“So where do we start?”

“The emergency room at Union Memorial, to make sure you haven’t screwed up your knee again. You’re no good to anyone if they put you on crutches.”

“Can I ask you one thing?”

They were driving through Tess’s neighborhood, the passenger seat pushed back as far as it could go, so Carl’s left leg was more or less extended and he could still hold the makeshift cold compress on it. Night had fallen, and there were no streetlamps here, so Tess could not see the expression on his face.

“Sure.”

“Why would it have been ridiculous?”

“What?”

“That guy said he thought we were having an affair. And you said, ”Don’t be ridiculous.“ ”

“Oh.” She understood what he was asking. Was it so impossible to think she might be interested in Carl Dewitt, with his freckles and his orange-red hair and his bowlegged stride? Yes, actually, it was. Only not because of the freckles and the orange-red hair and the bowlegs, but because of something else, some ineffable lack, the thing that people called chemistry.

But she did not think he would find that reason particularly comforting.

“I meant I wouldn’t cheat. Not on Crow.”

“How can you be so sure? Have you ever cheated?”

The simple thing was to say no. Tess did not owe Carl Dewitt that much honesty. After all, he had not always been truthful with her. But she felt caught on the question, as if she had stumbled into a bramble bush and needed to pull away with great care, separating herself one thorn at a time.

“I had a boyfriend who ran around on me. A lot. We broke up. But when he got engaged to someone else, I became the person he cheated with. I justified it at the time-I was his first love, I was his real love, blah, blah, blah-but there’s not any justification for what I did. To make things worse, he was killed one night. After we were… together. And I saw it. He died right in front of me.”

“Some people would see that as a fitting punishment.”

“Yes, I suppose they would. But Jonathan didn’t die because he was sleeping with me. It was… just a dumb accident.”

She lied because the story wearied her, she did not want to tell it again. Every time she told it, she ran the risk that it would be waiting for her when she closed her eyes. Assuming she ever closed her eyes again.

“So he died, and that made you decide you would never cheat again.”

“Yes.” No. Crow had left her once, when her yearning for another man became so pronounced that she told him about it for fear she would act on it. Carl didn’t need to know this either. “It’s complicated, being in a committed relationship that falls short of marriage.”

“So why don’t you get married?”

“I have a hunch that marriage becomes an excuse for people to start taking each other for granted.”

“I wouldn’t know. I never made it to marriage.”

“Scientists are beginning to say monogamy isn’t natural to any species. Not even swans. It’s a struggle, something you have to work at every day.”

“I never had to work at it when I dated. I didn’t date much, but when I did, I liked being with just one person.”

“Well, then, you’re better than most people I know. Crow and I have agreed to talk, if we start having feelings for someone else. That’s the best we can do-pledge to be honest about our weaknesses.”

“And so far-”

“So far, we’re doing fine.”

“I did have a girl once.” Something in Carl’s voice made it sound as if the once referred not just to a time long ago but to a literal number. He had a girl. Once.

“And?”

“She said I wasn’t ambitious enough. It made her mad that I was happy where I was, being a Toll Facilities cop, living in the town where I grew up. She said I should want more. So I tried. When I found… Lucy, I thought maybe this was my chance. I’d be a big guy, I’d be more. Then she broke up with me because I worked all the time.”

“Shit.”

“Yeah. If I had to do it over again, I’d go back to being me. The me I used to be. Then I’d find a girl who liked me just the way I was.”

“You still might.”

“Except I’m not that person anymore. Whatever happens, I’ll never be that person again.” Carl sighed. “I miss him.”

The conversation was unsettling. It was too delicate, too fraught. Tess felt as if she could make a million mistakes with a single syllable. What should she say? What did he want her to say?

“You should cut your hair,” Carl said.

“What?”

“Or not wear it in a braid. I saw this show, on A amp;E, the Criminal Justice files. A woman with her hair pulled back is too easy to grab. You jog, right?”

“Sometimes.”

“Well, imagine how easy it would be for someone to come up and-” His left hand caught her braid at a spot low on her neck. “You’d be in someone’s trunk.”

She saw the lights of Union Memorial up ahead, the white-pink blossoms of the cherry trees rippling in the wind.

“Al Capone donated those trees,” she said, hoping to change the subject and hoping Carl would let go of her hair. “It was in gratitude for the treatment he received here when he was in the throes of syphilis.”

“I know,” Carl Dewitt said. Of course he did. It was just the kind of thing he would know: gangsters and gangster films. “Al Capone. Now there was a guy who knew how to use a baseball bat. ”We are all members of a team.“ From The Untouchables. And they caught him because of tax evasion, not for murder or racketeering. Tax evasion.”

“You know,” Tess said, “I bet that’s how we’ll catch our killer.”

“For tax evasion?”

“For something small, some trivial detail he overlooked. No one manages to get everything right, all the time. God is in the details.”

“Really? I thought it was the devil.”

He should kill that guy, that Mickey Pechter. That creep, that pervert. He’s trouble. She handled him beautifully-of course-but the man should be taught a lesson. And it would be nice to demonstrate his loyalty to her even as he keeps his distance. The problem is, if Pechter is found dead, the police might focus on her because of her connection to the pervert, and that would be inconvenient. He cannot risk it, satisfying as it would be. And the thing is, it never is satisfying, not quite. The release can come only in the context of true intimacy. He has learned that the hard way.

Besides, Pechter was an unwitting accomplice, he owes him. Her adventure with him, and its legal consequences, provided the entrée he needed. He has never counted on luck, but neither has he spurned its opportunities. The first episode with Pechter had confused her, softened her up, opened her up in a way he never could have anticipated. The sook is ready for her jimmy. The rush is on.

It’s all about redemption, darling, all about redemption: yours and mine.

He always knew this part would be hard, but he also knew that waiting was his own peculiar talent. Now is the time to pull back, and not only because his picture is out there, floating around. Clean-shaven, his hair color altered, he is not that recognizable. But the point is to see if she can do it on her own. She has to negotiate the final part of the maze alone. He is not sure yet how she will do it, which is part of the joy. But he knows she will find her way. He has chosen well. At last.

He pulls his patchwork pillow to his face, inhales deeply, and thinks about Becca. What would she have been without him? Did she ever ask herself the same question? He likes to think she understood in the end, that she recognized her debt to him even as she reneged on it. She was young and, for all her seeming sophistication, not yet ready to accept the gifts he brought her. If only they had had more time. She would have understood how rare his love was, that it was a once-in-a-lifetime gift.

Funny, he always thought the only person capable of understanding his love for Becca was her father: Harry Harrison, mildly alcoholic, bumbling through the island, offending everyone and never knowing it. Becca’s senses were more acute, she was not fooled by the bland smiles of the Notting Islanders. But neither was she cowed. The locals came to respect her, if not accept her. Harrison was the perennial outsider, so outside he didn’t pick up on the mockery beneath the polite faces.