“I wrote Hal. Her father.”
“Did he write back?”
“He did.”
Ten minutes passed, Walk wondering but not wanting to know. Star’s father was hard. He had acres in Montana, the Cape too painful even to visit. He had not met his grandchildren.
“At first he told me to kill myself.”
Walk looked at the sainted wall, the depictions of judgment, and forgiveness.
“I might’ve done it. Then he changed his mind. Death was too good. He sent me a photo of her.” Vincent swallowed. “Sissy.”
Walk closed his eyes as the sun cut through and found the pulpit.
“You been into town yet?”
“I don’t know this place anymore.”
“You will know it again.”
“I had to go into Jennings to pick up some paint. I saw Ernie owns the place now.”
“Did he give you a hard time? I can talk to him.” Ernie had been one of the walkers that night. He’d been the first to see Walk raise his hand, the first to run back over then stop dead at the scene, double over and retch at the sight of the little girl.
They stood together and walked out, through the green grass and over the leaning gravestones. At the cliff edge they watched water break over jagged rock two hundred feet below.
Walk felt dizzy at the sight. “I think about it often. How we were. I see the Cape Haven kids, like Duchess, and I think of me and you and Star and Martha. Star said to me some days she still feels fifteen. We can get together, the three of us. In time, we can get things back. It was simpler, right. It was—”
“Listen, Walk. What you think you know, or might know, about what happened over the years. Whatever I was, I’m not now.”
“How come you didn’t let me visit, after your mother?”
Vincent kept his eyes on the scene, like he hadn’t heard. “He wrote me, Hal. Every year. On Sissy’s birthday.”
“You shouldn’t—”
“Sometimes it was short, to remind me, like I needed it. Other times he went on for ten pages. It wasn’t all anger, some was on change, what I could do, how I could let others live their lives and not pull them down.”
Walk got it then, it was not self-preservation of any kind, the way he’d reasoned it.
“If you can’t right a wrong, if you can’t ever do that …”
Together they watched a trawler, The Sun Drift, Walk knew it, blue paint and rust, curved lines of steel and wire. It moved silent from where they were, no waves just the carve of its hull.
“Some things just are, right. There’s a reason, always, but talk won’t change any of it.”
There was much Walk wanted to ask about the last thirty years of his friend’s life, but the scars on Vincent’s wrists told him it might well be worse than he could ever have imagined.
They walked back toward town in silence, Vincent keeping to the side streets, head down, always. “Star,” he said. “She saw a lot of guys then?”
Walk shrugged, and, for a moment, thought he had heard the slightest note of jealousy in Vincent’s voice.
He watched his friend walk away, back toward Sunset, to patch up the old, empty house.
After lunch Walk made the drive to Vancour Hill Hospital.
He rode the elevator to the fourth floor, took his place in the waiting room and read a glossy, pages of stark homes as minimalist as their keepers, reflected light all sanitary stucco. He kept his head low, though the other person was a young woman as determined as him, there in betraying body, mind displaced.
His name called, he moved fast, no outward sign, no matter the aches and pains, only a few hours earlier he could barely stand.
“The pills aren’t working,” he said, as he sat. The office was uniform, the only personal touch a framed photo that faced away. The doctor was Kendrick.
“Your hand again?” Kendrick said.
“Everything. A half hour to get up each day.”
“But you haven’t slowed down, in other ways? Walking? Smiling?”
He smiled despite himself. She returned it.
“Just the hands, the arms. Stiffness. Nothing more, I know it’ll come.”
“And you haven’t told anyone. Still?”
“They chalk me as a boozehound.”
“And you’re okay with that?”
“My line of work, it’s a good fit, right?”
“You know you’ll have to tell someone.”
“And then what? I won’t sit behind a desk.”
“You could try something else.”
“I tell you, you ever see me wasting my days on some fishing boat, you just come down and shoot me. Being a policeman is … I like my place. I like my life. I want to keep both.”
Kendrick smiled a sad smile. “Anything else?”
He stared out, the window more than a view then, a way to leave himself while he detailed what needed saying. A little trouble pissing, a little trouble shitting. And more than a little trouble sleeping. Kendrick said it was normal, made suggestions, lose a little weight, diet, therapy, changing dose, Levodopa. Nothing he did not know. He was not someone that walked blindly into medicating. He spent his free time in the library, reading up, six stages, Braak’s Hypothesis, even back to James Parkinson.
“Fuck,” he said, then raised a hand. “I’m sorry for cursing. I don’t do that.”
“Fuck,” Kendrick agreed.
“I can’t lose my job. I just can’t. The people need me.” He wondered if that were true. “It’s only the right side,” he lied.
“There’s a group.”
He made to stand.
“Please,” she said, and he took the pamphlet.
* * *
Duchess sat on the sand. She hugged her knees as she watched Robin, ankle deep and hunting shells. He had a collection, mostly fragments, his pockets fit to burst.
Off left was a group of kids from her school, the girls in bathing suits and the boys tossing a ball. The noise floated on, right through her. She had that ability, to feel totally alone on a beach full of people, in a class full of kids. She got that from her mother, but she fought it with everything she had. Robin needed stability, not a pissy teenage
