coiled out like a snake waking from a nap. He took the gun from the holster and pushed it into his pocket. "Thank you, Jack," he whispered. "You can have your car back in one piece after all."
He slowly wound through the park until he found a place, a thick clump of trees beyond the zoo grounds. Maybe it would be a long time before they found him there, time enough to buffer the shock.
"But what will this do to Trissa?" Augusta's words resounded in his brain.
"It will save her. It will save her," was all his aching heart could reply. He parked his car in the zoo lot and hiked back to the woods.
His feet scuffed along through a carpet of dead leaves and uncurling ferns and Johnny-jump-ups like tiny pansies winking up at him. "I thought you said pansies always made you smile," he remembered saying to Trissa once and could almost feel her warm body crushed against him.
When? When had he said that to her? Did it really make any difference now? When he reached a spot where the tree trunks blocked all view of the open meadows or the road, he stopped and leaned against a tree, letting his knees crumple under him and his back slide down the scratchy bark.
"Well, Duncan, success at last." He held the gun in his hand, staring at its short black barrel. He hadn't thought to check that it was loaded. He snapped it open. Good old Jack, as reliable as a Boy Scout for being prepared.
Dabbles of sun filtered down on him through the feathery, new leaves. The God damned birds twittered with maddening good cheer. "What are you waiting for? You've dawdled with this business thirteen years already," he muttered to himself.
"God take you, Nicholas," he heard Duncan's voice command and he put the barrel in his mouth. Each breath he drew after that shout echoed through his brain and brought a flash of memory -- of Danny and Jill and his mother, crouched on the floor, whimpering until the shots split the air deafening him. Of Valerie, her body crushed and cooling next to his in the chill, dark of the trunk. Of the trial, his father standing, screaming his vile taunts. Of the night after, the leather belt around his neck, the buckle cutting his chin. Of Doreen, broken and bleeding in the snow. Of Cynthia, Janey, Beth.
Of himself trudging through the blinding snow then giving up and waiting.
Of Trissa, kneeling on the railroad tracks, waiting.
"You're as crazy as I am."
"Then we were made for each other."
"You are kindred spirits."
"But what will this do to Trissa?"
Her voice came to him in a clear and trembling whisper out of a memory he did not know he had. "I thought of the train and how it would hurt. But not so much. And not for so long. Then I thought of the after when it would be dark and painless and empty. And you would not be there."
"...dark and painless and empty. And you would not be there."
"You would not be there."
He took his finger from the trigger and pulled the barrel from his mouth. He snapped the gun open again and, one by one, he removed the bullets and tossed them away from him into the woods. "Sorry to disappoint you, Duncan. Again."
From far away he heard Trissa's voice calling, "Nicholas! Nicholas! Cole?"
But he didn't know if it was really her or his mind playing tricks on him again.
*****
They had fanned out in three directions from Jack's car when they found it, Augusta and Roger together, Jack, Fitapaldi, and Trissa. The doctor didn't want her to go alone, but she insisted. They had to cover as much ground as possible. She had seen the empty holster on Jack's front seat, though they had tried to shield it from her view. She knew what little time they had. She knew it might already be too late.
When she first saw him slumped against the tree, his golden head dipped almost to his knees, she thought it was too late. It seemed her heart grabbed her and choked her as she stumbled blindly over the tree roots toward him. He did not raise his eyes to her until she bent over him and timidly touched a curl of his hair.
"Trissa?" He lurched to his feet and into her embrace. "I'm sorry. I -- I was too weak."
She hugged him fiercely. "Oh, no. Oh, no, you're strong. You have experienced things