“And what did you do?”

She smiled. “Made faces, of course. Trisha could tell you. I'm not into water or gritty sand. I take my beach experience on oversized towels with an oversized umbrella and a good paperback novel. That's what made it so funny.”

She turned to him finally, looked him in the eye. “Tell me about your wife. If memories are so good, even when they hurt, then tell me about her.”

“Her name was Cindy, she was beautiful, and I loved her.”

“How did you meet?”

“Hiking up in the White Mountains. We were both members of the Appalachian Mountain Club. She was twenty-seven. I was thirty. She beat me going up Mount Washington, but I beat her coming down.”

“What did she do?”

“She was an electrical engineer.”

“Really?” Jillian looked back at him in surprise. Somehow, she had pictured this phantom wife as someone… less brainy, she supposed. Maybe a blonde, the perfect foil for Griffin's dark good looks.

“She worked for a firm in Wakefield,” Griffin said. “Plus she liked to tinker on the side. In fact, she'd just come up with a new type of EKG before she got sick. Got the patent and everything. Cindy S. Griffin, granted a patent for protection under U.S. copyright laws. I still have the certificate hanging on the wall.”

“She was very good?”

“Cindy sold the rights to her invention for three million dollars,” Griffin said matter-of-factly. “She was very good.”

Jillian stared at him. She honestly couldn't think of anything to say. “You don't… you don't have to work.”

“I wouldn't say that.”

“Three million dollars…”

“There are lots of reasons to work. You have money, Jillian. You still work.”

“My mother has money. That's different. I want, need, my own.”

Griffin smiled at her. “And my wife made money,” he said gently. “Maybe I also want, need, my own. Besides”-his tone changed-“I gave it all away.”

“You gave it all away?”

“Yeah, shortly after the Big Boom. Let me tell you, if going postal on a suspected pedophile doesn't convince people that you're nuts, giving away millions of dollars certainly does.”

“You gave it all away.” She was still working on this thought. Trying to come to terms with a police detective who must make, what, fifty thousand a year, giving away three million dollars. Well, okay, one point five million after taxes.

Griffin was regarding her steadily. She was surprised he was telling her all this. But then again, maybe she wasn't. He hadn't really needed to come to her home last night in person. He really didn't need to clarify her donation to Father Rondell face-to-face. Yet he kept showing up and she kept talking. They were probably both insane.

“When Cindy first signed the deal,” Griffin said, “first negotiated selling the rights, it was the most amazing thing. For five years she'd been working on this widget, and then, voilà, not only did she make it work, but she sold it for more money than we ever thought we'd have. It was amazing. Exciting. Wonderful. But then she got sick. One moment she was my vibrant, happy wife, and the next she was a doctor's diagnosis. Advanced pancreatic cancer. They gave her eight months. She only made it to six.”

“I'm sorry.”

“When Cindy had earned the money, I liked it.” He shrugged. “Hell, three million dollars, what's not to like? She took to shopping at Nordstrom, we started talking about a new home, maybe even a boat. It was kind of funny at the time. Surreal. We were two little kids who couldn't believe someone had given us all this loot. But then she got sick, and then she was gone. And the money… It became an albatross around my neck. Like maybe I'd made some unconscious deal with the devil. Gain a fortune. Lose my wife.”

“Guilt,” Jillian said softly.

“Yeah. You can't get anything by us Catholic boys. Probably a shame, too. Cindy wasn't like that. Up until the bitter end, she was thinking about me, trying to prepare me.” Griffin smiled again, but this time the smile was bittersweet. “She was the one who was dying, but she understood I had the tougher burden to bear.”

“You had to live after she was gone.”

“I would've traded places with her in a heartbeat,” Griffin said quietly. “I would've climbed gladly into that hospital bed. Taken the pain, taken the agonizing wasting away, suffered the death. I would've done… anything. But we don't get to choose which one of us dies and which one of us lives.”

Jillian nodded silently. She understood what he was saying. She'd have given her life to save Trish.

“So here we are,” she said at last. “I gave my money to a suspected rapist's son to assuage my guilt. And you gave yours to…?”

“American Cancer Society.”

“But of course.”

He smiled at her again. “But of course.”

“How long has Cindy been gone?”

“Two years.”

Her voice grew softer. “Do you still miss her?”

“All of the time.”

“I'm not doing a good job of getting over Trish.”

“It's supposed to hurt.”

“She wasn't just my sister. She was my child. I was supposed to protect her.”

“Look at me, Jillian. I can bench-press my own body weight, run a five-minute mile, shoot a high-powered rifle and take out pretty much any shithead in this state. But I couldn't save my own wife. I didn't save my own wife.”

“You can't fight cancer.”

Griffin shrugged. “What is someone like Eddie Como if not a disease?”

“I didn't stop him. I was late, so late. Then I was down in Trish's apartment, seeing her on the bed. And I knew… I knew what had happened, what he had done, but then he came at me. Knocked me to the floor, and I tried. I tried so hard. I thought if I could just break free, find the car keys, go after his eyes. I'm smart, I'm well-educated, I run my own business. What's the point of all that if I couldn't break free of him? What's the point if I couldn't save my sister?”

Griffin moved closer. His eyes were dark, so blue. She thought she could drown in those depths, but of course they both knew that she wouldn't. And then she thought that maybe he would touch her again, and she didn't know if that would be the nicest thing to happen to her, or the very worst.

“Jillian,” he said quietly. “Your sister loves you.”

Jillian put her head in her hands then. And still he didn't touch her. Of course he didn't touch her. For he was still a homicide detective and she was still a murder suspect and it was one thing to catch her as she was falling and quite another to cradle her against his chest. And then there was a new sound in the background. Another vehicle, bigger this time, more guttural, the sound made by a white news van. The press was finally as smart as Sergeant Griffin.

And Jillian cried. She wept for her sister. She wept for Sylvia Blaire. She wept for the grief it had taken her a full year to finally confront. She wept for those moments in the dark apartment, when she'd tried so hard and failed so smashingly. And then she wept for those days, not so long ago, when Trish had run happily along this beach. Days and days and days that would never come again.

And then she heard the guttural engine die. She heard the van door slide open, the sound of feet hitting her gravel drive. She raised her head. She wiped her tears. She prepared to fight the next war. And she thought…

Days and days and days that would never come again…