Public Secrets

them time, loitering over a cup of coffee in the visitor’s lounge, going over every movement of his day to try to see if there was one thing he could have done differently. It was always timing, he thought wearily. If he had broken in the door five minutes earlier it might have changed everything.
He stood again when he saw them come in. Marianne’s eyes were red, but he didn’t think she would fall apart. She took the chair Michael vacated. “I shouldn’t have left her here by herself.”
“It’s not your fault,” Johnno told her.
“No, it’s not my fault. But I shouldn’t have left her alone.”
Ignoring the signs, Johnno pulled out a cigarette. Once it was lighted, he handed it to Marianne. “Marianne filled me in on what’s been going on during the flight over. I assume you’re aware that Latimer’s been abusing Emma for more than a year.”
Michael crushed the empty Styrofoam cup with his fingers. “I don’t know the details. I’ll take Emma’s statement as soon as she’s up to it.”
“Statement.” Marianne looked up. “Why does she have to make a statement?”
“It’s procedure.” He glanced back toward Emma’s door. “Just routine.”
“But you’ll do it,” Johnno put in. “I wouldn’t want her to have to talk to a stranger.”
“I’ll take the statement.”

With the ash growing long on her cigarette, Marianne studied him. He’d more than lived up to the promise in the newspaper picture of ten years before. At the moment, he looked tense and exhausted, dark shadows under his eyes lines of strain beside them. Despite them, she judged him as a man to be depended upon. Whatever Emma had said to the contrary, Michael Kessel-ring looked precisely like Marianne’s image of a cop.
“Did you kill Drew?”
He shifted his gaze and met her eyes. More than anything he could remember, he wished he could have said yes. “No. I was too late.”
“Who did?”
“Emma.”
“Oh Jesus,” was all Johnno said.
“Look, I don’t like leaving her alone,” Michael said. “I’m going in to sit with her. You might want to check into a hotel, get some rest.”
“We’ll stay.” Marianne reached up to take Johnno’s hand. “We can take turns sitting with her.”
With a nod, Michael went back into Emma’s room.

S HE SURFACED AT dawn. The light, dim as it was, relieved her. There had been so many dreams, so many strange dreams through the night. Most of them vanished, midnight mirages that slipped away in the sunlight. But she knew she’d had the nightmare again. Almost, she could hear the echo of music and the swish of shadows.
She struggled to throw off sleep, annoyed at first by the heaviness in her limbs. It was frustrating that she could only open one eye. She lifted a hand, found the bandage, and remembered.
Panic. It filled her lungs like smoke, almost choking her. She turned her head, and saw Michael. He was slumped in the chair beside her bed, his chin on his chest. One of his hands covered one of hers. She had only to move her fingers to have him jerking awake.
“Hey.” He smiled, tightening his fingers around hers and bringing them to his lips. His voice was rough with fatigue. “Good morning.”
“How …” She closed her eye again, impatient with the thin whisper. “How long?”
“You just slept through the night, that’s all. Any pain?”
She had pain, and plenty of it. But she shook her head. It made her believe she was alive. “It happened, didn’t it? All of it?”

“It’s over.” Wanting the comfort almost as much as he needed to give it, he kept her hand against his cheek. “I’m going to go get the nurse. They wanted to know when you woke up.”
“Michael. Did I kill him?”
He took a moment. Her face was bruised and bandaged. He’d seen worse, but not often. Yet her hand held steady on his. She’d been battered, but she wasn’t defeated. “Yes. For the rest of my life I’ll regret that you beat me to it.”
Her eye closed, but she kept her hand firm around his. There had to be something inside her, something besides the thin rivers of pain and drugged fatigue. “I don’t know what to feel. There doesn’t seem to be anything, no grief, no relief, no regret. I only feel hollowed out.”
He knew what it was to hold a weapon in your hand, to aim, to fire at another human being. In the line of duty. In self-defense. Yet no matter how urgent, how vital the cause, it haunted you.
“You did the only thing you could do. That’s all you have to