Empire Falls

painting houses. Grace was the sort of woman whom sorrow actually made more beautiful, and C.B. knew instinctively that except for the little boy, Miles, she had precious little joy in her life .
    He also sensed that when other people experienced sorrow, her heart went out to them, as if the weight of her own burden allowed her to shoulder even more. It was after the accident that left his daughter a cripple that Grace seemed really aware of him, and although he was suffering the torments of the damned, not just over what he’d done but for the lie he’d allowed his wife to tell the police—how coldly and competently she’d invented that speeding green Pontiac!—deep in his heart he was thrilled by the knowledge that at last he’d made contact .
    What an astonishing fantasy his love for Grace Roby had become in the years that followed! How it at once filled and absorbed his days, as her little boy grew healthy as a weed and his own child bravely endured one complicated, unsuccessful operation after another. Grace became for C. B. Whiting a dream not only of love and happiness in life but also of redemption, for he began to see in her the very principle of human compassion, the one person in the whole world to whom he might one day reveal his terrible secret, who would not just understand but forgive. If he were able to tell her, and if she were still able to love him, then wouldn’t this be his salvation? And if such forgiveness were possible in a mortal woman, could less love and forgiveness be expected of God Himself? There were times when such fevered reasoning struck C. B. Whiting as sheer lunacy, and others when it seemed divine truth .
    Regardless, by slow, steady degrees he could feel this woman beginning to fall in love with him. First glances, then gestures, then words and solemn professions, and then, finally, a plan. Francine knew, of course; she probably had suspected from that first day in the hospital. Incapable of anything like love herself, she was expert at sniffing out the disease in others. His and Grace’s plan, which his wife had nearly succeeding in thwarting completely, had been to spend the entire week together on Martha’s Vineyard. He’d imagined it might take that long to convince her, even though he knew her heart now belonged to him. Of course, it was the boy who complicated things. Taking her son away from his father was something Grace would not do lightly, even though the man had done little enough to earn such consideration—and she would never, ever, leave without him .
    Ah, two days on that magical island offered almost enough beauty and happiness to justify one’s existence. And how close they’d come to making it work! It still took his breath away, imagining it, a lifetime with this woman. Even now he would’ve jumped at the chance, though the drawn, emaciated woman standing with his wife on the other side of the patio door, apparently examining the garden, was almost unrecognizable as the one true love of his life. A single glance was enough for him to know what his years in Mexico had been like for her. The penance he’d once assumed for himself, he’d allowed her to perform in his stead. His wife, he was shocked to acknowledge, was now by any objective standard the more attractive woman .
    Of the three women, Francine became aware of him first, and in her thin smile he understood his folly in believing he would succeed where his father and grandfather, both better men, had failed. It was as if she knew all about the gun in his pocket, knew, too, how useless it had become .
    Then Grace looked up, and in her expression was the understanding he feared the most: that he had not suffered terribly these years since Martha’s Vineyard, that he had found a way to be happy with another woman, another little boy. No doubt she’d sensed it that final night on the island, when she had come to him in his cottage and they’d made love and talked about the future, and about the past. As he’d always imagined, she heard his confession and took what he’d done to his own child into her wonderful, forgiving heart and redeemed him. Only later, when they made plans to flee their lives and begin another together, and when she realized he meant for it to be just the three of them—himself, Grace and Miles—and had thought to leave his daughter behind or, worse, neglected to think of her at all, did he manage to ruin everything. He tried his best to cover the mistake,