you screamed.”
“I — I stubbed my toe.”
“It sounded like …”
“That’s all!” For an instant she clutched his hand before pulling back with an impatient shake of her head. “Why did you come?”
“Because I was worried. You’re having a rough time.”
“I’m mourning my husband! Can’t I do that in peace?”
“Let’s get some tea.” He eased past her gently and headed toward the hall.
“No! Don’t come in.”
It was too late. He stood at the entrance to the living room, gawking. Boxes were everywhere, their contents spilling out onto the floor. Old clothes, old magazines, toiletries, and cleaning supplies were packed willy-nilly. Other clothes were stuffed into garbage bags or piled in a loose jumble in the hall.
Mail lay scattered on the coffee table, some of the letters unopened. Green stole a surreptitious peek, wondering whether she had received another letter from Rosten. The smell of stale food, mildew, and booze hung in the air. Marilyn glared at him, tears of shame glinting in her eyes. She clenched her fists. “Oh, why did you have to come? Damn it, Mike, leave me be!”
He turned in a slow circle, searching for the right words as he surveyed the chaos. “You need help with this, Marilyn. This is too much work for anyone alone. Are you eating? Sleeping?”
She still hovered in the hall, as if the room repulsed her. “I have … pills. Luke’s pills. I do get some sleep. I just — I just … I’m doing it one day at a time.”
Green reached down to pile some clothes back into the box nearest him. “Look, I’m off for the weekend. Why don’t I help you —”
“Please don’t touch that.”
He looked at the jacket in his hand. It was an old plaid work jacket, smudged with paint. “At least let me bring a couple of my officers out here and we’ll help you clear this out.”
“No!” She clutched the doorframe and whipped her head back and forth. Pink blotched her pale cheeks. “This is my job. My house. I don’t want strangers pawing through Luke’s possessions. Throwing them out like he doesn’t exist anymore.”
“Okay, I get that.” Green set the jacket down again gently. In his work he’d seen grief take many paths. Jackie Carmichael’s room had been left untouched throughout the trial, as if she had just stepped out to go to class. And for three years after his mother’s death, his own father had been unable to move a single item of hers, including her nightgown.
Now he turned toward the kitchen. “Let’s make tea. We can have it outside on your patio. The spring sun is out.”
She seemed to relax marginally when he left the living room. The ritual of preparing tea also soothed her, so that by the time she carried the tray outside, her step was steadier and her eyes clear.
There was a small stone patio outside the kitchen door, on which sat a glass table and two plastic chairs, all covered with dead leaves and winter grime. Piled in the corner outside the door were more boxes, and Green noticed another jumble in the fire pit by the shed.
Without bothering to wipe the table, Marilyn placed the tray down and sank into a chair. “I’m sorry, Mike. I didn’t mean to be rude. This …” she nodded toward the boxes, “is difficult but it has to be done.”
“What about your friend? Wasn’t she going to help?”
“I don’t want …” She took a deep breath to refocus. “This is private.”
“But —”
“And I’m not selling the house, so it doesn’t matter how long it takes.”
“What about your fresh start?”
“I was premature. I’m sorry your two officers came out here for nothing. But there are too many memories here. Too much of Luke and Jackie in every nook and cranny.” She broke off. Her hands clutched her teacup and her jaw quivered.
He tried for a lighter tone. “How’s the streetwalking book club?”
“I put all that off for now. Too much else on my plate at the moment.”
Green’s gaze drifted to the jumble of boxes by the door, the decaying remnants of last year’s garden, the leaves waiting to be raked, and the tangled rose canes to be pruned.
The mound of garbage waiting to be burned.
It looked overwhelming, even for him. This frail, worn-out widow was in no shape to tackle it alone. Yet she had almost panicked at the offer of help. What had caused her abrupt reversal? And that scream? Was it simply the next twist in her mourning, or had something else happened? Something to do with her selfish, uncaring children?
Or perhaps with James Rosten?
Green knew Archie Goodfellow was a busy man, who spent much of his day not cloistered in a musty church but on his motorcycle visiting prisons and group homes. He had a chaplaincy office in Belleville, but rarely lighted long enough to check his mail, let alone respond to phone messages. Bypassing the chaplaincy office, Green called his cellphone and left a message, hoping the man would find a spare moment sometime that week.
He was pleasantly surprised when Goodfellow returned his call less than an hour later. In the background, Green could hear the soft rumble of engines and the sibilant hiss of tires on wet pavement. Archie was on the move.
“Speak of the devil!” Goodfellow boomed in his deep, honeyed voice long since perfected to waken the sinners in the farthest pews of cavernous church halls. “I’ve been meaning to call you. Good work, Inspector. Whatever you told James Rosten — and I don’t need to know, although curiosity may be the death of me — he’s turned a corner. He has a mandatory parole review coming up, and this time he didn’t waive it. Extraordinary! I’ve been trying for five years to get him to at least go through the process, but he’s always said there’s no point because he’d have to admit his guilt. But now, not only has he asked for a meeting with the prison parole officer, he’s developing a release plan.”
Green swallowed his shock. “Has a hearing date been set?”
“Next week. I’m working with the IPO on the plan. It’s not going to be an easy sell. James has a lot of ground to make up. As you know, he’s been an argumentative sonofabitch all the time he’s been inside, refused the treatment programs offered to help him come to terms with his offence, and also much of the rehab for his spinal injury at the treatment centre.”
“Yes, it’s hard to argue that he’s developed much insight into his behaviour.”
“No, but in the plus column, he’s been no trouble on the inside. Except for the prison fight, of course, but that was ten years ago and he didn’t start it — although he’d just lost his last appeal and I think he was itching for a fight. The guards should have seen that coming. He does his job in the library and even helps run the school literacy program. He stays away from drugs and badasses; he’s co-operative with the routine. Personally, I’d say — and I will say in my report — he’s at low risk to reoffend and a minimal risk to the community.”
“The wheelchair would certainly cramp his style anyway.”
Goodfellow chuckled. For a moment his voice was swallowed in the roar of a passing truck. “I’m pleased he’s decided it’s time to get out. I see this as a big step. He has always said he could never lie about his guilt, but I think, underneath it all, he was just afraid to get out. He had no hope of going back to the life he had before — no university or even private college would hire him, he’d never pass a crim records check anyway — and life for a poor, unemployed paraplegic can be really tough on the outside.”
“None of that has changed,” Green said.
“But