ash.
I pointed. “This way.”
We walked out into the shadow of the gigantic mound, past the handful of tourists and fishermen who were gathered there. Past the chain-link fence. Kathy looked at me, unsure. “You sure this is okay?”
I nodded. “Yes.”
We made our way onto the tiny, gray cove of beach and the large, jagged rocks. I looked for the narrow path that went up the slope. The sun was shining. The surf was up and occasionally a wave crashed over the outer rocks, sending spray into the breeze.
“You need some help?” Kathy asked, navigating her way across the rocks.
“No, I’m okay.” I knew my gait was a bit unsteady. But I also knew where I wanted to go. I looked up and saw the promontory halfway up the cliff and pointed. “Here it is…”
We looked at the jigsaw of boulders at the bottom of the rock.
This was where they had found him.
We stood, staring up at the enormous wall, waves spraying spectacularly.
I thought of Charlie and Gabby climbing over the same rocks just a few days ago, and a burning sensation rose up at the back of my eyes.
“It feels like a good place, Jay. It really does.” Kathy smiled, seeing my eyes well up. “I think they’d be happy here…”
“Okay.”
We took out a container the mortuary had provided us and opened each of the cardboard boxes containing Charlie, Gabby, and Evan’s remains. We poured a slow stream at first, then steadier, letting the flow of ashes all merge into one.
My brother, his wife, and their son.
When we were done, we just stood there.
Kathy shrugged. “You ought to say something.”
I hadn’t thought about saying anything. So much had happened. All that seemed to come to mind was “Here’s to Charlie and Gabby and Evan. Your lives all took a different path. It wasn’t a straight one, but you all ended up in the same place. The right place. With each other.”
“Rest in peace, guys,” Kathy said. “At last.” She looked at me. The spray from an incoming wave shot over the rocks.
It seemed like the right time.
We both took hold of the container and, with a nod, threw some of the ashes over the rocks.
A wave crashed over them, battering them with spray. We threw out more as the next wave barreled in, the ashes merging with foam and sand. I liked that. I watched them squeeze through the maze of rocks and head back out to sea.
“Look! ” Kathy pointed.
Out on one of the sandbars was a pelican. Just one. It stood there, all spindly legs and beak, seeming to observe us, like some solitary mourner at a funeral. Then its gaze drifted back out toward the bay, scanning the tiny whitecaps for a meal.
Kathy grinned that beautiful blue-eyed smile of hers. “See, they’re back.”
“Kathy, I love you,” I said.
It seemed to startle her. She covered her eyes with her hand, staring back into the sun. Then she smiled. “I love you, too, Jay.”
Suddenly the pelican flapped its wings and took off across the shallow shoals. We watched as it dove into the ripples, snapping something up in its beak, and rose-graceful, almost majestic-and flew over the bay.
I smiled.
The foam and the surf turned to spray again on the rocks and sand and then, as if pulled by an angel’s hand, slid back out to sea.
I nodded to Kathy and lifted the container. “One more.”
Chapter Eighty
W e flew back to New York. Max and Sophie, who had come up from school, were waiting at the house with Kathy’s folks. Tons of hugs and grateful tears as we came through the doors.
Still, Dev’s final words rarely left my brain.
And why had he let me live, when everyone else had died?
You still have work to do, doc. Things yet to find out.
I spent the next couple of weeks recovering. I went into the office a couple of times and checked up on my cases. I didn’t know exactly when I would begin to practice again. Some of that related to my hand, which was slowly healing.
Some was related to my mind.
You know the jack of hearts? You should. I think you might learn something from it.
It was like he was continuing to taunt me from the grave.
Gradually, things got back to normal. Sophie stayed a few days and went back to Penn. Max started up in school. Dev’s threat seemed to pass.
“It’s over, it’s over,” Kathy would say, trying to calm me. No matter how many times I woke up in the night in a sweat.
Haunted by the same recurring dreams.
Coming to in the ambulance, Dev’s words chilling me: “We’ve got your son!” Susan Pollack’s gruesome death. Or Dev, coming at me with that knife. Getting closer.
But this time, no shots brought him down.
Each time, Kathy would wrap her arms around me and pull me back down, brush my sweaty cheeks with her hand, saying, “It’s over, baby. It is.”
But I knew it wasn’t over.
They’d let me live, for some reason.
You still have work to do, doc. Things yet to find out.
The jack of hearts. One day it’s gonna give you a smile.
I knew I’d never be able to fully rest, or put it behind me, until I figured out why.
After about a month, I woke up with a start one night. The clock read 3:17 A.M. I was breathing heavily. My heart felt like it had been given a jolt of epinephrine. Damp sweat drenched my back and sheets.
Kathy shot up next to me. Since we’d gotten back, she’d been telling me that I ought to talk with someone, and I’d begun to think that maybe I should. She reached across the bed and put her hand on my shoulder. “Another dream, honey?”
“Yeah. A crazy one.” I sat up in the bed and tried to clear my head.
This one had been about my father. That incident at the house in California, when Charlie, the producer dude, and Houvnanian had come up to see him.
The same dream I’d had out west.
Except this time, the “music producer dude” was Dev. His ratty clothes and wolflike eyes.
And it really wasn’t a record they were talking about but somehow “making him pay.” My dad. For all the crap he had done to Charlie.
And instead of just smiling that creepy, probing smile of his and simply leaving, Houvnanian nodded to Dev, who took out this blade.
And suddenly everyone was screaming blazing, angry taunts, accusing my father of betraying them. And then they started to stab him. Like what I had read in Greenway’s book. But it wasn’t Riorden, it was my father. They were hacking away at him. Writing words in his blood. “Pig.” “Betrayer.”
And I was outside the glass window watching it all take place. Unable to do a thing. Or scared to. The three of them cursing and stabbing, until in shame and grief I had to turn away…
