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CHAPTER 36

Manon

Février is leaning on his cane beside my car when I shut the door on my way out, and I nearly walk into him before I see him in the shadows.

"For God's sake." My heart lurches. "You'll freeze to death out here."

"I was waiting for you," he says, as if there were nothing at all unusual about a man his age standing alone in a freezing driveway after dark. "I called. Your mother said you'd come. I'd sooner catch you out here than sit inside making conversation. What I've got to say isn't for other people to hear."

I frown. "About what?"

"I still hear things. At my age it's about the only use I've got left." He watches my face while he speaks, as if gauging me. "Three nights ago a young woman was brought into one of the Novak funeral homes. There'd been a fire. She had nothing on her to identify her." A pause. "She was your height, Manon. Could have been you. The fire took her face and most of the rest of her, so there was nothing left to say for certain it wasn't you."

The chill that goes through me has nothing to do with the cold.

"For most of that night," he says, "Laszlo stood over that girl believing she was you. Believing you were dead."

"He—"

"He didn't try to contact you because he swore to you he'd never do that, and it seems he keeps his word even when it's tearing him apart." His mouth twists. "A year ago your whole street would have been crawling with his men before that girl's body was cold. This time he stood alone and grieved for you, rather than break one promise to the woman who burned his house down." He shrugs, a small, delicate movement. "I thought you ought to know. Do what you like with it. I'm too old to pretend I don't care which way you go, but the choice is still yours."

I picture Laszlo staring at that woman's body, certain it was me, and never once reaching for the phone.

I can't live without that man. The moment I thought I'd finally gotten my freedom back, I couldn't get a full breath. He’s my oxygen. I just needed my mother’s words, and then the words of an old man standing in my parents' driveway to drive it all home.

"Thank you, Février."

"Don't thank me." He tips his cane toward my car. "He's at the Basset house tonight. Not that I'd know anything about it."

The Basset house is sitting in the dark when I pull up. One light burns at the back, but there's no one minding the entrance. His car is in the driveway, so he must be home.

I try the front door, and it's unlocked. Does he not care about his safety? How many people would love to kill the great Laszlo Novak?

I take a deep breath and go in. I'm not surprised to find him downstairs, in the mortuary where he normally works. It's such a familiar setting, even though he can't sense that I'm here. A year ago, he would have. His sleeves are rolled up and he has his back to me. He's wiping down a steel table that's already clean, nudging a tray of instruments an inch to the left and then back again. I stand in the doorway and watch him for a long moment.

For years this man knew where I was every minute of the day, and now I'm ten feet behind him in his own home and he has no idea.

"You've cleaned that table three times," I say.

He stops moving. My heart skips a beat, then races triple-time.

Then he turns around, slowly, as if he's not sure whether I'm real. Laszlo pales. He looks suddenly frightened, maybe because he realizes I'm real and he’s not hallucinating.

He crosses the room slowly. His hand comes up and stops in the air between us, close enough that I can feel his rapid breath, but he doesn't touch me. There's soot in the creases of his knuckles. Under it the skin's split on two of them, scabbed and days old, and the side of his hand is bruised yellow-green. That didn't come from wiping down a table, but I don’t comment on it.

I scramble to gather my thoughts, and for some reason I can't look at him just yet. I just don’t know what to say.

"Manon." He sounds so … defeated. "Are you hurt?"

"I'm not hurt."

"Then what happened?" His eyes move over, quickly assessing, and then he drags them back to my face. "You lost a patient and you're exhausted. You came here instead of home or somewhere else…" He makes himself stop. "Tell me what you need. Whatever it is, it's done."

"I need you to not say anything for a minute." My voice isn't steady, and I don't want to break now, after I've driven all the way here. "Because I don't want to change my mind."

He closes his mouth. I feel so uneasy, but I have to get this out. It's been long months of numbness.

"I want us to be together again. I want to come back."