When Ghosts Come Home(22)

“I’m sorry,” she said. “Of course. Of course it was awful.” She looked at the table, where the plate of food waited for him. “I made you a sandwich,” she said. “I thought you could use something to eat.”

“I’m really not that hungry,” Winston said.

“Well, I think you need to try to—”

“Why’d you call Glenn, Marie? Really? Why’d you call him?”

He watched her step away from him as if his question had been a physical thing that had struck her. She put her hand to her chest as if to finger a necklace, but there was nothing there. She smoothed back her hair instead and set her face as if she were readying herself to take on whatever he was going to say.

“We already talked about this, Winston,” she said. “I apologized.”

“That’s not what I asked you, Marie,” he said. He leaned his waist against the counter, his hands reaching back to brace himself. “I asked why you called him. Do you not think I can do my job?”

“Of course you can do your job, Winston.”

“Well, no one else seems to think I can. The Wilmington FBI is in on this now, Marie. They’re taking over the investigation, making it look like I can’t do this job anymore. And if I don’t keep this job, then I don’t keep our insurance, and then what’s going to happen, Marie? To us, to you? I’m not going to work for Bradley Frye.”

“And I won’t ask you to,” Marie said. “We’ll find a way to make it.” She raised her hands, dropped them to her sides. “I’ll go back to work. I can go back next school year. There’s bound to be—”

“Work?” Winston said. “Marie, you can’t even get out of bed some days. We don’t know what’s going to happen next.”

Her face changed. What had been hard suddenly softened, but not toward him.

“Well, I’m sorry, Winston. I’m sorry to be letting you down.”

“Jesus,” he said. He walked toward the kitchen table and took a seat where she’d left the plate of food waiting. He picked up half the sandwich, and then he dropped it onto his plate. “It’s not about that,” he said. “It’s about me needing to keep this job. It’s about people believing I can still do it. Leonard Dorsey called the damn FBI, and Bradley Frye’s showing up at the scene as if he’s already been sworn in.” He picked up the sandwich again, took a bite. He chewed, the taste of it not even registering. “It feels like it’s being pulled away from me, Marie.” He swallowed, looked up at her where she still stood in the kitchen. “And I never thought you’d be one of the people pulling it.”

“What do you mean, I’m pulling something away from you?” Marie asked. She walked to the table, sat down across from him. “I’m not trying to take something from you. I never have. Me calling Glenn has nothing to do with your job. It has to do with me loving you and not wanting you out there alone if you don’t have to be. I mean, Jesus, Winston, somebody shot Rodney Bellamy last night. And you were out there. In the dark. That could’ve been you.”

Marie put her hands on the table, intertwined her fingers. Winston stared at her hands, her wrists, registered how thin they were before they disappeared into the buttoned cuffs of her long-sleeved blouse. He knew she worried about him, and he knew he was taking out on her what he could not take out on Leonard Dorsey or Bradley Frye or the FBI or, hell, Rodney Bellamy for being there on that runway last night.

“I’m sorry,” he said. “I’m sorry. It’s just that—”

“Don’t explain,” Marie said. “Don’t explain.” She raised her eyes to his, her mouth curving up in a slight smile. “I was right, by the way.”

“About what?”

“About it being an airplane.”

Winston smiled too. “I don’t remember there being a debate about that,” he said.

“Well, I was the first to say it at least,” she said.

“I can’t eat all this,” he said. He picked up the other half of the sandwich and reached across the table. Marie took it from him and allowed herself a small bite.

“I bet it was drugs,” she said. She reached to the middle of the table and lifted a napkin from the holder. She wiped her mouth, crumpled the napkin in her hand. “Drugs from South America. That’s probably what the FBI thinks too. That’s why they’re getting involved.” She stared at Winston for a long moment as if doing so could get him to reveal everything he’d seen and heard and felt in the hours he’d been away from her. “You’re not going to tell me, are you?” she finally said.

Winston looked down at his plate of potato chips. He knew that by now word had spread around the island. Marie’s friends had probably been calling the house all morning, asking questions once they heard that a plane had crash-landed and been abandoned at the airport. By now everyone probably knew that a body had been found.

“Debbie said this happens where her sister lives down in Florida all the time. She said they’re always catching Colombians trying to unload cocaine from airplanes.”

Winston raised his eyebrows in mock curiosity. “Is that what Debbie said?”

“Yep,” Marie said.

“Well, I sure hope these aren’t the same Colombians,” Winston said. “I’ll talk to Debbie before I write my report.”