In her mind, Marian saw last night. She and Tom had had coffee. Good coffee, hers sweet and light, chasing the chill from her bones. And then Tom was going to take her home. But Marian, who had lived alone so long—Marian, who was always the first to feel confined, to see the wide endless highway of a new romance narrowing into a rutted road, who had always believed freedom meant more to her than love, because freedom was sure and love could not be counted on—Marian had not wanted to be alone last night.
Not after what she had heard from Tom. Not after the hissing formless fear that had followed them down the quiet streets.
And Tom, who could read minds, knew that.
Or maybe Tom had not wanted to be alone, either. Often that was true of the young men, the men who took Marian home, or came back home with her. They wanted no more than anyone wanted: a night or a week or a lifetime of shutting out the dark, pretending that love was truth. That love would last. That aloneness was not stretched around you like your own skin, and the cost of piercing it was not always, only, pain.
The sheets rustled as Tom lifted his arm, rubbed his hand over his face. He dropped his arm again, and she thought he was still asleep, but though his eyes were closed, his hand searched for and found hers. And then his eyes opened.
“Hey,” Tom said, smiling, his voice low and scratchy.
“Hey,” said Marian.
Tom pushed himself up on his elbows, kissed her, and fell back again. “It's okay,” he said.
“What is?”
“Whatever you were thinking wasn't okay.”
Marian stared at him for a moment, then settled down close. He opened his arm to her, curled it around her, his movements seamless with hers. If she could stay like this forever, wrapped in the warmth of Tom's arm, then maybe things really would be okay.
But she couldn't.
And they already weren't.
Tom brought Marian a glass of water and some aspirin, and then he went to take a shower. She drank all the water because a hangover was partly dehydration—oh, she had this down—and she stayed in bed, doing breathing exercises and meditating, trying not to think of last night, and the last weeks, and what had happened and what any of it meant. Tom emerged from the bathroom with a towel wrapped around his waist so she could have his bathrobe. She took a very hot shower, and by the time she came out, she felt better.
She could hear Tom downstairs moving around the kitchen as she dressed. She disliked getting back into yesterday's clothes; she always disliked that, which was one of the reasons she generally brought the young men home with her. Fresh clothes, and her own shampoo.
Her purse was downstairs, so she borrowed Tom's comb. He had no hair dryer, so after she got her hair essentially organized, it was on its own. The young men, she reflected, taking one last look in the mirror and heading for the stairs, the Manhattan young men, they all had hair dryers.
She smelled Tom's good coffee from the top of the stairs; by the time she reached the kitchen, he had poured her a cup, in the same black mug she had used last night. Or maybe this morning he was using that one, and she was using his.
“Scrambled eggs?” he asked. In a pan on the stove, butter made little spitting sounds as it started to melt.
“Let me make them.”
“No way. I'm trying to impress you.”
“You already have.”
He grinned. “I mean, in the kitchen.”
Marian felt herself flush from her breasts to her scalp. Tom politely turned away, still grinning.
Breakfast was orange juice, eggs, toast, and more coffee. She sipped her coffee and watched him bring the plates to the table, and as he sat, she finally faced the thought she had been turning from all morning.
Jimmy's papers, what he had left behind.
His legacy. Oh, if any of this were funny, that would be a laugh.
If the papers Jimmy had left told the true story of Jack's death—and what else, what subject was there?—then the legendary James McCaffery, the hero people needed so desperately to believe in in these terrible times, the legend that should have been Jimmy's legacy, would be destroyed. All the brave and selfless acts over the years, the risks, the rescues, would mean nothing. The man responsible for them would be revealed to be not who people thought he was, and it would change things, and one more thing people believed was solid and beautiful and good would turn into choking, crumbling rubble.
And drinking Tom's coffee, watching Tom, Marian thought: Not only Jimmy.
Tom Molloy had gone from bad to good, from dangerous taker to generous giver. He had left the path he was born to follow and gone another way. He had put his heart into it. Now, perhaps, Marian understood why. But the perilous truths Jimmy left behind could destroy Tom, too.
And the Fund. All the good the Fund could do,
It couldn't happen. It mustn't happen. Jimmy was already gone, and Markie, and Jack. And now, the good that was left, to be scorched into lifelessness and scattered like ash in a city choking on ashes?
No.
“Tom?”
