Chapter 16: Where I Can See You

We did not talk on the drive back.

At the lake house Cormick laid the five yellow sheets on the kitchen counter and photographed each one.

Then he sealed them in a clear sleeve for his lawyer and set the sleeve in the safe.

"Davis's hand," he said. "Not Russell's, not Colette's."

"Davis's."

"The recording gave us them. This gives us him."

I nodded.

I was standing at the glass wall with my arms around myself, looking at the lake going dark.

He came and stood behind me and did not touch me.

"You've been somewhere else since the car," he said.

"I'm here."

"You're on the stairs."

I laughed, and it came out wrong.

"I know you would have come," I said.

"Eden."

"You told me you would have come home. I believe you. I know it in my head."

"But?"

I turned around.

"Last time you were in Singapore," I said. "Nobody called you for four days."

I made myself go on.

"I died at the foot of that staircase and I kept thinking, he doesn't know. Then I thought, he doesn't ask."

My voice cracked on the last word.

"I'm angry at you for it. I know it isn't fair. It wasn't you, it was a man with your face who never got the chance."

"Go on."

"The girl on the floor is still in me, and she's furious that you didn't come."

He did not say sorry.

He crossed the floor and took my face in both hands.

"Tell her I'm listening," he said. "Whatever she needs to say."

"You weren't there."

"No."

"You never asked what I needed."

"No." His thumbs moved under my eyes. "I never asked anyone what they needed. I didn't know I could."

"That isn't where you were."

"It's why I was there. I'd have gone to Singapore because I couldn't stand a house with a wife I had frightened."

He said it plainly.

"I'd have called at night and been told you were sleeping. I'd have believed it, because it was easier."

He shook his head.

"I know myself. I would have been a coward, and a very polite one."

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