She turned back toward him. Her Mona Lisa smile came and went like a flicker of light. “It’s a beautiful day,” she said. “Do you want to come for a little walk?”
“Sure.” Normally he would have resisted the suggestion or, at best, accompanied her reluctantly, but at that moment he had no resistance in him.
It had turned into one of those soft September days when the temperature outside was the same as inside, and the only difference he sensed as they stepped out onto the little side porch was the leafy smell of the autumn air. The trooper sitting in his cruiser by the asparagus patch lowered his window and looked questioningly at them.
“Just stretching our legs,” said Gurney. “We’ll stay in sight.”
The young man nodded.
They followed the swath they kept mowed along the edge of the woods to prevent saplings from encroaching on the field. They circled slowly down to the bench by the pond, where they sat in silence.
It was quiet around the pond in September-unlike May and June, when the croaking frogs and screeching blackbirds maintained a constant territorial ruckus.
Madeleine took his hand in hers.
He lost track of time, a casualty of emotion.
At some point Madeleine said softly, “I’m sorry.”
“For what?”
“My expectation… that everything should always be exactly the way I want it.”
“Maybe that’s the way everything should be. Maybe the way you want things is right.”
“I’d like to think so. But… I doubt that it’s true. And I don’t think you should give up the job you agreed to do.”
“I’ve already made up my mind.”
“Then you should change your mind.”
“Why?”
“Because you’re a detective, and I have no right to demand that you should magically turn into something else.”
“I don’t know much about magic, but you have every right in the world to ask me to see things another way. And God knows I have no right at all to put anything ahead of your safety and happiness. Sometimes… I look at things I’ve done… situations I’ve created… dangers I didn’t pay enough attention to-and I think I must be insane.”
“Maybe sometimes,” she said. “Maybe just a little.” She looked out over the pond with a sad smile and squeezed his hand. The air was perfectly still. Even the tops of the tall cattail rushes were as motionless as a photograph. She closed her eyes, but the expression on her face grew more poignant. “I shouldn’t have attacked you the way I did, shouldn’t have said what I did, shouldn’t have called you a bastard. That’s the last thing on earth anyone should ever call you.” She opened her eyes and looked directly at him. “You’re a good man, David Gurney. An honest man. A brilliant man. An amazingly talented man. Maybe the best detective in the whole world.”
A nervous laugh burst from his throat. “God save us all!”
“I’m serious. Maybe the best detective in the whole world. So how can I tell you to stop being that, to be something else? It’s not fair. It’s not right.”
He looked out over the glassy pond at the upside-down reflections of the maples that grew on the far side. “I don’t see it in those terms.”
She ignored his response. “So here’s what you should do. You agreed to take on the Perry case for two weeks. Today is Wednesday. Your two weeks will be up this Saturday. Just three more days. Finish the job.”
“There’s no need for me to do that.”
“I know. I know you’re willing to give it up. Which is exactly what makes it all right not to.”
“Say that again?”
She laughed, ignoring his question. “Where would they be without you?”
He shook his head. “I hope you’re joking.”
“Why?”
“The last thing on earth I need is for my arrogance to be reinforced.”
“The last thing on earth you need is a wife who thinks you should be someone else.”
After a while they ambled, hand in hand, back up through the pasture, nodded pleasantly to their bodyguard, and went into the house.
Madeleine made a small cherrywood fire in the big fieldstone fireplace, opening the window next to it to keep the room from getting too warm.
For the rest of the afternoon, they did something they rarely did: nothing at all. They lounged on the couch, letting themselves be lazily hypnotized by the fire. Later Madeleine thought out loud about possible planting changes in the garden for the following spring. Still later, perhaps to keep a flood of worries at bay, she read a chapter of
She tended the fire. He showed her pictures of garden pavilions and screened gazebos in a book he’d picked up months earlier at Home Depot, and they talked about building one next summer, maybe by the pond. They dozed on and off, and the afternoon passed. They had an early supper of soup and salad while the sunset was still bright in the sky, illuminating the maples on the opposite hillside. They went to bed at dusk, made love with a kind of tenderness that grew quickly into a desperate urgency, slept for over ten hours, and awoke simultaneously at the first gray light of dawn.
Chapter 65
Gurney had finished his scrambled eggs and toast and was about to take his plate to the sink. Madeleine looked up at him from her bowl of oatmeal and raisins and said, “I assume you’ve forgotten already where I’m going today.”
Over supper the night before, he’d persuaded her with some difficulty to spend the next couple of days with her sister in New Jersey-a prudent precaution, under the circumstances-while he wrapped up his commitment to the case. But now he wrinkled his face in concentration, making a show of bafflement. She laughed at his exaggerated expression. “Your undercover acting technique must have been a lot more persuasive than that. Or you were dealing with idiots.”
After she finished her oatmeal and had a second cup of coffee, she took a shower and got dressed. At eight- thirty she gave him a tight hug and a kiss, a worried look, then another kiss, and left for her sister’s suburban palace in Ridgewood.
When her car was well down the road, he got into his own car and followed her. Knowing the route she would take, he was able to stay far behind her, keeping her only occasionally in sight. His goal was not to follow her but to make sure no one else was following her.
After a few deserted miles, he was sure enough, and he returned home.
As he parked by the trooper’s car, they exchanged small, friendly salutes.
Before going into the house, he stood by the side door and looked around. He had for a moment a timeless feeling, the feeling of standing in a painting. As he entered the house, the feeling of peace was disturbed by his cell phone with the short ring that signaled the arrival of a text message-and utterly shattered by the message itself:
SORRY I MISSED YOU THE OTHER DAY. I’LL TRY AGAIN. HOPE YOU ENJOY THE DOLL.
Gurney felt an irrational impulse to charge into the woods, as though the message had been sent by someone who was at that moment lurking behind a tree trunk watching him-to shout obscenities at his invisible foe. Instead he read the message again. It included the originating number, unblocked, just like the previous messages, making it a virtual certainty that the cell phone was the untraceable prepaid variety.
