39. Janet
JANET
The precinct doors swing shut behind me. Cold air, streetlights, a line of parked cruisers.
I flag a cab at the corner and give the driver the hospital's name.
I call Karen and Susan on a three-way line somewhere on the FDR.
I tell them everything. Ryan, the gun, the two shots, Mike bleeding out on the floor while I held him.
Karen goes quiet the way she does when she's holding herself together for someone else.
Susan cries. Neither of them says the thing I know they're both thinking that I gave Mitch a letter naming Mike as the one to blame if I didn't come back, and now here I am, alive, calling to tell them a different man saved me.
I tell Karen to destroy the letter or frame it. Her choice.
They both have questions. A hundred of them. Why I didn't tell them. Why I went alone. Why I thought leaving a note accusing Mike was a better plan than picking up the phone and asking for help.
I don't tell them the truth, which is that I couldn't survive their fear on top of my own.
By the time I hang up, my hands have stopped shaking.
Presbyterian's lobby is bright. I go straight for the desk, my voice already moving before my brain catches up.
"I'm looking for—" The word trauma comes out wrong, tangled with something else, and what actually leaves my mouth is nonsense. I start again. "Mike Trent. He came in with a stab wound. I need to know if he's out of surgery?"
The woman behind the desk starts typing. "What is your relationship to him?"
"Umm..."
"Janet."
I turn. Nico is already crossing the lobby toward me, still in the shirt from last night, a streak of dried blood on the collar that isn't his.
"He's out of surgery," Nico says. "He's in recovery. He's going to make it."
The room tilts sideways.
I don't remember sitting down.
I remember Nico's hand under my elbow. The pressure of it. Firm, careful, like I might come apart if he held too tight. The chair is under me, cold through my pants, and my hands are over my mouth, but they don't stop anything.
The first sound that comes out of me doesn't sound human.
It tears up from somewhere low and old, from the same place that opened in the funeral home six years ago when they closed Joe's casket and someone had to catch me before I hit the floor.
My chest keeps bucking. I bend over my knees, both hands pressed to my face, breathing in pieces. People turn. Shoes stop. Somewhere near the desk, a phone rings and rings.
Nico crouches in front of me.
He stays there, elbows on his knees, blocking part of the lobby with his body, close enough that I can see the scuff on one of his shoes and the blood dried along his cuff.
I fall apart anyway.
Right there in the hospital lobby, in front of a man who watched me try to disappear on his best friend twice.
"He's going to make it," Nico says again, quieter this time, like he knows that's the only sentence I can hold onto.
It takes a long time to stop. Nico hands me a coffee cup he must have gotten from somewhere, and I hold it without drinking it.
A nurse comes through the double doors, scrubs, clipboard, kind face.
"Mr. Trent's awake in room 210," she says. "You can go back now. Only for a few minutes."
Nico is already standing.
“Do you want to go in alone for a few minutes?”
“Thanks.”
I go upstairs.
The nurse holds the door with one hand. "A few minutes. He's in and out."
I step in.
The room is dim, one light on over the bed. Machines keeping their own quiet count. Mike is smaller than he should be against all that white, an IV line taped to the back of one hand, a bruise spreading dark under his eye.
I stop at the foot of the bed.
His eyes open. Take a second to find me. When they do, something in his face eases, like he'd been holding a question, and I answered it by being alive.
"Hey," he says. Barely there.
"Hey."
I make myself move to the side of the bed. I don't sit.
"You're okay," he says. Not a question. He needs it to be true more than he needs to know.
"I am. Thanks.”
“It's the least I could do.”
“Ryan’s not. He died. I shot him.”
He closes his eyes. Opens them.
I look at his hand on the blanket. The tape, the tube, the knuckles still split from his own brother. I don't take it.
"They're going to charge you," I say. "For stealing the files. They have all the footage from your place. D.A. says a year if you cooperate.”
He looks at the ceiling.
“Mike, please cooperate with him.”
He nods.
"You could get out in less. Good behavior."
"Okay.”
"Six months, with good behavior. Can you behave yourself for six months?"
Something that wants to be a laugh moves through him and catches on the stitches. He winces.
For a second it's almost easy. For a second we're two people at a kitchen island with our laptops open, and I could forget the tube in his hand and the year in front of him and the plane in front of me. But that was a lie. But was it?
It passes, the way it has to.
"You said you love me," he says.
My throat closes. I didn't know. All this time I thought I'd said it to a man who couldn't hear it, and he was in there the whole time, holding onto it.
"You heard that."
"I did."
I straighten.
"Nico is waiting to see you. I’m going to get going.”
“Will I see you again?”
“I need to go away for a while.” I say, because he deserves that much and not one word more.
"That’s probably a good idea," he says.
My hand finds his for one second. Not holding. Enough to feel that he's warm, that he's still here to be warm. He squeezes it.
I let go.
At the door, I don't turn around. If I turn around, I'll sit down in that chair and I won't get up, and one of us has a year to do, and the other has a plane to catch, and neither of those things has room in it for looking back.
"Goodbye, Mike."
I hear him breathe in like he's going to answer.
I'm through the door before he can.
I stare at a photo of Joe. I exhale.
I pull another suitcase from under the bed and pack for the second time in two days.
This time, I take my time.
I fold the clothes instead of shoving them in. I choose shoes. Underwear. A sweater. The charger from the wall. The toothbrush still sealed in plastic. My passport goes into the inside pocket of my purse, flat against the lining.
No panic now.
The quiet work of leaving.
I leave the framed newspaper clipping about the Keller conviction. I leave most of what made me a prosecutor in this apartment, on purpose.
I call Rosemary next.
"I'm going," I say. "Costa Rica. Tomorrow morning."
"You're still going?"
"Yeah. I am. I've always wanted to go."
"When are you coming back?"
"No idea. A couple of weeks. Never. No plan."
There's a pause on her end. Not judgment. Rosemary moving things around in her head until they fit.
She doesn't ask why. She doesn't ask about Mike.
"I'm picking you up, I'm taking you to the airport," she says. "Don't argue with me."
After we hang up, I sit on the edge of the bed with the suitcase open at my feet and order pizza because I'm too tired to go out, and because I assume Costa Rica probably has bad pizza.
In the morning, Rosemary is outside my building, double-parked and holding up half the block.
A line of cars leans on their horns behind her.
She gets out like none of it concerns her, sunglasses on, hair pulled back, one hand already reaching for my suitcase. Another horn blasts, longer this time, and she turns toward the car behind her.
"You're in such a hurry you can't wait one fucking minute, really?"
The driver honks louder.
Rosemary takes my suitcase from me.
"You thought that was going to help?"
"No. But it made me feel better." She gets back into the car.
The drive to JFK is faster than expected.
Rosemary keeps one hand on the wheel and the other on my knee, her thumb moving once in a while like she's checking I'm still there. Queens slides past the window in strips of brick, glass, highway, and morning light.
“Hey, can I ask you a crazy question?” she asks.
“Sure.”
“Nico, do you think he’s a good guy?”
“Are you serious?”
“I think we had a thing that night.”
“When you were held hostage?”
“If that’s a hard no?”
I laugh. “I love you, Rosemary.”
“Cause if you say no…”
“Yes, I think he’s a good guy, but I’m not the best judge of character,” I say.
At the curb, she puts the car in park and gets out before I can move.
"I've got it," I say.
She ignores me and pulls my suitcase from the trunk.
We stand there with taxis sliding past and people dragging bags around us.
Rosemary's eyes are wet behind her sunglasses.
"If you don't come back, I'll come visit," she says.
I laugh, but it breaks in the middle.
She hugs me.
She holds me hard, one arm around my shoulders, one hand at the back of my head. I hold on too, my face against her coat, breathing in her perfume and airport exhaust.
When she lets go, she wipes under one lens with her finger and looks toward the terminal.
"Text me when you land," she says.
I nod and tuck my phone into my coat pocket like that is a promise.
Rosemary touches my cheek with the back of her fingers.
I turn toward the doors before the tears come.
I go through the doors without looking back, because if I look back I won't get on the plane.
At JFK, I buy a bottle of Scotch at duty-free because the woman behind the counter asks if it's a gift and I say yes before I think.
She seals it in plastic and slides it across the counter.
I booked business class because I wanted space around me.
On the plane, they give me champagne before takeoff. I put the seat back, and watch the clouds gather over the wing until New York is gone.
I put on headphones. No one talks to me.
The cottage in Santa Teresa is two streets back from the Pacific.
Tin roof. Narrow porch. White walls. A tired blue gate. Furnished. A bed with a thin white cover. A small wooden table. Two chairs. A coffeemaker on the counter. The place you can walk into with one suitcase and let the door close behind you.
The house is smaller than it looked online, but the porch faces the road, the ceiling fan clicks once every rotation, and at night the ocean is close enough to hear through the dark.
I buy coffee, eggs, mangoes, candles, mosquito coils, rice, dish soap.
I pour myself a drink over ice and drink it on the porch while a man across the road fixes a motorbike with a cigarette hanging from his mouth and a boy rides past barefoot on a bicycle too big for him.
Weeks pass slow, all at once.
I learn the walk into town for fruit and coffee.
In the afternoons, rain comes hard. The road red and slick. The power flickers, the fan slows, and the women next door pull laundry from the line while laughing at the sky.
I buy a bathing suit from a woman who sells them out of a stall near the beach, bright colors hanging from a rope behind her. I choose a black one-piece and carry it home in a paper bag.
The Pacific is two streets away.
I hear it before I see it, a low steady thunder beyond the palms. The road opens, and there it is, blue and silver under the sun, waves folding over themselves and rushing white across the sand.
Surfers sit beyond the break, dark shapes rising and falling with the water.
Pelicans skim low over the surface. The horizon runs clean and endless.
I stand at the edge for a long time.
Then I walk in.
The water is warm around my ankles, then my knees, then my waist. It pulls at me, lifts me, takes my weight. A wave breaks against my ribs and I laugh once, surprised by the sound.
I dive under.
Salt fills my mouth. Sun flashes above me. The ocean moves around my body, heavy and bright and alive.
When I come up, my hair is in my face, and my feet barely touch bottom.
For the first time in weeks, my body lets go.
Tonight, the rain hasn't started yet.
I sit on the porch with my laptop open, meaning to look at flights for Susan's visit next month. Down the road, someone plays music from a radio. A kid rides by barefoot on a bicycle, and the dog with one white ear trots after him for half a block before giving up and dropping into the dust.
An email sits at the top of my inbox instead. Nocturne, still on the mailing list.
Grand Reopening. Friday night.
A picture of Nico at the bottom.
On Saturday morning I’m about to leave the house when my phone rings. Which is rare nowadays. It’s usually my sisters, Rosemary or a spam call, which is why I rarely take it with me. I look at it. Rosemary.
“Hey,” I say.
“Hey,” she says.
“Why are you whispering?”
“Nico is in my bedroom asleep.”
“Wow. So that happened?”
“It was intense. So much passion. I mean so intense, I thought I couldn’t take anyone, you know full blown – “
“I get it.”
“You have no idea,” she says. “It was intense.”
“I’m very happy for you.”
“What are you doing?”
“Going for a walk or a swim maybe.”
“I’m going back to bed. Hey, he saw Mike, he’s doing okay. Not too bad.”
“Thanks. Get some sleep.”
I hang up and stand there a second. He's doing okay.
I leave the phone. Take my towel and go to the beach.