The Unknown Beloved(3)

“Where were you?” he asked. “Before you came home. Where were you?”

“I w-walked down to O’Brien’s. B-but I didn’t go in. There are some k-k-kitties in a b-box in the alley behind the store. They’re so cute. I was just going to visit them for a minute, but I stayed too long. Mother must be wondering w-where I am. She must b-be scared. She’s been scared a lot lately.”

“When you left . . . where was your mother?”

“She was asleep.”

“And your pop? Where was your dad?”

“He wasn’t home. He just left this morning with Uncle Darby and wasn’t supposed to be back for a few days. He was going to miss my birthday, but he told me I could have one of the kittens when he got home. He said he’d talk to Mother.”

“When’s your birthday?”

“Tomorrow. I’m going to be ten.”

She thought he swore, but the word was soft, and she wasn’t sure.

“Have you picked one out? Do you know which one you want?”

“Yes. It’s a little boy cat. Daddy said no girl cats allowed because we only need one. The boy cat can’t have babies. But he was my favorite anyway. His eyes are like mine. One is brown. One is blue. It’s very rare, Daddy says. Very rare and very special.”

“What are you going to name him?”

“Charlie.”

“That’s a good name.”

“They’re dead, aren’t they?” she asked. She didn’t want to talk about Charlie. She wanted her mother. She wanted Daddy to come out and tell Malone and all the other policemen to go home.

Malone swore again, and this time she heard it. He crossed himself and looked down at her, and his eyes were shiny, and his lips wobbled.

“Yes, Dani. They are. I’m so sorry.”



People died. Their hearts stopped. The breath rattled from their lips, and the light went out. It wasn’t like a car stalling or a bulb flickering, though it was, in a way. Movement, motion, presence . . . and then nothing. A soiled glove in the road, the blown-off boot of a legless soldier. Michael Malone had seen more than his share of limbless men. Death was so unforgiving. So unforgiving. He had yet to see someone come back from it.

The soul was quick to flee. If there was a soul—whatever that strange phenomenon called consciousness was—it didn’t linger with the body. It raced away. And death, gray-faced and foul-smelling, immediately claimed the flesh. He’d seen it a thousand times.

When he was young, he’d imagined he could see souls. He’d even told his mother about the colors that hovered like watercolor paints around some people’s heads and shoulders. Pink and lavender, white and yellow, he saw them quite clearly, and he saw the light that shadowed him when he caught his reflection from the corner of his eye. His mother had believed him, and said it was a gift. His light had been warm once, but it’d been years since he’d seen it. His mother’s light was warm too, and he’d watched it fade. Maybe his mother took his gift when she went away.

He wasn’t sure what happened to a soul when a person died in stages. His mother had died in stages. He supposed a soul was like a great fire, raging, roaring until nothing but embers remained, and embers weren’t enough to subsist on. It was better for a man—or a woman—to go completely, for the soul to not sit with the body, but to leap out and let go.

He had worried that his mother’s slow death had killed her spirit. He still worried about that. Was she free? He hoped she was. He wasn’t. But he hoped she was. And he hoped little Mary was. And Baby James too. Maybe his mother and his children were together. That thought had brought him comfort when nothing else could.

But he didn’t know how to comfort Dani Flanagan.

“They’re dead, aren’t they?” Dani asked. And he told her the truth. Yes. George and Aneta Flanagan were dead.

He thought how strange the girl was, asking something so unbearable with a soft and knowing voice. It made the hair rise on his neck, that calm composure, that emotionless statement. But then her eyes began to fill, and tears coursed silently down her cheeks. Shamed, he fished Bunny out of his pocket and handed it to her. He didn’t even think. Afterward, he would curse himself for giving up the precious possession, but he’d wanted to give the girl something. It was the day before her birthday. Ten years old, and she was even more alone than he.

So he gave her Mary’s pink rabbit.

It wasn’t very big. It fit in his pocket. He’d carried it for the last six months. Dani accepted the toy and gripped it tightly, almost desperately, in both hands.

She looked up at him, eyes still streaming, and twisted the cloth rabbit nervously between swipes at her seeping eyes.

Then she looked away, still clutching his offering, but a vacant look stole across her face. Shock. Poor kid was going into shock.

“Bunny,” she murmured.

“Yeah. It’s a bunny. A lucky rabbit. You hold on to that for a minute, until we figure out what’s going on, okay?”

“But this was Mary’s,” she said softly.

“What . . . what did you say?” he whispered.

She didn’t answer.

Of course, he’d misunderstood her. It was his own madness. His own grief. His own guilt. She looked up at him again, her gaze still blank. Her eyes had shaken him in the kitchen. The left one was a clear, pale blue, and the right one as brown as his own. Here, in the meager light, he couldn’t see the colors, but they glimmered, one much darker than the other.