“That’s part of what I need to know,” she said.
“She’s not going back with her husband, if that’s what you’re asking. Ultimately, it was for the kids that she ever considered it-and I think she’s pretty clear that if she sacrifices herself for her kids and ends up unhappy, then that’s maybe harder on the kids than the way it is now.”
“And you?”
“This isn’t easy, you know.”
“I can make it easier,” she told him. “Michael-I’m sure you’ve heard about Michael-has asked me to move to New Hampshire with him. I’m tempted, because it offers a chance to start over. You know…. And I can do my computer work from just about anywhere-I don’t need to be in an office. It works for me. But there’s this part of me that is still holding on to us-is still thinking that we might try again-and I need to put that part away if I’m going to do this. I owe that to Michael. I can’t be leading one life and hoping for another.”
“No, that’s no good,” he said.
The wind blew across them, whistling in Dart’s ears and singing in the shrubs and treetops. The view was a vast sea of gray. Dart felt gray.
“So?” she asked.
“I don’t want to lose touch,” he answered. It was difficult for him to say, and his body ached with it.
“No.” She looked into the wind, and when she looked back at him her eyes were shiny with tears and she gave him a smile that made his heart tight and a lump form in his throat. “It’s okay,” she said, one tear escaping down her cheek.
“So much has happened,” he said.
“Yes, it has,” she agreed, looking away again.
She was a strong person, and he admired her. He wanted to reach over and touch her, to show her the compassion he felt, but he did not. He would not confuse things. It was difficult enough as it was.
“I’m sorry,” she said into the wind.
“Me too.”
They walked a little while longer, and somewhere high above a town that he didn’t recognize, she took his gloved hand in hers and did not let go. She held hands with him for the remainder of the walk, right until they reached their cars, at which point they finally released each other’s grip. She looked into his eyes and said, “We were good together.”
He nodded. He could feel the tears coming from deep within him, and he fought to hold them off.
“A good fit,” she said.
He nodded again.
She kissed him once lightly on the lips, climbed into her car, and was gone.
CHAPTER 48
It seemed strange to Dart that he should know so many people in a graveyard. Patrolman Bernie Denton was buried on the west side in a family site, the victim of a gang shooting and recipient of a funeral covered on national news a few years earlier.
There were two plaques among hundreds on a long cement wall erected for those choosing cremation rather than burial. Walter Zeller’s name was there, alongside Lucky’s, though Lucky’s avoided the nickname. He wasn’t sure what he believed about an afterlife-but if there were such a thing, Zeller was in a tough place.
The sun had risen and set several dozen times since he’d walked out of the hospital a decorated cop, and yet he was still Joe Dart, confused, lonely, restless. No charges had been filed against Kowalski, and although Dart had expected him to return to the department the same man, there were subtle but discernable differences in his acerbic behavior-something had changed.
News stories had filled the screen for a while: the collapse of Roxin Laboratories, and the endless ethical debate that the news of a drug like Laterin had caused. Some were calling Dr. Arielle Martinson a saint, among them a senator from Michigan. Some others were saying her case would never reach trial-that only Proctor and Alverez would serve any time. For her part, Martinson had disappeared, fueling a bevy of rumors-one being that she had signed on with a French company that had bought several of the genetic patents through the bankruptcy court; another that she had committed suicide, following in the steps of her test subjects.
It was all too sensational for Dart. The world was changing so fast-there was no predicting anything. Today’s fear was tomorrow’s promise.
He had no flowers to leave her. He had brought her nothing. He owed her nothing-that was how he felt about it. But he stopped at the foot of her grave anyway, because he couldn’t pass it up. He needed her. He needed that connection to the woman who had birthed him, to the person, however god-awful it had been. She was down there, under the snow and grass and earth, and Dart felt grateful for that.
He felt his throat constrict, and he cursed her for maintaining any hold over him, any power.
He reached down and placed his cast in the snow, leaving an unexplained print behind. He closed his eyes and he hated her briefly, but it passed.
“I forgive you,” he whispered, the tears beginning to fall. Met with an unsettling silence, and the distant sound of the Interstate’s overpass.
He stood and walked away, dragging his face against the shoulder of his coat, cursing his weakness.
He followed his own prints back through the deep snow, painfully aware that there were no other prints to follow.
Abby had kept the engine running. Kept things warm. Mac slept in the backseat.
She was driving. Dart was no good with the cast.
“You all right?” she asked, reaching over and touching his face lightly, wiping away one of his tears.
“Better,” answered Joe Dartelli. All right was still a little ways off.
