Dennis Lehane: Since We Fell

“Argue?” she said. “I agree. Be right back.”

She left the key in the ignition and the bag she’d carried out of the bank at his feet. It took her ten minutes in Marshalls to change out of her Nicole Rosovich outfit and into a pair of jeans, cranberry V-neck tee, and black cashmere cardigan. She handed the tags to the cashier, transferred her previous outfit to a plastic store bag, paid up, and left.

Brian watched her exit and started to sit up, but then his face darkened as she gave him a quick four-finger wave and entered the post office.

She came back out five minutes later. Brian looked a lot paler when she got behind the wheel. Smaller, too, and a little sickly. Her bag still sat at his feet, but he’d clearly gone through it — a stack of bills peeked through the opening.

“You went through my bag,” she said. “So much for trust.”

“Trust?” It came out sharp and high like a hiccup. “My passport isn’t in there. Neither is yours.”

“No.”

“So where are they?”

“I have mine,” she assured him.

“That’s wonderful.”

“I think so.”

“Rachel.”

“Brian.”

His voice was nearly a whisper. “Where’s my fucking passport?”

She reached into the Marshalls bag and retrieved a shipping label, handed it to him.

He smoothed it on his thigh and stared at it for some time. “What’s this?”

“It’s a shipping label. Global Express. Guaranteed from the United States Postal Service. That’s your tracking number right there in the upper right corner.”

“I can see that,” he said. “I can also see you addressed it to yourself as a guest of the Intercontinental Hotel in Amsterdam.”

She nodded. “Is that a good hotel? Have you ever stayed there? It looked good on the website, so I went with it.”

He looked at her like he was thinking about hitting something. Her, perhaps. Or himself. The dashboard possibly.

Probably her, though.

“What did you mail to the Intercontinental Hotel in Amsterdam, Rachel?”

“Your passport.” She started the Range Rover and pulled out of the parking lot.

“What do you mean, my passport?” His voice was, if possible, even quieter. It was how he got in an argument just before he exploded.

“I mean,” she said with the slowness one reserved for very young children, “I mailed your passport to Amsterdam. Which is where I plan to be by tomorrow night. You, on the other hand, will still be here in the States.”

“You can’t do this,” he said.

She looked over at him. “I kinda already did.”

“You can’t do this!” he repeated, but this time he shouted it. And then he punched the ceiling.

She waited to see if he’d hit anything else. After a mile or so, she said, “Brian, you lied to me through our entire marriage and for the year leading up to it. Did you actually think I was going to overlook that? Say, ‘Gosh, you big lug, ya, thanks for looking out for me?’” She turned left at a sign for 95, still ten miles away from the on-ramp.

“Turn the fucking car around,” he said.

“To do what?”

“Get the passport back.”

“You can’t get mail back once you’ve handed it over. Something to do with interfering with a civil servant on his appointed rounds or something.”

“Turn the car around.”

“What’re you going to do?” She was surprised to hear a chuckle trail the words. “Go back and stick up a post office? I’m going to guess they have cameras, Brian. You may get the passport, but by then you’ll have Cotter-McCann, the local police, the state police, and — since this would surely be a federal crime — the FB fucking I on your ass. Is that really the option you most want to explore right now?”

He glowered at her from the other side of the Range Rover.

“You hate me right now,” she said.

He continued to glower.

“Well,” she said, “we always hate the things that wake us up.”

He punched the ceiling again. “Fuck you.”

“Aw, sweetness,” she said, “would you like me to elucidate your remaining options?”

He popped the glove compartment with the side of his fist and pulled out a pack of cigarettes and a lighter. He lit the cigarette and cracked the window.

“You smoke ?” she said.

“You mentioned options.”

She held out her hand. “Give me one.”

He handed her his and lit another one and they drove the empty road and smoked and she felt a hundred feet tall for a moment.

“You can kill me,” she said.

“I’m not a killer,” he said with a weary indignation that fell somewhere between charming and offensive.

“But if you do, you’ll never get your passport. With all the heat on you, even if you could get someone to make you another one, they’d probably charge you a king’s ransom and sell you out to Cotter-McCann anyway.”

She looked in his eyes and saw that she’d scored a direct hit.

“You’ve got no one left to trust, do you?”

He flicked his ash out the crack in the window. “That’s what you’re offering? Trust?”

She shook her head. “That’s what I’m demanding.”

After a while, he asked, “And what’s that look like?”

“It looks like you scurrying around for a few days like a rat with everyone chasing you while me, Haya, and AB wander the canals of Amsterdam.”

“You like that image,” he said.

“And at the appointed time and place, you retrieve the passport I’ll have sent back stateside.”

He sucked so hard on the cigarette the tobacco crackled as it burned. “You can’t do this to me.”

She flicked her own cigarette out the window. “But I already have, dear.”

“I rescued you,” he said.

“You what ?”

“From a prison you built for yourself. I spent fucking years getting you ready for this. If that’s not love, then what—”

“You want me to believe you love me?” She pulled to the side of the road and slammed the shift into park. “Then get me out of this country, give me access to the money, and trust I’ll send you the passport.” She stabbed the air between them with her finger, surprised at the swift appearance and infinite depth of her rage. “Because, Brian? There is no other fucking deal on the table.”

He dropped his gaze and looked out at the gray road and blue sky and the fields yellow with the promise of summer.

Now, she thought, comes the moment when he threatens you.

“Okay,” he said.

“Okay, what?”

“I’ll give you what you want.”

“And what’s that?”

“Apparently,” he said, “everything.”

“No,” she said, “just faith.”

He gave his own reflection a rueful smile. “Like I said...”

Brian texted Haya from the interstate. For the second time in twenty-four hours, he didn’t like her response.

As agreed upon, he wrote,

How’s everything?

If everything was all right, she was supposed to write back,

Perfect.

If anything had gone wrong, she was supposed to respond,

Everything’s fine.

After fifteen minutes, she sent a text back:

All OK.

In Woonsocket, he directed her up the main hill and then south several blocks. They turned onto a dusty scar of a street that dead-ended at a mound of landfill, crumbled Sheetrock, and bent rebar. From there they had a perfect view of the river and the mill and the night watchman’s house. He pulled a pair of binoculars from the glove box and adjusted the focus as he looked down at the house.

“The pantry shade is still up,” he said.

The sparrow flapped twice in her chest.

He handed the binoculars to her and she saw for herself. “Maybe she forgot.”