Chapters (43)
- Pronunciation
- Prologue
- One
- Two
- Three
- Four
- Five
- Six
- Seven
- Eight
- Nine
- Ten
- Eleven
- Twelve
- Thirteen
- Fourteen
- Fifteen
- Sixteen
- Seventeen
- Eighteen
- Nineteen
- Twenty
- Twenty-one
- Twenty-two
- Twenty-three
- Twenty-four
- Twenty-five
- Twenty-six
- Twenty-seven
- Twenty-eight
- Twenty-nine
- Thirty
- Thirty-one
- Thirty-two
- Thirty-three
- Thirty-four
- Thirty-five
- Thirty-six
- Thirty-seven
- Thirty-eight
- Thirty-nine
- Forty
- Acknowledgments
“She was out with him one day. They’d been shopping. She had bags in one hand, Robbie’s hand in the other. It was a pelican crossing. Go for pedestrians. And this car just came straight through the lights. Bang. She went up in the air, he went under the wheels. She survived, he died.” He briefly closed his eyes. “And we died, too. Our marriage, I mean. Robbie had been the only reason for staying together. Without him we simply fell apart.”
They had almost reached the edge of the cliffs now, where weather erosion had made the soil unstable and it was unsafe to get any closer. Fin squatted down suddenly, and plucked the soft wet bloom from a single head of white bog cotton, rolling it gently between thumb and forefinger. Donald squatted down beside him, the ocean growling and snarling beneath them, as if hoping to pluck them from the cliff’s edge and suck them down into the deep. It spat its spray in their faces.
“What happened to the driver?”
“Nothing. He didn’t stop. They never got him.”
“Do you think they ever will?”
Fin turned his head to look at him. “I don’t know that there’s any way I can move forward with my life until they do.”
“And if they found him?”
“I’d kill him.” Fin twisted the bog cotton between his fingers and threw it into the wind.
“No you wouldn’t.”
“Trust me, Donald. Given the chance, that’s just what I’d do.”
But Donald shook his head. “You wouldn’t, Fin. You don’t know anything about him. Who he is, why he didn’t stop that day, what kind of hell he’s been through since.”
“Tell it to someone who gives a damn.” Fin stood up. “I saw you last night, Donald. The look in your eyes, when you thought you were losing your baby girl. And all she was doing was catching a ferry. Think how you’d feel if someone laid hands on her, hurt her, killed her. You wouldn’t be turning the other cheek. It would be an eye for an eye, and fuck what Gandhi said.”
“No, Fin.” Donald stood up too. “I can imagine I would feel many things. Rage, pain, a desire for revenge. But it wouldn’t be my place. Vengeance is mine sayeth the Lord. I would have to believe that somehow, somewhere, justice would be done. Even if it was in the next life.”
Fin looked at him for a long time, lost somewhere in myriad thoughts. At length he said, “There are times, Donald, I wish I had your faith.”
Donald smiled. “Then maybe there’s hope for you yet.”