Time disappeared from my mind. I had no idea how much of it passed before he stopped struggling. But finally, as the air in my lungs gave out, so did my strength. I held onto him until the last possible instant before he slipped out of my fading grip.

Alone, I kept on twisting through the water – up, down, I didn’t know which, and it didn’t matter. I was done for, numb, too weak to move. My aching, burning lungs screamed for air. In a few more seconds, my body would be forced to inhale cold salt water.

But even as I paid the ultimate price, that peace was still with me.

Suddenly, ahead in the water, I saw a pale luminous form floating toward me. It had to be a hallucination. I had just been through about as much trauma as a human being could endure.

I stared at it in terror as it came closer. Then, with certainty, I knew everything was okay.

Because it was my wife, Maeve.

Everything fell into place. She was the reason I’d survived the crash – my guardian angel, watching over me just like I’d prayed for her to do.

But as I reached out to touch her glowing hand, she shook her head sadly and vanished.

The next thing I knew, there were other human shapes around me – big dark ones, with nothing ethereal about them. Rough hands gripped me and something rubbery was shoved between my teeth.

With my mouth forced open, I couldn’t hold my breath any longer. The dam burst, and my starving lungs sucked in desperately.

But instead of the bilgy water I’d been braced for, it was pure, sweet air – from the Aqua-Lung of a Coast Guard diver, I learned soon afterward, one of a team who’d helicoptered in to intercept the crashing Cessna, and plunged into the chilly bay to find me.

When those heroes got me back to the surface, other choppers and craft from the Coast Guard and city authorities were converging on the site, to contain the fire and search for survivors.

Thank God, I was the only one of those.

The crazy events weren’t quite over yet. After the Coast Guard guys dragged me onto the deck of a cutter, I stood up and actually tried to dive back in. It took two paramedics to strap me, kicking and screaming, into a stretcher.

“Take it easy, Detective,” one of them said, trying to calm me. “The pilot’s gone. It’s over.”

“To hell with him!” The muscles in my face and throat felt like they were tearing as I yelled out at the flame-filled dark water.

“Maeve!” I screamed. “Maeve!”

Epilogue. Hockey Styx

Chapter 97

In addition to my wrist, I’d broken an ankle and three ribs, which put me in the hospital for the next week. NYPD cops don’t get paid all that much, but our health insurance is hard to beat, thank God.

The pilot of the F-15 that shot us down, Major Vickers, actually came to my room the night before I got out, in order to apologize.

“Are you kidding me?” I’d said, clapping the baby-faced twenty-eight-year-old on the back. “With that freak, I should have called in an air strike sooner.”

A month later almost to the day, I hobbled into Holy Name Church, still on crutches. The altar looked like a formal garden. When the organ started, it played Handel’s Water Music – Maeve’s favorite.

We’d decided that her memorial would be entirely life-affirming, and all that sort of thing. We were even holding it on her birthday instead of the anniversary of her death.

So why, then, as the sad sweet chords swelled through me, did every cell in my body want to start sobbing?

I heard someone clear his throat in the vestibule behind me. It was my son, Brian. He was wearing a white robe, holding a brass crucifix. His fellow altar boys, Eddie and Ricky, stood just behind him with glowing white candles.

Father Seamus was approaching, checking his watch. “If you would be so kind,” he said, glaring at me.

“I’ll start when you do,” I said.

“Mike, a moment,” Seamus said in a serious tone as he led me over to the alcove where they did baptisms.

I thought I knew the sermon he was going to deliver. How much of a wretch I’d been in the last year. How I’d been too sarcastic, too spiteful, too pissed off. How I had to try to lose my anger or it would eat me up. He would have been right, too. I needed to stop. Stop being so hateful. Life was too short. If the Teacher taught me anything, it was that.

“Mike, listen,” Seamus whispered as he put a warm arm over my back. “It’s been almost a year now, and I just wanted to say how proud I am of you the way you’ve been holding your family together. Maeve’s proud of you, too. I know she is.”

What? I thought.

“To your seat now, boy. I have a mass to start.”

I hurried past pews packed with friends and family to the front row.

Chrissy smiled, as she did what she called “nuggling” in next to my waist and held my hand. She was fine now. In the first days after the incident, I’d noticed every so often a heart-sickening look of sadness pass across her cherub’s face, especially when the gang came to see me at the hospital. But recently, she’d started doing what kids do – moving on.

Something I could probably take a lesson from.

After the Gospel, Jane stood up and read – a poem by Anne Bradstreet, “In Reference to Her Children,” which she’d found folded in the back of one of Maeve’s cookbooks.

“My mom taught us exactly what Anne Bradstreet wanted to teach her kids,” Jane said, clearing her throat. “What was good, and what was ill, What would save life, and what would kill. Thus gone, amongst you I may live, And dead, yet speak and counsel give. Farewell, my birds, farewell, adieu, I happy am, if well with you.”

That was it. I couldn’t hold it back. I started crying. And believe me, I wasn’t the only one. I hugged Jane tight as she returned to the pew.

After the ceremony, the girls surprised me with a picnic lunch in Riverside Park. I looked out over the Hudson, remembering seeing Maeve as a glowing angel in the water. If that was just a hallucination, so be it. Bring them on.

But a part of me, the best part, didn’t think so.

I would see her again one day. Before, I had only hoped it was true, but now I knew it was.

I watched Eddie and Brian tossing a football. The doctor had told me my ankle wouldn’t be ready to walk on for another couple of weeks, but what did doctors know? I dropped my crutches, hobbled out to join them, and intercepted a pass. Chrissy and Shawna leaped up immediately, and I let them tackle me. That’s when the rest of my crew piled on. Even Seamus, who actually stripped the ball from my hands before merrily landing on my chest.

I closed my eyes as Meyer’s ugly words filled my ears.

Is this all life is worth? This is what gets you out of bed in the morning?

You better believe it, you son of a bitch, I thought. And wherever you are, I hope you’re still burning.