Serena's POV
We leave Hannah Cho on a sofa in Hoboken at eleven that night, with four stitches, a bottle of Scotch and a retired ER nurse named Gloria, who is Odile's cousin and does not ask questions.
"I'll take the notebook to Brooklyn at nine," says Cho, propped on cushions, grey as putty. "The AUSA's a woman named Torres. She's honest. She'll want more."
"What more?"
"Corroboration. A link between the bomb and the old theft. A reason." She winces. "Without the ledger, it's two crimes with nothing between them."
"Hazel's ledger."
"If it exists."
"It exists."
"Then bring it."
"Thank you, Hannah."
"For what? Getting shot?"
"For waiting."
"It was nothing," she says. "I'm very stubborn."
***
We drive north in a borrowed car, a dented green Subaru that belongs to one of Dominic's old rowing friends. We don't take the Range Rover. We don't take phones. Dominic drives, with one bandaged hand and the other on the wheel, and I sit with the notebook in my lap and the Polaroid in my breast pocket, against my heart.
It's a clear night. The rain has blown out to sea. The Merritt Parkway winds under black trees, and the stars are very bright, and the dashboard glows a faint, steady green. The radio plays something low and wordless.
"Are you cold?" he asks.
"No."
"You can have my jacket."
"I'm fine."
"You've got blood on your face."
"So have you."
"I was going to say."
"Say it."
"You look magnificent."
It cracks out of me, helpless, like a pane of ice. I put my hand over my mouth, and he laughs too, a low, tired sound, and for a few miles, on a dark road in the middle of a nightmare, we just laugh, and I forget everything.
When it stops, I say: "What was he like?"
"Who?"
"My father. You met him."
"Once," he says at last. "At a Christmas party. Thirteen years ago. I was twenty-five. My father had dragged me to the Hale Meridian do at the Plaza."
"I remember. I was twenty-two, home for the holidays."
"You weren't there."
"I was in the coat room. With a sketchbook. Hiding."
"Were you?"
"I was drawing the doorman."
"I didn't see you. But I saw a man standing alone by the window, in a brown cardigan under his dinner jacket. Fifty or so. Very tall. Very thin. He had peppermints in his pocket. He gave one to a waiter, and one to a woman who'd got something in her eye, and one to me."
"What did he say?"
"He said, You look like a man who's been told to be somewhere he doesn't want to be." Dominic shakes his head. "I said, I'm thirty seconds from sneaking out. And he said, Then take a mint, son. It makes the escape smoother."
"He was the first honest person I'd met at one of those things." His voice has gone soft. "I remember thinking: I'd like to know that man."
"You'd have loved him."
"I know."
"He'd have loved you. He'd have hated that you were rich, and he'd have loved you anyway."
"Why?"
"Because you take the mint."
***
It's gone three when we reach the coast.
I've lost track of the time. The road dips and curves through sleeping towns, white churches and dark harbours, and a thin sliver of moon hangs over the water. Dominic is grey with fatigue. His hand on the wheel is trembling.
"We should stop," I say.
"I'm fine."
"You're not."
"We could be in Portland by five."
"And Hazel could be dead by six if you fall asleep at the wheel." I put my hand on his arm. "Pull over, Dom."
The motel is a low, flat, grey strip of doors under a buzzing blue sign, on the edge of a marsh at Kennebunk. A fat man in a vest sits behind a Plexiglas screen watching television with the sound off. He doesn't look at our faces. He looks at the cash.
"One room," says Dominic.
"Got one left. Two beds."
"That'll do."
"Fifty-eight dollars."
I stand at the window while he pays, looking at my reflection in the glass. A woman in a grey wig, a man's jacket, a smear of dried blood on her cheekbone. Behind me, a man's broad shoulders, a baseball cap, the grey in his hair.
We look like two people who have run out of road.
The room smells of damp and disinfectant. Two single beds under a picture of a lighthouse. A nightstand. A kettle. A bathroom the size of a cupboard.
"I'll take the one by the door," he says.
"Dom."
"It's fine."
"It's..." I stop.
He's standing with his back to me, shrugging off his jacket. His shoulders are rigid. He's folding the jacket with great care, as if the folding were the most important thing in the world.
I understand.
It's fear.
He's afraid that if he lies down beside me, he'll say something. Or touch something. Or ask.
I go into the bathroom. I wash my face. I take off the wig and shake out my hair, and the girl in the cracked mirror looks back at me, wet and tired and very much alive.
I come out.
He's lying on top of the covers on the bed by the door, fully dressed, with his arm over his eyes.
I get into the other bed.
The sheets are thin and cold. Through the window, the blue sign buzzes, flickering on the ceiling. I lie on my back and stare at the ghost of a water stain.
I can hear him not sleeping.
It's a very particular sound. A long, careful, controlled breath, in and out. The kind of breathing you do when you're afraid your own heartbeat will be heard.
"Dom," I say.
"Yes."
"Are you awake?"
"Obviously."
"Can I tell you something?"
"Anything."
"I'm not angry any more."
"I was," I say. "I was furious. I think I was angrier than I've ever been in my life. I stood in that room and read that log and I wanted to burn the whole thing to the ground."
"I know."
"But I keep thinking about the fire escape."
He says nothing.
"You went into a burning building." My voice shakes. "You, of all people. A man who hasn't been able to light a candle in three years. You went in. You climbed four floors with your hand bleeding. You said, I'm not letting go."
"I meant it."
"I know you did."
"Serena..."
"It doesn't make it right."
"No."
"It doesn't undo four weeks."
"No."
"But I think," I say, very slowly, "I think the thing I've been angry about isn't that you knew."
"What is it?"
"It's that I wasn't brave enough to tell you."
"You waited," I whisper. "And I let you. And that's the part I can't forgive. Not you. Me."
I hear the bedsprings.
A hand slides across the gap between the beds, in the dark, palm up, fingers open.
It's very close.
It hangs in the air above the thin grey carpet, trembling slightly, as if it were made of glass.
His fingers close.
We lie like that, in two narrow beds, in the dark, with the blue light flickering, our hands joined across a three-foot gap.
I fall asleep like that.
***
It's a clear, cold morning, the harbour glittering, the gulls screaming over the Old Port. Hazel Greaves lives in a narrow clapboard house on Munjoy Hill, with a green door and a lilac bush and a view of the water.
Dominic parks across the street.
I look at it for a long time.
"It's very quiet," I say.
"It's nine in the morning."
"There's no smoke from the chimney."
"It's October."
"She's seventy-nine, Dom. She'd have a fire."
At the windows.
At the little green door, which is standing, very slightly, a few inches open.
"Stay in the car," he says.
"No."
"Serena."
"I didn't climb out of the Atlantic to sit in a Subaru."
Then he opens the door.
We cross the street together, hand in hand, up the three worn steps and the little brick path. The lilac rustles. A bird sings somewhere.
I push.
It swings in without a sound, and a cold gust of air comes out, and the hallway is dark and full of the smell of old paper and lavender and, very faintly, something metallic.
"Hazel?" I call.
Nothing.
Dominic steps in front of me.
"Hazel Greaves?"
The house holds its breath.
At the end of the hallway, the kitchen door is open. Pale morning light falls across a linoleum floor. And on the floor, lying on its side, there's a pair of small, sturdy, orthopedic shoes.
With a foot still in one.