The Darkest Evening of the Year

to reality was the fierceness of her grip on Amy’s hand.
    “He’s my husband,” Janet told the police. “He hit me.” She put a hand to her mouth, but then lowered it. “My husband hit me.”
    “Oh, Jan, please don’t do this.”
    “He hit our little boy. Bloodied his nose. Our Jimmy.”
    One of the officers took the tire iron off the table, propped it in a corner beyond easy reach, and instructed Carl to sit in a dinette chair.
    Now came questions and inadequate answers and gradually a new kind of awfulness: the recognition of lost promise and the bitter cost of vows not kept.
    After Amy had told her story to the police, and while the others told theirs, she led Theresa out of the kitchen, along the hallway, seeking the boy. He might have been anywhere in the house, but she was drawn to the open front door.
    The porch smelled of the night-blooming jasmine that braided through the white laths of a trellis. She had not detected the scent earlier.
    The breeze had died. In the stillness, the eucalyptus trees stood as grim as mourners.
    Past the dark patrol car at the curb, in the middle of the moon-washed street, boy and dog seemed to be at play.
    The tailgate of the Expedition was open. The boy must have let Nickie out of the SUV.
    On second look, Amy realized that Jimmy was not playing a game with the retriever, that instead he was trying to run away. The dog blocked him, thwarted him, strove to herd him back to the house.
    The boy fell to the pavement and stayed where he dropped, on his side. He drew his knees up in the fetal position.
    The dog lay next to him, as though keeping a watch over him.
    Settling Theresa on a porch step, Amy said, “Don’t move, honey. All right? Don’t move.”
    The girl did not reply and perhaps was not capable of replying.
    Through a night as quiet as an abandoned church, breathing eucalyptic incense, Amy hurried into the street.
    Nickie watched her as she approached. Under the moon, the golden looked silver, and all the light of that high lamp seemed to be given to her, leaving everything else in the night to be brightened only by her reflection.
    Kneeling beside Jimmy, Amy heard him weeping. She put a hand on his shoulder, and he did not flinch from her touch.
    She and the dog regarded each other across the grieving boy.
    The retriever’s face was noble, with at this moment none of the comic expression of which the breed was so capable. Noble and solemn.
    All the houses but one remained dark, and the silence of the stars filled the street, disturbed only by the boy’s softly expressed anguish, which grew quiet as Amy smoothed his hair.
    “Nickie,” she whispered.
    The dog did not raise its ears or cock its head, or in any way respond, but it stared at her, and stared.
    After a while, Amy encouraged the boy to sit up. “Put your arms around my neck, sweetheart.”
    Jimmy was small, and she scooped him off the pavement, carrying him in the cradle of her arms. “Never again, sweetheart. That’s all over.”
    The dog led the way to the Expedition, ran the last few steps, and sprang through the open tailgate.
    While Amy deposited the boy in the backseat, Nickie watched from the cargo space.
    “Never again,” Amy said, and kissed the boy on the forehead. “I promise you, honey.”
    The promise surprised and daunted her. This boy was not hers, and the arcs of their lives likely would have only this intersection and a short parallel course. She could not do for a stranger’s child what she could do for dogs, and sometimes she could not even save the dogs.
    Yet she heard herself repeat, “I promise.”
    She closed the door and stood for a moment at the back of the SUV, shivering in the mild September night, watching Theresa on the front-porch steps.
    The moon painted faux ice on the concrete driveway and faux frost on the eucalyptus leaves.
    Amy remembered a winter night with blood upon the snow and a turbulence of sea gulls thrashing into flight from the eaves of the high catwalk, white wings briefly dazzling as they oared skyward through the sweeping beam of the lighthouse, like an honor guard of angels escorting home a sinless soul.

 
    Chapter
3
    B rian McCarthy and Associates occupied offices on the ground floor of a modest two-story building in Newport Beach. He lived on the upper floor.
    Amy braked to a stop in the small parking lot beside the place. Leaving Janet, the two children, and the dog, Nickie, in the SUV, she accompanied Brian to the exterior stairs