'Could I just offer some thoughts?'
'Offer away.'
'It seems to me that the hatred you felt for your mother was… well founded. There were bad times, lots of misunderstanding, jealousy, competition. Amber admits as much.'
'Large of her.'
'And what I think happened was that Erik manipulated you with that. Did you know they found the netsuke you and Amber fought over so long, in Erik's house? They also found some phone records that establish communication with the two men who burned your feet. Amber didn't hire them. Wald did. It took him years to feed your fears but only a few months to twist your mind to the point where you were scared enough to commit a murder. He used you, girl.'
She looked at me rather blankly then, and I fully realized the despair of her heart and the fatigue of her body. 'I actually loved him.'
'I understand that. Some things about Erik can be loved.'
'You're not so dumb, after all.'
'It doesn't take a genius to see a girl can fall in love with a guy. Handsome. Smart. Mommy's castoff.'
'Gad,' she said quietly. 'Love.'
'Yeah.'
She breathed deeply and leveled her beautiful eyes on me. I wanted only one thing more than to put my arms around her, and that one thing was to hear her acknowledge the truth
'You know, the first time we talked about it… it was kind of a joke. A perfect-crime fantasy. It was fun to… speculate. But then when Mom started getting the men after me and threatening me, it all of a sudden started sounding reasonable. It kind of takes you over. Like, if you talk about something enough, plan it enough, you pretty much have to go through with it some point. It… gets real. And I was so afraid.'
Oh, how I understood the insane logic of that statement! Had I passed it down to Grace through my genes, this compulsion to make the imagination real, to act upon thoughts so that thoughts became acts? Was there perhaps in Grace, as myself, some weakness of the faculties dividing impulse from action?
'I know. Can I tell you a true story?'
'Sure, Russ.'
'About three weeks after Izzy was diagnosed, I got real drunk and went out to the hillside with my revolver. I wasn’t sure why. I sat down and looked down at the house, the light of the city. I prayed to God that He'd make the nightmare stop, that He'd cradle Isabella in His healing arms. I offered Him my soul instead. Then I emptied all the cartridges but one from the cylinder, closed it and spun it and put it to my head. If He let me live, it was my sign that He was with us. If not, it was simple trading of one life for another. A stupid idea, right? But the more I thought about it, the more sense it made, and the more actual that gun became. I had gone that far, and I had to follow through. At the last second, I lowered the gun, pointed it at the hillside, and pulled the trigger. My hand jerked and the sound blasted into my ears. I had my answer then, at least to my own satisfaction: Go home, get sober, take care of your wife, and don't fuck with the Lord anymore. That's as deep as my faith ever got. I didn't even think another prayer until that night we went out swimming in the ocean.'
Grace betrayed no emotion to me, but something about her exhaustion seemed to deepen even more. Then, a wry smile came to her lips. 'I'm sorry for all that's happened to you and Isabella. I wish there was something I could do to make it better.'
'There is.'
She waited.
'Tell these men what happened. And understand that Erik will do everything he can to make you take this fall alone.'
Grace drew a deep breath.
I could only imagine the silence behind our one-way mirror. Grace eyed the thing, then returned her gaze to me. Her eyes were moist.
'Would you do one more thing?' I asked.
'Why not?'
'Call me Dad, or Pop, or anything but Russell.'
She smiled very weakly. 'I would accept a hug now, Pops.'
That Tuesday evening, I picked up my mail and headed directly into town to do the grocery shopping. In the market parking lot, I fanned through the letters, bills, and catalogs-you might imagine how Izzy, confined to a wheelchair, loved those catalogs- and found to my great dismay a postcard canceled in New York City, July 10. The picture on the front was of the Flatiron building, New York's first 'skyscraper,' and where my editor works. On the back was the following, in an almost illegible scrawl:
Dear Russell-New York a lovely city with so many… possibilities!
Aren't your publishers in this building? Am flossing regularly and considering minor cleansing action, but it would take an army of crusaders such as myself to dent this cesspool of humanity. Miss OC. Cuddles, ME.
My scalp actually crawling in the heat, I set the card carefully the glove compartment of the car, knowing that the Eye had wiped it clear of fingerprints. But it would never hurt to try. The people in Documents-Handwriting Analysis, to be specific would be more than happy to have it.
As I walked the familiar aisles of our grocery store, a deep, if fragile, sense of contentment began to come over me. I shopped with Isabella in mind, picking out all the things she loved to eat. Few things can soothe a troubled soul like the simple act of loving another person. Every bag of produce, can or jar, I touched with the knowledge that it was for Isabella, and that if I could not stem the sickness in her head, I might at least comfort her body with the fruits of my labor. There were other blessings to be counted: the Journal checks had begun to come in, Nell, my agent, had gotten a modest offer for the Midnight Eye book and I accepted it-while both my publishers and realized that the end of that book was far from being written; I had witnessed the beginnings of surrender in my daughter stopped by the health-food store for some tea that Isabella especially liked.
Then I loaded the groceries into the car and walked down to the beach to watch the sunset. It was an odd hour, because the dry, searing heat of the last week was getting ready to break. Far out over the horizon, a bank of moist dark clouds hovered and as the sun dipped into them, its bottom flattened and the cloud tops seemed to ignite. When the sun had fallen fully behind the bank, it glowed there, softly, like an orange wrapped tissue, and sent angled bars of light down onto the ocean, few minutes later, it emerged beneath the cloud bank and touched the water. As it sank, the clouds caught fire from below and soon the whole western sky was a blanket of black and orange patchwork settling over a flame-touched sea. I took a deep drink from my flask.
I began to see more clearly the tasks that lay ahead. Isabella would require more and more care, and there would be victories as well as defeats. I hoped that what joys we could find together would mitigate the agonies; I prayed that through it all we would keep our love alive; that if it was the desire of the heavens to kill her here on earth, we could still manage a laugh, a smile, a touch. My feelings of just a few weeks ago, of wanting so badly to escape, had diminished. The tug of the whiskey was still there, but it was a tug-not an irresistible yank. I felt slower as I sat there on the boardwalk bench, more able to occupy the moment. Amber had given me something in her desperately sweet surrender: She had broken the bonds of my own making, allowing me to grasp the heart of an obsession and understand that once possessed so fully, an object of desire can no longer hold such a tidal sway. Did I want Amber again? Oh, yes. One cannot eradicate genetic imperatives. But I no longer believed that she, or the secret life that went with her, was an antidote to the actual one I would now begin to live. As I looked out over the darkening water, it occurred to me that the core of a life is not what one will lose but what one will fight to keep.
And I realized one more thing as I sat there, which was this: I would never truly lose Isabella. Because some people never shine, no matter how much they are given and others will shine forever, no matter how much from them is taken away. Isabella was a light. Shine on, my dearest wife!
The car phone rang as I was heading out Laguna Canyon Roe
'Hello, Russell.'
I felt my scalp tighten and a cool sweat moving from my palms to the steering wheel.
'I told you not to call.'
'That was rude. I just wanted to ask you one more thing. In your article about my departure, will you remark
