T. Parker: Summer Of Fear

Grace betrayed no emotion to me, but something about her exhaustion seemed to deepen even more. Then, a wry smile came to her lips. "I'm sorry for all that's happened to you and Isabella. I wish there was something I could do to make it better."

"There is."

She waited.

"Tell these men what happened. And understand that Erik will do everything he can to make you take this fall alone."

Grace drew a deep breath.

I could only imagine the silence behind our one-way mirror. Grace eyed the thing, then returned her gaze to me. Her eyes were moist.

"Would you do one more thing?" I asked.

"Why not?"

"Call me Dad, or Pop, or anything but Russell."

She smiled very weakly. "I would accept a hug now, Pops."

That Tuesday evening, I picked up my mail and headed directly into town to do the grocery shopping. In the market parking lot, I fanned through the letters, bills, and catalogs-you might imagine how Izzy, confined to a wheelchair, loved those catalogs- and found to my great dismay a postcard canceled in New York City, July 10. The picture on the front was of the Flatiron building, New York's first "skyscraper," and where my editor works. On the back was the following, in an almost illegible scrawl:

Dear Russell-New York a lovely city with so many… possibilities!

Aren't your publishers in this building? Am flossing regularly and considering minor cleansing action, but it would take an army of crusaders such as myself to dent this cesspool of humanity. Miss OC. Cuddles, ME.

My scalp actually crawling in the heat, I set the card carefully the glove compartment of the car, knowing that the Eye had wiped it clear of fingerprints. But it would never hurt to try. The people in Documents-Handwriting Analysis, to be specific would be more than happy to have it.

As I walked the familiar aisles of our grocery store, a deep, if fragile, sense of contentment began to come over me. I shopped with Isabella in mind, picking out all the things she loved to eat. Few things can soothe a troubled soul like the simple act of loving another person. Every bag of produce, can or jar, I touched with the knowledge that it was for Isabella, and that if I could not stem the sickness in her head, I might at least comfort her body with the fruits of my labor. There were other blessings to be counted: the Journal checks had begun to come in, Nell, my agent, had gotten a modest offer for the Midnight Eye book and I accepted it-while both my publishers and realized that the end of that book was far from being written; I had witnessed the beginnings of surrender in my daughter stopped by the health-food store for some tea that Isabella especially liked.

Then I loaded the groceries into the car and walked down to the beach to watch the sunset. It was an odd hour, because the dry, searing heat of the last week was getting ready to break. Far out over the horizon, a bank of moist dark clouds hovered and as the sun dipped into them, its bottom flattened and the cloud tops seemed to ignite. When the sun had fallen fully behind the bank, it glowed there, softly, like an orange wrapped tissue, and sent angled bars of light down onto the ocean, few minutes later, it emerged beneath the cloud bank and touched the water. As it sank, the clouds caught fire from below and soon the whole western sky was a blanket of black and orange patchwork settling over a flame-touched sea. I took a deep drink from my flask.

I began to see more clearly the tasks that lay ahead. Isabella would require more and more care, and there would be victories as well as defeats. I hoped that what joys we could find together would mitigate the agonies; I prayed that through it all we would keep our love alive; that if it was the desire of the heavens to kill her here on earth, we could still manage a laugh, a smile, a touch. My feelings of just a few weeks ago, of wanting so badly to escape, had diminished. The tug of the whiskey was still there, but it was a tug-not an irresistible yank. I felt slower as I sat there on the boardwalk bench, more able to occupy the moment. Amber had given me something in her desperately sweet surrender: She had broken the bonds of my own making, allowing me to grasp the heart of an obsession and understand that once possessed so fully, an object of desire can no longer hold such a tidal sway. Did I want Amber again? Oh, yes. One cannot eradicate genetic imperatives. But I no longer believed that she, or the secret life that went with her, was an antidote to the actual one I would now begin to live. As I looked out over the darkening water, it occurred to me that the core of a life is not what one will lose but what one will fight to keep.

And I realized one more thing as I sat there, which was this: I would never truly lose Isabella. Because some people never shine, no matter how much they are given and others will shine forever, no matter how much from them is taken away. Isabella was a light. Shine on, my dearest wife!

The car phone rang as I was heading out Laguna Canyon Roe

"Hello, Russell."

I felt my scalp tighten and a cool sweat moving from my palms to the steering wheel.

"I told you not to call."

"That was rude. I just wanted to ask you one more thing. In your article about my departure, will you remark that queers of either sex will not be safe when I come back? I didn't mean to discriminate against them, but I couldn't remember if I'd been specific."

"You can't come back. Everyone knows your face. Everyone knows your name. It's just a matter of time before the New York cops come to your door. Then it's back to California for long trial, a couple of appeals, plenty of prison time, and the gas chamber. Winters offered me a front-row seat for that, I’ll be there." "Sh-sh-sh. You cutups! I wish there was a way for me show you how important this last article is. Just because I've left the county doesn't mean I don't care. I want to be remembered accurately. Remember to be accurate, Russell. You have professional codes to live up to."

With this, he hung up. I dialed the Sheriff's Department immediately and got Carfax.

"It was a Brooklyn number," he said, the excitement clear in his voice. "We've got the address. He's meat."

Back home, arms loaded with grocery bags, I managed to let myself in the front door. I had just kicked it shut behind me when I turned and saw Dee lying on the stairway with a bullet hole in the middle of her back and a streamlet of blood dripping down the steps.

In front of me, through dim light, something moved. A light went on. The Midnight Eye loomed not ten feet from me, bearded, bewigged, wrapped in a rotting green blanket, pointing a small automatic with a large silencer directly at the bags still clutched to my gut.

"Hi, Russ."

My first reflex was to look up the stairway, past Dee's body, to the bedroom where I had last seen my wife alive. The bags dropped to the floor. I leaned in the direction of the stairs, then held myself.

"She's s-s-sleeping," said the Eye. "I looked in on her. Don't worry. Sh-sh-sh. Now, step toward me slowly, with your hands away from your body."

I did so. I stopped to look upstairs again, to perhaps see a shadow cast by her breathing body, perhaps hear some tiny sound that would indicate life. The rage that rang from my stomach, up my backbone, and into my ears nearly deafened me. My breath was short.

"Yes, like that," he said. "Here… sit at your table."

I saw that my typewriter and a fresh stack of paper had been placed on the dining room table. I walked toward it, still straining, even through the dreadful ringing in my ears, for some sound from the bedroom above. "Sit."

"I need to see Izzy," I said.

"I told you, she's sound asleep. Deeply asleep."

"May I see for myself?"

"You may not, you shit-sucking liar! You cheat. You coward. You sit!"