pines stirring in the wind: the look and feel of Lucy’s body that first time, the sibilant whisper of pine branches overhead. God he loved her. God he had no choice. He gave her his mother’s wedding ring, but that was much later, and in spite of forces marshaled against them. He can still see the way it looked, sliding onto her left hand.
Given what happened later he and Lucy were fated, but in his own way Walker is blind and persistent as a zombie: dead, but he won’t lie down. The night he pressed the ring on Lucy they were in such distress that he was never clear where she went afterward, or where she hid the ring. He loved her so much!
The son of destruction. Walker backed out of her life to protect her, and he had to do it without telling her why; he had no choice. It destroyed him, but he would do anything to keep her safe. If only he’d been able to explain! He has spent his life since then researching the anomaly, meditating, trying to get to the truth of it. Years, with no answers. Years of grief.
Astounding need froze him where he stood, under the pines outside the Chaplin house. Whether out of need for the girl or the moment or who he used to be, Walker’s heart cried to heaven, I want it back.
But they were gone: Lucy. The boy. Whatever they were to each other was beyond all retrieving and Walker knew it. The only thing he can hope to get back is the ring. Not that having it would make anything better; it’s just an object he wants to hold. So with Brad in the trunk and certain issues pending, Walker waited for the man in the house to finish what he was doing and go.
Time wore on.
What does he think he is, Walker wondered. Entitled? Taking his goddamn time. It was hard at first, but he has schooled himself in patience over the years since then. The young man inside the house was nobody he knew, nobody he had any reason to hate. He had to wait. OK then, he told himself without affect. For as long as it takes.
Squatting in the pine needles, he waited beyond waiting. Shut inside the trunk of the Beemer, Brad could damn well stew in his own fumes. Eventually he’d come to. If I’m going to do this, I have to do it soon.
Moving so slowly that he barely disturbed the air, Walker got to his feet. He circled the old stucco, looking in. The front rooms were seedy, but so richly furnished that he was struck by the disparity. The function of money and position in this town. He entered the house through the back window. In the kitchen he paused, absorbing the space.
Where he was listening for footsteps, drawers being rifled, something, the sound he did hear was so subtle that at first he couldn’t identify it. It was . . . Walker shrank into the shadow of the fridge while his mind scurried here, there. It was . . .
The slither of glossy pages. Slowly, he emerged, silent and insubstantial: just one more ghost of the past in this old house. Poised in the doorway, Walker studied the intruder kneeling with his back to the kitchen where he stood, absorbing the set of the kid’s head, the whorl in his sandy hair, the concentration with which he studied the book on the floor in front of him. Like a high school time capsule, The Swordfish lay open, disgorging the past.
Him, Walker thought, riveted by an unaccountable pressure on the heart. Me.
He caught his breath as if to speak.
There was no time for discovery and confrontation, no time for Walker Pike and this kid to face off and say what they had to say, because out there in the damaged trunk of Walker’s Beemer, Brad Kalen came awake. Walker’s mouth opened; looking down at the bent head of the stupendously vulnerable new person in his life, he was on the verge when the banging and howling began, fucking Brad.
The kid’s head came up.
The night cracked and Walker turned into something else. Fucking Brad. Fury boiled up. Get out of here before . . . He had to go! In a miracle of compression, Walker turned and left before the kid could turn and discover him.
Shit! His heart shuddered. Shit, he thought, without being clear exactly what he thought he was