“That’d be good.” Bernadette kept her eyes on the fire. “I have regrets, Gus.”
“Tell me about it.”
She straightened her legs, relieving the strain on her hip. Her injured shoulder ached, too, but she didn’t want to take more pain medication. Without looking at Gus, she said, “I won’t survive the scandal of what Cal and Harris did. Who Jesse is. That so much of it went on for years under my nose.”
“You didn’t do anything wrong.”
“It doesn’t matter. I won’t survive it, and perhaps I shouldn’t. I should have pressed Harris for the truth about what was going on with him five years ago. I knew for months something was wrong with Cal.” She noticed the newspaper turning black, crumpling into the ashes. “I’m too trusting. People won’t see that as a good thing in a judge.”
“Cal didn’t get mixed up with Jesse Lambert because of you. Neither did Harris. They had their own reasons.” Gus pulled himself out of the Adirondack chair and sat in the grass next to her. He was fit, but not as limber as he’d once been. He grinned at her. “Remember sitting next to each other in first grade when they sent in that clown?”
“It was a juggler.”
“Same difference.”
“You misbehaved, as I recall.”
He shrugged. “I always misbehaved. When I started climbing mountains, I did better. When I came back from Vietnam, I had a lot on my mind. I’d spend days at a time on the ridge. Then Harry and Jill died up there.”
“You’re a hero to a lot of people, Gus.”
“Just did what I had to do. That’s what you’re doing now, isn’t it?” He looked at her with those penetrating blue Winter eyes of his. “Beanie, what do you want?”
“Want?” She heard her voice crack and looked away from him. “I don’t even know. Right now, sitting here with you in front of the fire is good enough.”
“You’re thinking about quitting, aren’t you?”
Her eyes filled with tears. “Retiring, not quitting. I never expected to go out of the courtroom on a board. I always knew one day I’d come back here. Gus, I want to be here listening to the loons and growing tomatoes.”
“You’d miss locking people up.”
“That’s a simplistic reduction of what I do.”
He grinned. “You’d miss your gavel.”
She rolled her eyes. He was baiting her, enjoying himself. Trying, she thought, to get her going, distract her. “I will not miss my gavel. One day, Gus, I swear -”
“One day when you’re up here for a court break, you can explain to me what you do.”
“You know what I do.”
“I know who you are. There’s a difference.”
He leaned back on his elbows. “We’re going to grow old together, Beanie Peacham.”
She smiled at him. “I hate to tell you, Gus, but we’ve already started.”
Thirty-Seven
The glasslike lake reflected the dark evergreens along its shore and the grays of dusk. Mackenzie, changed into dry jeans and packed for her trip back to Washington, jumped from an exposed rock to a bigger one at least ten yards into the water. She was just below the clearing where Jesse had taken Cal – and where, it turned out, Bernadette had carved out a lot for her.
If she didn’t make her peace with this place now, Mackenzie thought, she never would.
She heard a movement on shore behind her, but this time it wasn’t a knife-wielding lunatic. Rook emerged from the cover of the pines and hemlocks, dressed casually and as striking as ever.
Mackenzie grinned at him. “I can’t go anywhere without the FBI following me.”
“You marshals.” He jumped lightly onto her rock without teetering even a little. “Enough room here for the two of us.”
“Always so confident.”
“Did you break open more of your wound jumping into the water earlier?”
She angled a look at him. “You saw me?”
“T.J. brought binoculars. He wanted to check out the loons. Says you count as a loon all by yourself -”
“Where is he now?”
Rook gestured back toward Bernadette’s house. “He’s saying goodbye to Gus and Judge Peacham. He’s catching an earlier flight to Washington. He can pave the way with our superiors.”
“Meeting with the big guns of the FBI?”
He nodded.
“You’re still one of their rising stars. T.J., too.” She dipped a toe in the water, which felt colder than it had out by the dock. “Jesse could have killed Beanie yesterday.”
“Mac -”
“The only reason he didn’t is because he wanted her to delay me, so he’d have more of a head start. It didn’t do him any good.” She pulled her toe out of the water, remembering Jesse Lambert’s eyes yesterday when she’d confronted him. But she pushed the image out of her mind and continued. “Beanie says she had no intention of making it easy for him to kill her. She was going to fight back with whatever she could reach.”
“She might have succeeded,” Rook said.
“I wouldn’t put it past her.” Mackenzie put her hand on his arm, feeling his warmth and strength. “I love it up here, Rook.”