Archer Mayor - St. Albans Fire

“Hi, Joe.” She didn’t give him a hug, and he hesitated offering one. “Did you find the girl?”

“Yeah. She’s okay. I never told you, what with all that’s gone on, but she was the one-”

She interrupted him with a raised hand. “It doesn’t matter. I don’t want to know.”

He nodded, as much in confirmation to himself as in acknowledgment of her request. Never before had she countered him like that.

“Right.”

They stood awkwardly in the open doorway for a few moments.

“Well, anyhow. It’s safe. I wanted you to know it’s all over,” he said.

She gave him a sad smile. “Funny turn of phrase.”

“Oh, Christ,” he said. “No. I didn’t mean that. I’m sorry.”

But she was already shaking her head. “I think I do-mean that.”

He took a shallow breath. “Ah.”

She reached out at last and touched his cheek. He quickly turned his head and kissed her fingertips.

She dropped her hand, her expression soft and mournful. “And I’m the one who’s sorry, Joe. It’s not you. It’s me.”

“But it is what I do, isn’t it? Maybe even who I am.”

She didn’t argue with him. “You couldn’t stop that,” she said flatly.

He opened his mouth to answer, but again, she stopped him. “I wouldn’t want you to, no matter what you might say now.”

“There’re other ways I could do the same things,” he suggested.

“It would be like being the water boy at a football game,” she told him. “And I’d be the one responsible for putting you there.”

He saw that was a dead end. “You’re sure this is necessary?” he asked more generally.

“This isn’t the first time we’ve been here,” she reminded him. “You’ve been stabbed, beaten, almost blown up-God knows what else. You were shot at just a few hours ago. You’re in the middle of all that, taking responsibility, calculating the risks. I’m just the person who loves you, waiting for the bad news.”

“Will that change if we break up?”

She pursed her lips, the bearer of bad news. “Over time? Yes. It will diminish. I won’t know what you’re doing day-to-day. Also, selfishly speaking, chances are greater I won’t become a target because of you.”

He had to credit her honesty, if not her tact. Still, it was the former he’d been wanting for quite a while now, if dreading its content.

“I realize this is hard for you to understand, Joe, even with your abilities. I’ve never known a more sensitive man than you. But what just happened brought me back like a slap in the face. It was the rape all over again. I even felt raped. All over again. One of the ploys I used to get me through the rough spots back then was playing the old lightning-can’t-strike-twice denial game. They don’t recommend it, but it saw me through. Now I see what they meant.”

She paused. He didn’t say anything, at a loss for words.

“I can’t afford to do that again,” she concluded.

His heartbeat was rapid, and he knew his face was flushed, but he stayed silent, conditioned both by upbringing and by training to guard his counsel, to listen before speaking, to accept his losses. It took two to avoid the outcome she was suggesting. Whether she was right or not, she was determined to keep to her course.

And he’d never been a man to argue just for the sake of it.

Slowly, so she wouldn’t misinterpret, he leaned forward at the waist and kissed her gently on the cheek, enjoying the familiar warmth of her skin on his lips.

“I love you,” he said, straightening.

“I love you, too,” she responded as he turned to go. “I always will.”

Joe hadn’t wanted to return to the Cutts farm. As of late, his life was full enough of loss and grief and unanswerable questions to make a gratuitous visit to another emotional black hole impressively unappealing.

Which, of course, didn’t preclude his needing to do it anyway.

Not for Marie. Even considering his treatment of her at their last encounter, he still wasn’t keen on trying to make amends. Given what she’d always thought of him, that bordered too close to pure masochism.

Calvin, however, was another matter. Belittled by his wife and daughter, diminished by his own mixture of stoicism and self-effacement, Cal remained for Joe a potential touchstone-someone who, even now that his family was reduced to ashes, might have something to say that Joe could use in putting all this to rest.

For that remained an important coda for Joe-something he searched for at the conclusion of most cases, especially the ones extracting their weight in sorrow. In his world-the one that had just cost him Gail-such bruising needed redress, or at the very least, a moment of observance.

He had no idea how or if Calvin Cutts could supply him with such spiritual liniment, but for some reason, he’d thought of no one else when the need had become clear.

All that having been said, however, he still didn’t want to see Marie again, so, like a man obliged to attend a formal ceremony he yearned to avoid, he lingered in his car at the top of the hill above the farm, steeling himself against the inevitable-in this case, his arrival in the dooryard and the usual buzz saw greeting.

Which is when, as if from providence itself, a tractor cleared the horizon to his right and began trundling down-field, aimed directly at the fence beside him. Calvin Cutts was at the wheel.

Joe got out of the car and waited by the edge of the road until the tractor drew abreast and Calvin killed its engine.

The accompanying silence surrounded both men like the palpable warmth of the sun overhead.

Cal nodded at Joe before slowly disentangling himself from behind the steering column and climbing down to the freshly plowed earth.

“Agent Gunther,” he said, wiping his hands on his jeans as he approached.

“Mr. Cutts,” Joe said, returning the courtesy.

Cutts reached the fence and stopped. Neither man extended a hand in greeting. “What can we do for you?”

“Nothing I can think of,” Joe answered. “Just dropped by to see how you were all doing.”

It was the kind of statement Marie Cutts would have treated like a grenade pin, but Cal merely shrugged and answered, “Feeling a little caught between a dog and a tree, but I guess we’ll sort it out.”

“The farm?”

“Always. The insurance turned out to be even less than we thought, and Billy dropped his offer to where it didn’t make any sense. Looks like it’s back to life as usual.”

They were standing side by side with the fence between them, both facing the distant mountain Joe had admired on one of his first visits. Calvin’s last comment didn’t seem utterly delusional, as it might have from someone else facing his reversal of fortune. Instead, it came across as a simple statement of fact, and, for all of that, Joe was hard-pressed to doubt it. He and Cal were not entirely unalike, after all, from their parentage and age to their general stoicism.

“Could be worse,” Cal added. “Some foundation-run by that John Gregory’s brother-said they’d help out-pay for Linda’s kids’ education, replace the herd. Marie didn’t want it, of course, but we’ll take it-for all our sakes. Still,” he continued, “it’s not that we couldn’t still sell. Jeff could make more money someplace else, and I could even retire, more or less, given my needs.” He paused to rub his chin with one rough hand.

“But,” he added, “it just wouldn’t feel right.”

“What about Marie?”

He nodded. “Well, that’s part of it, of course. Farming’s what she knows. It would be a bad time to uproot her.”

When he left it at that, Joe asked, “How’s she doing?”