undercover agents can be burned by a random event. The reality of tonights meeting with Tim cannot be pushed aside: by encouraging him to proceed with his plan, I could be sending an impassioned amateur to his death.
I pause beside Annies door and peek through the crack. A pale green night-light limns her form, bunched beneath the covers. That she can sleep alone in her own room brings me an abiding sense of peace. After Sarah died, Annie not only had to sleep in my bed, but also had to be in direct physical contact with me. If her hand fell from my arm or hip, shed jerk awake with night terrors. The peace she now enjoys is a testament to the soundness of my decision to bring her back here. Living near my father and mother brought Annie the gift once enjoyed by all societies that revered the extended family: a profound sense of security. That decision cost me my future with Caitlin, but Annies recovery has given me the strength to deal with that loss. And yet tonight a nagging voice echoes endlessly beneath my conscious thoughts: Weve stayed too long
After I undress and brush my teeth, I walk to my bedroom window and gaze across sixty feet of space to the second floor of Caitlins house. Is she there? Did she fall asleep with the light on? Or is she down at the Examiner offices, badgering the editor about the layout of tomorrows paper? This thought brings a smile, but then I realize Caitlin could just as easily be dancing at one of the bars on Main Street, or exercising her gift for irony at the expense of somepompous, nouveau-riche redneck who threw a balloon-race party. I feel a compulsion to walk down and check her garage for a rental car. Has eighteen months of separation from her turned me into a stalker? The reality is that she could pull up to her house right now with a man and disappear inside for a night of recreational sex behind that familiar curtain.
Christ. As selfish as it sounds, this image has a more violent effect on my adrenal glands than the photos I viewed in the cemetery. If Im this jealous, can I possibly be over her? One thing is sure: Ill be damnedtruly damnedif I stand here mooning at her light like a latter-day Gatsby, until the very scene I fear transpires before me. Caitlin left me because I believed the path to my future lay through the past. So what the hell is she doing back here, where the past is never past?
As I drift toward sleep, the images from Tims cell phone snapshots rise again, but they seem remote, like evidence dropped on my desk by cops I dealt with in Houston. Can young girls be raped and dogs be slaughtered within sight of the town I love so dearly? In the foggy frontier between sleep and wakefulness the idea seems farfetched, yet one burden of my legal experience is the knowledge that savage crimes occur in the most benign settings, that screams go unheard, that pleas for mercy are ignored, even relished.
When thoughts like these trouble my passage into sleep, I use a trick taught me by a sixties-era rock musician I saved from going to jail in Houston. Whenever drug withdrawal sent him into paroxysms of pain and need, whenever the demons came for him, he would picture a virgin field of ice, blue-white and impossibly clean, so remote that no footprint had ever marred its surface. He would focus on that scene until he felt himself inside it, and sometimes peace would come. To my surprise, I found this sometimes works for me as well. But tonight, as I carefully construct my Zen-like sanctuary, I cannot keep the demons out. Dark shapes move beneath the ice like predators prowling a vast sea, ever alert for the shadows of prey on the white sheet above.
Tonight Im on the ice, I realize, one more shadow to be hunted. A penumbra the size of a small car flashes beneath me, and I run. Though I lie supine in bed, my heart thumps in my chest, and the blood rushes through my veins. Far ahead, I see a blue mark on theice. A hole. Beside it
I pause beside Annies door and peek through the crack. A pale green night-light limns her form, bunched beneath the covers. That she can sleep alone in her own room brings me an abiding sense of peace. After Sarah died, Annie not only had to sleep in my bed, but also had to be in direct physical contact with me. If her hand fell from my arm or hip, shed jerk awake with night terrors. The peace she now enjoys is a testament to the soundness of my decision to bring her back here. Living near my father and mother brought Annie the gift once enjoyed by all societies that revered the extended family: a profound sense of security. That decision cost me my future with Caitlin, but Annies recovery has given me the strength to deal with that loss. And yet tonight a nagging voice echoes endlessly beneath my conscious thoughts: Weve stayed too long
After I undress and brush my teeth, I walk to my bedroom window and gaze across sixty feet of space to the second floor of Caitlins house. Is she there? Did she fall asleep with the light on? Or is she down at the Examiner offices, badgering the editor about the layout of tomorrows paper? This thought brings a smile, but then I realize Caitlin could just as easily be dancing at one of the bars on Main Street, or exercising her gift for irony at the expense of somepompous, nouveau-riche redneck who threw a balloon-race party. I feel a compulsion to walk down and check her garage for a rental car. Has eighteen months of separation from her turned me into a stalker? The reality is that she could pull up to her house right now with a man and disappear inside for a night of recreational sex behind that familiar curtain.
Christ. As selfish as it sounds, this image has a more violent effect on my adrenal glands than the photos I viewed in the cemetery. If Im this jealous, can I possibly be over her? One thing is sure: Ill be damnedtruly damnedif I stand here mooning at her light like a latter-day Gatsby, until the very scene I fear transpires before me. Caitlin left me because I believed the path to my future lay through the past. So what the hell is she doing back here, where the past is never past?
As I drift toward sleep, the images from Tims cell phone snapshots rise again, but they seem remote, like evidence dropped on my desk by cops I dealt with in Houston. Can young girls be raped and dogs be slaughtered within sight of the town I love so dearly? In the foggy frontier between sleep and wakefulness the idea seems farfetched, yet one burden of my legal experience is the knowledge that savage crimes occur in the most benign settings, that screams go unheard, that pleas for mercy are ignored, even relished.
When thoughts like these trouble my passage into sleep, I use a trick taught me by a sixties-era rock musician I saved from going to jail in Houston. Whenever drug withdrawal sent him into paroxysms of pain and need, whenever the demons came for him, he would picture a virgin field of ice, blue-white and impossibly clean, so remote that no footprint had ever marred its surface. He would focus on that scene until he felt himself inside it, and sometimes peace would come. To my surprise, I found this sometimes works for me as well. But tonight, as I carefully construct my Zen-like sanctuary, I cannot keep the demons out. Dark shapes move beneath the ice like predators prowling a vast sea, ever alert for the shadows of prey on the white sheet above.
Tonight Im on the ice, I realize, one more shadow to be hunted. A penumbra the size of a small car flashes beneath me, and I run. Though I lie supine in bed, my heart thumps in my chest, and the blood rushes through my veins. Far ahead, I see a blue mark on theice. A hole. Beside it
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