Prodigal Son

moving.
        At first he feels as if the cart is the motive force, pulling him along the alleyway Although it lacks a motor, it must be driven by some kind of magic.
        This is frightening because it implies a lack of control. He is at the mercy of the shopping cart. He must go where it takes him.
        At the end of a block, the cart could turn left or right. But it continues forward, across a side street, into the next length of the alleyway. Randal remains on the route that he mapped to the O'Connor house. He keeps moving.
        As the wheels revolve, revolve, he realizes that the cart is not pulling him, after all. He is pushing the cart.
        He experiments. When he attempts to increase speed, the cart proceeds faster. When he chooses a less hurried pace, the cart slows.
        Although happiness is not within his grasp, he experiences an unprecedented gratification, perhaps even satisfaction. As he rolls, rolls, rolls along, he has a taste, the barest taste, of what freedom might be like.
        Full night has fallen, but even in darkness, even in alleyways, the world beyond Mercy is filled with more sights, more sounds, more smells than he can process without spinning into panic. Therefore, he looks neither to the left nor the right, focuses on the cart before him, on the sound of its wheels.
        He keeps moving.
        The shopping cart is like a crossword-puzzle box on wheels, and in it is not merely a collection of aluminum cans and glass bottles but also his hope for happiness, his hatred for Arnie O'Connor.
        He keeps moving.

CHAPTER 92
        
        IN THE BUNGALOW of the seashell gate with the unicorn motif, behind the windows flanked by midnight-blue shutters decorated with star shapes and crescent moons, Kathy Burke sat at her kitchen table reading a novel about adventure in a kingdom ruled by wizardry and witchery, eating almond cookies and drinking coffee.
        From the corner of her eye, she saw movement and looked up to discover Jonathan Harker standing in the doorway between the kitchen and the dark hall.
        His face, usually red from the sun or from anger, was whiter than pale. Disheveled, sweating, he looked malarial.
        Although his eyes were wild and haunted, although his nervous hands plucked continually at his stretched and saturated T-shirt, he spoke in a meek and ingratiating manner weirdly out of sync with his aggressive entrance and his appearance: "Good evening, Kathleen. How're you? Busy, I'm sure. Always busy."
        Taking her lead from his tone, Kathy calmly put a bookmark in her novel, slid it aside. "It didn't have to be this way, Jonathan."
        "Maybe it did. Maybe there was never any hope for me."
        "It's partly my fault that you are where you are. If you'd stayed in counseling-"
        He took a step into the room. "No. I've hidden so much from you. I didn't want you to know… what I am."
        "I've been a lousy therapist," she said by way of ingratiation.
        "You're a good woman, Kathy A very fine person."
        The weirdness of this exchange-her self-effacement, Harker's flattery-in light of his recent crimes, was impossible to sustain, and Kathy thought furiously about where the encounter might lead and how best to manage it.
        Fate intruded when the phone rang.
        They both looked at it.
        "I'd prefer you didn't answer that," said Harker.
        She remained seated and did not challenge him. "If I'd insisted that you keep your appointments, I might have recognized signs that you were… heading for trouble."
        A third ring of the phone.
        He nodded. His smile was tortured. "You would have. You're so insightful, so understanding. That's why I was afraid to talk with you anymore."
        "Will you sit down, Jonathan?" she asked, indicating the chair across the table from her.
        A fifth ring.
        "I'm so tired," he acknowledged, but he made no move toward the chair. "Do I disgust you… what I've done?"
        Choosing her words carefully, she said, "No. I feel… a kind of grief, I guess."
        After the seventh or eighth ring, the phone fell silent.
        "Grief," she continued, "because I so much liked the man you were… the Jonathan I knew."
        "There's no going back, is there?"
        "I won't lie to you," she said.
        Harker moved tentatively, almost shyly toward Kathleen. "You're so complete. I know if only I