Turning Point(38)

“It’s amazing how the past always gets us in the end, isn’t it?” Tom said seriously.

“It doesn’t have to,” she said philosophically. “We’ve both turned ours into something positive. That’s already a lot. You saved a child’s life yesterday by your quick actions, and I’m sure that’s not the first time you’ve done it. You’ve more than made up for the parents and brother you couldn’t save. And I help some people with my work. It’s a good way to exorcise the ghosts of our past, don’t you think?” He nodded, thinking about it. She wasn’t a bitter person, and he admired how free she seemed to be.

    They talked about other things then, and she said she had to go back to work. She would be very busy for the next few weeks.

“Can we have dinner sometime?” he asked her simply and there was none of the Don Juan act that usually served him so well. He was a man who liked a woman, enormously, and felt deep respect for her. And she was drawn to the man she had discovered behind the games.

“I’d like that,” she said easily. “Things will calm down a little in a few days. And we’ll have time in San Francisco.” He liked that idea. He kissed her on both cheeks when he walked her to the Metro. She smiled and waved at him, and then she disappeared to go back to work.



* * *



—

Their debriefings and analytical meetings continued throughout the week, and they were all feeling pressured by how insistent the press were, seeking interviews with anyone who would talk to them at the various offices that provided emergency services. They wanted to know what they felt went wrong, how the event could have been handled differently, and how did they explain that so many lives had been lost. One journalist in particular was dogged about it, Jacqueline Moutier. She tried to corner Bill when he left the office one night, and he was tired of it. She’d been hounding them all day. And the Americans had only been observers at the scene. All decisions had been made by the French police. But the reporter was clearly looking for dirt and officials to demonize.

    She followed Bill to the Metro, and asked him if he felt any one person was to blame, and the question enraged him. Despite the enormous loss of life, everyone had worked so hard to get the best possible result both after the shooting and during the hostage crisis. She pointed out that one family had lost two daughters, and their son was still in critical condition and he might die too. It was one of the many tragedies that had occurred, but it was no one’s fault except the man who had shot them, and it infuriated Bill that she wanted to pin it on someone else and make everyone involved look bad. She personified everything he hated about the press.

“Why do you want to make it worse than it is?” he said, stopping to answer her with his eyes blazing. “I think it was handled as close to perfectly as possible. I am in awe of how well every aspect of this tragedy was treated.” She was known for making trouble and pointing fingers unfairly to make her articles sensational, no matter who they hurt. He had the utmost contempt for her. She had already said once in the paper she wrote for that the police had been too slow to go in, and if they’d gone in faster, many more lives could have been saved. It wasn’t true. If they had gone in earlier, they would have been ill prepared, and many more lives might have been lost.

“What’s the point of making grieving parents feel worse?” he asked her harshly. “How do you sleep at night?” He threw it at her but it didn’t slow her down for a minute. The others had left the office a few minutes before he had. Stephanie had gone to have dinner with Gabriel. The trauma they’d all been through had brought the two of them closer, which wasn’t necessarily a good thing, but gave them both comfort. Wendy was having dinner at Marie-Laure’s, and Tom and Paul had gone out together. Bill wasn’t in the mood to join them, and he had a lot of reading to do, so he was going home alone, and had been followed by this pitbull of a reporter who seemed to him like the worst of her breed. She asked him his name and he told her, and the name of the hospital he was affiliated with in San Francisco, and then she disappeared. He was irritated thinking about her all the way home, and then he put her out of his mind and relaxed when he got to his apartment and called his girls. He couldn’t wait to see them again on Friday. After what he’d seen at the lycée, they were even more precious to him. It made him realize again how ephemeral life could be, a fact he knew only too well from the work he did. He didn’t need harsh reminders, and the images of the wounded and dead children had haunted him all week. Making ordinary plans with his children for the weekend gave him a sense of peace. The concierge at Claridge’s had texted him that they’d gotten three tickets to a new production of Annie, and seeing it with his daughters would be a welcome relief, in contrast to the tragedies he’d seen firsthand that week.



* * *



—

    Gabriel took Stephanie to dinner at Le Voltaire that night and it was cheering to be in the elegant, intimate restaurant. They were both feeling drained and shaken by the events of the week, particularly Stephanie. Dealing with the victims of car accidents and random head injuries was very different from mass killings of the kind they had just experienced. It had made her anxious about her children all week. Deranged gunmen were common in the States now too. They were less frequently motivated by political issues than they were in France, and more commonly similar shootings were committed by troubled students on university campuses, or disgruntled people with psychiatric problems that had been left to smolder for too long. It seemed to be a world crisis in many ways, and the members of the COZ and the other groups had been discussing in minute detail the need for early detection systems that needed to be much more acute than what existed now. She and Gabriel were both tired of talking about it, and she was happy to be out with him away from work. He had been massively busy and after the school shooting had the perfect excuse not to go home, although he insisted that he no longer answered to his wife. They never went out socially together and hadn’t in several years. Stephanie’s situation was very different at home, she had a marriage she was still trying to maintain, or had been until now. After almost two weeks in Paris, she was no longer quite so sure, and Gabriel was doing all he could to put doubts in her mind about the validity of her marriage, and the things he said had brought up questions for her, none of which had easy answers.