Icarus. (55 page)

And then he disappeared.

– "-"-"JACK WASTED NO time jumping up onto the ledge of the wall but he did not look to see Bryan's fall.

He moved carefully but quickly. One step then another. He made it almost all the way to the next rooftop, stopped, and bent down. He straddled the ledge with his legs, put his hand down and said, "Take my hand." When Grace didn't move, couldn't move, he just repeated it, very quietly, "Take my hand," he said. "Now. I won't let you fall."

He saw her close her eyes, saw her broken hand raise up toward him. When he grabbed it, he heard her gasp, but he had her and didn't let go. She reached her other hand up in the air and he grabbed that, too, slowly pulled her up, straining, fighting to keep his balance, but nothing bad was going to happen now, that he knew, this was the easy part, and then they were both on the ledge. He did not care about the street below. His head was clear and he realized the edge had lost its ability to call out to him, to grab him and pull him over. He was stronger than that. He was stronger than anything.

Still holding Grace's hand, he stood her up and they slowly walked back to his terrace.

Jack felt the heat of the sun now. And he once again heard the noise of the traffic from so far down below.

He watched as she stepped onto the terrace floor. Then he followed. They were hugging, her face buried in his chest, and he stroked her hair and told her she was safe. Told her they had won.

Jack Keller held her tight and told her that, at last, there was nothing more to fear.

When he was through with the police and the extraordinary crush of media that swarmed all over him, turning him into their hero of the moment – frontpage stories in every paper, television cameras outside the entrance to his apartment building, a blind offer of a book deal from three publishers, and calls from two agents and a network seeing if he was interested in a television movie about his life – Jack took a taxi down to the lower tip of Manhattan, boarded the Staten Island ferry, and took the boat over to go to Kid's grave.

Grace had asked if she could go with him and he agreed. They didn't talk on the ride over; both stood on the top deck watching the waves and letting the cool spray of the water wet their faces. At some point, their fingers touched and intertwined and they held hands until they landed on the other side.

Jack didn't know exactly what this trip was meant to accomplish but he felt it was necessary. As he stared down at the simple headstone that said "George 'Kid' Demeter," he thought of Dom saying they'd been to too many funerals. And he thought of Kid saying that, in his world, everyone was a Slash. Everyone wanted to be someone else. Everyone pretended to be what they weren't. Everybody angry and trying to escape their own skins, reaching for some elusive goal that was meant to provide a simple answer and hand over the greatest prize of all: happiness.

His head down, Jack thought about Caroline. He would never know what had truly happened between her and Kid. And he realized he didn't really care. He knew all he needed to. Whatever she had done, he forgave her. Ultimately, she had tried to help Kid; she had been kind enough and strong enough so that Kid was able to trust her, to tell her the truth, or at least the truth as he had suspected it. That truth had killed her, Jack knew, and he thought: That's what truth often does. It's why everyone's pretending. It's why everyone becomes a Slash. To try to avoid what will eventually and unfailingly destroy them.

He knew one other thing, too, and it was important to him. Caroline had chosen him. The affair had ended in Virginia and she was coming home to him. There was one truth that did not kill and one emotion that did not have to be avoided and that was love. Caroline had loved him and he had loved her and that was the only truth he needed to know. It was the only thing in the past that ultimately mattered.

He had learned about Emma, after his battle with Bryan on the terrace. She had kept a diary, it turned out, discovered after her murder, and the police allowed him to read what was relevant. It had filled in some gaps that would otherwise have remained elusive. He'd had no idea of her obsession with him; it had continued all these years. He hadn't known about her assaults on Caroline, either, and that knowledge pained him. Emma and Kid – that had been an unlikely and horrible twist of fate. Emma had moved to New York, transferred by her company, and she had seen Jack in the street, near his apartment. Strictly a coincidence. Kid had been with him. Then Kid and Emma had met at a club, one of Kid's regular haunts. She recognized him and, all these years later, the obsession resurfaced. She decided to see him, and seduce him, and then she had her connection back to Jack. Gradually, Kid had fallen for her, hard, which Jack understood. And she had, over the same period of time, gotten more and more information. In her diary, Jack read how the memory of her unfulfilled relationship with him had caused her much conflict. She was enjoying her life with Kid but she couldn't make the past go away. She, too, couldn't shake the ghosts. Finally, she had told Kid of her past with Jack and it had stunned him. She wrote in her diary: He wanted to be Jack Keller, had fallen in love with his wife and now his mistress and so, in a sense, he'd succeeded.

Jack could not imagine the depths of Kid's turmoil. The knowledge that he had inflicted Bryan on the world. The awareness of what he'd set in motion. But Jack did understand one thing absolutely.

It was time to leave Kid's world.

Maybe that's why he'd come out here. To say goodbye.

Jack looked up and Grace nodded. They walked out of the cemetery and, still holding hands, strolled slowly back to the ferry.

"I survived the publicity," she said as they walked.

"I knew you would," he told her.

"The Daily News said I redeemed myself. I was the Murderess who'd become the Heroine."

"It's over, Grace. It's all over and it doesn't matter anymore."

"You know what I think?" Grace said.

"What?"

"I don't think you can redeem yourself. I don't know if there's even anything to be redeemed. I think you just do what you do and you are what you are."

They walked in silence until the ferry dock came into view. "What about us?" Grace asked him. "Are we over, too?"

Jack stopped. He said, "I don't know. I think…" He smiled. "I don't know what the hell to think except that everything's different and I just have to see what life is like now."

"Me, too," she said. "But I'd like to see you."

"I'd like to see you, too," Jack said.

"Well, that's something, isn't it?" Grace asked.

He took her hand and they started walking again. Ahead of them, the ferry was pulling into the dock. "Yes," he told her, "that's definitely something."

THE LAST TIME Jack had been in Italy, he'd been with Caroline. He'd been young and the future held nothing but greatness.

He was back now and the future was a bit cloudier. But one thing had not changed.

"I'm starting to like this fucking thing," Dom said, tapping the side of his wheelchair as Jack wheeled him down a small side street in Milan.

"Don't get used to it You're already supposed to be walking around."

"I'm supposed to be dead."

"If there's one thing we've learned about you," Jack told him, "it's that you don't die so easy."

"Twenty-seven goddamn stab wounds," Dom muttered. "You walk around with twenty-seven goddamn stab wounds."

"I never knew you were such a whiner," Jack said. And, after a quick, calculated pause: "Old man."

"Nothin' but grief," Dominick Bertolini said. "You never gave me nothin' but grief."

Jack found the restaurant he was looking for and settled the two of them into a table on the outdoor patio. The owner came over, introduced himself to Jack, brought over a bottle of '97 Barollo that he said was magnificent.

When Jack and Dom were alone again, they raised their glasses in a toast.

"What do you want to drink to?" Dom asked.

"You first," Jack said.

"I'd like to drink to your mother," Dom said quietly. "I think she would have liked it here."

They clinked glasses and Dom said, "Now you."

"What time is it?"

Dom glanced at his watch, a confused look on his face. "Quarter to one," he told Jack.

"Then let's drink to that," Jack Keller said. "A quarter to one." And now their glasses touched a second time, then Jack turned his face to catch the full flush of the hot afternoon sun. "I always like to see another one of those roll around."