Cody McFadyen - The Face of Death

Doing good, babe, I'd heard Matt say in my head. I didn't reply, but I had smiled to myself.

I thought about Quantico and that possibility too. Maybe it would be good to leave this place behind.

If I do, it needs to be about choice, not retreat. I need to embrace my ghosts and lay them down, because they'll follow me wherever I go. That's what ghosts do.

We got through the closet and the bedroom and then the bathroom, and I floated through it all, the pain there but tolerable. Bitter- sweet, waitress, heavy on the sweet .

We filed down the stairway together with the boxes, moved into the garage, then up into the attic above the garage, dropping them off and pushing them back into corners where I knew they'd sit in the dark and gather dust.

Sorry, Matt, I thought.

They're just things, babe, he replied. The heart doesn't get dusty . I guess.

By the way, Matt says, out of nowhere, what about 1for-two-me?

I don't answer. I stand on the ladder, in the attic from the waist up.

"Smoky?" Callie calls from the doorway of the garage.

"Be there in a sec."

Yes, I think. What about 1for-two-me? What's the plan there?

I had learned, doing what I do, that good men and women can still have secrets. Good wives and husbands can still cheat on each other, or have secret vices, or turn out not to have been so good after all. And, I had learned, it all comes out once you die, because once you're dead, others are free to root through your life at their leisure and you can't do a darn thing about it.

Which brings me to 1for-two-me. It's a password. Matt had explained the concept of picking secure passwords to me once after a family e-mail account had been compromised.

"You want to include numbers with letters. The longer the better, obviously, but you want to pick something you can memorize and not have to write down. Something that'll be mnemonic. Like . . ." He'd snapped his fingers. "One for you, two for me. That's a phrase that sticks in my mind. So I change it a little and add some numbers and come up with 1for-two-me. Silly, but I'll remember it, and it'll be hard for someone to guess by accident."

He'd been right. It was like gum on your shoe. 1for-two-me. I'd never have to write it down. It would always be accessible. A few months after Matt died, I'd been sitting at his computer. We had a home office, and we each had our own PC. I was feeling numb and looking for something to awaken an emotion inside of me. I scrolled through his e-mail, dug through his files. I came upon a directory on the computer labeled Private. When I went to open the directory, I found that it was password protected. 1for-two-me, there it was, trotted out before I had to really think about it. My fingers had moved to the keyboard. I was about to type it out. I stopped.

Froze.

What if ? I'd thought. What if private really does mean private?

Like, private from me?

The thought had been appalling. And terrifying. My imagination went into overdrive.

A mistress? Porn? He loved someone else?

Following these thoughts, the guilt.

How could you think that? It's Matt. Your Matt.

I'd left the room, tucked away Mr. 1for-two-me, and tried not to think about it.

He popped up every now and then. Like now.

Well? Truth or denial?

"Smoky?" Callie calls again.

"Coming," I reply and clamber down the ladder.

I still feel Matt.

Waiting.

1for-two-me.

Packing away the past, it occurs to me, is messy stuff. We're standing in the doorway of Alexa's room. I can feel discomfort looming in the not-far-off. Pain is a little sharper here, though still tolerable.

"Pretty room," Elaina murmurs.

"Alexa liked the girly-girl stuff," I say, smiling. It is a little girl's dream room. The bed is queen-sized, with a canopy, and it's covered with purples of every possible hue. The comforter and pillows are thick and lush and inviting. "Lie down and drown in us," they say.

One quarter of the floor is covered in Alexa's stuffed animal collection. They range from small to big to huge, and the species run the gamut from the identifiable to the fantastic.

"Lions and tigers and heffalumps, oh my," Matt used to joke. I take it all in, and a thought comes to me. I wonder at the fact that it never occurred to me before.

Bonnie has slept with me since the day I brought her home. I don't think she's ever entered this bedroom.

Be accurate, I chide myself. You never brought her in here, that's the truth. Never asked her if she might want a king's ransom of stuffed animals, or a purple explosion of bedsheets and blankets. Time to fix that , I think. I kneel down next to Bonnie. "Do you want anything in here, sweetheart?" I ask her. She looks at me, her eyes searching mine. "You're welcome to whatever you want." I squeeze her hand. "Really. You can have the whole room."

She shakes her head. No, thank you, she's saying. I've put away childish things, that look says.

"Okay, babe," I murmur, standing up.

"How do you want to handle this room, Smoky?" Elaina's gentle voice startles me.

I run a hand through Bonnie's hair as I look around the room.

"Well," I start to say--and then my cell phone rings. Callie rolls her eyes. "Here we go."

"Barrett," I answer.

Sorry, I mouth to them.

A deep voice rumbles. "Smoky. It's Alan. Sorry to bother you today, but we got a situation."

Alan is overseeing the unit while I'm on vacation. He's more than competent; the fact that he's felt the need to call me raises my antennae.

"What is it?"

"I'm in Canoga Park, standing in front of a house. Scene of a triple homicide. Bad scene. Twist is, there's a sixteen-year-old girl inside. She's got a gun to her head and says she'll only talk to you."

"She asked for me by name?"

"Yep."

I'm silent, processing.

"Really sorry about this, Smoky."

"Don't worry about it. We were just about to take a break, anyway. Give me the address and Callie and I will meet you there soonest."

I jot down the address and hang up.

The man had gotten it wrong: Death doesn't take a holiday, apparently. Par for the course. As always, I am living my life on multiple levels: Make this a home, decide if I am going to leave this home and go to Quantico, go stop a young woman from blowing her brains out. I can walk and chew gum at the same time, hurrah for me. I look at Bonnie. "Sweetheart--" I begin, but stop as she nods her head. It's okay, go, she is saying.

I look at Elaina. "Elaina--"

"I'll watch Bonnie."

Relief and gratitude, that's what I feel.

"Callie--"

"I'll drive," she says.

I crouch down, facing Bonnie. "Do me a favor, sweetheart?"

She gives me a quizzical look.

"See if you can figure out what we should do with all those stuffed animals."

She grins. Nods.

"Cool." I straighten up, turn to Callie. "Let's go."

Bad things are waiting. I don't want them to get impatient.

7

"ALL TUCKED AWAY," CALLIE MUSES AS WE PULL ONTO THE SUB-urban street in Canoga Park.

She's talking to herself more than to me, but as I look around, I understand the observation. Canoga Park is a part of Los Angeles County. Los Angeles doesn't provide a lot of distance between the suburbs and the city proper. You can be on a street lined with businesses, drive two blocks, and find yourself in a residential neighborhood. It was a casual transformation; traffic lights gave way to stop signs and things just got more quiet . The city hustled nearby, never stopping, always there, while the homes were here, "tucked away."

The street we'd turned onto was in one of those neighborhoods, but it has lost that quiet feeling. I spot at least five cop cars, along with a SWAT van and two or three unmarked vehicles. The obligatory helicopter is circling above.