who needs a stick to fetch. “Hey, you got some of that smelling stuff?” he said.
Apparently it had become universally accepted that Dexter was the Eternal Keeper of the Smelling Salts. I had no idea where that baffling canard had come from, but in truth, I was completely without.
Luckily, Mrs. Aldovar apparently was not interested in sniffing anything. She gripped my arm, and Deke’s, and murmured, “Help me up, please,” and the two of us heaved her to her feet. I looked around for a horizontal surface uncluttered by law enforcement where we could deposit her, and spotted a dining table complete with chairs in the next room.
Mrs. Aldovar did not need a great deal of help getting into the chair. She sat right down as if she had done the same thing many times before.
I looked back into the next room. Special Agent Recht and her generic companion were edging their way toward the door, and Deborah was very carefully not noticing them. She was instead busy chatting with Mr. Aldovar. Angel Batista-No-Relation was standing on the patio, just outside a sliding glass door, dusting the glass for fingerprints. And I knew that just down the hallway, the huge bloodstain still hung on the wall, calling for Dexter. This was my world, the land of violence, gore, and mayhem. Both personally and professionally, this was where I had lived my whole life.
But today it had lost the rosy glow that had for so many years kept me enchanted. I did not want to be here, browsing through the residue of someone else’s happy frolic—and even more, I did not want to be off on a carefree romp of my own. I needed different vistas today. I had come to the old turf unwillingly, out of duty to Deborah, and now I wanted to go back to my new country, where all was bright and beautiful, the Land of Lily Anne.
Deborah glanced up at me without any real recognition and then back to Mr. Aldovar. I was scenery to her, part of what a crime scene looked like, Dexter as Background. Enough: It was time for me to leave, to go back to Lily Anne and Wonder.
And so without lingering for any awkward farewells, I slid out the door and walked back to my car, where it still sat nestled in by the Dumpster. I drove to the hospital in the prelude to evening rush hour, a magical time when everyone on the road felt empowered and entitled to all the lanes at once because they had left work early, and in my past life I had taken great joy in the sight of so much naked contempt for life. Today it left me cold. These people were endangering others, not something I could tolerate in a world where I would soon be driving Lily Anne to ballet lessons. I drove at a careful ten miles per hour over the speed limit, which only served to enrage most of the other drivers. They flew past me on both sides, honking and extending their middle fingers, but I held firm to my safe and sane course, and soon I arrived at the hospital, without any actual exchange of gunfire.
As I came off the elevator on the floor for maternity I paused for a second as the faint echo of a whisper rattled off the back wall of Dexter’s Dark Subbasement. This was where I had almost seen somebody who might have been watching me for some reason. But the thought came out sounding so ludicrous that I could do no more than shake my head and send a distant Tut-tut to the Passenger. “Almost Somebody” indeed. I moved on past, turning the corner to the nursery.
All my new friends at the nursery window were gone, replaced by a new crop, and Lily Anne, too, was no longer visible on the other side of the glass. I had a moment of crippling disorientation—where had she gone?—but then logic reasserted itself. Of course—it had been several hours. They would not leave her there alone and on display for so long. Lily Anne would be with her mother, feeding and growing closer. I felt a small surge of jealousy. Rita would have this important and intimate bond with the baby that I could never know—a head start on Lily Anne’s affections.
But happily for all, I heard the soft and mocking chuckle that lives inside, and I had to agree. Come now, Dexter: If you