Split Second - Catherine Coulter [10]
She was frozen to the spot, panic rising in her throat. She stood there, trying to center herself, and looked out again over the sea of faces, most familiar, some not. So many people, she thought, their lives intertwined with her father’s, and how were each of them feeling about his sudden unexpected death? She saw shock and sadness and blankness and imagined all these expressions were on her own face as well. She met her Uncle Alan’s dark eyes and remembered his telling her how he’d once fed her some strained peaches and she’d thrown up on him. And with that memory, Lucy realized she wasn’t cold any longer. She said fully into the mike, “Thank you for coming to honor my father’s life.
“My mother, Claudine, died when I was very young. I remember my father trying to explain to me that she wasn’t coming home, and I remember he was crying but trying not to. I didn’t understand and kept asking for her. Dad would always say my mom was in heaven and that God didn’t want to let her go; she brought too much happiness and joy to those around her. And then he’d say, ‘Do you know, Lucy, I bet your mom is making everyone in heaven laugh their heads off. If I were God, I wouldn’t let her go, either.’
“I think God feels the same way about Dad. All of you know how he could make you laugh, even if you were in a big funk. He could throw out one-liners so fast it was hard sometimes to keep up with him. It was impossible not to wear a perpetual smile around my father, even when I was a teenager and my world was otherwise filled with angst.
“Another thing about my dad—I always knew he was in my corner. No one messed with me, ever, teenage boys in particular.
“When I told him I’d changed my mind and I didn’t want to become a lawyer, that what I really wanted to do with my life was become part of the best cop shop in the world—the FBI—I’ll never forget the look on his face. Surprise, and then tears filled his eyes. I asked him what was wrong, and he smiled at me and hugged me and said it must be fate. When I asked him what he meant, he told me my mother had applied to the FBI only a few weeks before her death. Then he laughed, said he would have to readjust his long-term plans since it didn’t look like he would have a lawyer daughter to support him in his old age. In the FBI I’d do a whole lot more good than most lawyers ever do, but I wouldn’t get paid much for it.”
Lucy paused to let the burst of laughter wash over her. It was as if the entire audience sitting in front of her had drawn a collective breath, and let in some memories of their own.
“My dad loved his snifter of Hennessy Ellipse cognac every evening. He’d sit in his favorite chair, his head against the chair back, his eyes closed, and I’d know he was thinking about my mother. I know my mother and father are together now, and that all heaven laughs.
“My dad was the best of fathers. I will miss him forever.”
When she relinquished the mike to her Uncle Alan and smelled his familiar bay-rum scent when he hugged her, she realized some of her deadening pain was gone. She felt warm again.
Alan Silverman didn’t speak until Lucy was once again seated beside Coop. Alan smiled at her as he said in his deep, booming voice, “I am a lawyer, and Josh often told me the same thing.”
And there was more laughter.
CHAPTER 6
Hoover Building
Tuesday morning
“Please, Dillon, I can do my job. I want to work; I need to work.”
Savich looked beyond Agent Lucy Carlyle’s pale, composed face, beyond the misery sheening the air around her, to the fierce determination in her eyes. They were a darker blue than Sherlock’s, the color of the Caribbean under a cloudy sky. She looked as neat and puttogether as she always did, her chestnut hair, many different shades after the hot sun of summer, plaited neatly in a thick French braid, and her signature small silver hoops hanging from her ears. Her skin was so pale—was it whiter than usual? Grief, he knew, could leach the color out of you. She was wearing black boots