Eddi didn't know what to say, didn't want to say she was sorry. Again. She did not want to be where she was. She was not touchy-feely. She wasn't a people person. It was as if she'd inserted herself into the heart of a painful situation for pain's sake, the hurt inflicted as a substitute for the ache she couldn't otherwise feel for herself. Trying to make peace with Soledad's mother for Soledad was a losing proposition.
"You come to give me your sympathies, and I reject them. It's not very polite. I think my own guilt is working on me."
"Guilt?"
"I've been ill. I told my daughter… I told Soledad I'd rather her not be around while I was recovering. But it wasn't… I didn't know if I would recover. I didn't want her to watch me die." Gin could read the look on Eddi's face, answered the question there. "The surgery went well. The doctors think I have a good chance of surviving."
"You wanted to save her some hurt. You shouldn't feel guilty for that."
A shake of her head. "That's not why I feel guilty. If I'd let her come home, let her be there for me-"
"She'd still be dead." That was harsh and sharp, maybe more than Eddi had meant it to be. Definitely more. If she'd thought about it, she would have planed the edge off the. statement. But maybe in her self-pity Gin could use a reality slap. "Soledad was going to fight this fight long as she could, and long as she could would be right up to her end. I know that doesn't make losing her any easier. I work the same job, and having a like mind doesn't make… God, Soledad was a tough one… " One tear from Eddi. Just one. But it was one that up till that moment wouldn't come to her at all. "It doesn't make her not being around any easier for me."
"A parent shouldn't outlive their child. It should not be this way." The depth of the observation was matched by a dispassionate delivery. The summary of a grad-level thesis. A truth that could not be equivocated.
And the quiet returned.
Fat, uncomfortable quiet.
Gin asked: "Would you like something, something to remember her by?"
"I couldn't."
"I don't know how to do this." Just heavy with a certain "Jesus, end this" defeat. "I don't know how to close out a life. All of this," nodding to the boxes in various stages of being packed, "we'll just take all this home, put it in a room and never touch it again."
Eddi understood that.
"You were her…," lightly, "friend. It would be a nice way to help keep her memory alive."
Gin started for the door. "I'll give you some privacy. And thank you."
She left.
It was like, it was like being in a museum exhibit. A room set up to approximate the real world, but empty of actual life. And this, ladies and gentlemen, is where Officer O'Roark would have sat and watched television. Right here is where she is believed to have lain on the floor and read a book or a magazine. Over there, the supposed location she partook breakfast. And to our best estimation, this very location is where she developed her modified O'Dwyer VLe that was one of the most effective weapons in the fight against the hegemony of the muties. Right up until it misfired and cost Officer O'Roark her life. Soledad's ghost was all over the place. Warm and vibrant. Quite present. It felt to Eddi she could, with patience, wait out this dark, sick joke Soledad was playing-'cause that's all it was-and catch her sneaking from a hiding place in a closet into the kitchen for a sandwich.
Just a feeling.
Soledad was dead.
And how to keep her alive? What thing was there that would remind and inspire and comfort and not depress too severely? A photo? A book?
Soledad's favorite book? How the hell was Eddi supposed to know what Soledad's favorite, book was? Yeah, there were books around, but did Soledad particularly read any of them? Like Eddi. did she just buy books because it made her feel not so bad about wasting nights watching reality TV? Maybe something Soledad had made herself, some craft or something.
Weren't any around. Probably, Soledad wasn't a craftsperson. Except for her gun. With her gun she'd been real crafty.
On a table was a book, but not one that had been published. Eddi reached for it, opened it. Not a book. Soledad's journal. Eddi read for a few pages. Stopped.
Held the book, clutched it. Clutched it tight in her hands, then to her breast.
This.
If Gin was gracious enough to share her daughter, this-Soledad in her own words-is what Eddi would take.
The end of fear.
Sounds good. That's the problem with catchphrases and manicured sound bites: They sound good, but they don't add up to anything. They sound good because they 're honed and shined by politicians and zealots with badges, but with sophistry like that, all you end up with is shine.
I 'm getting shined. Getting shined three-sixty.
Raddatz is perpetrating with his "end of fear. " Don't know what or exactly how or why, but I can feel in my gut it's below the boards, not above. Problem is, that's the shine I came into things being told to expect.
The shine I can't divine: Tashjian. Maybe it's a false reading that I could, I should pass off to our history. My natural distrust and paranoia. But the feeding I have is that there's no way Tashjian's being straight with me. Yeah, freaks are getting killed and somehow Raddatz, the cadre, they 're part of it. But that I should so conveniently find myself in the middle of it, that so quick I was able to hook up with the guy Tashjian needed to put in his sights… there's something else, something more going on and I don't know how the hell I'm supposed to figure what. And I'm thinking, maybe, maybe that's the point. Why put an MTac cop and not an IA investigator into the mix, and I'm not going for Tashjian's "they'd smell 'em coming" line. Why is because the MTac cop can't-at least she isn't supposed to — figure things. Or maybe it's 'cause she's got a way of being a lightning rod, and it's time for lightning to strike.
That's cute.
Lightning rod.
How about target? How about dupe?
Whatever. People are trying to fuck with me, not the first time I've been fucked with. I've been had at plenty by freaks and normals the same. With freaks, I got technology for them. With normals, well, the rearview mirror of my life is tittered with people who made the mistake of getting on my bad side.
That was it. That was the last of Soledad O'Roark. Eddi read her journal again. Not, as with the first time, in a sitting. The second time there was a good deal more flinching involved. The second time Eddi had to read until she was full up with, with all she could take. Toss the journal aside. Then allow herself over a period of time to gravitate closer, closer to it, almost throwing off a front of indifference-I can handle this, I can handle it-before picking up the journal, reading to her level of tolerance and going through the process again. Reading to completion a second time.
And when she had, Eddi said: "Fuck."
Eddi wanted to meet outside somewhere. It'd been nice to walk on the beach, along the Santa Monica promenade. It just would've been nice- not nice, but more tolerable-to deal with bleakness under some daylight.
Vin wouldn't have It.
Yeah, he wanted to see Eddi. Would love to hang with her. But go out of doors'? Han, he didn't much feel like going out.
Why don't you come on over? he invited. C'mon, we'll sit. We'll talk.
Eddi had come to know Vin liked to sit and talk. Sit and watch TV. Sit and veg, and especially to an increasing degree sit and booze. She'd got that reading Soledad's diary. Journal. No way Soledad would've ever called it a diary. Eddi'd gotten Soledad's take on Vin's descent and wanted to avoid the opportunity to support his further degeneration by being audience to the cheap theatrics of his one-man drunk show.