He stepped unconsciously away from them as they said goodbye
s
to one another in the parking lot, his heart beating fast, blood leapfrogging in his veins. This was the way the world ought to be. This was the reason he’d picked up a badge and a gun in the first place. Here was hope. He’d forgotten what that was like. His job had pushed him so far underground that he’d forgotten what it was to be trusted—or trusting. To be accepted at face value.
Alice’s family—much like Alice herself—was from another planet, another time zone, and in some strange and indeterminate way they frightened him more than any undercover job he’d ever walked into. They did something that could prove dangerous to him. They drew him in, accepted him at face value, included him in their teasing, concern and relief merely because he was with Alice and they loved Alice.
“You have a very nice family,” he said as he and Alice walked from the restaurant to her car.
Alice snorted. “Much you know.” She peeked at him from the comer of her eye, wondering which worry puzzled him now. “They like you, too, but you’ve been accepted by a mob of lunatics. Don’t you wonder what that makes you?”
Gabriel lined his arm through hers. “A lunatic’s apprentice?”
“You’re cute, Book, I’ll give you that.” They reached the car, and Alice paused to unlock it. “I should have known you’d fit right in with them.”
Gabriel slid into the car, leaned across to open her door for her. “I take it that’s not a compliment?”
Alice shrugged. “Depends on what they’ve done to—umm, I mean
for
—me
lately.”
“But they love you.”
“Of course they love me. They have to. I’m their sister.” Alice backed the car out of its parking space. “I love them, too, but the pressure gets to me sometimes.” She paused thoughtfully, glanced keenly at him before she guided the car into the traffic. “No, that’s not right,” she said. “It’s really not the love that gets to me. It’s living up to it—their regard, their expectations.” She made a sound of regret behind her teeth. “That gets rough sometimes.”
Gabriel waited, silently watching her struggle with her thoughts, very aware that he wanted her to tell him about herself. For the first time in a long time he wanted to know someone else on a personal level, wanted to trade secrets he instinctively understood she would keep, tell her things about himself he hadn’t thought about in years.
When he’d almost decided she wasn’t going to live up to his hope, Alice turned the car onto a rutted dirt road that ran around behind a small private school. She brought the car to a halt near a tangled stand of elderly blackberry bushes and trees that broke the landscape between the school and a new subdivision under development, and rolled down her window. Yesterday’s downpour had left everything looking shiny, matted and damp. The air smelled of sunshine and rain.
“Do you mind if we walk a bit?” she asked. “It’s so beautiful out and once tonight hits, there won’t be time to breathe again before Sunday and I need—”
Gabriel put a finger to her mouth. “Let’s walk,” he said.
They left the car in the shade and strolled across the school playground. A few fluffy cumulus clouds dotted the otherwise clean blue sky, and Alice dropped her head back and closed her eyes, lifting her face to the sun, feeling summer on her skin.
“I used to bring Allyn and Becky here for picnics when they were little,” she said. “I’ve always liked this place. Matt and I used to cut class and come here sometimes. This school was closed then, and what with two big families and all, it was the one place we really had to be
alone.”
There was nostalgia instead of regret in her voice, which surprised Gabriel. His experience was that people hid their sins in closets full of shame, bringing them out only when forced to do so in order to protect themselves in front of a judge. He rolled up his sleeves and pocketed his hands, waiting, watching Alice, drawn to the beauty that lay beneath the unadorned surface. He doubted he’d ever been more uncertain about what would happen next in his life. Doubted he’d ever been less sure of what he wanted to happen. Knew absolutely what shouldn’t happen here, and couldn’t guarantee that he’d stop it if it did. Didn’t think he’d be able to, anyway.
“Don’t get me wrong—there were a lot of things I didn’t like about my family when I was growing up,” she said now. “Few things that could still use some work, but when I’d see my friends with
their
parents, or listen to them talk about
their
families, I always remember being glad that I wasn’t them and that it was
my
parents who’d had me.” Puzzled she peered up at him. He looked like everything strong and sure in the world
—
relaxed, attentive, whole, secure. And yet... “I don’t know why I’m telling you this,” she said softly. “I don’t usually attack people and show off my life, but there was something in your face back in the parking lot—like maybe there’s something you need to hear. Or I need to let go of.” She studied the ground at her feet,
kicked up an old golf ball buried deep in the wet green-and-brown grass. “I don’t know, maybe I’m crazy. Maybe—”
“Alice.”
He caught her whole attention just by saying her name.
His eyes were darker than ever, shaded from the sun. Her tongue flicked nervously between her teeth, then retreated. Gabriel waited, not forcing her to continue the way he wanted to. Not offering her support the way he also wanted to. Not touching her at all. And God help him, whether he should or not, he wanted to.
“You haven’t minced words so far,” he said gently. “Don’t start now. It doesn’t suit you. I’m part of your life for now by default. There are—” he grinned “—things I need to know in order to survive in it. Your sisters, for instance. They’ve never seen me before and for all they know I could be Attila the Hun, yet within ten minutes of meeting two of them, I’m an usher for Grace’s wedding. You answer the door in your bathrobe with a half-naked man at your back. Anyone else would leave in embarrassment, maybe file the scene away for extortion purposes in
the future, but your sisters stay and ask you if you had responsible
sex.
Now—” his jaw worked around a disbelieving laugh “—being an only child, I don’t know too much about siblings, but doesn’t this all strike you as odd?”
“No.” Alice shook her head. “I am the one who stopped for you, remember?”
“True.”
“And we’ve always been a very...ah…
open
family.” She grimaced. “At least where my parents weren’t involved.”
“Okay.”
“And like my father always said, when you already have seven kids, what’s two or three more?”
“That doesn’t explain yesterday.”
“No. Umm…no.” She shook her head. “Yesterday—” her mouth curved “—that was just my family. One of the first things we were ever taught was,
“Don’t be afraid to ask questions because it’s the only way to learn”
—except when your father is tired of course. Then it’s probably better to be seen and not heard. But we were also taught that whether we agreed with one another or not, family was always there.”
She gestured inadequately, misinterpreting his expression. “I don’t mean hiding fugitives from the law, or anything like that, but emotionally, supportively,
there.”
She started walking again, searching for words. “It’s... Like when I got pregnant and ran away and got married, my family wasn’t crazy about it, but they stood behind me, anyway. When Matt’s family found us and convinced him to let them get us annulled, I felt like I’d failed my family somehow. It didn’t make sense then, and it doesn’t now, but I felt like I’d thrown away something, disillusioned them, because I’d always sort of thought they saw me as a kind of saint—which I’d never been. I even used to wonder if I didn’t use Matt, if I didn’t get pregnant just so my family would stop looking at me that way, so I could stop having to live up to their expectations. So they’d know once and for all that I wasn’t perfect like they thought.”
She shook her head, laughed at the idea. ‘‘‘Course the funny thing is, I found out by getting pregnant that they’d known all along I wasn’t flawless. They’d lived with me for seventeen years and I hadn’t fooled them about anything. And when I was feeling sorry for myself and thinking how unfair it was that they thought I’d hurt them, they really only hurt
for
me, not because of me. They didn’t like what I’d done, but they didn’t judge me for it, and they weren’t ashamed of me. They didn’t try to hide me in some closet where people couldn’t see me. And they welcomed Matt into the family and said they’d do whatever they could...”
She looked at Gabriel. “Sometimes I feel like I still owe them for that. I’ve done so many stupid things and they’ve always been there. It’s kind of...” Her mouth worked around the word. “…
daunting
to have people go on loving you no matter what you do.”
“But you said it, they’re not perfect, either, Alice.” Gabriel’s face was hooded, drawn, emotion brewing beneath the surface.
“I know. That’s not the point.” Alice read the danger signals with a thrill of excitement. She was shooting in the dark and she was hitting things. Why that was so important to her, she didn’t know, but whatever she had seen hidden beneath his surface back in the parking lot, she was touching that part of him now, the heart of him. The only part that mattered. “It’s just the way I feel sometimes. I forget that they trust me to be there for them, too, no matter what. I forget that I’m not the only one who does stupid things.”
She stopped and turned on him with sudden passion. “Neither are you.”
He was silent, angry, not sure how to respond. Last night she’d exhibited an uncanny knack for reading between lines he didn’t even speak. The ease with which they communicated was something that both intrigued and disquieted him. He didn’t pretend not to know what she was talking about; that was the easy part. He’d told her about his job, about his findings. About how the people he had to trust were the ones he also had to suspect of hanging him out to dry. She was sharp enough to come up with the rest on her own. But he hadn’t told her about his family, about his guilt over them.
With an unaccustomed sense of resentment, he wondered how Alice seemed to know what he was thinking all the time, how she was able to pinpoint with such accuracy where her life paralleled his
—
and why she seemed to know exactly who he was. He eyed her the way one poker player eyes another, watching for a tipped hand.
“My family, my life—they’re not like yours, Alice. The mistakes I make are not as simply forgiven. When I do stupid things, misjudge a situation, trust the wrong people… It affects more than just me and my emotional life.”
“Are you talking about the mistakes you make as an officer of the law, as a man, or as somebody’s son?”
Her voice was gentle. Her question was as insistent as his mother’s last letter
—
and as unsettling. But he couldn’t ignore Alice the way he could ignore his mail. “I’m talking
about all of it, Alice. Which is more than you have a right to know.”
He turned his back on her, striding across the drive they’d come in on and forcing his way into the jumble of brush and trees on the other side. Branches scratched his face, and he shoved them aside. Rain puddled in leaves poured down his back, soaking his shirt. Unconnected snatches of memory stirred his conscience, blurred in and out of focus. Two days ago, Sunday night, a dark dirt road, raucous voices, firelight shuddering in an empty oil drum. The weight of a
killer’s gun pressed into his hand and the feel of it tucked against his back. A deafening explosion beside his ear, a grunt of surprise, the sound of a body falling.
He felt rather than remembered the out
of
control sound of two more jarring reports, the accompanying sensation of blind panic, of blood in his eyes, of slipping and scrambling to get away.