Ghost Shadow

17

“Everything is fine,” Liam assured David, snapping his phone shut.

“What the hell do you mean, fine?”

“I guess there was some trouble-and that you might have been right.”

“What?”

“Sam Barnard was at the museum. Sean and Katie heard him, and there was a major tussle, I guess between Sam and Sean. But Katie had gotten through to Pete Dryer and he arrested Sam. Katie might have lost her phone, what with everything going on. Anyway, she’s supposed to be at work now. Should I leave you there?”

“Yeah. You’re sure everything is all right?”

“The lieutenant called it in. He had it under control,” Liam said. “Look, I’ll leave you at the bar, and I’ll head to Katie’s house, and then, if she’s not working or at her place, I’ll meet up with you at Craig’s place. Your place. Whatever.”

“All right, thanks,” David said.

He didn’t know why. He’d been the one pointing out all the reasons that it had to have been Sam Barnard. But was it?

Liam let him off before reaching the insanity of Duval Street. David turned the corner and headed into O’Hara’s. Katie had not set up.

He found Clarinda and caught her by the arm. “Katie, where’s Katie?” he demanded.

“She hasn’t come in yet.” Clarinda’s eyes widened. “She isn’t with you?”

“She’s with Sean. She was with Sean.”

“Jamie just sent Jonas to the house. She hasn’t answered her phone, and neither has Sean. Jamie is breathing fire,” Clarinda said. “Oh, my God! Has something happened?”

“I’m heading to my house. If she shows up here, call me immediately. Screw Jamie and every customer in this place, Clarinda, and call me!”

“Oh, my God, David, you’re scaring the hell out of me!” Clarinda said.

“Just call me!”

He didn’t have time to reassure Clarinda, not when suddenly he was so convinced that he didn’t have time. He left the bar, and ran down the backstreets. A drunken party of six swaggered by him, almost knocking him over. A woman, in ridiculously high heels, staggered and caught his arm.

“Cool, thanks… Hey, help us along there, shoulders, will ya?” she asked.

He pressed her onto the nearest man; if they all fell flat on their faces, so be it.

He hopped a hedge to race across the lawn and up the porch steps of his house. He inserted the key in the lock, and twisted it. He reached inside to flick on the lights.

The electricity was out.

Her heard movement in the bushes and swung around. Liam.

“What’s going on?” Liam asked.

“Electric.”

Liam swore. He reached for his phone. David stopped him. “If he has them, they might still be alive. No alarms.”

Liam nodded. He drew his service revolver and they went into the house. “Fuse box?” Liam asked.

David nodded. “I can see-I can see enough.”

He went up the stairs and made a hurried sweep of the house. He came back down the stairs and went into the dining room.

The books lay on the table, undisturbed.

He turned to go back and look for his cousin.

But he was shoved. Shoved, back toward the table.

He swung around, ready to fight, ready to survive. There was no one there.

He was shoved toward the table again.

The top book flew open.

He drew out a penlight and threw the glow onto the page. He looked at it, puzzled. It was a family tree. He turned the page.

The paper nearly ripped as the page turned back.

“What? What?” he demanded aloud. The book offered a host of pages of old names, the kind of names the streets had taken on in honor of early residents, and names of those who had gone before and not been honored.

He studied the page again that the unseen entity wanted him to read. The headline read, Smith.

He ran his fingers down the page, following the descendants through the ages, births, marriages and deaths.

He swore aloud as Liam came back into the house. “Search this place, top to bottom!” he told him. “Get someone here, Liam, quickly, for the love of God!”

David burst out into the night and started running.

Katie was stunned as she heard movement-real movement-behind her. She blinked, trying to adjust to the slim filter of outside light that made its way in.

She longed to cry out; she was terrified for Sean. Tears stung her eyes.

She couldn’t cry out. She had to find Sean in silence.

A noise startled her.

She swung around. It was as if the museum had been activated. Next to the hanging tree, military ruler Porter waved a broadside that promised death to all pirates. His arms were jerking spasmodically. His jaw jerked and there was an awful moment when he talked without sound.

Then a bad recording came on. Rasping and hollow. “Death…death…death…to…to…all…all…all…pirates!”

She moved quickly by Porter, only to crash into a tall robotic of a wrecker.

“Storm! Storrrrm…warning. First ta’ reach her, salvage is mine…mine…mine…mine.”

She had to stay calm. She couldn’t heed the jerky movements or the eerie voices of the robotics. When she moved again, a sailor with the insignia for the Maine seemed to leap ahead of her in her path. He hadn’t moved. She was terrified, and she knew that someone had hit the mechanization that Craig Beckett made.

They were just robotics. Just robotics coming to mechanical life. She had to ignore them.

She had to get downstairs to Sean.

She started to walk again, and then she heard stealthy movement. Not a robotic.

Someone was stalking her in the darkness. She made her way carefully then, letting the robotics talk and move, and using them for cover.

She came to the robotic of Ernest Hemingway. He jerked and spoke, complaining about his wife, Pauline. He said, in grating and broken words, that he’d set a penny into his patio-because his wife had certainly taken his very last penny. Katie slipped by him, glad of the noise he was making, and headed down the servants’ stairs to the exhibits below.

She paused, having reached the first floor. She was going to have to sneak across the open entryway to get to the left bank of rooms if she didn’t go through the pantry corridor in the back.

She didn’t want to go through the pantry corridor; it was too narrow. If there was someone there, that someone could too easily nail her.

As she hesitated, she heard a strange whooshing noise, and, at first, she thought one of the robotics was speaking in a rusty voice once again.

“You…you…you…you…you. You are going to die. Come out, come out, wherever you are! We’re locked in, and your poor brother! Paying for the fact that you had to sleep with a Beckett!”

She froze. The voice was near. But from which direction?

She streaked out from the passage beneath the stairway and raced over to the left hall of exhibits where she had left her brother. She burst in on Robert the Doll. In silence, he was jerking back and forth on his stand.

She nearly tripped over a body. She hunched down. It was Sam Barnard. He was wearing handcuffs, and when she gingerly touched him, she discovered a plastic bag wound tightly around his head. With trembling fingers, she ripped it away from him.

“Katie!”

The whisper was Bartholomew’s. His hands were on her shoulders. He motioned her to silence, but beckoned her to follow him.

Her brother was stretched out in the facsimile of the cemetery, where the servicemen from the Maine were buried and honored. A bag was on his head; it wasn’t tightened. She ripped it away from him, and lay against him, desperate to hear his breathing.

He had a pulse. There was a gash on his head; she knew from the stickiness beneath her fingers when she touched him.

“Oh, God!” she prayed in a breath.

“Katie!” Bartholomew warned her again.

“You…you…you…you…you…are dead!” The words were followed by laughter. She tried to rise carefully, to start to move.

“Katie, the other way!” Bartholomew urged her.

Too late. She ducked to avoid a nineteen-twenties flapper, and crashed right into the wall of a big man’s chest.

He reached for her. He was wearing gloves. The gloves he had always known to wear. Diver’s gloves, so plentiful in the Keys!

His hands wound around her neck. She struggled.

He winced and jerked suddenly, as if he’d been hit from behind.

Katie took the moment. She pushed against him and bit his arm, bit as hard as she could. She clawed at his flesh.

If she died, which well she might, the bastard wasn’t getting away with it again.

Nor would he blame David Beckett.

“Bitch!” he roared.

His huge hand came flying across her cheek. The blow was stunning; she felt it with her jaw and head, stars sprung up before her eyes.

And then a darkness deeper than any she had ever imagined.

David slowed when he reached the lawn of the museum. Any alarm now would cost Katie her life, and he knew it. He had to believe that he had a chance. That the killer was determined to tease and taunt her before ending it. He wondered if she was meant to be his finest work. Katie O’Hara, so well-known and beloved in Key West. Beautiful, and a songstress. With a family as old and renowned as his own.

And Sean was in there, somewhere.

The door hadn’t been locked. It remained open. He couldn’t be sure how the killer would act and react, and he was certain that Liam would turn the house upside down. But he had to hurry-if sirens suddenly riddled the streets, if he knew that time was nearly up, the killer would work faster.

The killer had made a mistake. He wouldn’t be able to cast suspicion on David or anyone else. But David thought that he was so overconfident now in his quest for some kind of belated family vengeance that he wouldn’t believe that. He would still believe himself invincible.

And he would have taken care.

David didn’t enter right away. He stared at the floor behind the doorway. It took him a moment, and then he saw it. A trip wire. Somehow it would alert the killer that he was here.

His eyes had attuned well to darkness. He paused for just a moment at the entry, then leapt the turnstile as silently as he could. He hurried toward the left hall.

There was a body on the floor. Heart in his throat, he hurried to it.

Sam Barnard. David checked for a pulse. The man was breathing.

“Ch-cha-cha-Charleston!” A flapper warbled out in a gritty voice.

David jerked around. There was movement. He hadn’t intended to ever have these robotics work; he’d have brought in some experts and gotten them off to good homes elsewhere.

But tonight, they had a life of their own.

They’d been activated to hide other noises in the museum. They had been turned on to scare and frighten, and distract.

He wouldn’t be distracted. But he had to be very careful. He knew where the killer was. And he knew that the killer would be waiting for him.

Hurriedly, he searched the room, but he could only find Sam Barnard. He silently swore to the unconscious man that he would arrange for an ambulance the second he could. Once he had found Sean. And Katie. Katie…

Alive. She had to be alive!

He thanked God that he was good in darkness, and silence. He started through the museum. The killer would be waiting. He prayed that there was a way to surprise him.

Katie felt a stunning pain in her head. She blinked, and the world was still a realm of murky darkness-with odd, milky shapes blurring her vision.

She tried to move, and she could not. She tried to twist around, and she realized that she was strapped to a table.

She was covered in…

White. White. A white wedding dress.

She was wearing a wedding dress and veil, and she was strapped down on the slab that was a bed in the Elena de Hoyos exhibit in the museum.

Terror streaked through her, filling her with horror and panic. She almost squirmed; she would have screamed in hysteria if it hadn’t been for the gag in her mouth and the tape over it.

“Katie, Katie O’Hara!”

She was more horrified as she heard the crooning voice. For a moment, things seemed to jiggle above her, and then come into focus.

Pete. Lieutenant Peter Dryer. Of course. They’d been so stupid.

Who knew the families? Who could get keys to houses and museums? Who could be at any crime scene, and be expected?

Who had been the great-great-great-grandson of a man named Smith, Smith who had left behind a daughter who had married an immigrant named Dryer?

“Oh, Katie, I’ve saved the best for you. There’s a trip cord there, by the door. When David Beckett comes to save you, he’ll pull the wire. So cleverly planned. See-well, you can’t really see, so I’ll explain. I have your brother all trussed up and dressed like Carl Tanzler. All right, all right, so you saved your brother once! But I’m very good, and I can change my plans, and I really like this. I like this so much. Tanzler! Ha-ha. Sure, sure, Sean is young and much, much better looking, but… He’s got himself a syringe full of embalming fluid and other toxins, and if I’ve got this right, he’ll plunge them right into your heart when David enters. Then, of course, I’ll shoot the bastard for what he’s done to you. At first, I thought about letting him squirm in prison, but there are so many appeals, and hell, this is Key West, and the State of Florida considers us their wacky tailpiece to begin with. He might not get the death penalty. So! Old Key West justice. He dies here on the spot.”

She shook her head, unable to speak.

He fixed that for her, ripping off the gauze, jerking out the gag. It was horrible. She thought that she would choke.

She opened her mouth to scream, “David! It’s a trap!”

“Ah, loverboy isn’t here yet,” Pete said. “You can scream for a moment. Oh, yes, and it’s so good, so damned good! See what I did for your brother? He is a fine, strapping lad! Had that Sam Barnard down for me, and in a lock. Held him while I handcuffed him. And didn’t blink until I crushed his skull with the butt of my gun! There you go. Even the big and powerful fall to knowledge and careful planning. Remember that. Ah, well, you won’t really need to remember it long.”

“You’re a cop!” she told him.

“A good one. But you have to understand, Katie. I thought that maybe you did. My ancestor cursed the Becketts. He was hanged-because of a Beckett.”

“He was guilty!”

Pete shook his head. “Katie! You don’t understand. Some vile pirate had already been hanged, and there was no reason that my ancestor should have died.”

“He killed people.”

“He had a right! We were meant for great things. Don’t you understand anything? I had to get revenge on the Becketts for my family. For honor! I am the curse!”

“No! You’re a cop!”

“Yes, yes, and such a good one. Katie, time has gone by-time has waited. For me! Don’t go thinking I’m crazy, young lady. I have been on a mission. And David Beckett will finally pay the piper for his vile family. He should have been arrested and sent to the electric chair for Tanya-now that didn’t really hurt much. She was a little tramp. I was only a patrolman at the time, but she was so tipsy. And it was so easy. She was walking on one of the side streets, pacing. I stopped to give her a ride. She got right in the car, and I said I’d take her to the museum, to see David. She looked out the window, and I was ready. I didn’t even really know what I was doing then, but it was easy. I’d been prepared for the right moment, so I slipped that clean plastic over her head, and she had so much alcohol in her system…well, she went easy. Laid her out in back of the car…used the key to the museum I’d copied at least two or three months earlier, just waiting on ol’ David to get back, Mr. Hero Serviceman! Then, after midnight, I had lots of time to set her up. Now, that Stella, she was just at the right place at the right time, and I was at the right place at the right time, and good ol’David was back in the city, thinking he could tear the case apart.”

“Why did you let him?” Katie asked.

“Because I’m so damned good. With Stella, the city was rising. I just walked right up behind her while she was peeking through the bushes-afraid of the cops! Killed her-and left her there for hours. Who knows? Maybe folks even saw her and thought she was a drunk, sleeping it off. I went back for her, and hell, yes, missy, I had a copy of the key to that place, too-that shoddy new museum where I left Stella. Of course, I took the tapes from the surveillance cameras.” He paused to chuckle. “I even called David Beckett to come see the crime scene.”

“Danny,” Katie whispered. At least he was talking, at least she was playing for time.

“Danny, well, that saddened me,” Pete said regretfully. “I thought I could bribe him to just stop playing around. He got interested in old curses and figured out that I was descended from Eli Smith. He thought that it was funny that the police lieutenant’s ancestor was hanged for murder-funny! I tried to bribe him anonymously-couldn’t work up enough anger to kill the guy and thought that a little money might satisfy him. It would have worked, too-Danny was never exactly what you’d call ambitious! But then he saw me with Stella and I knew that he would start to put the pieces together. Danny wasn’t ambitious, but he wasn’t stupid.”

“He left the money and the books-that’s why you took your time getting a search warrant for his apartment, right?”

“I knew I had to get in there first,” Pete said.

“Why me?” she asked softly.

“Oh, Katie! Such a pretty, sweet thing! But he loves you, so…this is really the revenge I wanted. With Tanya, it was perfect-he had motive, he was young, he was big, he should have been angry. There’s motive for you! And…he cared about her, but not the way he cares about you. That’s too perfect. That’s real revenge!”

“Pete, Pete, think, you’re a cop, they’ll know it was you now!”

He laughed. “I’m a cop, yes. And that’s the point. We’ve come full circle from the hanging tree, and now it can all rest. The past will really be avenged. And as to my position, it’s perfect. And I am the best! I’ve served this city. I’ve been firm, and I’ve been fair. I’ve taken down some of the biggest drug lords to darken our door. And now, my life will be purged. Now, once Beckett is dead and he’s history-a vicious killer brought down by the descendant of the man he wronged-I’ll make history myself. I’ll take the chief’s place in a few years. And, in time, I’ll run for office. I’ll be governor, you’ll see. My life is bigger than this small island. It’s my destiny to carry out the curse. That’s how powerful I really am!”

He was serious. Dead serious. That was perhaps the most terrifying aspect of it all. He believed that he had been wronged. He probably had been a good cop-other than being a psycho murderer.

“Why are you hurting my brother?” she asked.

“Katie O’Hara! You don’t know your history. Your brother’s death adds so much to all this. Don’t you know? Oh, please, you might have guessed. An O’Hara was on the jury that denounced my ancestor, did you know that? An O’Hara helped deliver a death sentence. So, well, I just hadn’t expected quite this much justice, but it’s all fallen in nicely.” He lifted her head for her, twisting it so that she could see clearly.

She winced, trying not to cry out.

Sean looked like an oversize doll. He’d been set up in a stand. He was lolled against it, still unconscious. He was wearing Tanzler’s hat. Sean was tall and broad-shouldered. It must have irritated Pete that he couldn’t possibly shove Sean into Carl Tanzler’s much smaller clothing.

“Katie!”

She heard the soft whisper. Bartholomew was standing by her side. Behind him she could see Danny, Stella and Tanya.

“We’re trying, Katie. Work your left wrist. We’re trying…we’re trying.”

She smiled. Her head was killing her.

She wondered if she was going to join them soon.

Suddenly, something flew across the room and crashed against the wall. Pete Dryer spun around, his gun out. He fired shots into the wall, then he turned to face the dark corridor that led to the room.

“Beckett! I know that you’re out there!” Dryer warned. “Show yourself-or I’ll shoot her in the kneecaps long before I put her out of her misery!”

“Oh, that will go unnoticed by law enforcement,” David’s voice called from the darkness beyond.

“You ass! I’ll do it!” Pete said.

David moved into view. He didn’t look at Katie. She was certain that he didn’t dare.

She felt movement at her wrist. She twisted it. The tie was loosening.

“Shoot me, Pete-isn’t that your plan?” David asked.

Pete raised his gun. “Yes, it is.”

He fired.

But David wasn’t there. There was a sound of exploding glass. Katie dimly realized that he had taken a mirror from one of the exhibits. Pete had shot at his reflection.

Something came flying into the room. It was a headstone from the Maine exhibit.

It caught Pete right in the chest, slamming him backward. She heard his gun fly-and crash into the floor.

Somewhere.

“Get up, Katie, get up!” Bartholomew urged her.

She wrenched her wrist free. Halfway up, she started tearing at the other tie herself.

“Don’t! David, there’s another-”

“Trip wire, I know!” he shouted back to her.

Pete Dryer made a dive for the gun. David leapt the wire, and went flying down for it himself. Pete was closer.

He almost reached it.

But someone else was there.

Not Bartholomew. Not Tanya, or Stella.

She was Bartholomew’s lady in white, the broken-hearted Lucinda, and she used a foot that was clad in a delicate white slipper to send the gun sliding farther back in the room. Katie freed her hand and leapt from the table.

Pete staggered up, ready to fly for the gun again.

But David was in a fury. He tackled Pete, bringing him facedown on the floor, sending his nose, chin and forehead into a hard thud against the wood. He slammed the man’s head down again, and again, then jerked up to his feet, and slid back down to reach the gun.

He caught it.

Pete staggered up. David had the gun on him.

Pete started to lunge, but wavered.

“Don’t make me shoot you, Pete. Don’t,” David said.

Pete’s nose was bleeding profusely. He was bleeding from a gash on his forehead. He smiled.

He didn’t go for David, and he didn’t go for the gun.

He made a dive for the trip wire.

“No!” David raged, flying after him.

“Get up, all the way!” Bartholomew screamed to Katie.

And she did so.

Just as her brother’s trussed and propped-up arm came crashing down on the bed where she had lain. The sad marital bed of the long-dead Elena de Hoyos.

But it was empty.

And this time, David laid a punch into Pete Dryer with such a fierce anger that the man went down like a limp rag.

It would be a long while before he gained consciousness again.

Katie ran over to David, and threw herself into his arms. He held her against him as if she were as fragile as blown glass for a moment, then he crushed her to him and buried his head against her shoulder, trembling.

“Ambulances, we have to get ambulances out here!” Katie said.

David worked his mouth. “Liam,” was all that he said. And then managed, “I’m sure they’re on their way by now.”

He was right. The night came alive with the sound of sirens.

Then a shout. “David! David, where the hell are you?” his cousin shouted.

“Up here!” David yelled in return. There was a clatter in the entry below as Pete Dryer’s trip-wire sound alarm went off. There were footsteps hurrying up the stairs.

David was staring in the shadows over Katie’s shoulder.

She spun around.

“Thank you,” David said. “Thank you, all of you.”

They were all there. Bartholomew, Danny, Stella and Tanya.

Bartholomew swept off his hat and bowed elegantly. “Ah, yes, well, I owed a debt of gratitude to the Becketts, you know. And the O’Haras.”

Tanya’s spirit stepped nimbly past Bartholomew. She came to David, and Katie. She touched their cheeks.

She faded as she did so.

Then Stella was gone.

Then Danny.

“Bartholomew!” Katie whispered.

He smiled. “Oh, I’m not going anywhere,” he told her.

He stepped past them all, and Katie saw that his lady in white, Lucinda, was waiting for him on the other side of the room. He took her hands in his own.

“Dear lady, what a lovely, feisty creature you’ve proven to be! Lucinda, I’m Bartholomew.”

“David, Katie!” Liam was there, with officers behind him. The room became flooded with light. “Medics, get the medics up here!” he roared.

The worst of it all, to Sean, since they had all survived, was the humiliation.

Katie was released from the hospital in the early hours of the following morning.

Sean was not.

But Katie wasn’t going to leave him.

He was bandaged in a massive turban, and though his skull hadn’t been crushed, he had stitches that ranged over a large mass of it.

“I beat Sam practically to a pulp-did that bastard’s work for him, and sat there like a sitting duck while he creamed me!” he told Katie and David from his hospital bed. Then he mused, “How the hell could he have been so damned crazy, and none of us known it?” he demanded, bewildered.

“I wonder how we didn’t see so many of the clues staring us straight in the face,” David told him. “And you did what you thought you had to do-you defended your sister. Sam appeared to be the real enemy. Who the hell could know?”

Sean nodded bleakly, and looked at his sister. “You saved our lives, Katie. We’d have died for sure if you hadn’t kept us from suffocating in those bags.”

Bartholomew was seated in the one big chair in the room while David stood and Katie perched on the end of her brother’s bed.

He sniffed loudly. “Excuse me, but I do believe I get a little of the credit!”

“I’d hug you if I could,” Katie told him.

“Almost-I’m getting there,” Bartholomew said. “Look, you can all talk this out until you turn blue in the face. No one will ever be able to understand the human mind.” He waved a hand in the air. “Liam is down at the station now, where he will be for hours on end, filling out paperwork, and filling in the gaps from all the statements that were taken last night.” He pointed a finger at Katie. “You two-go home. Get rest. I’ll be looking after Sean. Have you seen your brother’s notes? He wants to get David in with him and start filming the shipwrecks of the Keys.”

“That’s marvelous! He’ll stay home,” Katie said.

“She’s talking to herself again,” Sean said.

“No, she’s talking to Bartholomew,” David corrected.

Sean’s jaw dropped. He stared at his sister. Katie shrugged.

“You mean, you can see him, too?” Sean asked David.

David shook his head regretfully. “No-but I did see him, for a brief minute last night. He’s real, and he’s looking out for you.”

Katie grinned, patting his leg. “Sean, cool. You’re staying home!” she said.

Sean groaned. “My plans aren’t really solidified yet,” he said.

“You’re going to ask David to work with you,” Katie told him.

“Hey!” Sean protested.

“It’s all right. I think it’s a great plan,” David said. He lifted a hand toward Katie. “We really do have to get some sleep.” She stood to join him, glancing at Bartholomew.

“Get along now, you cute little kiddies,” Bartholomew told her. “I’ll be here, I swear.”

Katie kissed her brother’s cheek carefully. “We’re a short drive away. Call if you need anything! I’ll be back in the morning,” she promised.

David shook Sean’s hand. “Jamie is on his way up to spend some time with you. He’ll be here soon.”

“I’m all right. I’m really all right. I want to come home.”

“They’ll release you soon,” David told him.

“Hey, David,” Sean said.

“Yes?”

“You’re really interested?”

“I’m really interested. My intentions are not to leave home for quite a while now,” he said.

He took Katie’s hand and they left the hospital room. Katie peeked in on Sam, but his nurse said that he was resting comfortably, so they tiptoed away.

In the car, Katie was silent for a while.

“I heard you talking in the kitchen when I woke up,” she told him.

He glanced her way. “Yes, you did.”

“You were talking to?”

“Bartholomew, of course.”

“But-”

“I don’t see him. I can hear him.”

“Oh. What was he saying to you?”

“Ah. Well, they’ve gone on. Tanya, Stella and Danny.”

“I’m so sorry for all of them.”

“Well, Stella and Danny were together.”

“Poor Tanya.”

“I don’t know. Some people believe that we forget about the ones that were most important to us in this life. I don’t believe that. We don’t forget those who mean everything to us here.”

“You sound sure.”

“I am,” he told her.

“Why?”

He looked over at her, a slanted smile cutting his features.

“Because love is our finest human emotion,” he said. “And losing it is the true depths of hell.”

“That’s lovely,” she said.

He pulled off the road suddenly, turned to her and took her hands. “Katie, I know that I’ve barely had time to really get to know you, for you to have time to know the real me. Your brother asked me my intentions. Well, my intentions are to stay here. To be with you. And, I’m thinking, when the time is right, when you’re sure…well, then, my intentions become absolutely old-fashioned and honorable. I want to marry you. I want to raise a family-and live happily ever after, of course.”

“Ah!” she said.

“Ah?”

She leaned over and kissed him.

“I do know you,” she said softly. “And I already know that my life without you would be hell. So-ah! I love you. And yes.”

“Yes?”

“Yes, I’ll marry you!”

He smiled.

They drove on home.

And that day, as they turned onto Katie’s street, it seemed only right that the angel parade was going on, and that fireworks went off as well, down at Mallory Square, just as they pulled into the drive.

They stood by the car, watching the lights in the sky.

David pulled her close.

“Home,” he said.

And so they were.