The Silent Hour

30

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A my and I stayed for a week. We hung out with Joe and sometimes Gena, ate seafood, had drinks of fruit juice and rum, bitched about the heat. All the things you’re supposed to do in Florida.

I checked the office voice mail daily. There was no word about Ken. Many days, I played his last message again. I listened to words I already knew by heart, and I tried to imagine what had provoked them. I had no luck. You rarely do with that approach to detective work. The way it gets done is out on the street. I stayed on the beach.

On the day before we left, I ended up sitting on a chair outside Joe’s hotel, alone, while he and Amy made a run to the store. Gena was coming by for an afternoon cocktail before dinner, and she showed up before they got back and came down to join me. We made small talk for a bit. I found out that while she had lived in other states and, for one year, in Europe, she always came back to Idaho in the end. Both parents were still alive, and she had two sisters; all of them lived within a fifteen-minute drive.

“So are you going to move to Cleveland or make him move to Idaho?” It was supposed to be a joke, but her pause told me it was a discussion they’d actually had.

“Maybe either, maybe neither, maybe something completely different,” she said.

“Egypt?” I was still trying to keep it light, because I was caught off guard by the idea that they were this serious.

“One person moving to join the other is the obvious option,” she said, stretching out on the chair beside me and kicking off her sandals, “but there’s an element of it that could feel selfish either way, you know? We both have our own lives at home, so to have one person make the sacrifice seems unfair. So we’ve talked about a compromise. Moving somewhere new to both of us.”

“Oh,” I said. Can always count on me for insight.

She looked over at me, sunglasses shading her eyes. The wind was fanning her brown hair out. “Would I like Cleveland?”

“Probably not.”

“Really?”

“You live in a college town in the mountains, right? Well, the city’s a change. Most people head the other way. Leave the city for mountains.” I waved out at the water. “Or a beach.”

“I lived in New York for seven years. Never minded being in a city. Of course, I was twenty-five then, too.”

I didn’t say anything.

“Either way, it won’t be happening overnight,” she said. “Joe’s not the sort of person who rushes into things.”

That made me laugh. “No, he’s not.”

She smiled but looked away from me. “He’s worried about you.”

“Doesn’t need to be.”

“I couldn’t speak to that. I don’t know you well enough to say. I do know that he’s worried. He’s afraid that the way he left was unfair to you. That you’re carrying guilt about it when you shouldn’t be.”

“I got him shot, Gena. Seems to warrant a small dose of guilt. But that’s really not the issue, not anymore. He’s happy again, and I’m glad of that. Thrilled.”

“You’re not. Happy, I mean.”

“Happy,” I said, “seems like a hell of a subjective thing. I’m working on it. So is Joe. So is everybody. And I can tell you this—you’re good for him. I can see that so clearly, and you have no idea how nice it is. He’s been alone for a long time.”

“Had you, though.”

“Yeah, but he never liked my hairstyle as much as yours.”

She smiled. “There’s one thing I’d like you to know.”

“Yeah?”

“When we’ve talked about moving,” she said, “and the things that we’d miss the most, just hate the idea of being away from, I talk about my family. Joe talks about you.”

A call from Graham came later that night, and the message he left offered no sense of progress but some news—Joshua Cantrell’s family had won a preliminary legal motion to claim the house on Whisper Ridge.