A Darkness More Than Night - Michael Connelly [5]
Always picked last for the team, too small to be competitive with other boys his age, Raymond had gravitated toward pastimes other than team sports. Fishing was his passion and on off days McCaleb usually took him out into the bay to fish for halibut. When he had a charter, the boy always begged to go and when there was room he was allowed to come along as second mate. It was always McCaleb’s great pleasure to put a five-dollar bill into an envelope, seal it and hand it to the boy at the end of the day.
“We’ll need you in the tower,” McCaleb said. “This party wants to go down south for marlin. It’ll be a long day.”
“Cool!”
McCaleb smiled. Raymond loved being the lookout in the tower, watching for black marlin sleeping or rolling on the surface. And with a pair of binoculars, he was becoming adept at it. McCaleb looked over at Graciela to share the moment but she was looking down at her plate. There was no smile on her face.
In a few more minutes Raymond had finished eating and asked to be excused so he could play on the computer in his room. Graciela told him to keep the sound down so as not to wake the baby. The boy took his plate into the kitchen and then Graciela and McCaleb were alone.
He understood why she was silent. She knew she could not voice her objection to his getting involved in an investigation because her own request that he investigate her sister’s death was what had brought them together three years before. Her emotions were caught in this irony.
“Graciela,” McCaleb began. “I know you don’t want me to do this but —”
“I didn’t say that.”
“You didn’t have to. I know you and I can tell by the look that’s been on your face ever since Jaye was here that —”
“I just don’t want everything to change, that’s all.”
“I understand that. I don’t want anything to change either. And it won’t. All I’m going to do is look at the file and the tape and tell her what I think.”
“It won’t be just that. I know you. I’ve seen you do this. You’ll get hooked. It’s what you are good at.”
“I won’t get hooked. I’ll just do what she asked and that’s it. I’m not even going to do it here. I’m going to take what she gave me and go over to the boat. So it won’t even be in the house. Okay? I don’t want it in the house.”
He knew he was going to do it with or without her approval but he wanted it from her just the same. Their relationship was still so new that he seemed to always be seeking her approval. He had thought about this and wondered if it was something to do with his second chance. He had fought through a lot of guilt in the past three years but it still came up like a roadblock every few miles. Somehow he felt as though if he could just win this one woman’s approval for his existence, then it would all be okay. His cardiologist had called it survivor’s guilt. He had lived because someone else had died and must now attain some sense of redemption for it. But McCaleb thought the explanation was not as simple as that.
Graciela frowned but it did not detract from his view of her as beautiful. She had copper skin and dark brown hair that framed a face with eyes so darkly brown that there was almost no demarcation between iris and pupil. Her beauty was another reason he sought her approval of all things. There was something purifying about the light of her smile when it was cast on him.
“Terry, I listened to you two on the porch. After the baby got quiet. I heard what she said about what makes you tick and how a day doesn’t go by that you don’t think about it, what you used to do. Just tell me this, was she right?”
McCaleb was silent a moment. He looked down at his empty plate and then off across the harbor to the lights in the houses going up the opposite hillside to the inn at the top of Mount Ada. He slowly nodded and then looked back at her.
“Yes, she was right.”
“Then all of this, what we are doing here, the baby, it’s all a lie?”
“No. Of course not. This is everything to me and I would protect it with everything I’ve got. But the answer is yes, I think about what I was and