Joe walked down the gleaming white-walled hallway, his footsteps sounding loud against the linoleum. There weren't as many people milling about as there'd been last time, but then again, it was late, as attested to by the faint odor of dinner and the muffled sounds of TV sets.
He turned one final corner and knocked on a door no different in appearance from the dozens he'd already passed-so many lives cloaked in ubiquitous anonymity.
"Come in."
He opened the door and stepped inside. Natalie Shriver was seated as usual by the window, but the lights were out, allowing her to gaze onto the moon-washed lawn without any competing reflection.
"Who is it?" she asked.
He realized the hall light behind him had made him into a featureless shadow. He quickly closed the door. "Joe Gunther. I visited you the other day?"
"I remember. Would you like to rest for a while? I apologize for the darkness. You may turn a light on if you wish."
"No. That's fine," he said, taking his chair across from her. "It's actually very restful this way."
"Yes, I agree. That's why I do it. I read a little later, generally. But after supper, it's nice to simply sit and think for a while. I don't believe people do enough of that in this busy world."
"I'm sure you're right."
He couldn't really see her face. It was mostly in darkness, one cheek only being touched by the moonlight.
"What's on your mind? I can't imagine you came by to simply stare out the window with me."
"I did say I'd be back to visit."
He saw her nod, if just barely. "That's true. I remember that. A nice gesture. Do you have many friends?"
"Enough."
"I would imagine they're happy to have you in their lives."
He was startled by the remark. It so closely echoed something Gail had told him just hours earlier. Flush from her near-miraculous victory over Ed Parker, and now a newly anointed state senator, she'd dropped by his house on Green Street with flowers, a box of mac and cheese as a joke, and an admission that despite the important place he held in her heart, she was fearful that she too often took him for granted.
He'd been deeply touched by that. He'd never laid claim to her, and although he'd felt cast away sometimes as she wrestled with her inner conflicts, he'd always known he might lose her to a course not yet charted. It was a defense mechanism, no doubt, a hedge against disappointment, and perhaps not the soundest emotional raft to cling to. But in the end, it worked for him.
"I'm certainly happy to have them in mine," he told Natalie.
She was silent for a moment, and he feared he might have reminded her of her losses.
"But you are here for a reason, nevertheless," she suddenly said, her voice still strong.
"That's up to you-whether you'd like to know about Hannah or not."
"Why she was killed?"
"Yes."
Again, there was a prolonged pause, during which Gunther became aware, for the first time, of the distant ticking of a clock somewhere.
"I think I would. I have my own theories, but it would be a comfort of sorts to actually be told. How do you know, by the way?"
"A man she knew, a long time ago, died recently and left a note-a long confession, in fact. With his lawyer."
"A suicide, you mean." She said it matter-of-factly.
"Yes." He paused. "Hannah had taken a deposition when she was a court reporter. This man discovered he was mentioned in it, by pure chance-had that gotten out, it might've ruined him. So he approached her, first with money, and then with his own dreams and ambitions."
"They were lovers, then?"
"For a while. That's why she dropped out. He'd heard from an ex-employee about a large cache of money hidden under the floor of a small store in Brattleboro. He stole it to start a new life, and I guess Hannah hoped she could make his dream her own. But it didn't last between them."
"Poor girl," her mother murmured. "It never did."
"Anyway, the man did well. He made a few lucky choices, hired people who knew what to do, became very wealthy. I only met him once, but I sensed he may have been as surprised by his own success as anyone, as if maybe he were just along on somebody's else's ride."
"That's happened to more than a few people."
"He wasn't really, though," Joe corrected himself. "I guess I meant that he seemed ill suited to the trappings of wealth. But he had the necessary ruthlessness. Money hadn't changed him from what he'd been."
"A bad man, then?"
"Maybe worse-an amoral one. Bland and brutal, both. When Hannah heard a few months ago that his past might be threatening to catch up with him, she contacted him and told him her continued silence could be bought."
Natalie Shriver reacted with a small but sharp intake of breath. "Oh-foolish girl."
"I'm afraid so. I am sorry."
The old woman sighed. "We make choices, Mr. Gunther, usually based on what we think is right, even when all around us see our folly for what it is. Hannah led a sort of wishful life, really-an approximation of the one that actually stretched out before her. She was never in a position to choose wisely."
Joe thought back to the lives he'd encountered lately, of people now both living and dead, and at the watershed events that had helped shape his own.
"I wonder how many of us are."