with the dead had been a couple of years before, when his head printer had died in a car crash. Alex had been sad at the loss of a man he'd liked as well as relied on professionally, but he couldn't pretend to a grief he hadn't felt.
This was different. Ziggy had been part of his life for over thirty years. They'd shared every rite of passage; they were the touchstones for each other's memories. Without Ziggy, he felt cast adrift from his own history. Alex cast his mind back to their last meeting. He and Lynn had spent two weeks in California in the late summer. Ziggy and Paul had joined them for three days hiking in Yosemite. The sky had blazed blue, the sunlight casting the astonishing mountains into sharp relief, their every detail clear as the acid etching on a printing plate. On their final evening together, they'd driven cross country to the coast, checking in to a hotel on a bluff overlooking the Pacific. After dinner, Alex and Ziggy had retired to a hot tub with a six-pack from the local micro-brewery and congratulated themselves on having their lives so well sorted. They'd talked about Lynn's pregnancy and Alex had been gratified by Ziggy's obvious delight.
"You going to let me be the godfather?" he'd demanded, chinking his amber ale bottle against Alex's.
"I don't think we'll be doing the christening thing," Alex said. "But if the parents push us into it, there's nobody I'd rather have."
"You won't regret it," Ziggy said.
And Alex knew he wouldn't have. Not for a second. But that was something that would never happen now.
The following morning, Ziggy and Paul had left early for the long drive back to Seattle. They'd stood on the deck of their cabin in the pearly dawn light, hugging farewell. Another thing that would never happen again.
What was the last thing Ziggy had called out of the window of their SUV as they'd set off down the trail? Something about making sure Alex indulged Lynn's every whim because it would get him into practice for parenthood. He couldn't remember the exact words, nor what he'd shouted in reply. But it was typical of Ziggy that their last exchange had been about taking care of someone else. Because Ziggy had always been the one who took care.
In any group, there's always one person who ends up as the rock, who provides the shelter that allows the weaker members of the tribe to grow into their own strengths. For the Laddies fi' Kirkcaldy, that had always been Ziggy. It wasn't that he was bossy, or a control freak. He just had a natural aptitude for the role, and the other three had been the constant beneficiaries of Ziggy's capacity for getting things sorted. Even in their adult lives, it had always been Ziggy that Alex had turned to when he needed a sounding board. When he'd been considering the huge jump of shifting from gainful employment to taking a chance on setting up his own company, they'd spent a weekend in New York thrashing out the pros and cons, and Ziggy's confidence in his abilities had, if Alex was honest, been more of a clincher than Lynn's conviction he could make a go of it.
That was something else that would never happen again.
"Alex?" His wife's voice cut into his numb reverie. He'd been so locked inside himself, he hadn't noticed her car arrive, nor the sound of her footfalls. He half turned toward the faint waft of her perfume.
"Why are you sitting in the dark? And why are you home so early?" There was no accusation in her voice, just concern.
Alex shook his head. He didn't want to share the news.
"Something's wrong," Lynn insisted, covering the distance between them and dropping into the chair next to him. She put a hand on his arm. "Alex? What is it?"
At the sound of her disquiet, the anesthetic of shock vanished abruptly. A searing pain knifed through him, taking his breath away momentarily. He met Lynn's worried eyes and flinched. Without words, he put his hand out and laid it gently on the swell of her stomach.
Lynn covered his hand with hers. "Alex?tell me what's happened."
His voice sounded alien to him, a cracked and broken simulacrum of his normal articulation. "Ziggy," he managed. "Ziggy's dead."
Lynn's mouth opened. A frown of incredulity gathered. "Ziggy?"
Alex cleared his throat. "It's true," he said. "There was a fire. At the house. In the night."
Lynn shivered. "No. Not