who will swear she’s legitimate. And I didn’t lie to Dennis. Everyone else in San Rafael, but not him.”
“Why did you think that he could protect you from the guys who were after you? Did you tell him what to look for, or describe them to him?”
“My disguise was being Mrs. Dennis Donnelly. It’s a lot easier to stay in character if you can find things to like. I knew Dennis loved me, and for a woman, that’s a bigger part of the equation than men know. I like him. I may regret that I married him, but I’m grateful to him. Now that’s over.”
Till had been asking for information about the killers, not her husband. Her answer surprised him. “You’re sure?”
“God, if I wasn’t before today, I would be now.”
“Because they found you?””
She turned toward him in bed. He could see her big eyes reflecting the faint light of the clock. “If I had been with Dennis when they found me, I would be dead tonight. I’m not, because I was with you. And he’s not dead, and the kids have their father.”
He glanced at the red numbers glowing on the nightstand. “It’s four-fifteen A.M. on your first night since you found out you were in trouble. For a while tonight, we were hanging by spit. Maybe you ought to put off thinking about the big things until you recover from that.”
“Maybe.”
“Good night.” He turned to face away from her, and closed his eyes. After a few seconds he felt her move closer to him, so she was touching his back.
“Jack?”
“Yeah?”
“Thanks for letting me sleep with you.”
“You’re welcome.” He lay in the bed staring into the darkness. Her voice had come from very close, almost the back of his neck, and he could feel that she was curled against him. Her touch, which she probably didn’t think he could even feel, was the biggest phenomenon in the room. He squeezed his eyes closed, forcing out thoughts of her, and let his tired, overactive mind rest, as it often did at night, on the thought of Holly sleeping peacefully in her room at Garden House.
It was no longer morning when his eyes opened. He sat up in the bed, and he realized he must have been hearing daytime sounds for hours, because when he heard someone walking along the hallway outside the door of his room, the sound was a continuation, not a beginning. He looked at the clock on the nightstand. The numbers said 2:20.
Ann was still asleep. He got out of the bed quietly, took his cell phone off the nightstand, and walked into her room, closed the door, and pushed the curtain open a few inches. The afternoon was bright, and people were walking below the hotel along the street to the harbor. Beyond the docks, restaurants, and shops, a few hundred yards out into the ocean, was the bulbous shape of Morro Rock, with tiny white birds circling above it and launching themselves from its peak to plummet a couple hundred feet toward the water. He wondered what it would be like to live here, where there was a single feature, a shape that dwarfed everything and seemed to be everywhere he looked. He supposed that people must become experts on the way it looked at different times of day and in different weather.
Till opened his cell phone and dialed. After a moment he heard, “Hello?”
“Hi, sweetie.”
“Hi, Dad. Checking up on me?”
“I guess so. I hope you don’t mind.”
“Not me. Where are you?”
He sighed. “I’m in a hotel.”
“By yourself?”
“Checking up on me?”
“I guess so. Do you mind?”
“Not me. I’m alone at the moment. I was missing you, and I wanted to hear your voice and I wanted to tell you I love you. So here I am. I love you.”
“I love you, too. Do you know when you’re coming home yet?”
“It should be in a few days. Things are going pretty much as I expected, so I’m hoping I’ll be there in time for the weekend. But I’ll call and let you know.”
“Good.”
“Holly, do you remember what I said about this job the day I left?”
“I don’t know.”
“I said it was a job where people were going to know who I was. Remember?”
“Oh, yeah. That.”
“I really hope you’ve been doing what I said.”
“I have. The only places I’ve been are work and home. I stopped wearing my name tag at the store. I’ve been wearing one that used to belong to a girl who quit. The tag says ‘Louise.’” She laughed. “Everybody keeps calling me Louise.”
“Have you been keeping your eyes open?”
“Yes. No strange men, no cars parked at work or at home. Bobby and Marie and I go to work together and come home together. If I wake up at night, I check to see if something woke me up.”
“That’s good. Don’t stop watching.”
“Hey, you know what? Mrs. Fournier is waiting for me. We’re going to pick up some paint for the walls in the back part of the store, and I can’t keep her waiting for too long.”
“Oh, sorry. You’d better get going, then. Nice to talk to you.”
“It was. And Dad?”
“What?”
“Don’t worry so much. Everybody here looks out for me.”
“Good. Go back to work. Love you.”
“’Bye.”
Till hung up and sat in Ann Donnelly’s room, staring out the narrow gap in the curtain at the ocean. During his career as a cop, he had guarded against situations where Holly might be in danger. Right now he probably had even less to worry about. Holly hadn’t lived with him in three years, and the phone at Garden House wasn’t in her name. He had sold his house when he’d retired.
Till was accustomed to living with a constant low-level anxiety about Holly. Letting her out of his sight was an act of trust and confidence that he had not felt when she was four, and did not feel now. Every time he turned his back on her, his mind was crowded with images of Holly being careless or confused or victimized.
“Good morning.”
He turned and saw Ann Donnelly standing in the doorway between the rooms. “Hi.” He felt an unexpected hollow in his stomach, a feeling that he might have let something precious and important slip away. He told himself that it would have been out of place and unethical to make some romantic overture to her last night, but now he could not help feeling a terrible suspicion that she had been telling him to try. She looked appealing, squinting in the beam of sunlight from the open curtain, running her long, thin fingers through her light hair, trying to search for tangles that weren’t there.
“Did you just wake up, too?”
“Yes.” He looked out the window again. “I was just checking to be sure nobody was standing on the rock watching our room with a pair of binoculars or something.”
She stepped close to him, her body touching his as she opened the curtain a few more inches. “Holy shit. I didn’t see it last night.” She laughed. “I can’t believe I actually didn’t notice that huge thing.”
He shrugged. “It was dark. I drove straight into town from the inland side.”
She stretched her arms, brought them forward and bent her back and then arched like a cat. He felt the hollow in his stomach deepening into regret, and looked away. She seemed to see his unhappiness. Did she guess what he was thinking? He said, “Let’s get showered and dressed. We can find a place for—what time is it? Lunch, I guess it would be.”
“Great. I’m starving.”
