Resolution
a Forever Knight story
by Lizbetann
©1997
Chapter One | Chapter
2 | Chapter 3
| Chapter 4
It was cold in the station. Goosebumps rose on my arms and I absently rubbed them for warmth as I shuffled through folder after folder, pale yellow/beige blurring into a colorless mass. My blazer hung on the back of the chair, but I didn't move to put it on. The sleeves dragged through the papers and were more trouble than they were worth in warmth. My trained mind fixed on random details passing before my eyes, disregarding my physical discomfort. Whether or not this exercise was of any use didn't matter at the moment; the ritual calmed me and gave my brain a chance to stop chasing its tail and heel at my command.
The call had come three days before, catching me at a rare moment between assignments. I was in the apartment--I can't call it my home, since it only sees my presence for three out of every twelve months. They said that she was missing, simply gone without a trace. For a moment I wondered why they had bothered to call me. It was an unsettling realization that my name was listed as her "next of kin"--because there was no other kin left.
They intended the report to be a mere formality, comforting police to grieving sister. They failed to take into account the fact that I was an investigator, and unlikely to leave the case alone. I'll give them this, they eventually accepted the inevitable with good grace. Captain Reese gave me access to all the files I asked for, and a desk to work at. There were two to choose from--a dead woman's and a missing man's. I choose the man's, in the superstitious hope that somehow Detective Nick Knight's thought process would merge with mine, and I would begin to understand why he and my sister had disappeared on the same night.
The facts were sparse. Doctor Natalie Lambert had given notice, packed up the things in her office, and disappeared. Detective Nicholas Knight lost a second partner within a year, was on the verge of being investigated for the death of both that partner and a suspect, and disappeared. Nice and simple. People who couldn't take any more and just got up and walked away. I saw them every day in my job.
But Nat's apartment was pristine, untouched, full of personal possessions. Her clothes were in the closet, food was in the refrigerator, and a hungry cat was wailing to be fed. Nick Knight's desk sat untouched in its typically male sloppy splendor--but no gum wrappers, no greasy hamburger bags, no photos of friends, of family. His loft was equally full of everyday personal possessions, but mysteriously lacking, somehow. There was a sense of empty places, as if a few things too precious to leave for others to find had been removed.
I could only assume that Nat and Nick Knight had disappeared together. Nat's car was found abandoned at the airport, Knight's tuna boat was safe in his garage. Co-workers reported that the detective and the coroner were "close"--not lovers, but everyone in the station would have been more than happy to play matchmaker. Both were secretive, close-mouthed about their lives.
Both were missing.
It was generally believed that they had left together, despite the fact they had left the most rudimentary of their personal possessions behind. Nat, in quitting her job, was certainly looking to move on. Presumably, the line ran, she convinced Knight to run away with her, and imagined the two of them soaking up the tropical breeze and piña coladas in Rio.
None of that agreed with my sickening gut-level suspicion that my sister was dead.
It was a window that I had watched for nearly six years, yet this time there was a difference. The woman still had long curly light brown hair and blue eyes, still walked with the same purposeful stride. The cat was fed, the TV burbling too softly for her human ears to make out words, on, I presumed, more for noise than entertainment.
But she was not the woman I had watched for so long. She was her sister, who would not stay long. And when she left, so would I.
The good doctor was dead--or so I was told. De Brabant as well--delivered in the same dispassionate tone. Both bodies tidily disposed of, and the doctor's car left in an obvious place to deflect police attention. Carefully, deliberately, he told me everything that had occurred, punishing himself with the retelling. I held my silence, hearing more than was said, hearing the pain that he would refuse to admit to. Then he left--for where, he never said.
My responsibly for six years had been to make sure that the human woman who had discovered our kind did not reveal our existence to the world. Generally, when such an unfortunate event happens, the human in question is hypnotized or killed. But my superiors had stayed that sentence of execution. A medical examiner determined to protect her friend's secret might just be more useful alive rather than dead. I was instructed to stay in Toronto and keep an eye on her.
Now she would never reveal her secret.
My charge was to remain until every loose end was tied, until the police officially stated that Natalie Lambert had skipped town and the sister left. Then I would be free to pursue my own life--or unlife, as the case may be.
And Toronto would be left as perhaps the only major city in the world where vampires did not roam the night.
It was eerie, living a dead woman's life. I had done it before, to track killers, but never for someone I had known before they were a corpse. The first night, I couldn't bear to sleep in Nat's bed. Her bed, her sheets, her plants withering on the sill, the soap melted into a puddle from the steady drip drip of the showerhead, milk spoiling in the refrigerator. Her clothes, her computer, her books, her cat...
Sydney accepted me with surprising ease. I had never owned a pet in my life, never considered it. A cat seemed to be too much responsibility. But Sydney cuddled close and demanded attention. Apparently, pheromones were enough in his eyes--or nose--to link two sisters who had nothing else in common.
Nat and I had been butting heads for my whole life. Seven years my senior, there was too much distance between us to allow for easy communication. Richard had been two years younger than she; I had been the afterthought child, unplanned, though no less wanted for all that--or so I had been assured throughout my childhood.
But the simple fact remained that Nat and I had been too disparate in age to have much in common. When I was just starting to be self-aware, Nat was beginning her teens. When I reached the age of rebellion, she was in college, working toward her medical degree. Our father died when I was fourteen, leaving me the only child still at home. My mother's and my shaky relationship quickly disintegrated under that stress, and at seventeen I finished school and took myself off to university in the States, at Colombia. At eighteen I further proved my inveterate perverseness by choosing my father's US citizenship over my mother's Canadian, and after graduating joined the Federal Bureau of Investigation. After that, family contact was limited to Christmases at home where I talked about my career with the FBI, Nat talked about her career with the county coroners office and Richard talked about his career as a Crown Prosecutor--and his wife and daughter. We agreed that law enforcement seemed to be in our blood. Mom died five years after I left home, and I began to believe that perhaps as an adult I could be accepted into the family circle.
Sydney mewled angrily, flicking his claws lightly at my arm as my grip turned too strong. Then Richard was shot and killed. I was only three years out of college when Nat called me at my apartment and told me my brother had been brutally murdered. In a brusque, distracted voice, she told me that there was no point coming to Toronto, since Richard had already been buried. She had not even bothered to tell me he had been injured until he was already in the ground. Stunned and furious, I told her precisely what I thought of her actions, and slammed down the phone.
I never spoke to her again.
At some point in my investigation, it began to be apparent that any questions I wanted answered would have to come from Nick Knight. There was so little in Nat's personal effects to indicate what had happened to her, both that night and in the preceding six years. I read the suicide note and journal that Nat's friend had dumped on her, and raged with impotent fury at the woman who had selfishly unloaded everything on Nat, who had been the least likely person to be able to deal with it. But there was nothing more, no personal papers of Nat's own, nothing.
The answers, therefore, had to come from Knight, a man everyone liked and no one seemed to know. His two former partners were dead. Before that, he had worked solo. He had transferred to Toronto seven years before from Chicago, but tracking his life back that far would take time and effort, not to mention calling in a few favors. Captain Reese knew nothing about him. Captain Cohen had died with his former partner, Schanke. Captain Stonetree have declined to comment past stating somewhat mysteriously that there were things in Knight's life that I simply did not want to know.
Talk about waving a red flag in front of a bull. He lived well but paid all his bills. He was forced to shun the daylight yet his loft was filled with paintings of suns. No family, little past. Nat had been his closest friend, yet even before Richard's death she had never mentioned him to me.
The only other direction I had to follow concerned--of all things--a nightclub. Called the Raven, it had been passed from the hands of a Janette Du Charme to those of Lucien LaCroix in the last year. Knight had visited the club on a regular basis for the past four years, presumably in a professional capacity.
I waited until nine in the evening to go to the club, assuming that it would be easier to find the owner--LaCroix--during early business hours. Unused to such places, I put on my generic little black dress and more makeup than I usually wore in a week--meaning mascara and blush.
My primping was of no use--the club was deserted. No notice, no for sale sign, just an eerie silence.
"No one's here."
It was a mark of my training that I automatically clawed for the non-existent service revolver under my arm. Sheepishly, I dropped my hand from its reflexive movement and said, "Thanks."
In the dim light from moon and streetlamps, I studied my unknown companion. Dressed simply but neatly in black jeans and a dark buttoned shirt, he stood with his hands in his pockets, watching me watch him with measuring eyes. Dark hair fell over those eyes, but did not mar their impact.
Seemingly waking from some contemplation, he took his hand and a key from his pocket and unlocked the door. The panel swung open on well-oiled hinges. I felt my mouth curve; somehow, I had been expecting a haunting creak. With a brief but surprisingly genteel wave of the hand, he silently invited me to enter. When I hesitated, he smiled. "It's a choice between staying alone on the street or coming inside with a stranger." His voice was rich and warm, flavored lightly with a French accent. I had grown up in Canada, and like any Canadian had taken Level Four French, had heard Quebecians speak accented English and purest French. Somehow, this man's voice sounded different, as though his French sprung from Europe rather than the New World.
I stepped inside the deserted club. My companion flipped on a bank of lights that probably were rarely used; they revealed the bar and dance floor with a punishing white glare rather than the dim colored pulses I would have expected. I descended to the lower level. Behind me, he started to remove the short cape I had flung over my dress. Flinching, I faced him and backed up a step or five. "Je m'appelle Joanna Lambert," I said, for some reason slipping into my schoolgirl French.
The unrelenting light revealed my companion to be wearing a deep bloodred silk shirt and to have blue eyes that pinned mine. If I had not already heard his accent, I would have assumed him to be Black Irish.
Taking my hand, he bent over it with an oddly courtly grace. "Rene Claudet. Enchante, mademoiselle."
What's the English saying? Lamb to the slaughter? Bearding the lion in his den? Il n'est pas. Unknowing, Joanna Lambert had walked into danger. Had LaCroix remained here, he would have taken her oblivious audacity poorly. She who in both looks and personality so resembled the woman who had drove his beloved son to death might not have seen the sun rise again.
In coming here, she could have easily exposed herself to her sister's danger. Had she dug too deeply into de Brabant's past while vampires thronged in Toronto, it would have been necessary to stop her. But now, there was little to find, and no one but me to betray.
Divia had seen to that. I only survived because I had never seen the inside of the Raven until de Brabant was already dead and LaCroix was ready to leave.
"Monsieur Claudet," Joanna said softly. Switching back to brisk, no-nonsense English, she asked, "Are you the new owner?"
LaCroix had given me the key, and the responsibility. He had already eradicated any evidence of immortal lives here, but the club could not just be dumped on the market. Why? I don't know. Did LaCroix expect his erstwhile daughter to return? There was nothing to return to. No one.
"Yes," I answered her. Legally, I was the new owner. The fact that I intended to be gone from this city in a matter of days didn't matter to the bureaucrats.
"Did you know the previous owner well?" she continued.
"No." She waited for me to expand on that one-word answer, and finally turned away when she realized I wasn't going to continue. She crossed to the bar and I followed. Ever the cordial host, I said, "I would offer you something to drink, but..." I gestured to the cooling unit that had recently held a decapitated corpse.
She knew what had happened; her lips tightened and she turned away. Idly, she wandered the room, touching the curtain of chains, setting them to swaying.
"You aren't going to reopen the club, are you?"
Her perceptiveness surprised me somewhat, but I answered her honestly. "No."
"Why?" This time, it was her one-word question that caught me off-guard.
"I am merely an intermediary here. I have no desire to run a club."
She looked at me through the chains. "So you will sell it?"
"Yes." Lie. The Raven would be held until the next century--and the next, should it come to that.
"You bought it as an investment?"
"Yes."
She struck the chains with her fist, frustrated at my closed mouth policy. "I'm sorry, Miss Lambert. I don't know anything to help you. " Another lie. I had every answer to every question she had, but for both our sakes I dared not reveal them.
Her shoulders straightened at the formal address, and the brief glimpse of anger was firmly suppressed. "I'm sorry I took up your time, Monsieur Claudet, and I thank you for your patience."
"De rien. I only wish I could help you more."
Truth.
Dead end.
All ends are dead, though. Life ends in death, and that is all that can be said.
I smacked myself on the head with a newspaper and flopped onto the couch. I was getting disgustingly morbid. Why did this matter so much to me? Nat was dead. I could do nothing for her. It was not my responsibility to find out the how and why of her death.
But I was the only one who was searching for the truth. Except that every line I followed was swallowed up and disappeared. Pulling myself off the couch, I went back to the computer, to the open file I had put together for Nat's case. There was frustratingly little there. I had checked through the File Manager on Nat's computer, looking for personal writings, an electronic journal, as it were. There was nothing there.
Except for several thousand K worth of memory not accounted for.
Suddenly excited, I pulled up a chair and tried to access the files through DOS. A box popped up, requiring a password.
Two hours later, I gave up. I had typed in family names, birth dates, childhood pets, medical terms until I was dizzy. I finally accessed an FTP site using my official code and retrieved a program that would run combinations of letters and numbers to break through the password. I set it up and went to get a cup of coffee. By the time I got back, the password had appeared on the screen.
Jo.
Nat had chosen my nickname for the password.
I sat in front of the screen, setting down my coffee cup when the hot liquid slopped over onto my shaking hand. I had thought that I barely registered in Nat's life, in her mind. Since Richard's death, she had made no effort to contact me. Yet I was on her mind every time she worked on her computer. It made my head spin.
I mastered my scattered emotions enough to start looking through the files, arranged chronologically and going back some six years. Within five minutes I put my head down on the desk and moaned.
For six years, Nat had been trying to cure Knight of being a vampire. My sister had gone insane.
Five people had died from exsanguination in a case in 1992. Three were homeless and had been murdered by a vengeful hospital worker. He died, and his blood had evaporated (evaporated?) in a fire.
The murderer of a museum guard, however, was never found.
A year ago, in the panic over the asteroid, the morgues were filed with bodies. Some of them had been drained of their blood. No one was ever charged with those deaths.
In February, two bodies were found in the lockers of a bus station. Drained. The case was still open.
Putting the files down on Knight's desk, I rubbed my eyes. I really didn't want to hear this. It was easier to take Nat's painstaking files of meticulous research as the ravings of a madwoman. My only question had been if Knight had shared her madness or if he had been the unknowing object of her medical fantasies.
I knew too much about how people died. I had kept calm and quiet in the presence of their bodies, even when the death had been particularly brutal. I knew the deaths described in the files on the desk before me were not natural. The wounds were inconsistent with the blood lost. And in almost every case there was an explanation from Nat that covered the abnormality. Individually, they worked. Taken together, however, they became less and less convincing.
As if Nat were covering up an undeniable truth.
If she really was crazy and believed that vicious bloodsuckers roamed the night, wouldn't she have exploited these deaths, used these cases to prove her point? Instead, she had disguised them. As if she were protecting something. Or someone.
Not for nothing had Sherlock Holmes been my idol growing up. The line about, "Once you have eliminated the impossible, whatever left is, no matter how improbable, must be the truth," had been quoted until it became trite, but it was still true. In my own work I reversed it, not excluding anything until it was justifiably impossible.
So I had to face the idea that vampires existed.
The proof for that theory was piling up. The cases on my desk. Knight's repeated "incredible" acts of valor. Nat's detailed, exacting medical notes...
Unable to bear any more, I stood up and gathered my coat to go out into the failing light. Thinking of the notes I read the night before made a strange ache tighten in my throat. At first, they were brisk and businesslike, referring to "the subject." Slowly, though, personality--of both the doctor and the patient--broke through. "The subject can't inject fluids other than blood--the body refuses it," gave way to, "I've never seen anyone make such a fuss about little things like drinking tea." Gradually, in the midst of the medical reports, I began to find the rudiments of the private journal I had hoped to find. Certainly it was unplanned and limited to her research--to Nick Knight. But it was unexpectedly revealing.
And then Richard was shot. For two days, no entries were put on the record. Then, Nat wrote, "Nick gave in to my pleas and saved Richard by bringing him across. Now I have two patients under my care, two men to find a cure for. We had to stage a funeral for Richard quickly, so no one could ever find out that there was no body in the coffin. I called Jo--what to tell her? Sarah will keep this secret, but Jo has a stubborn honesty streak. I had to tell her Richard was dead and buried. She wasn't pleased. I'll leave it up to Richard to decide what she should know."
Three days passed before Nat wrote again. "Richard is dead. Every one of Nick's predictions came true. But I didn't listen, refused to listen. I was so sure that I was right. Sarah has been made to forget that day when Richard attacked her and me, but I won't. I can't. I wish I could."
At that point I blinked irritably. I had left the curtains on the window open last night to catch the moonlight, and the sun was rising, shining into my eyes. I had been up the whole night reading Nat's files. Exhausted, I had stumbled to bed, rising late to go to the station to look at the files of Nick's cases over the past seven years. And finding that, rather than refuting Nat's "research," it only supported it.
But--vampires? I was still a long way from buying that explanation.
The sun had set by the time I had bought Sydney and myself dinner and returned to Nat's apartment, changing out of my power suit for a comfortably ratty pair of shorts and an equally aged t-shirt. The cat ate his meal and then crossed to where I was standing at the window and rubbed adoringly against my ankles. I had no idea what to do with him. I didn't have time for a life of my own, let alone a pet. Suddenly, the thought reminded me of Lora Haynes' journal, and I swept Sydney up into my arms, cuddling my cheek against the sleek fur. Lora Haynes had killed herself, Nat was missing (dead, I knew she was dead, through a link I never wanted to acknowledge)--and myself? What of my life?
Could I blame Nat for going over the edge into insanity, lost in the romance of elegant predators of the night? We both knew death could be an ugly thing--what harm could there be in dressing it up in prettier clothes?
"You're losing it, Lambert," I told my reflection in the window. "Vampires. Yeah, right."
I let Sydney fall from my arms to hit the floor with his lithe grace and went to bed.
Sang du Christ. The old curse came to my mind, oddly appropriate. Swearing by the blood of the Savior was not a childhood habit--I had sworn then in the coarse argot of a Parisian street-child--but something I had aped from my master, in an effort to forget that grimy bastard thief without a name and with no future other than a squalid life and a miserable death.
He had saved me from that, my master. He came to the jail the night before I was to be hanged for theft and murder, and gave me a choice--death or eternal life. I cursed him, thinking he lied to torment me, until his eyes glowed gold and his teeth sunk into my neck, draining away the life that would have been broken the next day anyway. And then I understood that he meant what he had offered, that eternal life was within my grasp, and I fought for it, fought him, greedily draining him of blood in my search for strength. His was still greater than mine, and he broke free. We escaped from the jail before the sun arose, and hidden in the dark from its light, my master told me what I was, what I had become.
Except that I never was quite what he wanted. I have no quarrel with my life, with what he had made me. But I accepted control from no one, and he wanted to make me into his dark disciple, a immortal parrot, a mirror to reflect his own image. But I had no knowledge of how to bend, I held or broke. Enraged at his failure, he tried to destroy me.
Instead, I destroyed him.
For that crime, I could have justifiably been executed by my kind. Instead, I was approached by the very group I should have run from--the Enforcers. I was a rouge, unknown in the Community due to my master's obsessive desire to control and mold my existence. I was either their enemy or a part of them. They offered me a choice--death or joining their ranks.
How could they have known--how could I have known--that such an offer would mean so much to me? Nameless, homeless, now masterless, I had nothing to belong to and nothing to call my own. Upholding the laws of the Community, being a part in the most intimate way possible... it was beyond anything I had ever dreamed. For three hundred years I accepted my responsibilities with joy. Lives touched mine rarely, mostly only when I was required to end them, either as an execution for a vampire breaking our laws, or as protection when a mortal found out about us and could not be made to forget. If no one loved me, at least they could not ignore me.
Invariably, the wonder and glory of it began to fade. I realized I was little more than a petty thug. The false intimacy of power and death soured. When I began to refuse to perform assignments, my superiors asked me for one last task, one, they said scornfully, that would not tax my newly awakened conscience. I was sent to Toronto to watch over a woman who had discovered that LaCroix's mad son was a vampire, and to make sure that she relayed that information to no one else. I was to let no one else in Toronto know of my presence. Not Janette Du Charme, LaCroix's daughter, not any of the other vampires who drifted through Toronto and certainly not de Brabant.
When I was done, I would be free.
My blasphemous curse was still ringing in my ears. Natalie Lambert was dead, as was Nicholas de Brabant. I should have finally had my liberty. But now Joanna Lambert had done the unthinkable. She had taken whatever scant information was available after I had cleaned out her sister's apartment and impossibly had discerned the truth.
I knew what I must do. To gain my own freedom, I had to make her forget.
Or failing that, kill her.
"I'm in love with him. God, I'm a fool."
Restless, I left the computer and prowled about the apartment. I had tried to sleep, but had been lured back to the story that was unfolding before my eyes. Nat's medical files were increasingly laced with personal observations about Nick. Maybe it had been inevitable that she would fall in love with him, I don't know. But I knew my sister, she would have done her best to hide it, to deny it, to bury deep where it couldn't hurt her. And Nick, lost in his own world of darkness, would have wanted to keep her safe, keep her away...
Damn! I realized I was doing it again, assuming that Nat was not insane, assuming that vampires existed and that Knight had been one of them. A whole cast was assembling in my head, Nick, Janette, LaCroix... a fantastic story, a fairy tale, a creation of a highly imaginative and insane mind.
But Nat had never been fanciful, not even as a child. I could not imagine her making all this up, no matter how far over the edge she had gone. Which left...
"Once you have eliminated the impossible, whatever left is, no matter how improbable, must be the truth." I muttered my own panacea aloud.
"Indeed. So now what do we do?"
At first I thought I was imagining the question in response to my quote. But why would my subconscious speak with a slight French accent?
Rene was standing just inside the French doors I had been brooding by earlier that evening. I could feel the chill of realization slide down my body.
Vampires existed. Undeniable fact.
And he was one of them.
This time, I didn't claw for my gun. When had my reflexes shifted, from agent to sister? When had my priorities changed? "Did he kill her? Knight. Did Knight kill my sister?" I didn't remember shaping the words, but they came from me, compelling, drawing on something within me, clawing out, making me bleed. I didn't want to know. I needed to know.
"Mademoiselle Lambert--" He began to walk toward me.
"DID HE KILL MY SISTER?"
Rene stopped. "It's not that easy."
"It is easy. Yes. No. Choose one, and give me an answer."
Suddenly he stood in front of me, his hand lightly circling my neck. He was taller than me, especially in my bare feet. Vampire. Killer. Drinker of blood. It might mean my life to challenge him, but I had to know. I had to know the truth.
I tried to step back, but his grip immobilized me. "Ah, so now you realize your danger. You didn't understand what you were walking into, Joanna Lambert. Now you do. Vraiment, do you want answers?"
"Yes." Without thought, still drawing on that thing deep inside of me. It was love. Love for my sister whom I had not known until she was dead. Nat was all I had left, and this was all I had left of Nat.
Abruptly, he let me go. "Get dressed," he snapped. Out of the depths of my own confusion, I heard the anger in his tone, and wondered.
"I want--"
"I know what you want. And I know that I should kill you now and end this. Get dressed. You'll get your answers."
I retreated to the bedroom to change out of my ragged shorts and t-shirt into jeans. I didn't know where he was going to take me, but I knew better than to challenge an angry vampire.
I'd get my answers. But would those answers end in my death?
I got my answers. Now, the question was living with them.
I left Toronto the next day. In the sunlight. I made sure of that. I cleared out everything I could from the files that would point to the conclusions I had drawn, and wiped Nat's computer clean. The captain was surprised that I dropped my personal crusade to discover where my sister had gone, but seemed to believe me when I said that if she had walked away from her life, it was by her choice, and that I would honor that choice.
Had it been her choice? In the end, had she known how much she was losing? Had she been afraid? I had stood in Nick's loft, listened while Rene had told me how and why -- and still not understood. A hand was clenched in my throat; I couldn't breathe. Tears burned in my eyes, blurring my vision. I almost thought I could see Nat with Nick, standing by the windows, pleading for love, for a chance to be together.
Why was I being haunted by a line of poetry? I barely remembered the rest of the poem; lit hadn't been my favorite class. And Yeats was much too moody for me.
But in my mind's ear, I kept hearing, "Things fall apart, the center cannot hold..."
And maybe that's how it should be. Maybe the center, the focus, the thing to which we cling so desperately should not always and forever remain the same. To let that happen would be to stagnate, to rot away, to wither and die.
"...the blood-dimmed tide is loosened..."
There had been no blood on the floor, where she had died. Where he had given up his life. Their lives would stand as no memorial. They had fought, suffered, struggled -- and, in the end, had not even the solace of an ephemeral reward. That was all. After a hundred years of searching for a cure, after six years with Nat, that was all. They died. Nothing more.
There would be no understanding it. There would be no resolution.
It hurt, to think that happy endings only happened in the movies. We can fool ourselves so completely, to believe that we have a right to happiness. We have no right to life, let alone joy. What we have then, every breath we draw, every rapture that brightens our sight, is a gift.
"...mere anarchy is loosed on the world. The ceremony of innocence is drowned, the best lack all conviction, while the worst are full of passionate intensity."
Which is why I quit my job, loaded my practical little sedan with clothes and Sydney, and headed out on a cross-country trip. Maybe there aren't any answers out there. Maybe all I'll find at the end of my journey is a worn-out car, a whimpering bank account, and a sense that I've just tossed everything away for nothing.
No. Not nothing. For the chance of something new, different, bright, joyful.
For life.
I thought that when I took her to the loft, when I told her in excruciating detail about how her sister died, about how hope was dead and dreams a useless longing, that it would be over, and I, finally, after so many years, would be free.
I was both right and wrong.
It was over, all of it. There were no more secrets to keep, nothing to stay me in Toronto. I was free of the obligations that the Enforcers had charged me with for so many years. I could now do as I pleased, without care or let.
But I couldn't forget that there was one other person who knew exactly what had happened that night. And through her, I finally understood the two people I had been watching for so long. There was a kind of ruined nobility in their destruction, in their futile hopes for a future that no longer existed. To have the courage to try was rare. To have the courage to face the consequences was nearly unheard of.
This, I knew better than anyone.
Did she know, did she guess, that I watched her from a distance, as I had for so long watched her sister?
It was not over. Not so long as I remembered.
FINIS
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