“You’re right.”

We pulled up at the newspaper and he got out and walked me in. I could hear the presses rolling. Snap out of it, I told myself, you’re lucky to be alive. I thanked Officer Sorenson, waved hello to Geoff, then made my way upstairs.

I talked to Lydia-she had been worried. Someone was already covering the hit-and-run.

I went over my progress on the funding story with John Walters and then I asked if we could go into his office. He looked up at me with a raised eyebrow, then motioned me inside the little glass cubicle he called home and shut the door on the nosiest people in the world.

I told him that I wanted to go to Gila Bend, and that I’d probably be taking a cop along with me, both for protection and for entrйe to any business I might need to do with the Gila Bend cops. I told him that there really wasn’t any way for me to do this story on the sly from the cops, and if that bothered him, he ought to can me or get somebody else to cover it.

He started laughing. Not the reaction I expected.

“You are so damned ethical, Irene. I love it. You haven’t been here forty-eight hours and you’ve got the news editor in his office, giving him ultimatums so you can work with a clean conscience. Brother.”

I waited.

“God save me from girls who went to Catholic school. Guilt just eats them alive.”

I still waited.

“Irene, you know what the dangers are of getting too chummy with the people you may have to write some story about later. You’re a professional. I’m not going to give you advance absolution for any sins you are about to commit against the paper, I’ll just trust you to use your best judgment. Just between the two of us, I’m happy as hell that you’re not going out there alone.”

“I know, John, I know. Don’t think I’m not frightened. You should have seen me fall apart out there today. I even puked on the street.”

“What the hell do you expect? You see someone you were talking to five minutes earlier get their head cracked open and die. Are you supposed to just stand there and say, ‘Gee, that reminds me, I didn’t have lunch today’?”

“I didn’t.”

“Didn’t what?”

“I didn’t have lunch today.”

This broke him up again.

“Hell, John, I don’t ever remember making you laugh like this before. Either I ought to go onstage or you’re becoming a raving lunatic.”

“The latter, I assure you, my dear, the latter. Now call it a day. Go home and make travel arrangements.”

On the way home, I bought a couple of steaks. By the time Lydia came in, I had a small feast waiting; Cody serenaded us with loud noises of anticipation for the leftovers.

PETE CALLED to say Bredloe had okayed the trip, and I told him I’d take care of the reservations. I called Fred back and cancelled O’Connor’s arrangements. Fred worked it out so that Pete and I could get on a flight to Phoenix the next morning and reserved a rental car. He needed to ask Pete some questions about seating preferences and so on, so I gave him Pete’s number and said goodnight.

At about seven-thirty, over Lydia’s protests, I headed back to the hospital. I hated the drive there, hated the walk in. But when I got to Frank’s room, all of that changed. He was awake and seemed fairly alert, and I realized I was damned glad to see him.

“You did come back,” he said.

“Sure. You remember my visit this afternoon?”

“Yeah, of course.”

“You look better tonight.”

“Thanks.”

I sat down and reached for his hand. We were quiet for a while. I was debating whether or not to tell him what had happened that afternoon. I decided not to. It would probably just worry him; besides, I reminded myself, I was there to comfort him.

“Something wrong?” he asked.

“Hospitals scare me, I guess.” It wasn’t a complete lie.

“Hmm. That all?”

“No, that’s only part of it. I’m not going to be able to see you tomorrow. I’m going to Phoenix for the day with Pete. We’re going to check something out there.”

“Glad Pete’s going, too. I’ll be okay.”

I stayed a little longer, and he seemed to be wearing down again. He tried to stay awake, but I could tell he was feeling drowsy. I didn’t want to push it. I started to leave and he roused himself enough to say, “Take care.”

“You too,” I said.

When I got back to Lydia’s I took a hot bath for my sore muscles’ sake and climbed into bed. Cody wasn’t ready to turn in and so he hung out with Lydia. I’d given the little bastard steak and he still snubbed me.

23

IWOKE UP before sunup, about 4 A.M., and couldn’t get back to sleep. I dressed as quietly as I could, so as not to wake Lydia. I was a lot less sore than the day before. I felt restless, and I still had a few hours before the flight to Phoenix, so I decided to take a drive down to the beach. I grabbed a sweatshirt and eased the front door open, holding the knob to keep the latch quiet. Outside, the streetlights reflected softly in the cloudy June sky, and the air was damp and cool. Crickets sang. The car was covered with dew.

I started the car, and in the quiet of the neighborhood the sound seemed incredibly loud. As quickly as I could, I put it into gear and headed down to the water.

I reached the shore just as the pre-dawn light was filtering above the horizon. I parked and walked out to the end of the pier, passing only a few avid fishermen silently standing along its sides. Without the traffic and beach crowd to distract from it, the Pacific roared in an endless, uneven rhythm of waves.

“Peaceful,” her name meant, and though I had seen her storms and wrath, I always felt restored when I saw her. She stretched to the horizon, a reminder of the power of nature at the doorstep of southern California’s posturing artifice. All my worries seemed so small before her.

I watched a terrific sunrise, one full of gentle color and changing hues in water and sky. The gulls were beginning their day noisily, their cree, cree echoing off the cliffs. I went down the stairs to the beach, took my shoes off and chilled the bottoms of my feet in the soft, cold sand. They soon felt numb. I plodded along, letting the wind pull my hair across my face, taking deep breaths of salt-sea air.

I walked until I reached the Las Piernas cliffs. Above them the sun was glinting off the windows of the upper sundeck of the enormous Sheffield Estate. Here, for as many generations as Las Piernas had been a city, the Sheffield family had reigned. The earliest Sheffields had started a general store, then a bank, then a pharmacy, and so on and on; they bought and sold real estate in and around Las Piernas to amass the original fortune, and added to it when one of the Sheffield grandchildren developed a knack for making ice cream. Sheffield Ice Cream stores were everywhere, and always seemed to be one step ahead of the latest ice cream craze. The last of the Sheffields was Elinor Sheffield Hollingsworth, who had married a handsome young Harvard law graduate who was now the district attorney of Las Piernas.

The Hollingsworths spent most of their time in one of the other family mansions, one up in the hills above the city, where they could socialize more easily with the other members of the upper crust. And so it was that today, like most other days, the cliffside estate looked vacant and lonely. Completely isolated, no other houses for two miles on either side, it stood sheltered on three sides by deep stands of trees that stretched from shore to road.

I turned and walked away from the twin cliffs and headed back to the pier. I watched a fisherman reel in and toss back a small perch. I thought about how strange an experience that must be for the fish, imagined the act of eating breakfast leading to a yank up into outer space and then a sudden fall back to earth.