Lincoln Perry 02 - Sorrow's Anthem by Michael Koryta Read Free Book Online

in a room filled with strangers, but now
those meetings had gone by the wayside, as well. These were the
rules of contact that had developed between us as the years had
passed, and while they were always unspoken, they were also rigid.
She worked out of her house, I knew, so I didn’t have to rise so
early simply to catch her at home. I was more interested in catching
her before she turned on the television.
She came to the door within seconds of my knock, but she wore
a robe and had her hair in a towel.
“Lincoln,” she said, lifting a hand to her temple. “What in the
world . . .” Halfway through the question she answered it for herself.
“Something’s wrong.”
I nodded. “Yeah. Something’s wrong.”
Seeing her again, I regretted that I’d designated myself as the
messenger. I’d known it wouldn’t be any fun for me, but it had also
seemed better than letting her hear it from some idiot television
news reporter or as overheard conversation in a grocery store
checkout line. Now I was struck by just how difficult the disclosure
was going to be.
“He’s in trouble,” she said, stepping aside from the door. “I’ve already
heard. But, Lincoln, he couldn’t have killed that woman. He
couldn’t have.”
“He didn’t,” I said. “But that doesn’t matter anymore. Not where
he’s concerned.”
I was inside the house now, following her through a tiny dining
room and into a kitchen that smelled warmly of brewing coffee.
Allison sat on a kitchen stool, the robe sliding off slim, bare legs.
“What are you talking about?”
“Ed’s dead.” I was standing in the kitchen doorway, tall and
rigid, hands hanging at my sides.
“No. Dead? No. He’s just in jail, Lincoln. They were going to
send him back to . . .” The attempt died then, and she shut up and
stared at me.
“It happened last night,” I said. “I was there when he died. The
cops came after him and he ran into the street. He was drunk and he couldn’t make it across. They hit him with their car.”
She didn’t say anything, just reached up and slowly unwound the
towel from her long blond hair. It fell to her shoulders, some of the
wetter strands sticking to her neck.
“Three years and seven months,” she said. Silence for a moment,
and then: “That’s how long it’s been since I talked to him. I figured
that out when I heard about the fire on the news last night. We saw
each other once when he got out of jail, and then no more.”
There was another long pause before she said, “So then I
shouldn’t be sad, right? Not really.”
She started to cry then, softly and without theatrics, just a quiet
supply of tears that she’d occasionally wipe with the back of her
hand. I didn’t move toward her. For a long time we remained like
that—her crying on the stool, me standing with my hands at my
sides in the doorway.
“Shit,” she said eventually, sniffing back the last of the tears and
shaking her head. “He’s dead and I’m mad at him for that. Make
any sense?”
“Yes.”
She barked out a laugh that was still wet with tears and shook
her head again. “Good. I’d hate to seem crazy.”
The silence that followed lasted a few minutes. Then she took a
long breath and said, “Now are you going to tell me how you ended
up with him when he died? Because if it’s been almost four years
since I talked to him, it had been a lot longer for you.”
“It had been longer.”
“Tell me,” she said. “Tell me why you were there, tell me how he
looked, tell me what he said. Tell me how it was when he died.”
Thirty minutes later we were still in the kitchen. The coffee had
finished brewing but sat unpoured, and Allison’s hair was air-
drying and fanning out a bit with static. I was still standing in the
doorway, refusing to cross the threshold and join her in the room.
“Did you believe him?” Allison asked.
“When he said he didn’t kill her?”
    “Yes.”
“I believed that before he said a word. Ed was a lot of things,
Allison, but