At First Sight

Chapter 21

A LOT OF THE GREAT FEMALE MARATHONERS TODAY, like Ethiopia's Getenesh Wami and Kenya's Helena Kirop, are from high altitudes and hot climates. The heat and thin air helps them with their training. Paige, on the other hand, trained in Charlotte, North Carolina, which was at sea level and freezing cold in winter. Wami and Kirop are light and almost seem to be built out of titanium, with no upper body-all legs and narrow shoulders. They carry what weight they have in their thighs and butts. Paige, on the other hand, had broad shoulders and carried her weight high. She'd started out in college as a middle-distance runner, so her strides tended to be less fluid and more choppy, but since Chandler had died, she'd been training more diligently, and her split times on 10Ks had come down to just under seven-minute miles-6:49 to be exact.

Since that terrible night when she learned of Chandler's death, her runs had been an oasis of sorts, where she could focus on the effort, and everything else faded away. As she ran, her mind miraculously cleared, and the Mean Reds were blown out of her like noxious exhaust. She began to contemplate her future. But the lingering anger-the Mean Reds-were always right behind her, chasing her like a swarm of gnats, waiting for her to slow down so they could engulf her again.

Paige ran in the evening along the well-lit clay path down by the river, smelling the damp, mist-wet ground, pushing herself harder and faster, trying to develop enough clarity to begin to chart the next act of her life. She was trying to view herself not as a victim, but as a work in progress.

One thing was damned sure. Chandler wasn't coming back. He was part of her past. If Paige intended to go on, she needed to establish some goals and pick up a more positive attitude.

It was November, on a Friday, almost seven months to the day since Chandler had died, and Paige was about four miles into her run, when she finally decided that she had to get out of Charlotte. Everywhere she looked there were painful memories. The restaurant where she and Chandler had gone to celebrate after they'd bought the house; the movie theater where they'd held hands and talked afterward about having a baby; the parks where they'd walked and shared their feelings. Even the dry cleaner that kept losing his favorite shirt. There were also her friends who still treated her like a broken thing. The constant reminders of what she'd lost were everywhere, and when she saw them, they would drive her to the ground, where she would curl around her grief like a wounded animal.

She knew she had to leave. But where should she go? Where could she start her new life? Paige hadn't gotten to that part yet.

But her runs allowed her to stop marinating in Chandler's death, and if only for an hour, she was finally focusing on the future. She knew she would never find anybody to replace Chan, but she had to get on with life, had to reclaim what was left of Paige Ellis.

So, on that Friday, she finally made the decision to leave. It was an important first step.

When Paige returned from her run, she saw Bob Butler's car parked under a streetlight in front of her house. She slowed her pace as soon as she saw the gray Crown Victoria with her sad detective slumped in the front seat, waiting.

Right after Chandler died, she had looked forward to Bob's visits. They had pushed her out of the early stages of grief and forced her to contemplate the future, even though that future only encompassed the gristly act of vengeance.

Bob and Paige had pledged to catch the bastard. But lately, as her mind steadied and her emotions stabilized, she was beginning to have second thoughts.

Bob Butler had shown her how lack of closure could poison you. Bob was living proof of what could happen if you let yourself wallow in grief. She could still see the remnants of who he had once been, but his emotions had calcified. He was lost inside his Bible. There were fewer and fewer things that entertained or interested him. Where once there had been a lively enthusiast, she now only saw the skeletal fragments of what she thought was his former self. Paige was determined not to let that happen to her.

Worse still, despite his monumental, even heroic effort to find Chandler's killer, it was clear that Robert Butler was getting nowhere. This quest was all tied up in his emotions about his dead wife. This manhunt was something they were doing more for him now than for her. She could almost chart his failure in the stoop of his shoulders and the lower angle of his chin.

With no new breaks in the case to report, they often ended up giving their weekly meetings more weight by lapsing into long psychological discussions about loss and death. It was a subject where Paige still had no sense of proportion. They were both just venting.

She slowed and stopped a few hundred yards behind the gray sedan, and for an instant, had an urge to take off and ditch him. Catching Chandler's killer was no longer the sole answer for her. Vengeance had become a destructive emotion that kept her wallowing in despair.

But for the moment, they were still mired in it, so she jogged up to his car, stuck her head in the open passenger window.

"What's up, stranger?" she said, through a smile she didn't feel. "I think I'm finally getting somewhere," he said. "Get in and listen to what I just found out."