her own, he had never so much as lifted a finger to help her. Not only had he turned his own back on my mother, he had forced his wife, my grandmother, to do the same. It was long after my motherâs death from cancer and only when my grandfather had been crippled by a stroke and was at deathâs door himself that I had reestablished contact with them.
No, as far as Beverly Piedmont Jenssen was concerned, there were far bigger issues at stake than an evening spent plying the handle of a one-armed bandit.
âLars is in my room sleeping,â I said. âI think he spent most of the night sitting outside in a deck chair.â
âSilly old fool,â Beverly murmured. âHeâll probably catch his death of cold.â
âDonât you want to go talk to him?â
Beverly sniffed and dabbed at her nose with a lacy handkerchief she had fumbled out of her pocket. âI donât think so,â she said. âIâm just not ready to talk to him yet. I donât know what Iâd say. In fact, I think Iâll go back to the cabin and lie down for a while myself. The truth of the matter is, I didnât sleep very well last night, either.â
âCome on, then,â I said, helping her up and offering my arm. âIâll walk you to your door.â
Her hand on my arm was almost bird-boned, and she leaned against me as we walked. The gale had yet to blow itself out, and I was happy to be there to steady her as we made our way down the long, narrow corridor to their cabin on the Bahia Deck.
âIâm glad to see youâre wearing your bracelets,â she said when we stopped in front of her door and while I waited for her to extract the room key card from her pocket.
âThey saved my life,â I told her. âIn this kind of rough sea, if I werenât wearing them, Iâd probably be flat on my back in bed.â
I held the door open for her and walked her as far as the freshly made-up bed. âYouâre sure you donât need anything?â I asked.
âNo,â she said. âIâm fine. Iâll just take a little nap. And if I do need something, the attendant is right outside.â
âAll right, then,â I said, backing toward the door. âSleep well.â
âJonas?â she said.
âYes.â
âAre you going to tell Lars what I said?â
âDo you want me to?â
âI donât think so. If heâs as smart as I think he is, heâll figure it out on his own. Thatâs what Iâm hoping, anyway.â
âOkay,â I said. âMumâs the word.â
I went out and closed the door. As I walked back up the corridor carpeted with a distinctive strewn-seashell design, I was struck by a fit of despair. Lars and Beverly were both pushing ninety, for Godâs sake, and the two of them still couldnât make heads or tails of the battle of the sexes. If with a combined total of over seventy years of experience with marriage they couldnât make it work, then there sure as hell wasnât much hope for the rest of us.
4
A FTER DEPOSITING BEVERLY in her cabin, I returned to mine. Lars was still asleep, only now he was sprawled crosswise on my rumpled bed. Because of that, I didnât hang around. Instead, I went down and tried walking around on the Promenade Deck. When that proved to be far too wet and blustery, I went up to the Lido Deckâs buffet and drowned my sorrows in a couple of cups of coffee.
It turns out I did have some sorrows to drown. Iâve never been one for great feats of introspection, but now, retired from Seattle PD, I found that self-examination had caught up with me anyway. Iâd be fine as long as I was preoccupied with whatever was going on around me, but as soon as I was left to my own devices, waking or sleeping, a single image invaded my being.
In my mindâs eye I would once again see Sue Danielson, wounded and bleeding, lying propped