So she had that in common with a ghost.
And maybe all of that had been an illusion after all, like everything else in his life had turned out to be.
It took him a long time to adjust to her absence. He hadn’t realized that she was the lens he’d begun to see nearly everything through. That even though she was kind of a secret, she was also, in a way, his center of gravity. And when it was clear he was just never going to see her again, life had taken on a peculiar, almost dreamlike quality. What he did had ceased to matter because nothing had consequences in a dream.
Hence the foray into satin sheets. Life in general had become a satin sheet. Superfluously decadent; nothing of substance adhered.
He was aware he didn’t like to say her name in his mind. Which meant it had more power over him than he preferred any soul to have.
That was a helluva long time ago, though. A fair number of women ago. His parents’ divorce ago. His father’s indictment ago. The national guard ago. Backpacking through Europe ago.
Somehow all of that had led him back to here about three years ago, thanks to Morton Horton and the goats.
For about two decades he’d been untangling the skein of his life as if it were a wad of Christmas tree lights, all of them burnt out save one.
That light was the house at Devil’s Leap.
And he knew Graybill thought he was nuts. Mac hadn’t done an irrational, unplanned thing in about two decades.
But he didn’t feel the need to explain to Graybill why this was, in fact, the most rational thing he’d ever done in his life. If there was one thing Mac loathed, it was revealing anything that might be construed as a vulnerability.
Publicity came in a close second in the loathing department. He’d had enough of that for a lifetime.
Which was why Graybill would be doing the bidding for him tomorrow.
“Yes, sir. I understand the cap.”
“Until tomorrow then. Thanks, Graybill.”
“Until tomorrow, Mr. Coltrane.”
Mac signed off and stood up abruptly from his perch on the end of the bed and opened the door to let in The Cat, who laced himself around his shins without quite touching them, The Cat’s version of an air kiss. The Cat had showed up one day about a year and a half ago and never left. Mac poured some kibble into the bowl, then turned around for a last look at the room, at all the minimalist decorating at its finest. The shotgun over the door. The vast bed. The shelf alongside it holding all of his i-gadgets.
Next to those, a collection of neatly stacked tie boxes.
Mac couldn’t forgive, but he couldn’t seem to get rid of those, either.
Through the transom window of this cottage the big old Victorian house seemed etched into the night sky, just a few shades less dark. For three years now it had been a hundred-some-odd feet yet two hundred light years away.
He doubted he’d sleep tonight.
Tomorrow at nine a.m. was the hour when that gap would close and he, like every Coltrane had stretching back at least a century, would do the inevitable: get exactly what he wanted.
Avalon roared into the courthouse parking lot at about three minutes to nine, skidded to a sideways halt, yanked her seatbelt out of its socket like it had taken her hostage, and all but toppled out of the car, scrambling gracelessly upright and ramming her hip butgoodon the door frame in the process. She took three leg-dragging, whimpering, Quasimodo-esque steps to adapt to that little mishap, sucking air in between her teeth against the pain.
Fuck fuck fuck.
She had three minutes. Elbows tucked into her side, head down, morning air whistling through her ears that had always stuck out just a little more than she preferred, hoping the little butt nudge she’d given the car door was enough to swing it closed, but not staying to hear the click.
If only everyone in Hellcat Canyon wasn’t so freakingnice. She’d planned to be the first person in line before the credit union opened this morning; she was the second. The first was Mrs. Corcoran, who was eighty-seven and had brought with her a coffee can full of dimes.
“Boy, you must have been saving these for decades, Mrs. Corcoran! If dimes could talk, I bet they’d have a tale to tell. Let me get those wrappers for you...”
To keep from hyperventilating and frightening both Mrs. Corcoran and the sweet, helpful clerk, Avalon multitasked.
To her current assistant (Kenneth? Daria! No! It was Enrique—staff turnover among young, flaky, skilled tech workers was so high she sometimes forgot who was on deck), she sent a text:
I’ll be out of the office thru end of week due to family emergency. Defer all decisions to Corbin. Pls overnight anything currently in my inbox to the address I’ll send soon.
