She sat down on the corner of the bed and continued pulling on her clothes.

‘But you did? Fall in love with me, I mean?’

‘Yes. I did.’ Kyra was still naked from the waist up. McCabe found himself looking at her breasts and felt his desire for her growing again. It felt like a weakness. Sensing this, she turned her back on him and slipped on her bra. She took a deep breath. ‘McCabe, I do love you. Though sometimes I’m not entirely sure why. So why don’t we both shut up before we do or say something we’ll both regret.’

She took the rest of her clothes, walked to the bathroom, and closed the door. He could hear sounds of running water. Kyra washing. The door opened. Kyra came out.

He knew he ought to drop the whole thing, but he didn’t. ‘Just talk to me. Okay?’ His voice was calmer now. Less combative. ‘You once told me you weren’t sure you could marry someone who could take another human life. Is that it?’

‘I did. But it’s not. I’ve come to terms with that,’ she said. ‘I believe you killed those men because you had to. I also believe, as you do, that the world is better off without them.’ She was looking around the room. ‘Have you seen my sweater?’

‘Over there on the rocker. Under my stuff.’

‘Thank you.’ She pulled it out and tugged it down over her head. Then she retrieved a brush from her bag and stood before the full-length mirror on the back of the bathroom door.

He stood behind her, watching her reflection, as she began brushing her short, curly blond hair. ‘You know there’s nothing wrong with what I do,’ he said. ‘It’s an honorable profession. It’s important. And it’s what I care about doing.’

She turned and stroked his cheek. ‘I know that. I respect it. I don’t want to stop you being who you are any more than I’d want you to stop me being an artist.’

‘So there’s gotta be something more.’

‘Alright.’ She sighed deeply. ‘Since you seem utterly incapable of letting it go, yes, there is something else. Something that frightens me, and, try as I might, it’s something I can’t seem to get out of my head.’

‘And what is it that frightens you?’

Kyra didn’t answer right away. She stood there looking at his reflection in the glass. Seconds passed. Then a minute. ‘Please,’ he said, ‘just tell me what it is.’

‘Alright, if you really must know, Carol Comisky frightens me. In fact, she scares the shit out of me. Do you remember Carol Comisky?’

Of course he remembered Carol Comisky. She was the widow of a cop who’d been killed the year before. He’d had his throat cut and bled to death trying to stop a killer from attacking a witness. The same guy came within a hair’s breadth of killing McCabe as well.

‘Yes. Kevin’s wife. Kevin’s widow. What about her?’

‘Remember her standing there at the funeral?’

She knew McCabe remembered. He remembered everything. All the words he ever heard or read. All the images he’d ever seen. At least all the ones that were important enough for him to notice when he first saw them. He had an eidetic memory. The scene at the cemetery reassembled itself in his mind in extraordinary detail, right down to the last blade of grass. ‘Mostly I see a woman in mourning. No crying. Just sort of a grim, determined look on her face. Black linen suit. Black shoes. Low heels. Dark hair cut short. No hat. Three kids, all under six, standing next to her. Next to them are Kevin’s parents. Standing right behind, Shockley and Fortier, in full dress uniform.’

‘Look closer, McCabe,’ she said. ‘Look at her face. Her expression isn’t grim. Or determined. It’s angry. She’s looking right at us. You and me. And she’s pissed. Pissed at Kevin for becoming a cop. Pissed at herself for marrying him. Pissed at you because you’re the one who sent him up to that room and, I suppose, because you’re still alive and he isn’t. She’s pissed at me, maybe me most of all, because I’m not alone and she is. What I see in Carol Comisky is a woman, about my age, standing there with a bunch of little kids next to an empty hole in the ground and seeing any chance she ever had in life going right into that hole along with her dead husband.’

‘Her dead husband the cop?’

‘That’s right. Her dead husband the cop. And you know what else she’s thinking? She’s thinking if only her husband had been an accountant or a salesman or a tugboat captain – almost anything but a cop – she wouldn’t be burying him, and she wouldn’t be raising those three kids on her own, and all the flowery speeches from Chief Shockley, all the twenty-one-gun salutes, all the bagpipe players marching up and down in their stupid kilts playing “Amazing Grace” won’t make a shit’s bit of difference.’

‘She may get married again.’

‘Yes, maybe, but the odds are against her. And even if she does, that’s not really my point.’

‘Then what is?’

‘I understand if we get married the chances are you won’t get killed. Most cops don’t, and, as you point out every chance you get, this is Portland, Maine, and not New York or Baltimore or Detroit. The problem is, McCabe, even assuming you live to a ripe old age, I’ll still have to lie here night after night for the next fifteen or twenty years, while you’re out chasing some nutcase, worrying that you may not come home, that I may never see you again. Maybe that’s unfair. Maybe it’s cowardly. I don’t know. I do know that right now, I just don’t want to put myself through that.’

‘Kyra, you want us to break up because you’re worrying about something that almost certainly won’t happen?’

‘No, I’m not saying that.’ Kyra put her arms on his shoulders and looked into his eyes. ‘I love you too much to even contemplate giving you up. All I’m saying is, every time I think about us getting married and maybe having children, the image of Carol Comisky pops into my head, along with your brother Tommy’s wife and all the others who’ve been left behind.’

McCabe’s narcotics cop brother Tommy, Tommy the Narc, had been shot dead by a drug dealer five years earlier. ‘I know it’s my problem, not yours,’ Kyra said. ‘Maybe someday I’ll get over it and we can go on with our lives. But for now I’m just not ready. I’ll let you know when I am.’

‘Kyra,’ he said, ‘people die. Truck drivers get killed in accidents. Cowboys get thrown from their horses. And God knows how many sedate business executives die every day from heart attacks or cancer. When Casey gets her license, and that’s less than two years away, I’m gonna lie awake at night like every other parent in the world dreading the idea that the phone might ring and somebody will tell me she’s been killed or maimed in some horrible crash. But that doesn’t mean I’m going to keep her from going out or getting a license. Or that I wish I never had her. We can’t stop living our lives together because something bad might happen.’

‘I know. You’re right,’ she said. ‘Just don’t push me for now. It’s something I have to work out for myself, and one way or another I will. It won’t be the reason I don’t marry you. If that makes sense.’

‘It doesn’t. Not much.’ He let it go, but he wasn’t sure what he was feeling. Something between anger at being rejected and fear that he might actually lose her.

Kyra nodded, then went to the hall closet, retrieved a fleece vest, and slipped it on over her sweater. Her bright red L.L. Bean down parka went over that. She headed for the door. Before going out, she paused. ‘Remember, tonight’s First Friday, and I’ve got those four new pieces hanging at North Space.’

‘Our cause for celebrating.’

‘Yes. And I’m very happy we did. I’m very happy I have you. And I’m sorry if I’m making you unhappy. But this will pass.’

From his perch on the window seat, McCabe stared down across the bay and wondered if he could summon the emotional energy to make small talk with the art crowd. On First Fridays most of the forty or so galleries in Portland stayed open late, many with opening receptions for new work. North Space was the most successful and best established of the lot. Kyra was proud Gloria Kelwin, North Space’s owner, thought so highly of her work. She’d be dreadfully disappointed if he didn’t show.