Prayers For Rain Part 80

The gaiety left her eyes and was replaced by something warmer, but unsettled, still questioning.

"I'm sorry," I said.

"What?"

"About what happened in the woods last year. About that child."

She held my eyes. "I'm not sure any longer that I was right."

"Why's that?"

"Maybe n.o.body has the right to play G.o.d. Look at the Dawes."

I smiled.

"What's funny?"

"Just..." I took the fingers of her right hand in mine, and she blinked, but didn't pull them away. "Just that over the last nine months I've been seeing it more your way. Maybe it was was a relative situation. Maybe we should have left her there. Five years old, and she was happy." a relative situation. Maybe we should have left her there. Five years old, and she was happy."

She shrugged, squeezed my hand. "We'll never know, will we?"

"About Amanda McCready?"

"About anything. I think sometimes when we're old and gray, will we finally be settled about the things we've done, all the choices we made, or will we look back and think about all the things we could've done?"

I kept my head very still, my eyes on hers, waiting for the searching to settle, for her to see whatever answers she was looking for in my face.

She tilted her head slightly, and her lips parted a tenth of an inch.

And a white post office truck sluiced through the rain on my left, glided in front of us, clicked on its hazards, and double-parked in front of the mailboxes fifty yards ahead.

Angie pulled away and I turned forward in my seat.

A man in a clear, hooded slicker over his blue and white postal uniform jumped from the right side of the truck. He held a white plastic carton in his hands, its contents protected from the rain by a plastic trash bag taped loosely on top. The man came around to the front of the mailboxes, placed the crate by his feet, and used a key to open the green mailbox.

Most of his face was obscured by the rain and the hood, but as he emptied the carton of mail into the box, I could still see his lips-thick and red and cruel.

"It's him," I said.

"You're sure?"

I nodded. "A hundred percent. It's Wesley."

"Or the Artist Formerly Known as Wesley, as I like to call him."

"That's because you need psychiatric care."

As we watched him fill the green box, the postman descended the stairs of a brownstone and called out to him. He joined him at the boxes and they chatted, raised their heads to the rain, then down again, laughed about something.

They bulls.h.i.tted for another minute and then Wesley waved, hopped in the truck and drove off.

I opened my door and left Angie's sudden, surprised "Hey!" behind as I ran down the sidewalk, my hand raised and yelled, "Wait up! Wait!" as Wesley's truck reached the green light at Fairfield and kept going, drifting into the far left lane for a turn onto Gloucester.

The postman narrowed his eyes at me as I reached him.

"Trying to catch a bus, buddy?"

I bent over as if out of breath. "No, that truck."

He held out his hand. "I'll take it."

"What?"

"Your letter. You trying to send something, right?"

"Huh? No." I shook my head, then gestured with it up Beacon as Wesley made the turn onto Gloucester. "I saw you two talking here, and I think that's my old roommate. Haven't seen him in ten years."

"Scott?"

Scott.

"Yeah," I said. "Scottie Simon!" I clapped my hands as if elated.

The postman shook his head. "Sorry, pal."

"What?"

"That ain't your buddy."

"It was," I said. "That was Scott Simon, no question. I'd recognize him anywhere."

The postman snorted. "No offense, mister, but you may want to see an optometrist. That guy's name is Scott Pea.r.s.e, and no one's ever called him Scottie."

"d.a.m.n," I said, trying to sound deflated as fireworks exploded through my body, electrified it.

Scott Pea.r.s.e.

Got you, Scott. G.o.dd.a.m.n got you.

You wanted to play? Well, hide-and-seek is over. Let the real games begin, motherf.u.c.ker.

29.

I spent the week sitting on Scott Pea.r.s.e-following him to work every morning, following him home every night. Angie covered his days while I slept, so I'd leave him when he picked up his truck at a garage on A Street, be watching again when he left the General Mail Facility along the Fort Point Channel after his final mail collection of the day. His routine, that week anyway, was maddeningly innocuous.

In the morning, he'd leave A Street, his truck fully loaded with large parcels. These he'd deliver to the green boxes throughout Back Bay, where they'd be picked up by the mail carriers on foot and brought to people's doorsteps. After a midafternoon lunch, according to Angie, he'd head out again, this time with an empty truck, that he'd gradually fill with the contents of the blue mailboxes. Once that was done, he'd drop the mail at the sorting facility and clock out.