Sympathy Between Humans Part 25

Moments earlier, in the parking lot of the hospital, the twins had shared a quick, quiet conversation.

"You can stay out here," Marlinchen had told Aidan. She was holding a potted ivy grown along a frame in the shape of a heart; we'd stopped for it on the way over. "Everyone will understand."

The same thing had occurred to me; I'd thought it odd that the son who called his father Hugh Hugh was intent on accompanying his sister and brothers on this charitable visit. was intent on accompanying his sister and brothers on this charitable visit.

"It's okay," Aidan said. "I'll go in."

"Are you sure?" Marlinchen said, wanting, as always, to avoid unpleasantness of any kind.

"I'm not afraid to see him, Linch," Aidan said, and the note of iron did a lot to explain his determination to be here, not to shy away from the man who'd exiled him years ago.

"That's not what I meant," she'd said, looking down, sunlight flashing off one of her earrings. But they'd discussed it no further.

"Hi, Dad," Marlinchen said now, brightly. "We're all here. It's not just a visit, it's an invasion."

Hugh, in his rocker, looked improved from the last time I'd seen him. His color was better, as was his posture. Marlinchen set the ivy at his side, and leaned over. "Can you give me a kiss?"

Hugh leaned close to her, one hand steadying himself on the arm of the rocker, and obeyed. The doctors were right; he did understand what those around him were saying.

But he didn't, or couldn't, speak. Marlinchen carried the conversation, with Colm and Liam adding their comments sporadically. Hugh was clearly listening, but his voice came out as an unsteady rumble, or telegramlike half sentences that didn't make immediate sense. He seemed to understand he wasn't making sense, either, embarra.s.sment lighting his blue eyes.

Something else: Hugh seemed focused only on Marlinchen and the three boys on the couch. After about five minutes, Freddy leaned over to speak to him. "Mr. Hennessy, remember what we've been talking about, turning your head to scan the whole room?"

He was coaching his patient to compensate for the neglect, the tendency of some stroke patients to ignore stimuli from the side affected by the stroke. Hugh did as instructed. He turned his head, looking past the boys on the couch, and stopped. For the first time, he saw Aidan. A muscle jumped under his left eye. There was nothing impaired about his vision or his memory.

Marlinchen's smile became even more set. She seemed to realize what had happened, but said nothing to acknowledge Aidan's presence.

"I've been saving The New York Review of Books The New York Review of Books for you," she told her father. "I didn't throw any of them out. I'll read the better articles to you." for you," she told her father. "I didn't throw any of them out. I'll read the better articles to you."

Hugh's attention had not shifted. The muscles of his face were working, and a small bubble of saliva had appeared at the corner of his mouth. The sound he was making took shape. "What is," he said. "What is. What is she. She is..."

Marlinchen shot me a nervous glance. "Oh," she said. "Dad, this is Sarah Pribek. A friend of ours."

But Hugh clearly wasn't looking at me. He was staring at Aidan, and I remembered what Marlinchen said, that Hugh was confusing his p.r.o.nouns. Hugh didn't mean to say she she; he meant he. he. Hugh's blue eyes were narrow, and trained on his oldest son. Hugh's blue eyes were narrow, and trained on his oldest son.

Beside me, Aidan shifted on his feet. "Maybe I should take a little walk," he said.

Marlinchen, forced to acknowledge what was happening, looked pained. "I don't know," she said.

On the couch, Colm seemed to have recused himself psychologically from the situation, examining a small callus on one of his weightlifter's hands. Liam looked from his father to his sister. His eyes were intent, but he said nothing.

I took the decision from Marlinchen's hands. "Yeah, that might be a good idea," I said. It was probably best that Hugh didn't have another stroke at the sight of his long-lost son.

Aidan slipped from the visiting room. After he left, Marlinchen carried on with her open-ended conversation, with Liam and Colm still helping at irregular intervals. Increasingly, I felt like an interloper, and after a moment I left the room, as Aidan had.

It was around one o'clock, with the iron heat of a June midday in full effect, but I wandered outside. The exit door was conveniently just beyond the visiting room, and I'd somehow wanted relief from the atmosphere of the nursing home: aseptic, yet cheerful; verdant with plants, yet somehow stale.

Once outside, I saw that Aidan had made the same decision. He was at a distance on the grounds, walking, and had drifted toward the only shade available, where willows overhung the shallow, reedy pond. The Canada geese that had been bathing there rose up and flew off at Aidan's approach. All but one, which was flopping awkwardly.

Aidan still hadn't noticed me following him. His attention was on the straggler goose. As it flailed forward into the sunlight, I saw a tiny flash of metal in its beak, and I realized what had happened. At one of the small lakes nearby, the bird had gotten a fishhook caught in its beak. It had flown here before settling down in this safe haven and trying to dislodge the hook, probably making things worse in the attempt.

Aidan, surprising me with his reflexes, s.n.a.t.c.hed up the goose by its neck. The bird squalled with surprise. Its outstretched wings worked wildly, the tip of one sc.r.a.ping at Aidan's cheekbone and forehead while he worked at the goose's beak with his free hand. Aidan pulled his head back, out of reach of the bird's thrashing wings, and spoke to the goose, not loud enough for me to overhear. Then he withdrew his hand, and I saw light glint off the small crook of metal.

Aidan released the bird, which shook itself indignantly, then took to the air. It flew low at first, only a few feet over the turf, as if making a test flight to see that all systems were go. Then it banked higher and was out of sight. Aidan, after watching it disappear, moved toward the pond's edge. He c.o.c.ked his arm and threw the fishhook out into the waters of the pond.

In a field full of cool, a.n.a.lytical thinkers, I'd always worked from instinct. In that moment, I made up my mind about Aidan Hennessy.

It was such a small thing Aidan had done, removing the fishhook from the goose's beak, yet it spoke volumes. I didn't believe that Aidan had known that anyone was within view of him. He had acted naturally and without forethought to ease an animal's pain. I couldn't reconcile that image with the idea of him ripping up Marlinchen's cat.

Other people had tried to tell me. Marlinchen had been his staunchest defender, of course, but Liam had said it as well: he's our brother. he's our brother. And Mrs. Hansen, the grade-school teacher, had called Aidan a fighter but not a bully. I just hadn't been able to hear any of it. Gray Diaz's investigation, Prewitt's suspicion... it had all set me on edge, and the resulting paranoia had spread throughout my life, coloring how I'd viewed Aidan, making his unexpected return seem sinister. And Mrs. Hansen, the grade-school teacher, had called Aidan a fighter but not a bully. I just hadn't been able to hear any of it. Gray Diaz's investigation, Prewitt's suspicion... it had all set me on edge, and the resulting paranoia had spread throughout my life, coloring how I'd viewed Aidan, making his unexpected return seem sinister.

When Aidan sat down in the shade of the willow, I went to join him.

"Hey," I said, sitting with my knees drawn up, resting my forearms on them.

"Hey," he said.

"Look," I said, "I should say something. I think we might have gotten off on the wrong foot." Come on, Sarah, you can do better than that. Come on, Sarah, you can do better than that. "I was too hard on you, the night you came home." "I was too hard on you, the night you came home."

Aidan looked over at me.

"Suspicion is a cop virtue," I explained. "It's my fallback position when I don't know what to think."

"It's okay," he said, taking out a pack of cigarettes and starting to remove one. I suspected that he, like most smokers, fell back on cigarettes at awkward moments, not necessarily for the nicotine but just for the distraction of a simple physical activity. "I mean, I can see how it might have looked to you."

I nodded but said nothing else.

"I guess I should say, too..." He paused, thinking. "Well, Marlinchen says you've been looking out for them, since Hugh had his stroke."

I shrugged. "Mostly, it was my job." I wasn't sure that was true, but it sounded good.

"Well, anyway, it's..." Aidan tore up a handful of gra.s.s. "I'm glad someone was there." He slid the cigarette back in its pack.

"Quitting?" I asked him.

He shrugged. "Marlinchen's on my case about it."

That was Marlinchen, nothing if not forceful in her opinions. I plucked a dandelion globe. "Can I ask you a question?" I said. "It's another cop habit."

"Go ahead," he said.

"I know you don't have a criminal record," I told him. "That's kind of hard for a runaway to do, to survive without breaking the law. I don't mean to get in your business, but were you really law-abiding, or just lucky?"

"Mostly law-abiding," Aidan said. "There's always work off the books, if you know where to look for it. When I couldn't find jobs, I raided garbage bins behind stores. Panhandled. Made up stories about having a bus ticket stolen. That kind of thing," he said.

"You never thought about contacting your dad for money?"

Aidan's eyes flicked toward the building, where Hugh was secreted behind the glare off the big plate-gla.s.s window. "I didn't want anything from him," he said. He didn't elaborate, not sure what I knew.

"It's okay," I said carefully, knowing it was a sensitive area. "Marlinchen told me about Hugh. About how things were before you were sent away."

"It was a long time ago," Aidan said, looking out at the waters of the pond. "I try not to think about it."

We were silent a moment. I decided not to push things further than we'd already gone, but Aidan surprised me by speaking again. "You wanted to know, the other night, about why I decided to come home." It was half a statement, half a question.

"Yeah," I said, half responding, half prompting.

"There was no big thing that made me leave the farm in Georgia," he said. "Pete was okay, but he wasn't my family, and we never really warmed up to each other. I finally decided that the farm was his problem, not mine. So I split."

"And you didn't want to come home, because of Hugh," I said.

"Yeah," Aidan said. "I thought I'd go to California and start over. So I did. I made some friends, guys who'd watch my back if I watched theirs. Met some girls, had some times. But I didn't stay there, I came home because"- Aidan hesitated-"it's not that easy to explain."

"You don't have to tell me," I said.

"It was just something that happened on the beach one night." A wisp of dandelion fluff landed on Aidan's arm, and he brushed it away. "When I said before that I was 'mostly' law-abiding, well, I was, but I did some drugs." He looked at me, making sure I was okay with that before moving on. "So one night, I was wired on crystal and sitting up smoking, because I knew I was never going to get to sleep. I don't know why, but at some point I started thinking about Minnesota, and all of a sudden I realized I didn't even remember what Donal looked like." He shrugged. "I don't know why it bothered me so much, but it did. And I realized that I'd been trying to tell myself that the people I'd met out in Cali were my new brothers and sisters, but that was bulls.h.i.t. They weren't and never would be. Some people in your life you just can't subst.i.tute for. They aren't replaceable."

In its low-key way, it was a story of extraordinary emotional largesse, but my radar for bulls.h.i.t was quiet. I sensed he meant everything he said.

Then Aidan focused on something beyond me. I turned too, to see what it was. Marlinchen and her brothers were approaching. They were done visiting.

"Dad's making a lot of progress," Marlinchen said, sounding pleased, when she reached us. "He said my name. Well, the short version."

Aidan said nothing.

"That's great," I managed, a second or two belatedly.

"I talked to Gray Diaz," Genevieve said, over the long-distance wires. Genevieve said, over the long-distance wires.

It was Sunday, and I had taken a little time for myself, going home to clean out the mailbox and check my messages. The house had that stillness that you feel after an absence, the once-wet dishrag hardened to a stiff fossil over the faucet, papers lying museumlike where I'd left them. Also awaiting me was a bag of tomatoes on the back step, the gift of my neighbor Mrs. Muzio, and a message on the machine. From Genevieve.

"Well, we knew he'd want to talk to you," I told her. "You're my ex-partner and the person I went to visit after my alleged crime."

"That's not the point," Genevieve said. "Sarah, this guy really thinks you did it."

"We knew that too, didn't we?"

"This is different," she said. "I was a cop for nearly twenty years. I spent those years listening to cops talk about their cases, their suspects, and their gut feelings. I know when they're just trying on theories for size, and I know when they've got religion. This guy has got religion, Sarah. He believes you killed Stewart."

I hadn't told her about the Nova and the tests the BCA was running for Diaz. Certainly I couldn't say anything now; she'd only worry more.

"There's nothing you can do about it," I said.

"I could come back."

"No," I said firmly. She meant come back and confess. come back and confess. This was exactly what I didn't want. "Think about what you're offering to do. There'd be no turning back from it." This was exactly what I didn't want. "Think about what you're offering to do. There'd be no turning back from it."

She was quiet on the other end, and I knew she was internalizing the possibility of a life sentence. I pressed my advantage. "We've come this far, Gen. Too far to panic and tear it all down with our own hands."

My neighbor's scrawny Siamese cat stalked past the back door, looking for a handout. I stayed silent, letting my words sink in. Genevieve would see the logic in it. She'd always been logical, just as I'd always been intuitive.

Finally, Genevieve said, "When all this is over, you're coming to see me, right?"

"Absolutely," I said, relieved.

When we'd hung up, I got up from my place on the floor, went into the kitchen, and opened a can of tuna, sc.r.a.ping it onto an old, chipped plate. we'd hung up, I got up from my place on the floor, went into the kitchen, and opened a can of tuna, sc.r.a.ping it onto an old, chipped plate.

The examination of the car was probably the worst of Diaz's investigation. What else was there for him to do, a search of the house? Diaz was a perceptive guy. Surely he'd recognize that I wasn't the sort of person to keep a diary, and if I did, I wouldn't write down explicitly incriminating things in it: Dear Diary, I sure am glad I got away with killing Royce Stewart, and torching his place, too! Dear Diary, I sure am glad I got away with killing Royce Stewart, and torching his place, too! No, Diaz knew better. No, Diaz knew better.

I forced open the back screen door- it was really getting stiff- and set down the plate of tuna on the back step. From his prowls in the gra.s.s, the Siamese glared as though I were trying to poison him, but I knew he'd approach and eat after I was gone.

I didn't go back into the house, but down into the bas.e.m.e.nt, instead, where the little .25, which Genevieve's sister had pressed on me, rested in the toolbox. I'd never used it; in fact, as far as I knew it had never been used in any crime. But I didn't feel comfortable having it around. Regardless of how unlikely it was that Diaz would get a warrant for the house, it was time for the little gun to go. The river would take it off my hands. One short walk out to the bridge, and the gun would scud gently along the riverbed until it got hung up on some natural impediment, to lie unseen and untouched for some small eternity.

It was when I was back in the house, watching the Siamese eat in that both dainty and ravenous way cats do, that I realized I knew somebody who needed the .25 a little more than the waters of the Mississippi.

The dinner hour was over, but the pleasant smell of cooking hung in the air of Cicero's hallway. The door at the end of the hall was open, and I waved at the shaven-headed boy standing in it as I approached. He made a half nod in return, chin thrust in the air. hour was over, but the pleasant smell of cooking hung in the air of Cicero's hallway. The door at the end of the hall was open, and I waved at the shaven-headed boy standing in it as I approached. He made a half nod in return, chin thrust in the air.

I shifted the brown paper bag in my arms and knocked at Cicero's door. No one answered.

Could he be sleeping? It was too early for that. I knocked again.

"Shorty looking for ya," the boy in the doorway said to someone inside. I turned and saw the boy moving aside, heard Cicero making his goodbyes to the other people he'd been visiting inside the apartment.

"I don't think I've ever been called Shorty before," I said when Cicero was at my side. He opened the door to his apartment, which was unlocked.

"It means 'girlfriend,' " he said.

"I know what it means, means," I said, and left it at that. He couldn't have known why it gave me a little chill to be called that, Royce Stewart's nickname. "Anyway," I said, "I brought you some things. From what you'd call the informal economy. You like tomatoes, right?"

"I love tomatoes," Cicero said, his face slightly tipped to look down into the bag, "and these still have that great smell. Of the leaves, I mean."

It was one of my favorite things, too, the sharp spice of tomato leaves, so different from the sweetness of the fruit. "I know," I said.

Cicero went to put the bag on his kitchen counter. I used the time to dig into my shoulder bag. "This is the other thing," I said, pulling the .25 from the bag; its cheap silver plating gleamed in the lamplight. Earlier, I'd cleaned and oiled and test-fired it, ensuring that it was in working condition.

"Sarah, is that real?" Cicero had turned to look.

"It's real," I said. "It comes from- a kind of an in-law," I said. Genevieve was, after all, practically family to me.

"Is your husband's whole family involved in crime?" Cicero asked me, only half kidding.

I didn't answer him directly. "This gun isn't registered to anyone that I know of, and if any crimes were committed with it, they were long ago and over state lines," I said. "I was going to get rid of it, but you need it more."