The Given

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

It was late by the time Kit was through being questioned, and it wasn’t until she was led back into the bull pen that she saw a wall clock that read nine P.M.—which made her heart jolt in her chest. However, to her relief, Dennis was leaning against the wall beneath it. His brow cleared when he saw her, though aware that he was still in his professional environment, he merely placed one hand on her shoulder and asked, “You okay?”

For a moment, just one, she allowed herself to lean against him. Then she thought of Grif and reminded herself that there were only seven more hours in which to stop him from dying again. Dennis’s jaw tightened as she pulled away, but he let his hand drop.

“Where’s Marin?” she asked, as he led her to the admitting window where they’d made her check her .22. She knew her aunt had been there. She’d heard her yelling even with the interview room door shut.

“Probably still raising hell,” Dennis said, jerking his head at the stony-faced officer on the other side. “She was here for about an hour, but between you and me she was doing more harm than help. I finally told her I could get further with the department than she could. Her tongue is as sharp as barbed wire.”

“She’s not the most diplomatic when she’s upset,” Kit admitted, causing the officer on the other side of the window to snort as he shoved a clipboard her way.

Kit signed where instructed, and only then did he return the plastic bin containing her gun.

“You’re lucky you got a permit for that,” the officer said, nodding at her .22.

“I don’t break the law,” Kit replied, tucking the gun back into its holster and then her bag. She’d been accused of no crime, so they had to return it. That was the law, too.

“Come on,” Dennis said, cupping Kit’s elbow as he pulled her away from the window.

“Marin agreed to let me handle things on this end while she went to the paper to write up a story about the relationship between Barbara DiMartino and Gina Alessi,” he said as he led the way down the hall. “And the diamonds they’ve both been after for fifty years. Hold up.”

Dennis pulled her back before she could push through the double doors where they’d entered the station. “You don’t want to go that way. Reporters.”

“Friends,” Kit said, reminding him that she was a reporter as well.

Dennis shook his head. “Not this time.”

He was right. If some string reporter pieced together the story about two con-women searching for diamonds—and that Kit was somehow involved—they’d start speculating about her as well. That’s why Marin was using the newspaper to get their side of the story out first and fast. When it came to the news, a good offense was the best defense.

Besides, if anyone was going to tell this story, Kit thought, following Dennis, it was her. But first she needed to get back to Grif. “Thanks for helping to get me out so quickly,” she told Dennis as they pushed against the steel bar of the back door and swung out into the cold night. “I think you set some kind of record there.”

“Well, we got a witness who says Ray DiMartino had you cowered and cornered just after a gunshot was fired. We also caught Larry and Eric Ritter downtown, trying to catch a bus to Sheboygan, Wisconsin.”

“Where?”

“You gave us the drop on them, so that was in your favor as well.” He motioned to his car at the far end of the lot, but stopped her just after she’d cleared the steps. “I vouched for you, too.”

“Of course you did. You’re my friend.”

“Yes. And . . . I remember.”

Tilting her head, Kit found that Dennis’s eyes had gone surprisingly dark, yet they still shined in the filtered glow of the streetlamp. “What?”

“You. I remember you sitting at my deathbed, Kit.” He chuckled wryly when she returned to his side. “It’s been six months, but I still dream of it. I knew I was dying. My body knew it. I could feel my mind cramping up against the idea.”

It was the first time they’d spoken of it. In six months, they hadn’t once recounted the events leading to Grif leaving her . . . and her ultimate decision to be alone if she couldn’t have him. She had wanted to explain the choice to Dennis . . . but how could she explain to anyone about Griffin Shaw? Even the Pure couldn’t understand him. He wasn’t just her partner or lover, or some ideal she’d dreamed up from the rockabilly era she loved so much. And discovering that Grif’s and her father’s deaths were linked only confirmed that there was more than simple love between them. There was fate.

That was what had propelled him from the shadows the night they met. Fate was what had him defying heavenly orders to save her life. And it was fate that had them snapping back to each other like a rubber band, when the tension of being apart grew to be more than either of them could bear.

So Kit now believed that fate would come through once again if only they fought together in these last few hours. If only they both believed.

Yet right now Dennis’s eyes were drinking her in. It was the first time he’d allowed his true feelings to show, and Grif was right. This man cared for her. He’d be so good for her.

“I was so afraid you would die.” She told him now.

He touched the side of his head, where the bullet had grazed him, in what had become an unconscious gesture. “You know when you’re underwater, and sounds are distorted, yet you can still differentiate between noises?”

“Yes.”

“Your voice was like that. I couldn’t hear what you were saying, but I recognized it and knew you were there. I even think I tried to respond . . . at least that’s what I dream about now.” He looked at her, gaze gone liquid from the memory. “Even now I wake with the same thought rolling through my mind. ‘She’s gonna stick to the very end.’ ”

He laughed at that, but there was no humor in his laugh, because he had woken up . . . and she left him still. Kit looked down, shamed. She knew how it felt to be left behind. Yet she also knew it was something she’d do again if given the choice.

“Dennis, I—”

“Shh.” He silenced her with a finger to her lips, and let it linger for a moment before dropping it to cup her chin. “You can’t force the heart in a direction it doesn’t want to go. And it’s okay. I wanted you then, and a part of me always will, but do you know what I really want? More than anything else?”

She shook her head, throat too full to talk.

“I just want to see you dance again, Kit.”

“Dance?” Kit repeated, blinking back tears.

“You don’t anymore,” he said, and his flashing smile was wistful. “And you used to love to dance.”

“Yeah, I did.” And so many of the things she’d loved had fallen away, all lost because she thought Grif had been lost to her as well. One thing was certain: no matter what happened tonight, that was going to have to change. It was no way to live.

“Come on,” Dennis finally said, holding out his hand. There was nothing romantic in the gesture, just Kit’s friend offering to put the past behind them and continue helping her into the future. So Kit took his hand and allowed him to lead her to his waiting car.

“I’ll take you to your aunt,” he said, keys jangling as he broke free and rounded to the driver’s side. “Maybe she—”

The figure that rose behind him looked like it was made from the shadows themselves, and the only thing that saved Dennis from a square hit with the two-by-four was Kit’s widening eyes as her gaze darted over his shoulder. Instinct allowed him to manage a half-block as he turned, but it wasn’t enough. Dennis went down with a heavy thud.

Then Justin Allen lifted his other hand and pointed his gun directly into Kit’s face.

“Honey,” he said, eyes glittering in the cold night. “Don’t even think of trying to run in those shoes.”

It took Grif twice as long as it should have to reach the Sunset Retirement Community. He lost his way twice on Hacienda, despite knowing the road well, and it wasn’t out of shock or even nervous anticipation. Not entirely. His sense of direction, never good, was also deteriorating. He hadn’t noticed it at first, but it seemed like someone had gradually been lowering a dimmer switch on his eyesight so that every outline blurred. The bones in his fingers ached as well. His knuckles threatened to lock even when he turned the steering wheel, like the marrow and cartilage and joints were beginning to fuse together so that mobility would soon be impossible.

So when he did finally arrive at Sunset, he grunted like the old man he was supposed to be as he climbed from Kit’s car and straightened to face the building.

“They’ll be expecting you,” Marin had said, voice soft because even though she didn’t know who Evelyn Shaw really was to him, she knew he’d been searching for her long enough that the moment mattered. The moment, he thought, was all that mattered. After spending one lifetime looking only forward to the future, and a second gazing longingly at the past, as least he’d finally learned that.

So he took a step into the next moment, and then into the one after that. And they were indeed expecting him. The interim health services director held out a hand and smiled as if welcoming him home, like she’d been waiting for him all along. She led Grif to room 330, then turned to regard him as she placed her hand on the door.

“I normally accompany guests into our residents’ rooms, but as I’m new here and she no more knows me than she does you . . .” She trailed off and Grif glanced at her to see why. That was when he spotted the speck of stardust caught at the corner of one of her eyelashes, winking at him as if from the wings.

How ’bout that, Grif thought, impressed despite the gravity of the moment. A Pure taking human form . . . just for me.

“Steel yourself, Shaw. She’s not the same woman as the last time you saw her.”

And with a murmured blessing in the jumbled language of tongues, she was gone.

Grif turned back to the closed door. Alone.

She was seated in a wheelchair, facing the window, when Grif entered the room, a heavy tartan blanket draped across her lap. The light from the nearby table lamp illuminated her thin, freckled neck, and she was so slight that there was room in the seat for another small person. Evie had always been a slim woman, but he’d never thought of her as frail before. Nerves moved sickeningly in his stomach.

The Pure who’d led Grif in was right. This woman resembled nothing of the Evie he’d loved and adored and married. He’d watched a woman with platinum curls fall to the floor beside him when he died. Now she was sitting up again, those curls gone gray and brittle, that other woman a mere memory to them both. For a moment Grif was unable to take another step. He’d hardly changed at all—not on the outside—but if her mind was as frail as her body, would she recognize him?

He must have sighed or made some other identifying sound, because Evie tilted her head without turning it, a move that put him in mind of a baby swallow. “Is that you, Mr. Justin?”

Justin. Grif burned inside. Justin Allen had known his wife.

He had never so dearly wished a man dead.

Yet he couldn’t let his anger show, not to Evie. She was fragile, and Marin had said that her charts and meds indicated a heart problem. So, slipping the fedora from his head, Grif took a careful step forward. His knuckles were white around the brim of his hat, his heart beating like mad. Evie’s softened profile shifted and rounded out as he approached, and he steeled himself as he slipped in front of her.

Though the room was warm, Evie wore a sweater that swam over her shoulders, in addition to the blanket folded across her knees. Her entire body trembled with the effort to lift her gaze, and her thin, dry lips pursed hard in concentration as she worked to focus on his face. Grif had a flashback: those lips stained red, full and stretching into a playful smile, meeting his with the ardor of . . . well, someone fifty years younger. He blinked, the image replaced by the trembling woman in front of him, and something in his heart cracked.

“No, Evie. It’s not Mr. Justin,” he said, as quietly, as gently as he could. “It’s me.”

The woman just stared, the corners of her eyes milky with age. This was not his wife, Grif suddenly thought. Evie would never wear her hair swept so carelessly to the side . . . she did not have a face as soft as sagging velvet. This woman wasn’t even made up, he thought, swallowing hard, and his girl always pulled out her pancake tin and sponge the moment she awoke.

But then the dark irises found focus, and that vibrant, long-ago girl flashed into view.

Evie’s mouth fell lax without uttering a sound, yet those piercing eyes remained on his, and after what felt like a full minute, she rasped, “Griffin? I— Is that you?”

He hadn’t even known he’d been holding his breath, but it escaped him now in a dizzying sob and he fell to his knees before her. He’d found her. No matter what else occurred in the next few hours, in this life or any other, he had finally found his wife. When he felt her hand, tentative and shaking, on the back of his neck, Grif lifted his head.

“But you were . . . but I saw—” She jerked her head, eyes going wide.

“Shh . . .” Grif lifted his hand and gently touched the back of her palm. It was cold. “No, I’m alive.”

But his words didn’t soothe her. She began shaking her head more violently. “No. No, I saw it. You were struck down. Your blood was everywhere.”

“Yes . . . and no,” he said, hating that of all her memories of him, this was the one she still carried. “It’s complicated. But what matters is that I’m here now, and Evie, you need to know. I’ve dreamed of this for so long. I’ve dreamed of you.”

Suddenly, the already glassy eyes filled with tears, and Evie lifted her hand so that it wavered in front of her mouth. “Oh, Griffin. Oh, my God, it’s really you.”

And when he bent forward this time, she folded herself around him. They clung to each other for long minutes without speaking. Evie shook above him, and Grif responded in kind below.

“I was so scared,” she finally said, her voice muffled in his hair. “I’ve been so alone. I closed my eyes that night, I couldn’t help it, and when I opened them again, you were gone. And then, eventually, I was gone, too.”

Grif sat back on his heels and studied her face. He didn’t know what that meant, and from the way Evie’s gaze began to wander again, he wasn’t sure she did, either. His voice, too, shook when he spoke. “Do you think . . . you can tell me what happened?”

Evie seemed to look right through him. It was as if he’d been a ghost to her for so long that she couldn’t hold on to him, even when he was right there. But then her mouth moved in a stutter-start, her eyes shifted, and her mind began searching the past.

Then she started to talk. Full sentences. A story that, Grif could tell, she’d told many times over the years. No, she hadn’t died back in 1960, but the events of that long-ago night had chased her as relentlessly as they had him. And despite the age rubbing her vocal cords into reedy strands, she laid out the story so clearly that Grif could see it even when he closed his eyes.

She had been dizzy with drink that night, she said, the roar of the casino crowd round in her ears, a rush of approval that felt like a big hug as she kept the craps table alive, throwing seven after seven. The night was cold when they finally left the casino, yes, but she had a large, warm man at her side, and the juice zinging through her veins. Their bungalow had been hidden, as if in a secret garden, a dark pocket of solitude sweetened by the scent of honeysuckle and rose.

“I was blinded by all of that darkness.” She’d opened their bungalow door and pushed inside before she ever saw the shadow move. And she stared for so long, wondering with dumb displacement what Tommy DiMartino was doing in their private space, that she hadn’t even realized what he’d done until Grif cried out.

“I felt that knife like it’d entered my own gut. Worse, my heart cleaved right in two. I even thought of my little sewing kit on the bathroom sink, and I thought maybe I could just stitch up your belly with red-colored thread so that everything would be as it was meant to . . . as it’d been just one minute before. Then I saw the doll.”

It was the strange juxtaposition of a young girl’s toy in their attacker’s bloodied hands that shocked her into realization, and she screamed as Griffin and Tommy fought. However, nobody could hear her through the isolation of their lush garden. Nobody was there to see Tommy fall, still grasping his sister’s doll. Nobody saw Grif blindsided by a clay vase after that, more shadows moving, until they were all facedown in a puddle of blood.

“Do you remember, Griffin? Do you remember how I tried to reach you?”

He remembered the same deep brown eyes that stared at him now, filled with tears as she cried out, Damn it, Griffin, no . . .

Her fingertips suddenly found his, and Grif realized Evie had been saying his name over and over again, just as she had then. Griffin, Griffin, Griffin . . .

It was all she ever called him. It was what she called him still.

Why do you . . . she had said.

“Why would you dredge all this up again?” she said now.

The question was abrupt, and rocked Grif back on his heels. He blew out a hard breath before reaching into his jacket’s inner pocket, and pulled out Kit’s phone and the image she’d taken of the newly discovered map. Pointing, he said, “Because I think you’re in trouble, Evie. And this is why.”

The doll. The diamonds. The dueling families. He explained it to her quickly, simply, then told her the map showed where Sal DiMartino disposed of all the lives he’d ended in his notorious run of the city . . . and where he’d buried one doll with diamonds for eyes.

Evie stared at the image for so long that the screen timed out and the phone went blank. Then she shook her head, placed her hands over her face, and began to sob. Horrified, Grif watched as her little shoulders sank forward and caved in on themselves, and her broken voice lifted and fell like a brittle leaf on a swirling wind.

“Please don’t cry,” he begged, inching forward and taking her hands in his. She pulled him close, and still kneeling, he put his head in her lap.

“But the world,” Evie moaned, hands running over his head just as they used to. “The world is such a dangerous place.”

Grif just kept his head bowed, because yes, it was. And even an angel, even a Pure, could do nothing about that.