“Going out?” I said.
She smiled. “You know it. This guy? He saw me on TV, thinks I’m-like, a big star.” She laughed. “Ain’t that a riot? Anyway, he asked me out. He’s cute.”
I looked at the child on the couch.
“What about Amanda?”
Helene gave me a big smile. “Dottie’s gonna watch her.”
“Dottie know that?” I asked.
Helene giggled. “She will in about five minutes.”
I looked at Amanda as the image of an electric can opener was reflected from the TV and played across her face. I could see the can opening like a mouth on her forehead, her square chin bathed in blue and white, her eyes open and watching without interest as the jingle played. An Irish setter replaced the can opener, leapt across Amanda’s forehead, rolled in a field of green.
“The caviar of dog food,” the announcer said. “Because doesn’t your dog deserve to be treated like a member of the family?”
Depends on the dog, I thought. Depends on the family.
A savage pang of weariness stabbed me just under my rib cage, sucked the breath out of me, and left as quickly as it had come, trailed by a throbbing ache that settled into my joints.
I mustered up the strength to cross the living room. “Goodbye, Helene.”
“Oh, you leaving? ’Bye!”
I stopped at the door. “’Bye, Amanda.”
Amanda’s eyes remained on the TV, her face bathed in its pewter glow. “’Bye,” she said, and for all I knew she was talking to the Hispanic handyman as he went home to Rosa.
Outside, I walked for a while, finally came to a stop in the Ryan playground, sat on the swing where I’d sat with Broussard, looked out at the basin of the unfinished frog pond where Oscar and I had saved a child’s life from the madness of Gerry Glynn.
And now? Now what had we done? What crime had we committed in the woods of West Beckett, in the kitchen where we’d taken a child from parents who had no legal right to her?
We’d returned Amanda McCready to her home. That’s all we’d done, I told myself. No crime. We’d returned her to her rightful owner. Nothing more. Nothing less.
That’s what we’d done.
We’d taken her home.
Port Mesa, Texas
October 1998
In Crockett’s Last Stand one night, Rachel Smith joins in a drunken conversation about what’s worth dying for.
Country, a guy fresh from the service says. And the others toast.
Love, another guy says, and catches a round of jeers.
The Dallas Mavericks, someone yells. We been dying for them ever since they entered the NBA.
Laughter.
A lot of things are worth dying for, Rachel Smith says, as she comes over to the table, her shift over, scotch glass in her hand. People die every day, she says. Over five dollars. Over locking eyes with the wrong person at the wrong time. Over shrimp.
Dying is no measure of a person, Rachel says.
What is? someone calls out.
Killing, Rachel says.
There’s a moment’s silence as the men in the bar consider Rachel, and that hard, calm thing in her voice matches the thing that’s in her eyes sometimes, the thing that can make you nervous if you look too close.
Elgin Bern, captain of Blue’s Eden, the best shrimper in Port Mesa, eventually says, What would you kill for, Rachel?
Rachel smiles. She raises her scotch glass so that the fluorescent light over the pool table is reflected and trapped in the ice cubes.
My family, Rachel says. And only my family.
A couple of guys laugh nervously.
Without a second thought, Rachel says. Without a look back.
Without a moment’s pity.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
My editor, Claire Wachtel, and my agent, Ann Rittenberg, once again salvaged a manuscript from a mess and made me look a lot better than I have any right to expect. Mal, Sheila, and Sterling read the crude scribbling and talked me through the difficulties. Thanks also to Sergeant Larry Gillis of the Massachusetts State Police, Department of Public Affairs; Mary Clark of the Thomas Crane Public Library in Quincy; and, for countless gracious intangibles, Jennifer Brawer of William Morrow and Francesca Liversidge of Bantam UK.
About the Author
DENNIS LEHANE is the New York Times bestselling author of Mystic River; Prayers for Rain; Gone, Baby, Gone; Sacred; Darkness, Take My Hand; and A Drink Before the War, winner of the Shamus Award for Best First Novel. He lives in the Boston area.
