“And Nixie?”
“Mira came by on her way out. She said the kid was doing a little better. That the trip to the morgue . . . Jesus.” She covered her face with her hands. “God, I didn’t think I was going to be able to hold it together in there.”
“I know.”
She shook her head, struggling even now to maintain. “The way she looked at her father, touched him. What was in her eyes when she did. Sorrow, something beyond sorrow. And you knew, seeing that, how much she loved him. That she was never afraid of him, never had to worry if he’d hurt her. We don’t know what that’s like. We can’t. I can find the man who did this, but I can’t understand what she feels. And if I can’t understand, how can I make it right?”
“Not true.” He brushed her face with his fingers, took away tears. “Who are you weeping for, if not for her?”
“I don’t know. I don’t know. She doesn’t know what I do, but she’s living through it. I can’t know what she knows. That kind of bond? It’s different than what we’ve got. It’s got to be. Child to parent, parent to child. That was taken from her.”
She reached up with her own hands, wiped the tears away. “I stood over my father, with his blood all over me. I can’t really remember what I felt. Relief, pleasure, terror—all of it, none of it. He comes back, in my head, in my dreams, and he tells me it’s not over. He’s right. It’s not over. It’s never going to be. She makes me see it.”
“I know.” He rubbed an errant tear away with his thumb. “Yes, I know. It’s wearing on you, I can see that, too. There doesn’t seem to be anything either of us can do about it. You won’t pass the case to someone else.” He lifted her chin with his hand before she could answer. “You won’t, and I wouldn’t want you to. You’d never forgive yourself for stepping aside because of personal distress. And you’d never trust yourself again, not fully, not the way you need to.”
“I saw myself when I found her. Saw myself, instead of her, huddled in a ball, coated in blood. Not just thought of it, but saw it. Just a flash, just for an instant.”
“Yet you brought her here. You face it. Darling Eve.” His voice was like balm on the burn. “The child isn’t the only one who shows grace in her steps.”
“Grace isn’t the issue. Roarke.” She could tell him, say this to him. “On days like this, part of me wants to go back there, to that room in Dallas. Just so I can stand over him again, with his blood all over me and the knife in my hand.”
She closed her fist as if she held the hilt. “Just to kill him again, but this time to know what I feel when I do, to feel it because maybe then it’ll be done. Even if it doesn’t, to feel that moment when I carved him up. I don’t know what that makes me.”
“On days like this, all of me wants to be the one to go back to that room in Dallas. To have his blood on me, and the knife in my hands. I know exactly what I would feel. And what it makes us, Eve, is who we are.”
She let out a long breath. “I don’t know why that helps when it should probably scare me. She won’t feel this way, because she had that base. Because she could lay her head on her mother’s dead heart and cry. She’ll have sorrow, and nights when she’s afraid, but she’ll remember why she was able to touch her father’s face, her brother’s hair, and cry on her mother’s breast.”
“She’ll remember a cop who stood with her, and held her hand when she did.”
“They’re going to throw her into the system, Roarke. Sometimes it’s salvation, sometimes it’s good, but not for her. I don’t want her to be another case file. To cycle through that like I did. I have an idea what could be done, but I wanted to run it by you.”
His face went absolutely still, absolutely blank. “What?”
“I was thinking we could approach Richard DeBlass and Elizabeth Barrister.”
“Oh.” This time it was Roarke who let out a long breath. “Of course. Richard and Beth, good thought.” He turned away, walked away from her to stare out the window.
“If it’s a good idea, why are you upset?”
“I’m not.” What was he? He didn’t have the name for it. “I should’ve thought of them myself. I should have thought more clearly.”
“You can’t think of everything.”
“Apparently not.”
“Something’s wrong.”
He started to deny it, push it aside. And had to accept that it would just be one more mistake. “I can’t get my mind off the child. No, that’s not it, not altogether. I can’t get it out of my head, all of it, not since I went to that house with you. Stood looking at those rooms where those children had been sleeping.”
“It’s rougher when it’s kids. I should’ve thought of that before I asked you to do the walk-through.”
“I’m not green.” He whirled around, his face lit with fury. “I’m not so soft in the belly I can’t . . . Ah, fuck me.” He broke off, ran his hands through his hair.
“Hey, hey, hey.” Obviously alarmed, she crossed over quickly, rubbed his back. “What gives?”
“They were sleeping.” Christ Jesus, would that single thing always sicken him the most? “They were innocent. They had what children are supposed to have. Love and comfort and security. And I looked in those rooms, saw their blood, and it tears at me. Tears at my gut. Tears at the years between. I never think of it. Why should I, goddamn it.”
She didn’t ask of what, not when she could see it on his face. Had it only been a short time ago he’d told her he hated to see her look sad? How could she tell him what it did to her guts to see him look devastated?