“He was unjustly threatening the life of an innocent human being, and you saved her; it’s just that in this case the innocent person happened to be you.”
She was quiet. “I didn’t feel courageous. I felt terrified.”
“Ralph once told me that fear is one of the key ingredients to courage. That if your life’s in danger and you’re not afraid, you’re just a moron. And a liability.”
“But it felt good to kill that man,” she said softly, almost imperceptibly, and with fragile honesty. “I was glad I did it. That’s different from just being afraid. I’m not sorry he’s dead, I’m sorry it felt good when I shot him.”
She was quiet, and the air seemed to beat with dark wings around us.
I knew this feeling personally, this one she’d articulated. More than once I’d flirted with the seductive lure of the forbidden. Just one example: when I was apprehending Basque, I needlessly broke his jaw, and the gratuitous violence excited a part of me I’m ashamed is even there.
“Tessa, I don’t-”
“It’s okay. I know there’s not-”
“Hang on, let me finish. I’m no expert on any of this. And you’re right, denial isn’t the answer. Somehow forgiveness, or making amends, or some sort of penance, is-has to be, or else-”
“Or else you just gotta live with it, right? Let bygones be bygones, pick up the pieces and try to move on?”
“Well…” Even I could tell that wasn’t really an answer, more of a metaphysical cop-out.
Lien-hua’s observation came to mind: “We run from the past and it chases us; we dive into urgency but nothing deep is ultimately healed.”
“They’re good questions.” I searched for something else, something more solid to offer her. “I need to think about all this some more.” I was struck by how completely unsatisfying a response that was.
“Yeah, me too.” Then after a pause that went on too long, she said quietly, “I read the note.”
“The note?”
“The one from Amber. About last night. In the motel room.”
“Oh, that note.”
“Amber gave me her explanation this afternoon. I’ve been wondering if I could hear yours.”
74
I fingered the prescription bottle in my pocket. I could confront Tessa about the meds or delve into the whole issue of my dubious relationship with Amber five years ago.
Great alternatives.
“What’s the deal with you two?” Tessa pressed.
“It’s complicated.”
“Whenever people say something’s complicated, they never mean complicated, they mean fractured, that somebody got hurt-and in this case it was both of you, wasn’t it?”
I hate it when she does that.
“All right. Here’s the edited version. Amber and I met when she was engaged to Sean. There was chemistry and-”
“Did you sleep with her?”
“No.”
She waited. “But?”
“But we did fall in love,” I admitted.
“And how did that happen?”
“What do you mean, how did it happen? We fell-”
“C’mon, no one just falls in love. You drift there purposely. You make choices in that direction or it never happens.”
It took me a moment to reply. “You’re right. Yes. We made choices in that direction.”
Tessa was quiet. “What happened last night?”
“Nothing. I would never cheat on Lien-hua. And I would never do something like that to my brother.”
“But yet you fell in love with his fiancee.”
“Yes.” This was not at all the conversation I wanted to be having. “I did.”
I heard the garage door open. Sean must have finished shoveling.
“You were right,” Tessa said. “That was highly edited.”
The garage door rattled shut.
Hearing Sean enter the garage, I thought of what Tessa had just told me a few minutes ago about my not believing him ever since we were teenagers and how that had hurt things between us. And now, as I thought about the awkward issue of my past with Amber, it struck me that on all fronts I’d been the one, not Sean, who’d sabotaged our relationship.
Tessa seemed to be reading my mind. “Maybe you should go see how he’s doing.”
“Maybe I should.”
Go on. Talk to him, then get back to those videos and follow up with Tait to see if there’s been any progress on finding Kayla. And check for footage from other unsolved cases that might lead you to Reiser’s killer.
I stood. Reached into my pocket and pulled out the bottle of pills.
Tessa watched Patrick unpocket a pill bottle.
“Amber couldn’t get to the pharmacy,” he said, “but she had these here. They’re over-the-counter. She told me you were asking about getting a prescription filled? For sleeping pills?”
“Um…”
“I wish you would’ve told me.”
“I was… I was trying to work some stuff out on my own.”
“I would’ve helped. If you would have let me.”
I was ashamed I needed it, she thought, but said nothing.
“Where did you get the prescription?”
“A psychiatrist.”
“You’re seeing a psychiatrist?”
“I was. I mean, I did. Just a few times.”
He took a breath. “Look, I understand it’s been rough, but… just keep me in the loop. I know I’m just your stepdad but-”
“No, you’re more than that. I should’ve told you. Seriously. I’m sorry.”
He put a reassuring hand on her shoulder, then held out the bottle to her, and she could see that he wasn’t angry. Not really. “Amber said to just take one. They’re supposed to be pretty strong.”
She accepted the bottle. “Just one. Got it.”
Then Patrick left to talk to his brother.
And Tessa took one of the pills.
75
There was no room for a car in Sean’s garage.
Instead, the space was jammed full of tackle boxes, cross-country skis, fishing poles, tents, duck hunting decoys, and sleeping bags. A workbench rested against the far wall stacked with boxes of birdshot, shotgun shells, and tools. One of his guns lay on the bench, a Mossberg 930 Tactical; it looked like he might’ve been interrupted in the middle of cleaning it. A small fridge sat beside the door, and I imagined it might be for his night crawlers in the summer, his beer and brats year-round.
The trophy deer heads and muskie that he’d removed from the living room for Tessa’s benefit were propped against a huge cardboard box stacked high with back issues of Wisconsin Sportsman magazines.
“So, did you get it all shoveled?” It was a lame conversation starter, I knew that. But that’s the way things were between us.
“As much as I could. It’s still blowing pretty hard.” He stowed the snow shovel in the corner of the garage near the workbench. “At least we should be able to get out if we need to.”
The garage was deeply chilled, and even though I’d grabbed my coat, I still caught myself shivering.
As I was trying to think of a way to transition into the topic of the accident twenty years ago, Sean said abruptly, “I thought there was a detective from Denver you were interested in?” His question took me off guard. I’d never told him about Cheyenne, and I was surprised he’d heard about the potential relationship that had never gotten off the ground.
“Cheyenne Warren.”
“Yeah. That’s it.”
Cheyenne had been the one to fire the shots at the man who, as it turned out, was Tessa’s father. Since that terrible night, her relationship with Tessa had remained visibly strained, although both of them claimed things were all right. In the disquieting wake of the shooting, Cheyenne had left law enforcement and gone back to ranching. Neither Tessa nor I had seen her in more than three months.
“I’m with Lien-hua now,” I told my brother.
“I got to know her a little on the trail groomer. She’s nice.”
“Yes, she is.”
Telling him that I was thinking of proposing to Lien-hua seemed like the sort of thing that might serve in some way to draw us closer together, but also a little too personal to share at this point.