Dennis Lehane - Since We Fell

“A man who would give you such precious stones,” the old man said, adjusting his glass. “Whoo. He must love you very much.”

Her hands began to shake as she looked at them, at the flesh, at the jewels, and wondered if anything, anything in her life, was real. These last three years had been first a crawl and then a climb toward sanity, toward reclamation of her life and her self, a series of baby steps taken in a tsunami of doubt and terror. A blind woman walking down a series of corridors in an unfamiliar building she could not remember entering.

And who had arrived to guide her? Who had taken her hand and whispered, “Trust me, trust me,” until she finally did? Who had walked her toward the sun?

Brian.

Brian had believed in her long after anyone else had gone home. Brian had pulled her out of the hopeless dark.

“All of it was a lie?” She was surprised to hear the words leave her mouth and surprised to see the tears fall on the marble countertop and on her hands and on her rings. They rolled down the sides of her nose and off her cheekbones and into the corners of her mouth; they burned a bit.

She moved to get a Kleenex, but Caleb took her hands again.

“It’s okay,” he said. “Let it out.”

She wanted to tell him it wasn’t okay, any of it, and would he please let go of her hands?

She pulled her hands out of his. “Leave.”

“What?”

“Just go. I want to be alone.”

“You can’t be alone.”

“No, I’ll be fine.”

“No,” he said, “you know too much.”

“I...?” She couldn’t repeat the rest of his threat. It was a threat, wasn’t it?

“He won’t like it if I leave you alone.”

Now she repeated it. “Because I know too much.”

“You know what I mean.”

“No, I don’t.”

She’d left the gun in the chair over by the picture window.

“Brian and I have been at this for a very long time,” he said. “There’s a lot of money at stake.”

“How much?”

“A lot.”

“And you think I might tell someone?”

He smiled and drank some bourbon. “I don’t think you necessarily will, but I think you could. ”

“Uh-huh.” She carried her wineglass with her to the window, but Caleb came right along with her. They stood by the chair and looked out at the lights of Cambridge, and if Caleb looked down, he’d see the gun. “Is that why you married a woman who didn’t speak the language?”

He said nothing and she tried not to look down at the chair.

“Who doesn’t know anyone in this country?”

He looked out at the night, but moved his hip slightly closer to the chair and kept his eyes on her reflection in the window.

“Is that why Brian married a shut-in?”

Eventually, Caleb said, “This could be so good for everyone.” He met her eyes in the dark glass. “So don’t make it bad.”

“Are you threatening me?” she said softly.

“I think it’s you who’s been doing the threatening tonight, kid.” And he looked at her the way the rapist, Teacher Paul, had in Haiti.

Or at least that’s how it felt in the moment.

“Do you know where Brian is?” she asked.

“I know where he might be.”

“Can you take me to him?”

“Why would I do that?”

“Because he owes me an explanation.”

“Or?”

“Or what?”

“That’s what I’m asking. Are you giving us an ‘or else’?”

“Caleb,” she said, and hated how desperate she sounded, “take me to Brian.”

“No.”

“No?”

“Brian has something I need. Something my family needs. I don’t like that he has that and hasn’t told me.”

She felt herself trying to swim up through the wine again. “Brian has something you...? The camera store?”

Caleb nodded. “The camera store.”

“What—?”

“He has something I need. And you’re something he needs.” He turned to face her, the chair between them. “So I’m not going to take you to him just yet.”

She reached down, grabbed the pistol, thumbed off the safety, and pointed at the center of his chest.

“Yes,” she said, “you are.”

Driving them south in his silver Audi, Caleb said, “You can put the gun away.”

“No,” she said, “I like having it.”

She didn’t. She didn’t like having it at all. It sat in her hand like dead vermin that might spring back to life. Its power to stop a life with the flexing of a finger was suddenly one of the ugliest concepts she’d ever considered. And she’d pointed it at a friend. Was, even now, pointing it generally at him.

“Could you put the safety on?”

“That would add an extra step in case I have to pull the trigger.”

“But you’re not going to pull the trigger. It’s me. And you’re you. Do you get how ridiculous this is?”

“I do,” she said. “It’s ridiculous for sure.”

“So now that we’ve agreed you’re not going to shoot me—”

“We haven’t agreed on that.”

“But I’m driving,” he pointed out, his tone falling somewhere between helpful and condescending. “So you’re going to shoot me and — what? — sit in the passenger seat as the car goes flying across the expressway?”

“That’s what air bags are for.”

“I don’t believe you.”

“If you try to take the gun from me,” she said, “the only choice I’ll have is to, you know, shoot you.”

He jerked the wheel and the car lurched into the next lane. He smiled at her. “Well, that felt unpleasant.”

She could feel the power dynamic shifting and she knew from the housing projects and the ride-alongs and the long nights in Haiti that when power shifted it stayed shifted unless you grabbed it back immediately.

His eyes were on the road when she flicked the safety on. It didn’t make a sound. She shifted in her seat, leaned forward slightly, and slammed the butt of the pistol down on his kneecap. The car lurched and swerved again. A horn blared.

Caleb hissed. “Holy fuck. What is wrong with you? That fucking—”

She did it again, exactly the same spot.

He jerked the car back out of a third swerve. “Enough!”

They’d be lucky if another car on the freeway wasn’t calling 911 right now to report a drunk driver, giving the operator Caleb’s license plate number.

She flicked the safety off again.

“Enough,” he repeated. Riding his vocal cords along with the anger and attempt at authority was a clear timbre of anxiety. He had no idea what she was going to do next, but he was definitely afraid of the possibilities.

So now the power had shifted back.

He exited the freeway in Dorchester, in the southern tip of Neponset. He headed north on Gallivan Boulevard, stayed right at the rotary, and at first she thought they were crossing the bridge to Quincy, but instead he headed for the on-ramp back onto the expressway. At the last moment, he turned right, and drove down a street badly in need of repaving. They bounced along until he turned right and took them into a blocks-long stretch of bent, weather-lashed houses and Quonset-shaped warehouses and dry dockyards filled with boats that ran to the smaller side. At the end of the street, they found the Port Charlotte Marina, something Sebastian had pointed out to her a few times on their sails through Massachusetts Bay their first few summers together. Sebastian, showing her how to steer and navigate at night by the lights in the sky. Sebastian, out on the water with the wind in his Nordic hair, the only time she’d ever known him to be happy.

A restaurant and yacht club sat just past a near-deserted parking lot, both buildings looking freshly painted and hopeful for a marina in which there were no yachts. The biggest boat moored at the dock looked to be a forty-footer. Most of the others looked to be lobster boats, aged and constructed of wood. A few of the newer ones were fiberglass. The nicest of those was about thirty-five feet long, the hull painted blue, the wheelhouse painted white, the deck a honey teak. She paid attention to it because her husband stood on it, bathed in their headlights.