Out at Night (38 page)

They waited as two haz-mat men in booties and full gear slowly made their way through a fold in the tented enclosure.

“Uncle Pete?”

“Yeah.”

“Are you sorry for what you did to my family?”

He looked at her. “I thought I was doing the right thing. I was trying to protect you and Andy. The other stuff—yeah. I’m sorry what happened.”

“But are you sorry for what you
did
?”

Her uncle lowered his face and rubbed it with his hands. “Grace, my own kid’s been hit by a bad man. Looking at her little boy is going to be a reminder, for the rest of her life, of what he did to her. My job is to help her in every way I can love that little boy and let him know how much we want him here. How much we need him. And I plan on letting her know the same thing. That’s my work.”

He looked at her steadily. “Whatever work you have to do, get on with it. There’s enough hurt and blame and sorrow without going back in time and digging up old ground. And as far as the rest—I see this shit every day of my life. Parents doing the worst things. Selling their kids. Tying up their grandmothers and leaving them in the trunks of cars driven off bridges. Cutting out an eye just for the hell of it. I thought I was doing the right thing. If you want me to rewrite the past, I can’t.”

Forgiveness. It was pretty much bullshit, from where she sat, watching the haz-mat team stamping in the fog and dark.

She was tired. “I don’t want to carry this around anymore.”

Something unexpected happened.

His eyes filled. “Thanks.”

She felt it then, a band loosening in her chest, in her heart. It wasn’t about her uncle. It wasn’t about who she was now. It was about that small girl in science class, rushing across the room to her crying brother, scared. It was about that girl. Her uncle was right. Taking care of her was Grace’s job, and staying angry at him wasn’t doing anything to heal that child.

“Can darkness ever be explained?”

Pete stared out over the busy scene in from of them. “That’s why we’re the good guys, Grace. The sentinels at the gates of hell. We don’t have to explain it; we just have to stop it.”

He got up, dusted off his pants, and touched her shoulder.

“I’ll drive to San Diego later and debrief you there, get a more formal statement.” He hesitated. “Good job, kid. Now beat it. Go home.”

Chapter 48

When she got to the 10 she put the windows down. Behind her in the rearview mirror, she caught a glimpse of lights in the darkness behind her. Nobody was on the road in the middle of the night except truckers. She stopped once for coffee at a McDonald’s in Temecula.

The air seemed to grow heavier the closer she got to home. They’d had a run of dry weather, months of it, and everybody was worried about fires. For all its beauty, San Diego was a fragile place.

The sun came up as she made the outskirts of San Diego County. The traffic picked up. She wondered if she had time to go home and take a shower. She didn’t want to miss seeing Katie before school. She had things she needed to say. But she didn’t want to say those things stinking, with Stuart’s blood on her shirt.

She stood under the shower a long time, trying to get the smell of the trip out of her skin, the wounds out of her heart. It was good to wear clean clothes again.

It was almost seven when she pulled into the parking lot of Le Rondelet.

The pink on the water had shifted to silvery gray. A black bank of clouds hovered over the city. Fires could look like that, when they’d been burning, but there was no smell of smoke.

A fisherman in rubber boots came out of the bait shop across the street, holding a paper bag. A boat and trailer were parked at the curb. He climbed up into the back of the boat and disappeared.

A woman dressed in a business suit was coming out of the building as Grace went in so that was one worry off her plate. She didn’t know if she had the composure to stand outside the building, speak into a tinny box. It would too harsh a reminder that she was a visitor now, sometimes, in her own child’s life. She took the elevator up.

She hesitated before knocking but the tiredness had caught up, along with the other things. She rapped on the door.

She didn’t know what she’d do if he didn’t answer, she really didn’t. She leaned her forehead into the door. She tried again. This time, she heard something stirring inside. Somebody coming.

“Yes?” His voice was low, guarded.

“It’s me.”

He opened the door. He took one look at her and pulled her to him. She buried her face in his robe and he moved her inside.

“What happened?”

She tightened her arms around him. His body was still sleep-warm and his robe was soft and smelled clean.

“I’m sorry.” The pain welled up. She was on her own now. Lost. “I thought I was doing the right thing, Mac, but I was wrong. I hurt you and I hurt Katie and I hurt myself and I don’t know how I can get past that. Make it right.”

“Mama?” Katie walked into the living room, sleepy and digging a finger into her eye. She was a golden color, her skin, her hair.

She stopped. Her nightgown moved around her ankles. “Mommy.”

Grace dropped to her knees. She opened her arms and Katie came into them. Grace held her and inhaled, breathing in the sweet sleep scent of her daughter.

“I lied about Daddy.”

Katie tightened her grip, her arms small, and pressed her face into Grace’s chest. “It was mean.”

“It was.”

“How could you do something so mean?”

Katie detached her grip so she was staring into her mother’s face. Her dark brown eyes stared fixedly at Grace, eyes wounded, cautious, and it was the cautiousness that broke Grace in two. Katie had never had to be careful around her before and it was Grace’s job to make sure Katie never would have to be again.

“Mommy was hurt and I didn’t know what else to do. But I wasn’t thinking about the right thing. I was thinking about the easy thing. And that was wrong. I was wrong. And I’m sorry.”

Katie digested that. “You’ll never do it again, right?”

It was such a small thing to say compared to the monumental wrong Grace had done. She stared soberly at her daughter and saw a flash of years passing, Katie growing long-limbed, growing away. “No.”

“Okay.” Katie pulled away and yawned. “Can we have pancakes for breakfast?”

____

Mac walked Katie into the school, a tall, big-shouldered man reaching down to hold the hand of a little girl. They’d parked in the back lot at Cabrillo Elementary, and Grace stayed in the car with the windows down and watched them through the windshield. It was almost time for the bell and the walkway teemed with kids with gelled hair and backpacks. The little kids, Katie’s age, all had a busy parent pushing them along.

A boy stopped and looked at Mac and back to Katie. “Who is that guy?” His voice was shrill and carried over the laughter and chatter of the other kids.

Katie looked up at Mac, her gaze trusting, her smile wide. He smiled back. She straightened her shoulders.

“That’s my Daddy.”

___

Mac drove Grace back to her car. He stopped, stared straight ahead, his hands loose on the wheel.

“I’ve been thinking,” He switched off the engine.

“Me, too.”

He didn’t touch her. She wondered if he ever would. A kid on a skateboard shot past.

Finally he said, “I saw her, and these two things came roaring up out of nowhere. More, but these hit me hard. This intense love. You hear about it. You just don’t understand it until it’s yours.” He smiled briefly and Grace could see the pain under it. “She’s so funny.”

“Yeah.”

“Beautiful.”

Grace looked at her hands, willing herself not to cry.

“And the second was anger. So strong, this rage. At you. Even in the hospital, when I was pushing for everything to work, I was starting to feel it. And I never said a word. I kept my mouth shut. For that, I am truly sorry.”

Grace swallowed. She studied the sky, the dark drift of clouds, aware of the pain pulsing through her. She was afraid to breathe, afraid it would hurt.

“What I said in the hospital and that first day in the Bahamas, about trying, even if we’re not sure, that’s only part of it.”

He glanced toward Le Rondelet. A woman with a stroller pushed open the front door and hurried to her car, talking on her cell as she lifted out her baby and folded the stroller, the phone tucked in the crook of her shoulder.

“The rest—buying this place, hedging my bets, being there for Katie, not knowing how it’s going to end, for us—that’s true, too.”

A dark green garbage truck creaked slowly into the parking lot and backed up as a man in uniform detached from his perch and trotted forward to guide it toward the bins.

Mac looked at her, his eyes dark with emotion. His voice was low. “It’s over so fast, a life. That’s what I was thinking, Grace. There and gone. I remember T. S. Eliot spoke of the future in some poem, and the past, and how they merge only at this moment in time. The
here and now
. So now I’m back to thinking—would it be so bad, staying. Together.”

Her heart twinged. She knew now what she needed to say. “Yeah. It would.”

If he came to her with no sense of joy, if she settled for that, at some point, whatever dignity and self-respect he had as a man would force him to walk away from her, and when that happened, it would be for good. And Katie would only have as a model two parents who were polite and remote and careful with each other, no map at all, no way in to a country where happiness bubbled between parents, a country Grace feared that without a guide, Katie would never find.

Grace needed to let him go. Let her light-filled daughter go. Into a place she couldn’t follow.

She looked out the window again. If the fence at the corner wasn’t there, she’d almost be able to see her house. A car cruised by and turned onto Shelter Island Drive.

“I get it, Mac. That’s what I came to say. You deserve a chance to get to know her.” A tear slid down her face. “I’ve been thinking lately. About forgiveness. What it costs. What I’m
not
willing to sacrifice. You want to hear? It’s a short list.”

It felt as if her heart was exploding. As if her breath had stopped.

“Grace.”

The current was hard and fast, a riptide pulling her out to sea, away from everything she loved, far from home.

“Here are the things I will not sacrifice. Katie’s laugh. It’s gold. It really is. The way she throws her head back and her shoulders rock. Her tender feelings. Her safety and happiness. The importance of teaching her moral truths. Her need to know her father. And your need—your right—to know her—” She opened her mouth, trying to take a breath and all that came out was a heart-rending cry: “without me.”

She held up her hands, stopping him from touching her. She licked away a tear.

“No, no, wait, listen. The other day, she took me into the living room and said,
See Mommy, I can make music
. And she ran her bare foot over the heating grate and the grate rang—like chords on a harp. And she had this strong, wide smile on her face. She’d shown me something amazing, just me. And you deserve that same chance and if I’m there all the time—”

He reached across the seat and pulled her to him. She held onto him, clung to him. She could feel his heart pounding. He smoothed her hair, carefully, so careful with his touch. She could feel him take a choked breath. “Thank you.”

She was far from shore now, the edge of the known world growing hazy, indistinct. It was cold where she was, the boat small.

She didn’t expect him to speak, and when he did, his voice was uneven. “We can go nine more rounds with this and keep chewing it or we can just go on.”

She sat with it. Felt it come into her. A cautious warmth. A light.

“Can you do that?”

“Can you stay?” He hesitated. “I want you to stay.”

It was as if Grace had seen a marker, waving lights, a fire, maybe, people she loved calling her name, guiding her home.

They got out of the car and walked through the parking lot, and as they crossed into the lobby, it began to rain.

My life rocks with celestial music, and I thank most the three people who make it out of the air itself: Martha, my brave and tender-hearted daughter, your choices make me proud beyond words; Aaron, my talented and complex son, thanks for the light you bring;

and Fred, my guy, who hangs the moon. Thanks, you three, for the songs.

I do believe this house is filled with magic, my great-nephew four-year-old Daniel White said to me. And it is. Inside this house this time, in random rooms: My stepdad Bruno Johnson, thanks for your encouragement; Carol Landis, for the book about forgiveness; my niece Dori Altmiller, for the shining piece of glitter I used last novel; Godmother Kathy Rowley—strong light pours from you—thanks for giving our kids such a perfect model of how to live well; Godfather George Palmer, for your tenderness and for driving back the dark; Tony Vittal, for your energy and heart; Judi Vittal, for believing in our friendship even when I drop the ball; Heather Arnett, my friend in the trenches, my friend for life; Linda Molloy, for your goodness; and Caitlin Moreland, Mary Ann Rhode and Gary Antweiler, who walked in and made my day. And Joanne Newman and Terri Christianson, for the laughter.

This book could not have been written without help. I thank especially Palm Springs FBI Special Agent Mark Hunter, for your time and the details; Police Officer Troy Castillo, for showing me how your world works; Police Evidence Technician Sam Pye, for letting me into the clubhouse; Union Pacific Railroad Police Lt. Richard Mosley, for the bits about trains and the yard, Riverside County Coroner Sgt. Brent Sechrest, for reminding me that you speak for the dead. Forensic Document Examiner Randy Gibson, for your friendship and for opening doors; also Dr. Marilyn Carlin, Dr. Ned Chambers, UCSD librarian Annelise Sklar, Bill Canales at Full Circle Tattoo, police DNA consultant Zach Gaskin, and Steve Koike, Monterey County Cooperative. Riff Markowitz is a real person, gracious, dynamic, and the men and women in the Palm Springs Follies defy age, space and time. Go see them.