“I admit, this is tough to hear. But I made a promise to not rag on you about your job—and I’m trying to honor it. Besides, I’m hoping for a conjugal visit, and I don’t want to do anything to piss you off.”
I smiled. “Request for conjugal visit accepted. And, Beau, I really appreciate your understanding. More so now than ever. When I didn’t hear from you for so long, it freaked me out a little, and I had a taste of what you must go through when I’m working on a story.”
“Ahh, my plan worked.”
“And if it’s any consolation, I learned from last night. I should have handled a few things differently.”
We ended up eating dinner south of Lake George, at a restaurant that was basically a huge log cabin, with not another reporter in sight. Some of my tension and angst melted away, and I managed to leave all the crap behind me until I fell asleep in Beau’s arms that evening.
Beau had to leave by nine the next morning, but I was staying—for the arraignments of Cody, Riley, and her husband, and of course, for Alice’s service. And hopefully for the return of a man named Sean Castle, last seen living in Vermont. The authorities had determined that he was the person Dirk had referenced and they were now scouring New England for him. Dodson and I had agreed that I’d depart for the city on Friday but return down the line if necessary.
“You okay?” Beau asked over breakfast at the hotel.
“What do you mean?” But I realized I’d been poking at my eggs and my mood was turning glum again.
“You seem out of sorts.”
“I am, I guess. It’s been a lot to process.”
“Focus on getting back to New York. I’ll plan something fun for Friday night.”
As soon as he pulled out of the parking lot, however, I could feel myself sinking back into a nasty funk.
One of the things gnawing at me was the mistakes I’d made. As I’d confessed to Killian, it was dumb of me to buyCody’s disclosure about Alice’s call to him. I should have been suspicious ofanyoneAlice had spoken to that day.
And then there was my stupid decision to kick the hornet’s nest at Baker Beverage. Once I’d read Cody’s comment about his army pal and realized that the implications could be serious, I should have shut the fuck up and, as Alice would have said, skedaddled out of there, instead of pricking and pushing in order to see where it could lead. Was Beau right last summer when he’d said I put myself in unnecessary danger?
Doubts and regrets often surfaced for me after a story was done—over details I’d missed, comments I hadn’t considered hard enough. And nearly every crime story I covered served up its own emotional hangover—the result of contemplating senseless deaths, children’s lives overturned, and on and on. But this funk just seemed to be, well, funkier than some of the others I’d experienced.
Had I begun to have misgivings about my job, I wondered, and what I wanted out of life? Were those misgivings even at the heart of my hesitancy about marrying again?
Back in the hotel, I wandered to a table in the café, one with a view of the lake, and ordered a cappuccino. No, I told myself, gazing at that dazzling blue, I loved what I did. And I loved Beau. My current morose mood could surely be explained by the fact that this was the first time while on assignment that I’d lost someone I considered a friend.
Watching a boat zip across the lake, I thought back to what Alice had said over dinner when I’d asked her if the job ever got to her. Yes, sometimes, she’d replied. But when that happened, she fished, and by relishing the spaces betweeneach catch—as my father had the spaces between each bird sighting—she regained her equanimity.
That’s what I’d do then. Not fish. Never. But back in New York this weekend, after I’d dumped my dirty clothes in the wash and Skyped with my mom, I’d take my father’s old binoculars to Central Park and tramp through the wooded areas, scouting for cedar waxwings and yellow-bellied sapsuckers. Sometimes I’d simply drop onto a rock and do nothing but relish the spaces between birds.
Then I’d go home and work on my next book and wait forCrime Beatto call again and ask me to take an assignment that hopefully, in Dodson Crowe’s words, would have “a few nice layers.” And I’d say yes. Because no matter how sad those stories could be, there was always the pulse-pounding rush that came from peeling all the layers away.
