The Unknown Beloved(111)

She was a painting in sunset shades, her colors melding into the shadows of the room, and he let himself look for a moment more. The dress she wore was the same hue as the apples of her cheeks and the plum of her mouth. He’d noted both when he tore himself from her lips. It was the same dress she’d worn the night she’d roused him with kisses on the sitting room floor, Debussy having put him to sleep.

Oh, to go back to that moment, when he’d been hazy with sleep and easy with dreams, awakened by a lover’s touch. He’d run from her then like he was running from her now. But it was not because he didn’t want to stay.

When he dropped his hat on his head and his coat over his arm, he made himself turn away for good. He would call when he reached Chicago. Just like he’d said he would. He would even write to her. He would enjoy that. He would allow himself that. And if or when she failed to reply, he would know to let go.

He picked up his bag, still waiting by the door, and reached for the knob.

“Good night, Dani,” he whispered, one last time.

He was in the hallway when he thought he heard her reply. “Good night, Michael.”



When he’d left Chicago in ’23, he’d left behind a woman who had wanted him gone. She’d begged him to go. She’d screamed and wept and threatened and cajoled. And she’d never once asked him to come back. He would have. He’d remained faithful to her, as faithful as a man could be when the object of his loyalty has given up all claim to him.

Molly said he should comfort himself with the fact that Irene did not reject him for the love of another. Irene had never strayed either, as far as he knew. She gave him up because she preferred to stay broken, and a marriage, a true marriage, required constant mending. But Irene’s isolation had never been a comfort to him. Isolation was not fidelity.

He’d left Chicago with nothing but heartbreak behind him.

It was different leaving Cleveland.

He found himself inexplicably checking his rearview mirror, like the city would follow him. Like he would still be able to see it, the signs and the skyline, the hollowed-out Run, and the odd-eyed woman he’d kissed goodbye. No, it was not like leaving Chicago at all.

He drove in silence, not whistling or humming, not muttering to himself or listening to the push-button radio that was a luxury in most cars. He drove that way for hours, stopping for fuel and then continuing on, silence sitting beside him, just like it had done for the last fifteen years.

But something had changed.

The silence was no longer empty. It was no longer a relief. It gnawed at him now, biting and tugging and twisting in his gut. And it got worse the farther he traveled.

At one point he pulled over, convinced he was going to be sick. He rolled down the window and let the air whoosh through the windows. It was going to be a beautiful day and nothing like his miserable trip to Cleveland in January had been. The foliage was lush, the skies clear, and dawn was coming. Yet his discomfort grew with every mile.

He retched, trying to force the feeling to abate, and suddenly there were tears on his cheeks and a moan in his throat. His chest began to heave, the writhing in his belly rising to his lungs. He wasn’t sick. He was crying.

And it shocked him.

He pulled out his handkerchief and mopped at his face. More tears replaced the ones he dried. “Good God, Malone,” he said, but the tremor in his voice embarrassed him, making it a thousand times worse. The tears were coming so hard he would not be able to drive. He sat behind the wheel instead, shaking and shuddering, his fists to his eyes, fearing he’d lost his goddamn mind.

A few cars slowed on the highway as they passed, curious about the car pulled to the shoulder of the road. Most gaped, a few gestured. One man even stopped, probably thinking he was having car trouble. Malone waved him on through his open window, and the man mercifully veered back onto the road.

His eyes were raw and red, his nose too, but eventually the streaming ebbed, and the pain in his throat became a dull ache. He had not cried since Mary died. And even then, he’d bit his sorrow back and shoved it away so often that eventually it had only lurked at the edge of his thoughts and plagued his sleep.

He’d thought all his grief had gone. He’d thought it had moved on. And suddenly . . . it was back. Maybe grief was always like that. Maybe it kept coming back until you released it. He suspected it had always been there, under the ice, just like Dani said. Maybe now, it would finally go for good.

He pulled back onto the highway an hour after he’d stopped, but his eyes continued to well and his chest continued to ache. By the time he reached Molly’s house in Chicago, his head was pounding, and his legs shook as he took his valise from the car. His other things could wait.

Molly made him breakfast—he’d just missed Sean—and bustled around him, cleaning and chatting and needling him for news about the Butcher. If she noticed his battered countenance and exhausted reticence, she didn’t say, and Molly would have said. Having the face of a hound dog had its advantages.

He was weary enough that rising from the table was too much work, and he sat with his hands clasped and his head bowed, knowing he needed to call Dani. He’d said he would. But he didn’t think he could. Not today.

“You know I never pry in your work, but do you think you’ve caught him?” Molly asked, sitting down across from him with a pot of tea. “Is that why you’ve left Cleveland?”