Cold River - Carla Neggers [103]
Then again, who was looking for a firebug based on a tip from a genius kid?
“Your plants died,” Grit said, pointing to a couple of dead-looking houseplants in the window over the sink. There were dead plants in her window box outside, too.
Jo gave the drooping former greenery a cursory glance. “They were dead before I left for Vermont in November.”
“Is that a good thing or a bad thing?”
“Just a fact.”
Grit turned and leaned back against the sink. He’d never been one to care much about where he was, provided he could get done what he had to do. That wasn’t looking too good at the moment. Charlie’s CD was filled with stuff he’d pulled off the Internet and scanned about firebugs, smoke jumpers, search-and-rescue dogs, open arson investigations and such. Charlie had added charts and his own analysis. Grit figured he’d be a hundred by the time he went through it all.
He looked at Jo. She wasn’t in a cheery mood, either. “I thought I might find pictures of mountain valleys and moose on the walls,” he said.
She frowned at him. “Why?”
“Reminders of home.”
“What do you have on your walls, Grit?”
“Paint and a couple of flies I smooshed.”
“What color paint?”
“What do you mean ‘what color?’ Who cares? It’s paint. Beige, I think. Maybe it’s white that’s turned beige. It’s not a great apartment.” He nodded as he took in her place, its furnishings tidy and a lot more modern than anything he’d seen in her string of cabins on the lake in Vermont. “This place is in a good location.”
“I pay for location in no space and no light.” She pushed a palm through her copper hair. “You see Elijah here, Grit?”
“Nope.”
“You could have hesitated.”
“Why?”
She sighed. “To make me feel good. Everything’s happened so fast with Elijah and me.”
“Fast? It’s been fifteen years.”
“Most of which we spent apart.”
“Love’s not enough for you two?”
“It wasn’t fifteen years ago, was it?”
“Well. Here’s what I see. If you want Elijah to move to Washington, you’ll need an apartment that doesn’t have such low ceilings. If you two want kids, more space would be good.”
She got a pained look, as if she were longing for something she believed deep down would always remain just out of reach. Grit saw the dark circles under her eyes and the strain at the corners of her mouth. “Kids, Grit,” she said. “How can I think about kids when I don’t even know where I’ll be living in a month?”
“Takes nine months to have a kid, Jo. And the kid doesn’t care where you live.”
“If I’m—”
“Jo. You’re overthinking. Vermont and Washington are both good bases for you and Elijah. Army’s not done with him yet. He just doesn’t know it. He thinks he’s ready to chop wood and pull hikers off Cameron Mountain.”
“His father…” Jo breathed out at the ceiling. “Drew came here right before Elijah was wounded. He asked me to go see the cherry blossoms with him. I did, and he told me he’d been having visions of the children Elijah and I would have had if we’d stayed together. They felt so real to him.”
“Maybe they were real. Maybe those kids he saw are still waiting to be born.”
Jo looked at him. “You don’t see the world the same way other people do, Grit, do you?”
“I just see the world as I see it. Come on. Myrtle’s summoned us to her house.”
Jo pulled some fuzzy brown rotted leaves off a plant and dropped them in the sink. “Your leg, Grit.” She spoke without looking at him. “Do you ever think about what your life would be like if you could go back in time and…” She shrugged. “I don’t even know what I’m saying. Never mind.”
“Go back in time and what, get shot in the head and die instantly?”
She made a face at him. “No. I told you—”
He interrupted her. “Yeah, actually, I do think about that. What about you, Agent Harper? Do you think about where you’d be if Charlie Neal hadn’t shot you in the butt with airsoft pellets?”
“It was in the hip, Grit.” She rinsed bits of the dead gunk off her fingers. “I wouldn’t have been in Black Falls when Alex Bruni was killed here in D.C. and his daughter took off onto Cameron Mountain by herself.”
“Elijah would have