“Yes you were,” she said. “Something silly. I could see it in your eyes.” He laughed, then winced at the pain of the skin stretching around his mouth.
She put her hand on his. “Are you upset about Paul Mellani?”
“Yes.”
“Because you’re thinking you should have done something?”
“Maybe.”
She nodded, gently rubbing the backs of his fingers. “It’s too bad that the search for Kim’s father didn’t have a happier ending.”
“Yes.”
She pointed to his other hand, the bandaged one. “How’s the arrowhead wound?”
He raised the hand from the bed and looked at it. “I’d forgotten about it.”
“Good.”
“Good?”
“I don’t mean the injured hand. I mean the arrow. The great arrow
“You don’t think it’s a mystery?” he asked.
“Not a solvable one.”
“So we should ignore it?”
“Yes.” When he didn’t appear convinced, she went on. “Isn’t that just the way life is?”
“Full of inexplicable arrows falling out of the sky?”
“I mean, there’ll always be things we don’t have the time to understand perfectly.”
It was the sort of statement that bothered Gurney. Not that it wasn’t true. Of course it was true. But he felt that the
A young nurse came to the door, pushing ahead of her a TV on a rolling stand, but Gurney just shook his head and waved her away. RAM’s “horrible tragic fireball” could wait.
“Did you understand Larry Sterne?” Madeleine asked.
“Maybe part of him. Not all of him. Sterne was… an unusual creature.”
“It’s nice to know there aren’t a whole lot of them running around.”
“He thought of himself as a thoroughly rational man. Thoroughly practical. A paragon of reason.”
“Do you think he ever cared about anyone else?”
“No. Not a bit.”
“Or trusted anyone?”
Gurney shook his head. “ ‘Trust’ would not have been a meaningful concept to him. Not in the normal sense. He would have seen the willingness to trust as a form of weakness, an irrational flaw in others, a flaw that he could exploit. His relationships would have been based on exploitation and manipulation. He would have viewed other people as tools.”
“So he was all alone, then.”
“Yes. Completely alone.”
“How dreadful.”
Gurney almost said,
He wanted to explain this to her, explain this peculiarity of his being. But then he got that feeling he sometimes got when he was near her-the feeling that she already knew what he was thinking without his having to say the words.
She looked into his eyes, squeezing his hand and holding it that way.
Then, for the first time ever, he got that same peculiar feeling, but in the opposite direction. He got the feeling that
He could feel the words in her hand, see the words in her eyes.
She was telling him not to be afraid.
She was telling him to trust her, to believe in her love for him.
She was telling him that the grace on which he depended would always be with him.
In the profound peace that followed her silent words, he felt relieved of every care in the world. All was well. All was quiet. And then, somewhere in the far distance, there was a sound. It was so faint, so delicate, he wasn’t sure whether he was hearing it or feeling it or imagining it. But he knew exactly what it was.
It was the distinctive lilting rhythm of Vivaldi’s “Spring.”
Acknowledgments
Continuity itself is usually a good thing in business and professional relationships. And when that continuity involves truly talented, dedicated people it can be a delightful thing.
From the publication of my first novel,
Thank you, Rick. Thank you, Molly. Thank you, Lucy.
John Verdon
