The Last Place

CHAPTER 31

“What you did? He actually said that?”

“Yes,” Tess said. “And without apparent irony.”

She was at the dining room table, watching Crow as he straightened and cleaned the so-called great room, the combination living and dining room that had been created by knocking out the walls in the front of the house. He was unusually manic, as if he felt the house had been defiled by the afternoon’s events and needed some sort of symbolic cleansing.

Crow and the dogs had arrived home just as Mickey Pechter made his mad dash. Unfortunately for Mickey, Miata thought he was running toward Crow and had responded accordingly. She growled and snapped, fur bristling on her neck, penning Pechter in a corner of the house until he seemed on the verge of wetting himself.

If he had been crouched on someone else’s wood floor, Tess would have rooted for just that outcome.

But it was her floor, her house, and Mickey Pechter was a problematic presence, wet or dry. If she called the police and made a report, she could end up before Judge Halsey, her probation extended because she was clearly making no progress on the anger front. She didn’t worry about additional criminal charges-home invasions went to grand juries, which seldom indicted homeowners. But she didn’t want to come under Judge Halsey’s falsely benevolent gaze again, didn’t want to hear his droning pronouncements on the violence that flowed between men and women. She was tired of explaining herself, tired of asking for permission.

She called to the dog. “It’s okay, Miata. Down, girl.”

The Doberman retreated, but then the greyhound surged forward, anxious to get in on the action. Esskay, however, had no instinct for combat. Once she confronted Mickey Pechter, her only move was to hook her nose in his armpit, looking for a pat. She ended up knocking him back on his ass. He yelped with pain-a phony, exaggerated cry. What a whiner, Tess thought. Crow, meanwhile, had turned his attention to Carl, who insisted through gritted teeth that he would be just fine if he could elevate his knee and ice it.

“What the fuck were you thinking?” Tess asked Mickey. She was suddenly weary, adrenaline draining from her body and leaving her with nothing but a bruised flulike feeling.

“I wanted you to know what it’s like to be scared and jumpy all the time. It’s a joke, what that judge did. You assaulted me. I woke up in intensive care. Then I go back to work, and I get fired. They said it was because of the downturn, but I bet it was because they heard about what happened.”

Tess smiled. So she had exacted a punishment of sorts. Out of work, Mickey Pechter would have more time but fewer funds to stalk underage girls.

He did not miss her look of satisfaction. “If I were a woman and you were a man, it wouldn’t have ended with you in counseling. You should be in jail, you bitch. I have nightmares because of what you did.”

“I know. I heard your victim impact statement. So if you’re so scared of me, why have you been following me?”

“I saw you with this guy down on Guilford Avenue one day. It got me to thinking.”

Guilford Avenue? That was the day they visited the private mail service, where Eric Shivers had once kept a box. What was Mickey doing there? Baltimore was small enough for such a coincidence to be plausible, but Tess had assumed Mickey Pechter was the kind of suburban boy who never ventured downtown.

All she said was, “Got you thinking what?”

“That maybe you and he were fooling around and I should follow you and see if I could get the goods on you, blackmail you, fuck up your life the way you fucked up mine.”

“You thought Carl and I were having an affair? Don’t be ridiculous.”

He wasn’t listening, he was wound up in his own logic, illogical as it was.

“Then I thought it would be better just to scare you, make you feel unsafe all the time, vulnerable-like. I tried hang-up phone calls at your office-only I kept getting the machine. So then I started tracking you. I wanted you to see me following you. I wasn’t planning on doing anything more, but today, when I got here and saw the door open-”

Now even Mickey Pechter seemed to be having trouble understanding how his mind had worked, how he had reasoned himself into almost getting killed. Yet Tess knew. After all, it had happened to her. All I wanted to do was scare you, get you to stay away from teenage girls. I never set out to strip your clothes off and apply a depilatory.

She would have told him as much. Mickey Pechter, however, did not strike her as a man who would appreciate that irony.

Instead, she said, “So you came to my house with a baseball bat in hand-just to scare me.”

“I’m on a softball team. We had a game today. The bat was the only thing I had in my sister’s van. I was gonna come in, wave it around. I thought I’d pretend to be like, you know, some guy in one of those drug movies who’s looking for a stash but goes to the wrong house.”

“Sounds like a good way to get killed.”

“I didn’t know you had a gun. And I didn’t know this guy, your redheaded friend, was going to jump me from behind. He was trying to kill me, swear to God. I only swung at him to get him off me, and then he was so angry, I thought he really would kill me if he got the bat out of my hand. It was like I was outside my head. I couldn’t stop.”

Tess looked at Carl, who had struggled to a seated position with Crow’s help and had a dish towel of cracked ice pressed to his knee. His face was pale beneath his freckles. She wondered if he could go into shock from pain.

“Carl, you want to press charges against him?”

“God, no,” he said, his voice tough, if a bit faint.

“You sure?” She wouldn’t have minded Mickey Pechter facing his own felony assault charges. But this was the city, not the county. There was no Judge Halsey here, no time for such penny-ante antics. Besides, she didn’t want any official record of Pechter’s visit.

“Positive,” Carl said, between clenched teeth.

She waved her gun at Mickey, just for effect. She was suddenly aware of how bizarre she must look. Much of her hair had come loose from her braid and was flying around her head, her white shirt was crusted with dirt and dead leaves, her black linen skirt was still halfway up her hips, displaying the full glory of her now-ripped pantyhose, cut-rate DKNY purchased in bulk at Nordstrom Rack. The Preppie Avenger.

“I’m the one who almost killed someone today,” she said. The catch in her voice, almost a sob, caught her off guard. “Do you realize that? I almost shot you in my home, and no grand jury in the world would have indicted me, not under these circumstances. But it would have fucked up my life, just the same. You want to give me nightmares? You came damn close. Thing is, you would have been too dead to enjoy it.”

“I told you I didn’t know you had a gun,” Pechter stammered, afraid again.

“You never know who has a gun in this world. Or who has a concerned family friend who’s willing to wreck your life for the sheer fun of it. You can’t know anything about anyone. So you shouldn’t pick fights, because you may not win. Don’t flip people off in traffic, don’t pull macho shit in bars. We live in a world where people will kill you for one rude look. How can you not know that? Are you too busy trying to pick up underage girls to read the goddamn papers?”

“I know,” he said, “that you are one crazy fucked-up cunt.”

“Hey, watch your language.” But it was Carl who objected to Mickey’s rhetoric, not Tess. “You shouldn’t talk like that, not in front of a woman. Not in front of anybody.”

Mickey began to edge toward the door, unnerved by Carl’s intensity, although Carl couldn’t even stand, much less go after him. Tess blocked Mickey’s way.

“I’m calling my lawyer tomorrow and I’m filing for a restraining order against you,” she said. “If I ever see you again-in my rearview mirror, or standing outside my office-”

“I know,” Mickey Pechter said, sneering at her, “you’ll shoot me. Big talker.”

She put her gun on the floor and grabbed him by the collar of the windbreaker with both hands, bringing him nose to nose.

“I’ll burn something else off next time. Something that doesn’t grow back. Tell that to Judge Halsey if you like. Tell him any fucking thing you like. As far as I’m concerned, I haven’t been angry enough up to now.”

She let go of him as suddenly as she had seized him and he staggered backward, hands shooting instinctively for his groin. Then he turned and ran for his van in a wobbling stride, hands still cupped in front of him. Tess was pretty sure it was the last she would see of Mickey Pechter.

“Of course, Mickey wasn’t the only one following me. Was he, Carl?”

Carl had moved to an upholstered mission-style chair, which had cost Tess the approximate bluebook value of her thirteen-year-old Toyota. His left leg was stretched out on a matching ottoman, a second dish towel balanced on his knee, where the first had left a dark wet spot. Tess had poured him a shot of Jack Daniel’s, feeling like some saloon proprietress tending to an injured cowboy. Now she replenished his glass and poured herself a little more white wine while she was up. She asked Crow if he wanted anything, but he just shook his head and went back to his obsessive cleaning.

“What do you mean?”

“You’ve been watching me too. I know it wasn’t coincidence that you stopped by today. Were you parked at the bottom of the hill so you could watch the entrance to my little street? Or have you been everywhere I’ve been today? The funeral, the cemetery?”

The only sound in the room was Crow’s dust mop going back and forth across the floor. Swish swish swish. Swish swish swish. Tess’s mother had given Crow this new kind of mop, a Swiffer, for Hanukkah, and he loved it, the way men often love things for their sheer novelty. He had the wet cloths for the kitchen and bathroom floors, the dry ones for the wide-planked pine floors that ran through the rest of the house. Their floors always gleamed.

“I wouldn’t say watching,” Carl said. “Checking in, from time to time. I’ve been worried about you.”

Tess knew there was good reason to be worried about her. But Carl didn’t, or shouldn’t. He didn’t know what Luisa O’Neal had told her.

“I saw the thing about Julie Carter in the paper,” he said, as if anticipating the question. “I remembered her from your original list. Let me guess. She was small, with light eyes and dark hair.”

“Yes.”

“Lucy. Tiffani. Mary Ann. He’s definitely got a type. Although I think Lucy was the prettiest. Even dead-” He did not finish the thought.

“Major Shields said you’re obsessed with Lucy.”

“It’s as good a word as any, I guess.” He sighed. “I liked to think of myself as Dana Andrews in Laura, only she never comes through the door in a raincoat, still alive. But when I dream about Lucy, she’s whole. In my dreams, her head is with her body. She’s not the way I found her.”

“You dream about her?”

He nodded, his face doleful. “Every few nights.”

“Is that why you cracked up on the job, got disability?”

“I got disability for my knee.”

“That’s not what Major Shields told me.”

“Then he’s a liar.”

“So you didn’t have a nervous breakdown at work?”

“Oh, I cracked up.” Carl’s tone was mild, as if he were telling a funny story on himself. “But when I cracked up, I screwed up my knee, and that’s why I had to take disability. You see, I really did slip on the ice in the parking lot, in January the year after Lucy was killed. I was out a month. By the time I came back to work, the state police had pretty much taken over the investigation. They didn’t need me. As Sergeant Craig was quick to point out.”

“But you didn’t stop, did you?”

“I just couldn’t stop talking to people, thinking about it. They warned me, told me to back off, and maybe if I had kept going the way I was going, they would have disciplined me.”

“So what happened?”

“One day-I’m still in a brace, on pain medication, walking like Walter Brennan-I drove to the bridge where I found her. I started walking. I crossed the Susquehanna: about a mile, I guess, no more. I turned back and did it again. Then again. About the fifth or sixth time, I’m in so much pain I keep thinking I’m going to pass out. Apparently I was talking to myself too, muttering like some old man on the street, although I don’t remember that part. I was trying to figure out how the head came to be there, how he had slowed to leave it there, without anyone seeing him. Even in the middle of the night, another car could have come along. He was risking so much-” His voice trailed off.

“What happened?”

“One of my old co-workers called our supervisor. I was admitted to the hospital in Havre de Grace that night. They released me forty-eight hours later, although they recommended I try some post-traumatic stress counseling. It’s not like I was nuts. But my knee was so screwed up I had to get replacement surgery, young as I am. I was out the rest of the year.”

“Carl, if that’s not obsessive, I don’t know what is.”

“Well, why shouldn’t I be obsessed? I found a severed head on a bridge. I think I’ve come by my obsession pretty honestly.”

“Yet when Mary Ann Melcher called the tip line and tried to tell you her ex-boyfriend matched the description of Alan Palmer, only he was dead-”

Carl shook his head. “I knew more by then. I knew the guy we were looking for wouldn’t kill himself. He might be dead, but not on purpose. I was just stalling for time, trying to figure it out.”

“But it did make sense. There were no killings after Mary Ann, no evidence of any activity on his part.” Until Julie Carter was shot and killed.

“Everything always makes sense with this guy. What’s the one thing we know about him? He plans things out in advance, in minute detail. I think he decided to stop, for some reason, and he wanted to cut off his own trail if the cops ever came looking for him. I don’t think he’s dead or reformed.” He gave her a level look. “And neither do you.”

“So why does he make sure I get this list? Why draw attention to himself?”

“He’s decided he wants to be found, for some reason. Found by you.”

The words might have chilled Tess more if she hadn’t repeated them to herself, over and over, since the death of Julie Carter. She stared into the bottom of her glass. She was drinking wine as if it was water, and yet she couldn’t feel its effects. Fear was a great sponge for alcohol.

“Let’s go back to that original list,” Tess said. “There are three deaths since Mary Ann Melcher’s boyfriend ”disappeared‘ at sea. Julie Carter, shot and killed this past Friday night. Alan Palmer once dated her, although he left when she wouldn’t kick her drug problem. Okay, that makes sense. But the other two don’t. Hazel Ligetti, a forty-something spinster, burned up in a house fire. And Dr. Michael Shaw, hit by a car while jogging. Not young women, not gunshot victims.“

“Doesn’t sound like our guy, does it?”

It made her feel safer, somehow, to have Carl back, to have him speak as if they were partners. Carl, after all, had seen this man in person. With Carl at her side, how close would he dare to come?

“No, it doesn’t. Then again, maybe he knew he had to change the pattern. Or maybe these were people who could have identified him, who knew what he had done.”

“So where do we start?”

“The emergency room at Union Memorial, to make sure you haven’t screwed up your knee again. You’re no good to anyone if they put you on crutches.”

“Can I ask you one thing?”

They were driving through Tess’s neighborhood, the passenger seat pushed back as far as it could go, so Carl’s left leg was more or less extended and he could still hold the makeshift cold compress on it. Night had fallen, and there were no streetlamps here, so Tess could not see the expression on his face.

“Sure.”

“Why would it have been ridiculous?”

“What?”

“That guy said he thought we were having an affair. And you said, ”Don’t be ridiculous.“ ”

“Oh.” She understood what he was asking. Was it so impossible to think she might be interested in Carl Dewitt, with his freckles and his orange-red hair and his bowlegged stride? Yes, actually, it was. Only not because of the freckles and the orange-red hair and the bowlegs, but because of something else, some ineffable lack, the thing that people called chemistry.

But she did not think he would find that reason particularly comforting.

“I meant I wouldn’t cheat. Not on Crow.”

“How can you be so sure? Have you ever cheated?”

The simple thing was to say no. Tess did not owe Carl Dewitt that much honesty. After all, he had not always been truthful with her. But she felt caught on the question, as if she had stumbled into a bramble bush and needed to pull away with great care, separating herself one thorn at a time.

“I had a boyfriend who ran around on me. A lot. We broke up. But when he got engaged to someone else, I became the person he cheated with. I justified it at the time-I was his first love, I was his real love, blah, blah, blah-but there’s not any justification for what I did. To make things worse, he was killed one night. After we were… together. And I saw it. He died right in front of me.”

“Some people would see that as a fitting punishment.”

“Yes, I suppose they would. But Jonathan didn’t die because he was sleeping with me. It was… just a dumb accident.”

She lied because the story wearied her, she did not want to tell it again. Every time she told it, she ran the risk that it would be waiting for her when she closed her eyes. Assuming she ever closed her eyes again.

“So he died, and that made you decide you would never cheat again.”

“Yes.” No. Crow had left her once, when her yearning for another man became so pronounced that she told him about it for fear she would act on it. Carl didn’t need to know this either. “It’s complicated, being in a committed relationship that falls short of marriage.”

“So why don’t you get married?”

“I have a hunch that marriage becomes an excuse for people to start taking each other for granted.”

“I wouldn’t know. I never made it to marriage.”

“Scientists are beginning to say monogamy isn’t natural to any species. Not even swans. It’s a struggle, something you have to work at every day.”

“I never had to work at it when I dated. I didn’t date much, but when I did, I liked being with just one person.”

“Well, then, you’re better than most people I know. Crow and I have agreed to talk, if we start having feelings for someone else. That’s the best we can do-pledge to be honest about our weaknesses.”

“And so far-”

“So far, we’re doing fine.”

“I did have a girl once.” Something in Carl’s voice made it sound as if the once referred not just to a time long ago but to a literal number. He had a girl. Once.

“And?”

“She said I wasn’t ambitious enough. It made her mad that I was happy where I was, being a Toll Facilities cop, living in the town where I grew up. She said I should want more. So I tried. When I found… Lucy, I thought maybe this was my chance. I’d be a big guy, I’d be more. Then she broke up with me because I worked all the time.”

“Shit.”

“Yeah. If I had to do it over again, I’d go back to being me. The me I used to be. Then I’d find a girl who liked me just the way I was.”

“You still might.”

“Except I’m not that person anymore. Whatever happens, I’ll never be that person again.” Carl sighed. “I miss him.”

The conversation was unsettling. It was too delicate, too fraught. Tess felt as if she could make a million mistakes with a single syllable. What should she say? What did he want her to say?

“You should cut your hair,” Carl said.

“What?”

“Or not wear it in a braid. I saw this show, on A amp;E, the Criminal Justice files. A woman with her hair pulled back is too easy to grab. You jog, right?”

“Sometimes.”

“Well, imagine how easy it would be for someone to come up and-” His left hand caught her braid at a spot low on her neck. “You’d be in someone’s trunk.”

She saw the lights of Union Memorial up ahead, the white-pink blossoms of the cherry trees rippling in the wind.

“Al Capone donated those trees,” she said, hoping to change the subject and hoping Carl would let go of her hair. “It was in gratitude for the treatment he received here when he was in the throes of syphilis.”

“I know,” Carl Dewitt said. Of course he did. It was just the kind of thing he would know: gangsters and gangster films. “Al Capone. Now there was a guy who knew how to use a baseball bat. ”We are all members of a team.“ From The Untouchables. And they caught him because of tax evasion, not for murder or racketeering. Tax evasion.”

“You know,” Tess said, “I bet that’s how we’ll catch our killer.”

“For tax evasion?”

“For something small, some trivial detail he overlooked. No one manages to get everything right, all the time. God is in the details.”

“Really? I thought it was the devil.”

He should kill that guy, that Mickey Pechter. That creep, that pervert. He’s trouble. She handled him beautifully-of course-but the man should be taught a lesson. And it would be nice to demonstrate his loyalty to her even as he keeps his distance. The problem is, if Pechter is found dead, the police might focus on her because of her connection to the pervert, and that would be inconvenient. He cannot risk it, satisfying as it would be. And the thing is, it never is satisfying, not quite. The release can come only in the context of true intimacy. He has learned that the hard way.

Besides, Pechter was an unwitting accomplice, he owes him. Her adventure with him, and its legal consequences, provided the entrée he needed. He has never counted on luck, but neither has he spurned its opportunities. The first episode with Pechter had confused her, softened her up, opened her up in a way he never could have anticipated. The sook is ready for her jimmy. The rush is on.

It’s all about redemption, darling, all about redemption: yours and mine.

He always knew this part would be hard, but he also knew that waiting was his own peculiar talent. Now is the time to pull back, and not only because his picture is out there, floating around. Clean-shaven, his hair color altered, he is not that recognizable. But the point is to see if she can do it on her own. She has to negotiate the final part of the maze alone. He is not sure yet how she will do it, which is part of the joy. But he knows she will find her way. He has chosen well. At last.

He pulls his patchwork pillow to his face, inhales deeply, and thinks about Becca. What would she have been without him? Did she ever ask herself the same question? He likes to think she understood in the end, that she recognized her debt to him even as she reneged on it. She was young and, for all her seeming sophistication, not yet ready to accept the gifts he brought her. If only they had had more time. She would have understood how rare his love was, that it was a once-in-a-lifetime gift.

Funny, he always thought the only person capable of understanding his love for Becca was her father: Harry Harrison, mildly alcoholic, bumbling through the island, offending everyone and never knowing it. Becca’s senses were more acute, she was not fooled by the bland smiles of the Notting Islanders. But neither was she cowed. The locals came to respect her, if not accept her. Harrison was the perennial outsider, so outside he didn’t pick up on the mockery beneath the polite faces.

Once, when she was late coming back from her voice lesson, he had been desperate enough to go to her house. Harry Harrison, drink in his hand, met him at the door and insisted he come in for a little chat. He feared the father would demand to know just what he did with his daughter, all those times they went off on the bay. Worse, he feared he would tell him. He loved Becca so much that he yearned to speak of it to someone, someone who would understand.

Of course, you couldn’t tell your girlfriend’s father how it felt to make love to her. But Harry Harrison struck him as someone worldly, someone who had loved and lost. He would know that it wasn’t about the heat, inside and out, that it wasn’t the mere physical sensation. It was Becca. She was extraordinary, otherworldly. Her voice proved that. No earthbound woman could produce those sounds. When he was-with her, joined to her, he sometimes thought he might reach the source of that voice.

He also found himself wishing there was a switch, a way to turn it off, so it belonged only to him. Because he knew, he knew without knowing, that her talent was his enemy. As much as he loved her and worshiped everything that came out of her, the voice would take her away from him one day.

So he had gone to her house, seeking a different kind of kindred spirit.

“You miss her, don’t you?”

“Sir?”

“Call me Harry. You miss Becca, when she’s away for even a day, don’t you? I do too. She’s all the company I have.”

“Well, we had a date, that’s all. Nothing special.” He pretended to a coolness he didn’t feel. If Becca hadn’t missed the boat, they would be heading out now, in his skiff. He would have his hand in hers, and soon she would have him in her. He had never been with anyone before Becca, but he knows this is as good as it’s going to get. He sees the people around him, the grown-ups. The dried-ups, as he thinks of them. Even his parents, as much as he loves them-what’s the point? How could you settle for such day-in, day-out ordinariness if you’ve known the thrill of loving someone like this? He’d rather die than be without Becca. He really would.

But all he said to Mr. Harrison was, “Is that your computer? Is that what you’re writing your book on?”

Almost no one had computers then and this one was huge, a clunky beast that took up much of the dining room table.

“Yes. It’s a pretty good machine, but the power outages on the island seem to have fried something inside. You wouldn’t believe how much work I’ve lost. I have to back up my files practically every five minutes, and it’s still not good enough. I should go back to a typewriter. They were truly portable. I had one typewriter that went with me from Italy to Cuernavaca to Vermont. But I bought the computer when I decided to live here.”

“Why did you go to all those places?”

“Because I wanted to. I’m a writer. And I make just enough money to live where I please and do as I please-as long as I don’t get too extravagant. I wanted to try island life because I remembered visiting Tangier when I was a boy. I didn’t count on Becca suddenly deciding she wanted to be an opera singer. If she gets much more serious, I suppose we’ll have to move again.”

His heart lurched, even as his mind raced through the calculation. He is a junior, seventeen. Becca is a year ahead of him in school. He knew she would go to the mainland at the end of this school year, that he would have to wait a year to follow her. But he counted on their having the next year. He’s not sure he could survive two years without her.

“And you could do that? Just pick up and go anywhere you want to go?”

“As long as it’s reasonable. New York is too expensive. Of course, Becca has her heart set on Juilliard. I keep telling her there are other good music schools. Peabody in Baltimore, for example. She’s got New York fever.”

No, she doesn’t, he wanted to say. She yearned to sing, yes. But she wanted to be with him too. They had spoken of it endlessly. She wouldn’t go to New York, not without him.

“And when I tell her I don’t think New York is going to work out, she says maybe she’ll run away, go to Italy or somewhere else in Europe.” Harry Harrison shook his head, sad and bewildered. “She’s always threatening to leave me if she doesn’t get her way. It’s hard for a man alone to raise a daughter. She seems to think it’s my fault her mother is dead. As if, having divorced her mother, I didn’t care when she died. But I did. And I didn’t want to be a single dad. Taking a four-year-old girl into my life wasn’t what I had planned, either. She says I drink too much. But alcohol is just… the lubricant. A writer has to shed his inhibitions, get naked. I have to enter a place where I don’t care what people think.”

He thought, Well, you’ve ended up in a place where people don’t care about you at all. If you knew what they thought of you, you’d probably never get a word on the page.

“I heard,” he said instead, “that you’re writing a book about us.”

“Who told you that?” Harrison’s voice wasn’t loud, but it was harder, and the sudden change scared him.

“I… I don’t know.” Big-mouth Aggie Winslip. “It’s just something I heard. Becca must have mentioned it.”

Harrison switched back to genial host. “She did? I didn’t even know Becca listened when I spoke about my work. She seems to find it boring. She calls me a cut-rate Michener. Becca’s a terrible snob, if you want to know the truth. Keeps talking about ”high art‘ and “low art.” With high art being whatever she likes-opera-and low art being everything else. I’ll tell you something about Becca.“ He leaned in to share his confidence, his breath sour with gin. ”She’s got the diva temperament, but I don’t think she’s got the acting chops to be a great singer of any range. She’ll have to play parts that are close enough to her own personality to get by. She’ll never sing Mimi, she’ll always be Musetta.“

“I… I’m not sure who they are.” This was true, despite Becca’s endless chatter about what she did and what she sang and what she was learning. When she spoke, it was often as if she were still singing in a foreign language. He was so caught up in joy he couldn’t hear the distinct sounds.

“You don’t need to know,” her father said, clapping him on the back. “Can I get you something?”

But he made his excuses and wandered out, still thinking about what kind of job would allow him to go wherever he wanted. Every job he knew was tethered to a place, whether it was waterman or C amp;P lineman or schoolteacher. He wanted a job that would allow him to go anywhere, because that’s what he would need to be with Becca.

Later, years later, he would find himself wondering if there was a different meaning to her father’s words. You don’t need to know. He thought Harry Harrison was being kind, saying these things were unimportant, they would not impede his love. Now he thinks that Harry Harrison assumed this was a high school romance, destined to fade.

This realization made him feel much less guilty about what he had taken from Harry Harrison-who had, it turned out, drunk himself to death in a fashion. When Becca disappeared, Harrison did too, and he spent the rest of his life in pursuit of his wayward daughter. Of course, he never found her. But liver cancer found him.

Everybody dies. He adjusts the pillow beneath his cheek, so he’s no longer pressing against one of the more wiry seams. His mother’s handiwork improved over the time she was making this pillow. As did his. He sighs, hollow from anticipation. Everybody dies.