Empire Falls

couple of years, much as you did.” She paused to let this sink in. “And of course there are your brother and the others who depend upon the Empire Grill for their admittedly slender livelihoods. In the end, though, it’s up to you, just as it always has been.”
    “Power and control. Right, Francine?”
    It was the first time he had ever called her by her first name. In fact, over the years he’d nearly forgotten it. Strange that it should return to him at this moment.
    If being addressed so intimately offended Mrs. Whiting, she took pains to conceal it. “Ah!” she said, in mock delight. “You were paying attention to my little lessons, weren’t you, dear boy! I could never be sure.” And with that she turned and stepped nimbly around and toward the Lincoln.
    “He preferred my mother, didn’t he, Mrs. Whiting?” Miles called after her. “That’s what all this is about, right?”
    She stopped—stock-still for a moment—then returned to where he sat. “And am I not a model of Christian forbearance, dear boy? Did I not forgive your mother her trespass? Did I not welcome her into the very home she destroyed? Did I not offer her every opportunity for the expiation and redemption you Catholics are forever going on and on about?”
    “Redemption? Wasn’t it really retribution?”
    “Well, as I once explained to my husband, there was a little something in the relationship for each of us.” She started away again, then stopped and turned back. “Having said that, I wouldn’t want to leave you with the wrong impression, dear boy. I was very fond of your mother, just as I’m very fond of you. In the end I think she was glad things didn’t work out quite as she’d hoped. I like to think she came to understand life’s great folly.”
    Then she looked down at the policeman. “Do you think you can manage to lock up, Jimmy? The padlock on that gate is a little stiff. It requires no end of coaxing.”
    “I’ll take care of it, Mrs. Whiting.”
    Miles couldn’t help but smile, having made more or less this same promise to the woman for twenty-five years—the precise destiny his mother had feared above all others. When the Lincoln glided out between the stone pillars, followed by the limo, Miles felt something rub against his elbow, and when he looked down there was Timmy, who must’ve escaped when Mrs. Whiting opened the car door. The animal seemed satisfied with the damage already inflicted on Miles and offered no additional malice.
    Jimmy Minty got to his feet and offered Miles a hand, which Miles accepted and then held out his wrists to be cuffed. Jimmy led him over to the Camaro, kicking the cat out of the way, hard, when she tried to follow.
    Miles tried without luck to remember the last time he’d been in a sports car. The engine growled like a caged animal directly beneath his feet. Charlene had once confessed that she considered this a sexy sound. Human folly indeed. Outside the gate, Minty put the Camaro in Park and went back to close and lock the gate. As Mrs. Whiting had predicted, this was not an easy job, and Miles could hear him swearing at the lock.
    “You never should’ve come back here, old buddy,” Jimmy Minty said when he got back in the car. “Your mother was right about that. I’ll never forget how she screamed at you. I guess that’s what I was trying to say before all this started.” By “all this” he seemed to mean everything that had happened since he’d found Miles parked outside his boyhood home back in September. “I felt real bad when I heard her screaming at you like that, all those things she said when she was dying, and you just trying to help.”
    Miles closed his eyes and listened to her, the memory still fresh, horrible. Go away, Miles. You’re killing me. Can’t you understand that? Your being here is killing me. Killing me .
    “Not that you cared if I felt bad or not,” he added.
    “Do me a favor, Jimmy?” Miles asked when he eased the Camaro out onto Empire Avenue.
    “Sure.” He seemed anxious to demonstrate that despite being habitually and cruelly misused, he wasn’t the sort of man to withhold a favor if asked nicely.
    “Ask my brother to make sure Tick gets down to Boston on Sunday.”
    His promise to his daughter was the thing he’d forgotten, the thing that, had he remembered it, might have kept him from heading down this very wrong road. He remembered thinking a few minutes earlier that there’d be plenty of time for regret