishing right from wrong.' 'A jury just might buy it,' Maggie said.

'Do you think she was insane?'

'Don't you think so?'

'I think she kidnapped a baby and killed three people,' he said.

'Yeah, but she was also a mother who had to watch her child die.' Maggie added pointedly, 'We all have our breaking points.'

He didn't reply, but he thought to himself, yes, we do.

'What about Nieman?' he asked. 'What have you found out about him?'

'Nieman's a ghost,' she said. 'We're going to be unraveling his secrets for months. So far, we've linked him to murders in Colorado, Iowa, and New Mexico, but we still don't know exactly who he is or where he came from. The FBI is helping us put the pieces together.'

'Kasey's lawyer will claim that killing him was a public service,' he said.

'It was.' Maggie stared at Stride with her hair falling across her face. 'What now? Do you and I plead temporary insanity too?'