Darkness, Take My Hand (Kenzie & Gennaro 2)

“Hi,” she said.

I’d been dozing in the chair on the porch and I opened my eyes to the first snowflakes of this winter. I batted my eyes at them, shook my head against the cruel, sweet sound of her voice, so vivid I’d been ready to believe for a moment, like a fool, that it wasn’t a dream.

“Aren’t you cold?” she said.

I was awake now. And those last words didn’t come from a dream.

I turned in my chair and she stepped onto the porch gingerly, as if worried she’d disturbed the gentle settling of the virgin flakes on the wood.

“Hi,” I said.

“Hi.”

I stood and she stopped six inches from me.

“I couldn’t stay away,” she said.

“I’m glad.”

The snow fell in her hair and glistened white for just a moment before it melted and disappeared.

She took a faltering step and I took one to compensate and then I was holding her as the fat white flakes fell on our bodies.

Winter, real winter, was here.

“I missed you,” she said and crushed her body against mine.

“Missed you, too,” I said.

She kissed my cheek, ran her hands into my hair, and looked at me for a long moment as flakes collected on her eyelashes.

She lowered her head. “And I miss him. Badly.”

“Me too.”

When she raised her head her face was slick, and I couldn’t tell if it was all just melted snow or not.

“Any plans for Christmas?” she said.

“You tell me.”

She wiped her left eye. “I’d kind of like to hang with you, Patrick. That okay?”

“That’s the best thing I’ve heard all year, Ange.”

In the kitchen, we made hot chocolate, stared over the rims of our mugs at each other as the radio in the living room updated us on the weather.

The snow, the announcer told us, was part of the first major storm system to hit Massachusetts this winter. By the time we woke in the morning, he promised, twelve to sixteen inches would have fallen.

“Real snow,” Angie said. “Who would’ve thought?”

“It’s about time.”

The weather report over, the announcer was updating the condition of Reverend Edward Brewer.

“How long you think he can hold on?” Angie said.

I shrugged. “I don’t know.”

We sipped from our mugs as the announcer reported the mayor’s call for more stringent handgun laws, the governor’s call for tougher enforcement of restraining orders. So another Eddie Brewer wouldn’t walk into the wrong convenience store at the wrong time. So another Laura Stiles could break up with her abusive boyfriend without fear of death. So the James Faheys of the world would stop instilling us with terror.

So our city would one day be as safe as Eden before the fall, our lives insulated from the hurtful and the random.

“Let’s go in the living room,” Angie said, “and turn the radio off.”

She reached out and I took her hand in the dark kitchen as the snow painted my window in soft specks of white, followed her down the hall toward the living room.

Eddie Brewer’s condition hadn’t changed. He was still in a coma.

The city, the announcer said, waited. The city, the announcer assured us, was holding its breath.