One Cold Night

comfortable; he could hardly wait to see Susan, and to bring Lisa home.
    “Catch those Yanks last Sunday?” Goldman asked Dave as he bent into the car’s front passenger seat.
    “Caught the end of it on the radio. Jeter had a good night.”
    “I’ll say.”
    Dave noted Braithwaite’s pinched smile as he revved the engine. Goldman slapped the top of the car as it drove off.
    “Yanks or Mets?” Dave asked Rufus Braithwaite; this could be his first chance to break into the man’s silence in a way unfreighted by significance. And it would be good, after the long night and day, just to talk. “Or is it movies, books, what?”
    “Gardening books,” Braithwaite said. “And gardening. My wife’s the reader — mystery, romance, lit-rature. Anything with a good story.”
    Dave liked the way he’d said literature, stressing the first syllable, breaking the word into parts.
    “If gardening’s your thing, you should take the Childress orchard off the old man’s hands,” Dave said, glancing out the window as the velvet darkness was given shape by a cluster of houses. They were nearing town. “I think he’d practically give it away now.” He knew that suggesting this to Braithwaite was out of bounds, but obviously the guy wasn’t cut out to be a cop; sometimes you just needed permission from someone, even a stranger, to change your life.
    Braithwaite nodded crisply, once, and turned up the hospital’s driveway. They pulled to a stop in front of the hospital’s main entrance. The double doors swung open and a white-suited nurse walked casually out.
    “There was an article about me in the newspaper.” Dave felt as if a stopper were being pulled out of him. Sharing his guilt with Braithwaite was as bad asgiving him advice, but all of a sudden Dave felt he had to talk — to anyone. He needed the relief of confession. Was that how Susan had felt making her confession to Lisa last night? “I think Theo Childress saw it and showed it to Peter Adkins, or vice versa. I think that was how they found out about Lisa. I think after that, Theo showed Peter how to become... someone else.”
    That single article had made Dave’s sergeant so proud of himself at the time, turning a failed search for a lost girl into a public-relations coup for the department, using Dave as the face of a questing, but human, police force. Dave should have refused to do it; but he was human; he had mistrusted his own judgment that it was a bad idea and even succumbed to vanity. One subset of words and two self-satisfied photographs on a page crammed with print ads. It had nearly cost him everything that was valuable in his life.
    “Seems to me,” Braithwaite said, “if they’re out there looking for you, they’ll find you any which way they can.”
    “Well, thanks for the ride.” Dave held out his hand. Braithwaite took it, and the two men shook.
    Lisa was still asleep when Dave walked into her hospital room. A serenity had settled over her face; a face that in wakefulness was astounding in its flexibility of expression, but rarely peaceful.
    Susan was perched on the edge of a chair, the upper half of her body leaning on the bed. Her short brown hair was mussed, and she wore a tan sweater over the red pants Dave had seen her in earlier that day. It felt like another century now. Susan looked smaller, deflated, but she did not appear traumatized or particularly weakened for having encountered the groom, and for this Dave loved her more than ever. She was defiantly alive and she was here. They had won.
    Bill and Carole Bailey sat in upholstered armchairs by the far windows. Dave acknowledged them with a nod. Carole, who had been crying, nodded back. Bill slapped his knees and almost rose, but at his wife’s sharp glance he thought better of it and remained seated.
    Dave walked up behind Susan and opened his palm across the back of her neck. Her skin felt cool. Her right hand immediately crossed her body and reached up, her fingers weaving into his. After a moment she twisted to glance at him with bloodshot eyes before turning back to Lisa, her daughter. Seeing them together for the first time since he had possessed that knowledge, Dave could see how clearly alike they were. Both were strong, warm, determined and beautiful, though in different ways. Susan’s physical beauty hadn’t filtered directly to Lisa, who resembled a version of Peter; instead, the beauty had transmuted into something intangible, soaking her with charisma,