Fated (26 page)

“My father’s notes talk about a fallen angel, but I can’t believe that.”

“Can’t you?” Toby regarded him with an expression that bordered on pity. “You’ll have to suspend some of your hard-nosed convictions if you want to get to the bottom of this. After all, does it matter? A fallen angel, a monster, or an alien—they all instill fear because we don’t understand them, so in the end aren’t they the same thing?”

Hart scoffed. “No, they really aren’t.”

“Only because of the meaning people have given to the words. He doesn’t do any harm, Hart.”

“We don’t know that. Your guy could be killing people just as easily as he’s healing them.”

“No.” This came out vehemently, Toby’s coal black eyes meeting Hart’s dead on. “No, he doesn’t. He helps. He heals. The deaths….” Toby shook his head. “They’re not his fault.”

“I’m sorry, but without any proof… I can’t believe you.”

“It’s not up to me to make you.” Toby took one step, his defensive posture dropping as he reached out.

“Don’t.” Hart moved out of reach. “It was a huge mistake to get involved with you to begin with.”

Toby winced and closed his eyes. For a brief moment, he said nothing. “You think I have something to do with this.”

Did he? He couldn’t believe Toby would kill anyone, but he could hardly trust his instincts where Toby was concerned. “I have to keep all options open. Especially now.”

“What can I do to prove to you I’m innocent?”

“You can go down to the station first thing in the morning and have your fingerprints taken.”

Toby looked crestfallen. “With my job—”

“They’ll be very discreet. Don’t worry about that. If you’re innocent, no one will ever know why you came in.”

“Okay.” Toby ran a hand through his hair. “All right, I’ll do it.” There was no gel in his hair, and it stuck up disarmingly in all directions. The paleness of his skin tugged at Hart’s gut.

“You understand that even if you have nothing to do with it, we can’t…. This is my fault, not yours. I knew better, and I went ahead with it anyway, so for that, I’m sorry.”

Toby pressed his mouth together and nodded, his face unreadable. “Before I go and you never set eyes upon me again, let me tell you at least one thing. Your father came to me. He had pains in his shoulder, and he came to see me. This was some time after someone had left me to drown in my own blood in an alley. Your father came to see me, and I referred him to a cardiologist, and he asked me about the Predator. I didn’t tell him anything.”

“Why not? What did he ask?”

“Seemingly random things. Did I know the myth, was I aware of any miracle healings. I can’t exactly remember. I didn’t tell him anything because I wanted to protect him. I didn’t believe—and I still don’t—that it’s safe to talk about it.”

“You just said you didn’t think he killed anyone.”

“I don’t. But that doesn’t mean someone isn’t after him, or after the people he’s touched.” Maybe he thought he’d been protecting Hart by not telling him either. “But none of that is my point. The point is he talked about
you
. Your father was proud, and he loved you. I feel….” Toby was running out of steam. “I thought you should know that. That you meant the world to him.”

Hart couldn’t listen anymore. Thin strips of red sunlight pierced the old glass of the south-facing window, bathing the living room in a warmth he couldn’t bear. It often did that, so close to the Mountain. Its height would stop the clouds from passing, so they’d dump their rain on Brightly, while a mile away the sun shone as if it were the loveliest summer evening.

“If you can’t tell me anything else regarding the case, I need you to leave.”

For barely a second, Toby remained unmoving, and then he stirred cautiously, as if he had forgotten how his limbs worked during the course of their conversation. “I know this seems unbelievable—”

“It might be a reflection on my sanity but I’m starting to believe it.”

“You do now.” Toby came to a halt in front of Hart, his eyes dark and unfathomable. “I would have told you the truth the first time you came looking for the mark on Ben’s neck if I’d thought you would have believed me then.”

He wouldn’t have, and they both knew it. For a suspended beat, Toby might’ve thought about touching Hart, who didn’t know his own mind, didn’t know whether he’d be able to reject any kindness in this state. Gentle fingertips touched the burn on his cheek. He turned away.

“Even if you don’t believe in anything else,” Toby whispered, his breath hot on Hart’s neck, “believe this. What I felt for you was real. How much I wanted you was real.”

“Go,” Hart croaked. He closed his eyes and willed his body to stop responding. Toby’s fingers stroked the back of his neck, and goose bumps rose on his shoulders and down his spine. “Please.” The touch fell away.

Following Toby to the door, he felt like slamming it, until a realization forced his mouth to move. “Wait. You came here to talk to me about something. What was it?”

“I….” Toby winced, averting his gaze. “It doesn’t matter anymore.”

“Tell me.”

Toby fixed his eyes on a point somewhere beyond Hart’s shoulder. “Benjamin Drake left advance medical directives in place. They specified if he ever ended up on life support, it shouldn’t be kept up for more than ten days if there were no changes. Those ten days are up tomorrow.”

“Then it’s out of your hands, isn’t it? Why come to me?”

Toby smiled, but it didn’t reach his eyes. He hardly hung on to it for more than a second before he let it fall away, a tired pallor taking over as he withdrew within himself. “It hardly matters now.”

Not until Hart closed the door and pressed his forehead against it did he realize Toby had come to him looking for comfort. For a soothing touch and a kind word before he had to let one of his patients go.

“Fuck.” Hart slapped the wood underneath his palms once, hard, then again, harder, so the skin stung and tingled. “
Fuck
!”

F
OR
DUST
thou art and unto dust shalt thou return.

The priest read only to Hart, but it didn’t really penetrate the blood-drum that thrummed through his ears. At his feet stood the black casket, ready to be lowered into the damp earth. It smelled like basement. It smelled like tree roots and decay.

His mother and father, if nowhere else, were here at least reunited by the soil.

Hart lifted his face to the sky, the bright sunlight turning the inside of his eyelids gold. The day hadn’t heated to the point of unbearable just yet. As summer ended that point came later and later in the day. Somewhere in the distance a mourning dove cooed.

A tickle against his cheek made Hart open his eyes in time to see a feather flutter to the ground. It landed at his feet, soft, gray, and downy like it belonged to a young bird. Hart stooped to pick it up and added it to the small bouquet of moonflowers he’d plucked on the porch that morning. He’d watched from his rocking chair as their buds closed under the rising sun, and somehow at the end of his father’s brilliant life, Hart found it fitting to leave these on his grave.

Still the priest read to his lonely audience, and maybe this wasn’t how things were supposed to go during funerals. But it was, in a manner of speaking, his funeral, so Hart put the flowers with the feather on the coffin and stayed there, kneeling, one hand pressed to the warming wood. The morning dew on the freshly mowed lawn hadn’t entirely evaporated yet, and Hart felt his knees go cold.

Inside those four walls, his father was laid to rest. Tears breached the corners of his eyes as he found it hard to imagine this man a decade older than the last time he had seen him. Suddenly, not saying that final good-bye face to face seemed like a terrible waste. Doing nothing to stop the tears, Hart bent his head.

I miss you
, he thought.
I have missed you so damn fucking much.
And he would go on missing him until he turned to dust himself, regretting every single wasted day of these past lonely years.

At a respectful distance stood two men who would lower the coffin when the priest was done, but they were quiet enough that he could ignore them. The priest’s voice droned a low monotone easily blocked out. Hart, for the first time in his life, felt the weight of truly being alone. Now there was no one left who would love him simply for existing. Surely once past thirty it was stupid to feel like an orphan, right?

Part of him rebelled against the self-pity,
but then
, he thought,
if I can’t pity myself on the day I bury my last remaining family member….

“Amen.”

The priest closed his black Bible and looked down upon Hart with a gentle smile. He held out his hand, and for a moment, Hart thought the priest would touch him, but he didn’t. His eyes closed, and his mouth moved over a silent benediction.

When he was done, as if he knew more words were unwelcome, the priest stepped backward, his black cassock rustling around his legs. When he was a fair distance away, the priest turned around and started down the path toward the gate, lifting his face to the sun as if he too was soaking up the last of its power before the fall began to rain down on them.

At a momentary loss, Hart stayed where he was. Slowly the buzzing in his ears subsided, and he became aware of the men waiting for him to go so they could do their job. His knees felt stiff when he rose to his feet, and he wondered if he’d been there longer than he thought.

“Bye, Dad,” he softly said, realizing that he’d never speak directly to him again. With a last glance at his parents’ graves, Hart took a deep breath and straightened his shoulders.

At first he thought the figure by the old weeping willow at the top of the hill was no more than a visitor for another quiet, lonely grave. But the man stood too still, face lifted straight ahead to where Hart halted. And those shoulders hunched in a far too familiar way.

“Isaac,” Hart breathed. A warmth that spread from the inside made the hairs on his arms rise in a pleasant shiver. He didn’t bother fighting the smile as he set off up the path toward the tree where Isaac apparently tried to hunch deeper into his suit.

“I’m sorry” was the first thing Isaac said when he came close enough. “I know you didn’t want anyone here with y—”

“Don’t be ridiculous.” He didn’t stop walking until he had Isaac in his arms. Isaac gave a little surprised
oomph
at being squeezed so tightly and then wrapped his arms around him to give as good as he got. “It’s so great to see you,” Hart whispered. Tears began to stream down his face again, but this time he felt like the grief left his body on their trail. “So great.”

“You too. God.” Isaac gripped him tighter, fisting the back of his suit jacket, no doubt crumpling it, but he didn’t care. He just didn’t care.

“A
RE
YOU
all right?” Isaac sat at the edge of his bench, hands squeezed together in his lap, as comfortable as if he were sitting on a bed of nails.

“Not really, but I will be.” They’d moved to the Inn, a small café beside the church. A few elderly locals were having their breakfast inside. Hart had picked a table under a large umbrella, shading them mostly from the sun and the street. Isaac chewed on his bottom lip. He looked like he’d lost a little weight in the past six days. There were dark circles under his usually vibrant blue-green eyes. Now they were dull and bloodshot, and even his blond curls lacked their usual bounce. Hart frowned. “Are
you
all right?”

Isaac shook his head, blinking rapidly. “I’m fine.” Clearly a lie since his chest hitched. “I just can’t imagine… both your parents gone.” For as much as Isaac had grown into those shoulders of his, there still very much lived a child in his heart.

“You don’t have to imagine, Isaac. Your mom is young. She’ll be around for a long time.” To his dismay Isaac seemed even more upset than before, and he wished he could go around their table, sit beside him, and hold him tight. “Your mom is all right, isn’t she?”

“Yes.” Isaac took a deep breath and dredged up a bigger smile. “Yes, perfectly fine, of course.”

“How did you get here?”

“I drove.”

Well, no wonder. “I’m really happy you’re here.” Hart laid his hands flat on the table—an invitation for Isaac to take them if he needed or wanted to—but Isaac’s remained tense and unmoving. “But you didn’t have to do that. It’s a bitch of a drive, I know. Let me at least give you some money for gas.”

The set of Isaac’s mouth turned a little tight. “Mom gave me money. Don’t treat me like… like….”

“Like?”

“A child.”

“I don’t.” God help him, he didn’t. “You look like anything but a child in that suit, buddy. I didn’t know you had it in you.” Now there was a lie if he’d ever told one.

Isaac smiled reluctantly, color returning slowly to his cheeks. “So that’s what it’s gonna take, huh? The way won’t be through your stomach, but through being well-dressed. I’ll remember that.”

“Are you hungry?” Hart rose to his feet before he could start blushing. “I’ll go order us something. Dad loved to eat. We should at least honor that today.”