Sweeney was still looking up, hands braced behind his back. “Perfect English and nice manners,” Brenda said. “Preppy clothes, Topsider boat shoes. A van with a lift to take his old customers to restaurants and doctors. Getting their pictures framed, renting porn for the old guys. Staying for iced tea with nice old ladies who show him photos of all the people who never come to visit—”
She remembered the photos on Sweeney’s kitchen table.
“It reminds me of something,” he said, still looking at the sky. “No, never mind. It’s rumor-mongering.”
“I’m a journalist,” Brenda told him. “There are no rumors, only leads.”
“Not even rumors,” Sweeney said. “Just happy hour loose talk.”
He thought a moment, reached out and grabbed the only ball they hadn’t used. He threw it into the night. “I heard a story,” he said. “From another lobbyist. He was up in Michigan last summer. We were having drinks, and he mentioned some elderly people who died down here. One suffered from bad rheumatoid arthritis and fell. Someone else died the same day, when he accidentally pulled out his oxygen tube. You could say both these people died between nursing shifts.”
“Patrick—” Sweeney turned to her. “Fifty-three thousand people in Collier County are sixty-five or older. Forty-five percent are seventy-five or older. One thousand three hundred doctors’ offices and clinics, forty-four thousand Medicare recipients—”
Sweeney held up a hand. “Okay, you did your homework. Let me finish. These people died fast, not even between nursing shifts. And not because of neglect. Both times, the attendant was doing something else. Making up a bed, loading the dishwasher. No one blamed the caregiver. Things happen to frail old people, that’s all. This friend of mine wasn’t talking about All Hands on Deck, he was just talking. Saying how easy it would be to go into business that way. You know how it’s going to be. Remember the memorial service for Teddy Larson’s mother? The son can’t be bothered to fly down, but someone from All Hands on Deck shows up.”
Sweeney batted at something. She was sorry to have made him talk about death. “Let’s leave it alone,” he said. “Rivera’s probably just a hardworking guy. As you say, probably here illegally. That’s why he’s not on the website. Terri thought working with politicians made me cynical and suspicious. She was right. When I see a go-getter, it reminds me of some state senator on a podium. I see him taking bows for legislation he can’t read without moving his lips.”
Brenda drank off her wine. Maybe Sweeney was right. She didn’t know Rivera. He didn’t fit a stereotype, so she had joined his fan club. Then, after a few details, she was ready to think he was a criminal.
“Let’s tidy up this golf course.”
She stood and held out her hand. Sweeney took it, and she pulled him up. He seemed taller now. His mussed white hair made him look almost boyish. He smelled of cologne she remembered from the plane, mingled with sweat and wine. The streak of barbeque sauce still marked his forehead. She reached up and rubbed it off with her thumb.
“What’ll we use—”
He bent and grabbed up the blanket. As they turned and began walking, Brenda kept Sweeney’s hand. There was no reason not to. Mixed with all the wine, she felt grateful to him. Lighter. Unburdened. It was a good hand she preferred to keep as they walked out into the strange, perfected expanse of garish green slicing through darkness.
That’s all it is, she thought, amazed and embarrassed to be thinking such thoughts, to be doing a routine just for herself. All it is—she remembered Charlie Schmidt coming back to the dock at Kettle Falls, looking down at the place where his black speedboat had been tied up. Charlie Schmidt, who had wanted to take the blame. Who had lied for her.
Perhaps the memory was why she kept Sweeney’s hand. Was there any reason, beyond old habits? Old habits, she thought. What crap it was, believing that giving up love, something almost unknown to her in adult life, could be explained by her bad-girl, anything-goes past. What crap.
Watching her feet as they walked, she looked at Sweeney’s golf shoes. His movements seemed almost somber now, as though he wished this weren’t happening. But here was the place, and he leaned against her slightly, moving them out of the band of light. The pressure from his shoulder was precisely what it had been next to her on the plane, Sweeney flying back to Florida for the first time since Teresa Sweeney had done what she did. Was there any connection? Between Teresa Sweeney taking her life and Kettle Falls? None she could think of.
All at once Brenda felt more drunk. Don’t lie, she thought. You aren’t drunk. There was no connection between the man she’d killed and Terri Sweeney. A vicious life, a good life—she shook her head. Both lives had ended, all for nothing. Just a good man left to make lists, and herself without the guts to make a future with Charlie Schmidt.
“I hope you aren’t feeling sorry for me,” Sweeney said.
“Lobbyists are good at reading people. You know what you see.”
“I see this year’s Most Improved Golfer.”
“Do you see someone feeling sorry?”
“It doesn’t matter.”
The spot lamps were still casting their shadows in front of them but more dimly. Silhouetted on the left were the dark houses of people already asleep or out of town.
“No, it matters,” Sweeney said. “Someone who knew about Terri and didn’t feel anything wouldn’t be here.”
“I’m no social worker,” she said.
“I know that.”
“It’s the golf.”
She had not meant to say anything more, but hearing herself, she now wanted what would follow to be funny. For both of them. So she could stop thinking. With that she pulled his hand to make him stop. “It’s all the
