Scott Turow - Personal injuries

Early Monday morning, when Evon arrived at McManis's for a final debriefing before going up to Feaver amp; Dinnerstein for the last time, Joe Amari placed the cocktail napkin on which Rollo Kosic had writen his warning to Robbie Friday night on the conference table. It was already in a plastic folder and every UCA entered to take a look, as if were a piece of the True Cross. The napkin, sporting Attitude's black-lined logo and the heavy geometric doodles in the comer, had been torn in four, but the pieces fit neatly. It would go out for fingerprinting and handwriting analyses as soon as Feaver identified it.

He arrived at nine-thirty to set the scenario for Evon's curtain call upstairs. After the weekend at home, he again looked a wreck.

"That's it." He smiled as he held the plastic envelope, but it seemed to require a second effort. Kosic was a lock now. Dead-bang on obstruction and without much room on the conspiracy overall. McManis wanted to start planning an effort to flip him. Rollo was key. There was still no direct evidence against Tuohey, nothing to actually prove he was in league with Kosic and the others.

McManis gave the napkin a second look and asked Bobbie about the reference to Mason, which he hadn't mentioned Friday night. Feaver shrugged. Apparently, Brendan figured he'd gone to Mason because he hadn't knocked on Tooley's door.

Robbie went up to his office first. When Evon got there, the receptionist, Phyllida, a lean Australian whom Robbie had employed because he loved her accent, told Evon that he wanted to see her. When she closed the door to Bobbie's office, an unexpected swell of melancholy gripped her; she experienced the fine cityscape through the broad windows and the harmony of the spring light and took in yet again that she was leaving. In memory, she'd realized, this experience was going to be similar to hockey-another broad marker in her life, something to live up to, another stream she couldn't step in twice.

"So," he said. His eyes were dead. "Blah, blah, blah, you're fired."

He should have been sticking with the cover. Evon was supposed to yell at him and call him names, which was likely to bring some of the office folks close to the door. The idea was to create the impression of a final lovers' row. But he clearly wasn't ready to begin.

"So do we get together again or is this sayonara?" he asked her.

She was leaving in half an hour. Amari was going to take her to the airport. She told him that McManis said she would be back whenever they began the effort to flip the investigation's leading targets. He sat in his tall black chair and shook his head, smiling at himself.

"You know," he told her, "I always thought one of the greatest things about women was they stuck around." He looked in the direction of the red rug for a while. "Times change," he said. She smiled sadly at that, and then, on impulse, crossed the room and hugged him, waiting what seemed to be quite some time for him to let her go.

"You better raise your voice now," she told him. "Let them hear `You're fired,' like you mean it."

"You're fired," he said listlessly and then, staring miserably at her, began to cry. "Don't take it as a compliment. I cry about everything these days." He got out his handkerchief. "You better do the yelling. Now's your chance. Tell them what a lying heap of dung I am."

She settled for slamming the door and, as she emerged, muttering under her breath. Four steps away, she stopped in order to pull back from the precipice of disordering emotions. Bonita, with her raccoon eyes and piles of black hair, brittle as fiberglass, was staring. So was Oretta from the file room. Perfect, Evon thought. Perfect play.

Midweek, she flew out to Denver to see Merrel. She arrived Thursday, and on Friday afternoon they drove up to Vail to see the brand-new condo. It had cost three quarters of a million dollars and Evon felt she could put her hand through the walls if she knocked on them too hard, but Merrel and Roy were thrilled, as they always were by their possessions. Together they showed off everything in the place-the patio, the mountain view, the hot tub, the rumpus room furniture, even the stove and microwave. In Roy's view, this was the same thing as Jesus handing them a report card telling them they were doing good. Roy spent five days a week riding on airplanes. Evon had picked up the phone sometimes when she was visiting and heard him say he was in the most ridiculous places, Sumatra or Abu Dhabi. But the longer she knew him, the more she realized he was a lot like her father, clinging to a few simple things and otherwise completely baffled.

Merrel's girls, ages fourteen to three, were wonderful. Grace and Hope, Melody and Rose were all blondes and all their mom's kids, each with painted nails and arguments about how Merrel should do their hair. Evon took especially to Rose, the littlest, who was said to favor her aunt. It wasn't really a compliment. Poor Rose had not been born with the silky, long-legged look of her mother. She was what Merrel called a 'pudge.' Rose was never neat and, at the age of three, already somewhat frantic, incorrigibly committed to screaming whenever she wanted to be heard. But for whatever reason she loved her aunt. She drew Evon into her games and could already throw a ball accurately.

Saturday night, dinner got messed up. Roy was on the patio, getting exercised about the gas grill that wouldn't ignite, and the meat sat out there with him, as the light dwindled and shrank the bulk from the mountains. The smell of cedar rose up from the forest floor as the chill began to drain the little bit of moisture from the air. Merrel, trying to ignore Roy's growing agitation, finally fed the smaller girls noodles, while she and Evon ate half of a wedge of Brie and drank most of a bottle of wine.

Evon tried to entertain the little ones. Rose told her that Momma said she'd be the flower girl when her Aunt DeDe got married.

"Oh, honey," she said, "I don't think your Auntie DeDe is the marrying kind."

Merrel, who was still unpacking boxes in the kitchen, heard this and sang out with a story about a colleague of Roy's, a woman named Karen Bircher, who at the age of forty-one had gone from being a powerhouse career gal to a mom at home in the space of fifteen months.

"It just takes the right guy, De," Merrel told her, crossing into the small dining room carrying a tray of glassware.

Lightly, laughingly, actually strangely happy, Evon said, "Oh, I don't think it's a guy."

Who knows why these things happen? Her sister stood stock-still, her anxious glances divided between the tray of Orrefors, which she plainly feared she might drop, and Evon. Merrel was terrified. No other way to describe the look that evaporated much of her beauty. She literally snatched up Rose, stating that it was time for bed, and ran away with her daughter.

When Merrel returned to the kitchen, she was furious. Evon was stacking plates in the cupboard.

"Please, DeDe," Merrel whispered, "please don't ever say anything like that to Roy."

Roy. Evon laughed again. She was instantly afraid it was another of those moments when her reactions were dead-wrong. But she was so happy. And the thought of saying anything to Roy was purely amusing. Simple Roy was just a fellow walking through a tunnel looking for the light.

"Oh, hon," Evon said, "it's been fifteen years before I could even say it to myself." She still felt like a bubble rising in a soft drink. She found her sister's eyes. It took a moment for Merrel to reorganize herself. She was working her way back toward something. Love. Merrel loved her. In their family, they loved each other best. And there was a reason for that, because there was a piece of one another they always carried around, the someone else they might have been.

"Oh, sweetheart, sweetheart," Merrel said and opened her arms to her sister. They stood there in the little pantry laughing and crying both, but for just a moment, because Melody walked in, upset about the ravaged mess Grace had made of the hair of one of her dolls. Knowing nothing else to do, Merrel reached down and hugged her daughter urgently and grabbed at DeDe and took her in as well.