“John-”

“Let me finish. I hated Susan for it at first. But I missed her, too. And I hated missing her. Then I started blaming myself. Homicide detective gets called out in the middle of the night all the time, doesn’t make for much of a home life.

“Anyway, one night, she came back. Her ghost, I suppose. You think I’m crazy?”

“Not at all,” I said.

“Well, I don’t scare easy, but that scared the living hell out me. She asked me to forgive her.”

“She could talk?”

“Yes, can’t your husband talk?”

“It’s not my husband, John.” I turned to Chance. “Can I tell him?”

Chance nodded.

“He’s here, now?” Russo asked, startled.

“Yes, he’s here. It’s Chance Devereaux. He started visiting me the night before the funeral. He wants to be buried in a Catholic cemetery, but as a suicide, they wouldn’t allow it.”

“He told you it wasn’t suicide?”

“Yes. He can’t talk; I think it has something to do with the way he died. But he isn’t so hard to understand once you get used to it. He made it clear that Louise drugged his drink, then shot him while he slept.”

“We’ve suspected something like that,” John said. “He had enough barbiturates in his system to make it seem unlikely that he would have shot himself; but it was right on the borderline, nothing solid enough to convict. Still, I wondered why he would take sleeping pills if he planned on shooting himself that same night. What would the point be? Between that and the insurance, she wasn’t completely in the clear.”

I watched Chance walk over to the fireplace. John followed my gaze.

“He walked over here?” he asked, taking a step back.

“Yes. He wants us to look inside it, under the metal plate in the hearth. The one over the hole where you clean out the ashes.”

Russo got down on all fours and lifted the plate. I wasn’t too surprised when he pulled out a sheaf of papers. Chance touched me on the shoulder, then disappeared.

The papers proved that Chance had warned Emery about the tank eight months before the disaster. One of Emery’s fingerprints had been left at the cabin, on the door to a storage shed. Facing prosecution in the deaths of the workers as well, Emery later broke down and confessed to helping Louise kill David, and told police that Louise had killed Chance. He had been having an affair with Louise Devereaux for the past six months. They met on Wednesdays. They were both convicted of murder.

I saw Chance one other time; when I signed the forms saying I would pay to have his body moved to the Catholic cemetery. He met me near his old grave, and hugged me. He was still warm.

John Russo and I married a year later. When the going gets rough, we tell one another ghost stories.

Unharmed

Pacing my small cell, trying not to listen to the racket around me.

They’ve just brought a meal to me, and I’m going to settle down to enjoy it. In the two days since Cindy’s death, I haven’t been able to get enough to eat. The authorities don’t know what to make of my appetite.

They’ve been by to see me a couple of times now; can’t make up their minds. I’ve watched them eyeing me, trying to figure out what went wrong, why I didn’t save her. Wondering if I killed her, or if it was an accident. They aren’t convinced of my innocence, but they’re equally unsure of my guilt.

I’ll tell you what I couldn’t begin to try to explain to them. Decide for yourself.

The last time I lost my appetite, I was with Cindy. We were together that evening, as we were every evening…

She set the meal before me with a small flourish. I stared at it, only half-listening to her prattle mindlessly as she fumbled around in the kitchen, dishing up her own dinner. She insisted on this, this “eating in” every evening. And believe me, she was no gourmet cook. I could barely force myself to eat the unappetizing lumps in gravy that were supposed to resemble beef stew. Not that I know the first thing about cooking, but I wouldn’t have minded going out once in awhile, nabbing a bite on my own. Fat chance. Cindy wouldn’t let me out of her sight.

Out of her sight. Poor choice of words, Alex.

Cindy was blind. That sense of duty I felt toward her, that protectiveness that is a part of my nature, welled up in me and made me feel ashamed. As penance, I finished off the last of the tasteless gruel.

Don’t let me mislead you. I didn’t stay with Cindy out of guilt or pity. I knew she was blind when I met her. I thought, at the time, that I was fully prepared to live with that fact. Being with her gave me a sense of purpose unlike any I had known before. I thought I loved her. I had even thought she loved me.

From the moment we met, though, Cindy had taken over my life. I admit that I allowed her to do so. In the beginning, I had an illusion of power. I was piloting her through the obstacles of life. What I failed to understand at the time was that I was also becoming completely dependent on her, not just for material things, but for companionship and a sense of being needed.

I was shuffled around a lot as a kid; I confess that I wouldn’t know my own mother if I met her on the street. Cindy offered stability, a chance to stay in one place. You don’t know how much I longed for that as a kid. But even the chance to have a place called home doesn’t explain how much I needed her. The praise and affection she lavished on me in the beginning became all-important to me; I would have done anything for her. But these days, she doled out her praise and affection in a miserly fashion.

Some might say I was ungrateful. After all, I was better off than a great many others. I wasn’t homeless, begging for a hand-out. Many in my position, with my background and limited education, would never live so well.

To our friends, we still appeared to be devoted to one another. Few of them realized that my devotion was a chore or knew how hard I had to work at it. Even the ones who knew how demanding Cindy could be still idealized our relationship.

I wondered at that, scratching my head in puzzlement. She heard the sound, of course. “Alex! Will you quit that scratching!” she snapped. I silently sulked off to my favorite chair. I didn’t like admitting she was right. Lately I had gotten into the nervous habit of scratching my head, and it annoyed the heck out of her. I’m sure it bothered her as much as her whistling between her teeth bothered me. Our nervous habits had started grating on each other.

Face it, Alex, I thought with a sigh, everything about her is grating on you.

Perhaps you think I was unnecessarily harsh in my evaluation, especially considering her physical challenges. Not so. Through my association with her, I met other blind people, and have found that they are as varied in personality as the sighted. I can honestly say that I would have been happy to be a friend or even more than a friend to a great many of them. Cindy would have driven me crazy even if she’d had 20/20 vision.

But I was stuck with her. My dependency on her for my livelihood was never far from her mind. Or mine. At night, I often dreamed of running away, living on my own. So vivid were these dreams that I would often startle myself awake. “What were you dreaming, Alex?” Cindy would ask sleepily. “You’ve been running in your sleep.”

I’ve been running away from you, I wanted to say, but it was no use. She always fell right back to sleep after asking the question. What did she really care about my dreams?

I heard her whistling to herself as she finished cleaning up the dishes. That damned whistling was the worst of it. I tried in every way I could think of to let her know it annoyed me, but to no avail. She didn’t understand me at all.