a stack of work to do before I sleep.”
I shook my head.
“What’s that mean?”
“No you haven’t. Got work to do.”
“What are you talking about?”
“I called your office before I left home.”
She pushed back from the rail. “Honey, you’ve really got to stop bugging people where I work. It just doesn’t look very—”
“There’s no meeting here tomorrow.”
She cocked her head, Dyer style. I could see her judging how to proceed. In the end she nodded.
“That’s correct.”
There it was. Yes—I lied to you. It felt like a cold wind was blowing across the back of my neck, though the night was warm, and there was no breeze.
“So what are you doing here?”
“I wanted to see Natalie.”
“Not according to her. She says it was a drive-by and she wasn’t even sure why it happened.” There was a cliff in front of me, the edge of which I could clearly see, yet toward which I was persisting in taking steps.
“You’ve been to interview her? Wow. Shame you were never this go-getting when you were a policeman, Jack.”
“I never wanted to be a detective. You knew that.”
“But now you do? When it’s too late?”
“I care about this more, I guess.”
“How come?”
“Because it’s you. Because something’s happening that I don’t understand. And you’re not answering my question.”
“There’s nothing going on, babe.”
I got out my cigarettes. Took one, then offered the pack to her—something I’d never done before in all the time we’d known each other. She just looked at me.
“Saw you walk by with one in your hand,” I said. “Found your ash on the deck the night you came back from Seattle, though I didn’t realize it. Saw you smoking out there last Sunday afternoon, too, when I was running. I thought it was just condensation. But it wasn’t.”
“Jack, you’re being ridiculous. I don’t—”
There wasn’t enough force behind the lie. I didn’t even have to raise my voice to interrupt.
“Plus, I found a collection of butts in the bushes. Couldn’t figure how someone could have been out there without you seeing them from inside. But that’s because it was you doing the smoking. Correct?”
She looked away. Being right brought me no pleasure. “So what starts you up again after…what—ten years? Twelve?”
She didn’t answer. Her eyes remained elsewhere, and her mouth was pursed. She looked like a teenage girl stoically enduring being chewed out for breaking a curfew she believed was dumb and unfair.
“Is it the same thing that’s started you using abbreviations in text messages?”
“What are you talking about now?”
“You’re a bright woman. You’re capable of understanding the question,” I said.
“I understand the words, but not what you’re getting at. You’re out on some weird kind of limb here, honey.”
“I don’t think so. You’re the one who needs to get your head straight. Whatever or whoever’s clouding your mind has you falling down all across the board.”
“I’m really fine,” she said. “Seems to be you who’s running red lights.”
She looked so chillingly smug then that I wanted to turn and walk away from her. Or even, for a fraction of a second, to shove her over the railing. To punish this impostor for stealing the identity of someone I loved.
“Annabel’s birthday,” I said instead.
She frowned. Even when she spoke, it was with the air of someone treading water. “What about it?”
“When is it?”
The penny dropped. She rubbed her forehead. “Oh, crap.”
“No big deal in the grand scheme of things. But—”
“Of course it’s a big deal. Shit. Why didn’t Natalie say anything?”
“Probably didn’t want to embarrass you.”
“Natalie? Does that seem likely?”
“Actually, no. But before you leave town, you should see about getting something to the kid, don’t you think?”
“Yes. Christ. What did we get her last year?”
“I have no idea,” I said. “Call Natalie tonight, make your excuses, and get a gift suggestion at the same time.”
“Good thinking.”
Neither of us said anything for a while. We seemed to have taken a turn down some baffling side street, and I didn’t know how to get back to where we’d been. So I simply picked up the car and put it back on the other road.
“Amy, if you’re just going to stonewall, then—”
“There’s nothing that needs to be talked about.”
“So how come you’re suddenly listening to Bix Beiderbecke?” I asked, feeling absurd.
“Christ—you’re really pushing on this, aren’t you? I caught a couple tracks on the radio, thought it sounded okay, didn’t bother to change the station. And anyway—how do you know that’s who—”
“Your phone is full of it.”
“You looked through my phone? For God’s sake. When?”
“The day in Seattle. As far as I could tell, you’d vanished off the face of the earth.”
“What’s on my phone is private.”
“From me? Since when did we have secrets?”
“People always have secrets, Jack—don’t be a moron. It’s how you know you’re a different person from somebody else.”
“I don’t have any.”
“Oh, yeah, right. Is that why you tell people you left the police because you’d finally had enough? Why you don’t volunteer the information that one night you just got up and fucking—”
“Secrets from you, I meant. And what would you prefer me to say? That I nearly wound up on a—”
“Of course not. But…”
She breathed out heavily. The air was beginning to turn, to lose its warmth. We looked at each other, and for a moment it was only the two of us, as if a bubble had burst and any disagreement between us was absurd.
“You want some coffee?”
She nodded.
“Or is it tea these days?”
She smiled a little, against her will. “Coffee will be fine.”
We got drinks from a stall thirty yards back up the pier. Started walking together toward the shore but wound up back at the end without discussing it. Whenever we’d come onto the pier together, that’s where we always went, where our feet took us when they were together.
I found myself saying something from nowhere, something that sounded odd and clumsy in my mouth. “Do you think there’s any of him still here?”
“Any of who?”
She knew who I meant. “Don’t you remember the wind? How some of…some got blown back at us, back onto the pier?”
She looked away. “There’s nothing left. Nothing here, nothing anywhere. It was two years ago. It’s dealt with.”
