Paul Robertson: According to Their Deeds

He only shuddered once, and then was still except for the rattle of his breathing.

“Thank you,” Charles said, his own breath in gasps. “Thank you for coming.”

Galen Jones pulled the box away. A cascade of what had once been a Chinese vase poured out of it. “What was…?”

“No. Don’t ask. Just call the police.”

“You get his gun, I’m not touching it.”

Frank Kelly didn’t stir; a dark bruise was already covering half his face. Charles eased the gun from the holster and set it on the bench behind him.

“Mr. Jones, I had completely forgotten that you and I were meeting here today.”

“What do you suggest tonight, Philippe?” Charles said.

“Monsieur.” Philippe bowed low. “For you tonight we have a very special dinner,” he said in his most deferential voice. “All day we have been preparing for you.”

“Charles! Dorothy! Oh!” Henna red hair came flying across the room, with the hostess beneath it. “Oh, how terrible it has been!” She nearly fainted, or did for a moment and recovered, without interrupting the flowing words. “I was in the kitchen when Henri told me you had arrived. We have talked of nothing else since yesterday! Nothing! Such tragedy!”

“I think we’ve recovered, Antoinette,” Dorothy said. “The police were over all day yesterday asking questions, but we’ve finally had some rest today.”

“What will you do?” she asked. “Can you even dream of starting again?”

“I think we can dream,” Charles said.

A thin, beautiful note strung itself from one corner of the room to the other. A wandering violinist planted himself beside them and began to play.

“But for tonight,” the hostess continued, unabated, “you will have no cares. Tonight everything is for you. I will return to the kitchen, so that everything will be perfect for you!” And she left them, perfectly.

“I thought about not calling this morning,” Charles said, “and just showing up like we usually do. Who knows what else they might have in store.”

The violin’s haunting melody wrapped about them like linguini.

“It is perfect,” Dorothy said. “They’re all enjoying themselves so much.”

“Are we recovered?” Charles asked.

“We’ve started to be. I do want to start over.”

“We’ll build a new shop.”

“But then it wouldn’t be old!”

“No, it’s a new start, Dorothy. The old is gone. The past is gone. What do you think of that?”

“Well… I liked our past. Most of it.”

“We still have most of it,” Charles said. “But it’s more than just the building that will be new.”

“What else has been changed? Charles, what would have happened if you’d just taken the papers to the police in the first place?”

“They might have figured out how Derek was killed, and prevented the other deaths. They might not have. I don’t know how my decisions affected John Borchard and Patrick White.”

“There hasn’t been anything in the paper about Karen Liu,” Dorothy said.

“I think she’ll come forward herself. She wants the fight.”

“It would have to be a relief for her.”

“In the end, none of them escaped,” Charles said. “I couldn’t save anyone from their own pasts and their own decisions.”

“Did you think you could?”

“I tried.”

“Angelo escaped,” Dorothy said.

“He’s been through the fire, and I think it was a refiner’s fire. I think we’re going to see gold.”

“And what about you, dear?”

“Me?”

Like the tide, the music and murmur slowly swept against them in waves, foam-crested with their own thoughts. Charles sat quietly staring away, and Dorothy at him. He sighed.

“Do you remember,” he said, finally, “talking about coincidences? In a well written story there shouldn’t be any. I went in to Frank Kelly and I closed every door out, because I wanted…” He had to pause to think. “I knew what he’d done. I knew what he would do. But I couldn’t make myself be the one who brought about his destruction. I only could hope that there was some forgiveness, or something, that I could give him. And at the very moment I needed him, Galen Jones walked in. I hadn’t even thought of him, and there he was.”

“I don’t even want to think about it.”

“But it’s over.”

“It does sound like a coincidence,” Dorothy said.

“No, I think the story is too well written for that.”

“What story, Charles?”

“My story, and we know who it is who’s writing that. And your story, and Angelo’s story, and everyone’s. What a book that must be.”