chapter 53

But it wasn’t over.

Four days passed. Grace got better. She went home that first afternoon. Cora and Vickie stayed with them. Cram came by that first day too, but Grace asked him to leave. He nodded and complied.

The media went crazy, of course. They only knew bits and pieces, but the fact that the notorious Jimmy X had resurfaced only to be murdered had been enough to send them into a total state of derangement. Perlmutter set up a patrol car in front of Grace’s house. Emma and Max still went to school. Grace spent most of her days in the hospital with Jack. Charlaine Swain kept her company a lot.

Grace thought about the photograph that started it all. She now figured that one of the four members of Allaw had found a way to get it in her packet. Why? That was harder to answer. Perhaps one of them realized that the eighteen ghosts would never sleep.

But then there was the question of timing: Why now? Why after fifteen years?

There was no shortage of possibilities. It could have been the release of Wade Larue. It could have been the death of Gordon MacKenzie. It could have been all the anniversary coverage. But most likely, what made the most sense, was that the return of Jimmy X set everything in motion.

Who really was to blame for what happened that tragic night? Was it Jimmy for stealing the song? Jack for attacking him? Gordon MacKenzie for firing a weapon under those circumstances? Wade Larue for illegally carrying a gun, panicking, and firing more shots into an already frenzied crowd? Grace did not know. Small ripples. All of this carnage had not started with some big conspiracy. It had started with two small-time bands playing some dive in Manchester.

There were still holes, of course. Lots of them. But they would have to wait.

There are some things more important than the truth.

Now, right now, Grace stared at Jack. He lay still in his hospital bed. His doctor, a man named Stan Walker, sat next to her. Dr. Walker folded his hands and used his gravest voice. Grace listened. Emma and Max waited in the corridor. They wanted to be there. Grace didn’t know what to do. What was the call on this one?

She wished that she could ask Jack.

She did not want to ask him why he had lied to her for so long. She did not want an explanation for what he had done that terrible night. She did not want to ask him how he’d happened by her on the beach that day, if he had been intentionally seeking her out, if that was why they fell in love. She didn’t want to ask Jack any of that.

She only wanted to ask him one last question: Did he want his children by his bedside when he died?

In the end Grace let them stay. The four of them gathered as a family for the last time. Emma cried. Max sat there, his eyes trained on the tile floor. And then, with a gentle tug at her heart, Grace felt Jack leave for good.

chapter 54

The funeral was a major blur. Grace usually wore contact lenses. She took them off that day and did not wear her glasses. Everything seemed a little easier to handle in the blur. She sat in the front pew and thought about Jack. She did not picture him in the vineyards or on the beach anymore. The sight she remembered best, the sight she would always carry with her, was Jack holding Emma after she was born, the way his big hands held the little wonder, carrying her as if afraid she’d break, scared he might hurt her, the way he turned to Grace and looked at her in pure awe. That was what she saw.

The rest, all she now knew about his past, was white noise.

Sandra Koval came to the funeral. She stayed in the back. She apologized that their father could not come. He was elderly and ill. Grace said that she understood. The two women did not embrace. Scott Duncan was there. So were Stu Perlmutter and Cora. Grace had no idea how many people showed up. She didn’t much care either. She held her two children and fought her way through it.

Two weeks later the children went back to school. There were issues, of course. Both Emma and Max were suffering separation anxieties. That was normal, she knew. Grace walked them into school. She was there before the bell rang to pick them up. They were hurting. That, Grace knew, was the price you paid for having a kind and loving father. The hurt never goes away.

But now it was time to end this.

Jack’s autopsy.

Some would say that the autopsy, when she read and understood it, was what sent Grace’s world off kilter again. But that really wasn’t it. The autopsy was merely independent confirmation of what she already knew. Jack had been her husband. She had loved him. They had been together for thirteen years. They had two children together. And while he had clearly kept secrets, there were some things a man cannot hide.

Some things must truly remain on the surface.

So Grace knew.

She knew his body. She knew his skin. She knew every muscle on his back. So she really did not need the autopsy. She did not need to see the results of the full-exterior examination to tell her what she already knew.

Jack had no major scars.

And that meant that – despite what Jimmy had said, despite what Gordon MacKenzie had told Wade Larue – Jack had never been shot.

First Grace visited the Photomat and found Fuzz Pellet Josh. Then she drove back down to Bedminster, to the condominium development where Shane Alworth’s mother resided. After that, she plowed through the legal work on Jack’s family trust. Grace knew a lawyer from Livingston who now worked as a sports agent in Manhattan. He set up plenty of trusts for his wealthy athletes. He went through the paperwork and explained enough for her to understand.

And then, when she had all the facts pretty much down, she visited Sandra Koval, her dear sister-in-law, at the offices of Burton and Crimstein in New York City.

Sandra Koval did not meet her in the reception area this time. Grace was inspecting the photo gallery, stopping again at the shot of the wrestler, Little Pocahontas, when a peasant-bloused woman told her to come this way. She led Grace down the corridor and into the exact same conference room where she and Sandra had first talked a lifetime ago.

“Ms. Koval will be with you shortly.”

“Great.”

She left her alone. The room was set up exactly the same as last time, except now there was a yellow legal pad and a Bic pen in front of each seat. Grace did not want to sit. She did her own version of a pace, more a limp-pace, and ran it over in her head again. Her cell phone buzzed. She spoke briefly and then snapped it off. She kept it close. Just in case.

“Hi, Grace.”

Sandra Koval swept into the room like a turbulent weather front. She headed straight for the little refrigerator, opened it and peered inside.

“Can I get you something to drink?”

“No.”

With her head still in the mini-fridge, she asked, “How are the children?”

Grace did not reply. Sandra Koval dug out a Perrier. She twisted the top off and sat.

“So what’s up?”

Should she test the temperature with her toe or just jump in? Grace chose the latter. “You didn’t take on Wade Larue as a client because of me,” she began without preamble. “You took him on because you wanted to stay close to him.”

Sandra Koval poured the Perrier into a glass. “That might – hypothetically – be true.”

“Hypothetically?”

“Yes. I may, in a hypothetical world, have represented Wade Larue to protect a certain family member. But if I had, I would have still made sure that I represented my client to the best of my ability.”