A Darkness More Than Night

it. But McCaleb thought the explanation was not as simple as that.
    Graciela frowned but it did not detract from his view of her as beautiful. She had copper skin and dark brown hair that framed a face with eyes so darkly brown that there was almost no demarcation between iris and pupil. Her beauty was another reason he sought her approval of all things. There was something purifying about the light of her smile when it was cast on him.
    “Terry, I listened to you two on the porch. After the baby got quiet. I heard what she said about what makes you tick and how a day doesn’t go by that you don’t think about it, what you used to do. Just tell me this, was she right?”
    McCaleb was silent a moment. He looked down at his empty plate and then off across the harbor to the lights in the houses going up the opposite hillside to the inn at the top of Mount Ada. He slowly nodded and then looked back at her.
    “Yes, she was right.”
    “Then all of this, what we are doing here, the baby, it’s all a lie?”
    “No. Of course not. This is everything to me and I would protect it with everything I’ve got. But the answer is yes, I think about what I was and what I did. When I was with the bureau I saved lives, Graciela, plain and simple. And I took evil out of this world. Made it a little less dark out there.”
    He raised his hand and gestured toward the harbor.
    “Now I have a wonderful life with you and Cielo and Raymond. And I… I catch fish for rich people with nothing better to do with their money.”
    “So you want both.”
    “I don’t know what I want. But I know that when she was here I was saying things to her because I knew you were listening. I was saying what I knew you wanted to hear but I knew in my heart it wasn’t what I wanted. What I wanted to do was open that book right then and go to work. She was right about me, Gracie. She hadn’t seen me in three years but she had me pegged.”
    Graciela stood up and came around the table to him. She sat on his lap.
    “I’m just scared for you, that’s all,” she said.
    She pulled him close.

    ***

    McCaleb took two tall glasses from the cabinet and put them on the counter. He filled the first with bottled water and the second with orange juice. He then began ingesting the twenty-seven pills he had lined up on the counter, intermittently taking swallows of water and orange juice to help them go down. Eating the pills – twice a day – was his ritual and he hated it. Not because of the taste – he was long past that after three years. But because the ritual was a reminder of how dependent he was on exterior concerns for his life. The pills were a leash. He could not live long without them. Much of his world now was built around ensuring that he would always have them. He planned around them. He hoarded them. Sometimes he even dreamed about taking pills.
    When he was done, McCaleb went into the living room, where Graciela was reading a magazine. She didn’t look up at him when he stepped into the room, another sign that she was unhappy with what was suddenly happening in her home. He stood there waiting for a moment and when things didn’t change he went down the hallway into the baby’s room.
    Cielo was still asleep in her crib. The overhead light was on a dimmer switch and he raised the illumination just enough so that he could see her clearly. McCaleb went to the crib and leaned down so he could listen to her breathe and see her and smell her baby scent. Cielo had her mother’s coloring – dark skin and hair – except for her eyes, which were ocean blue. Her tiny hands were balled in fists as if she were showing her readiness to fight for life. McCaleb fell most in love with her when he watched her sleep. He thought about all the preparation they had gone through, the books and classes and advice from Graciela’s friends at the hospital who were pediatric nurses. All of it so that they would be ready to care for a fragile life so dependent on them. Nothing had been said or read to prepare him for the opposite: the knowledge that came the first moment he held her, that his own life was now dependent on her.
    He reached down to her, the spread of his hand covering her back. She didn’t stir. He could feel her tiny heart beating. It seemed quick and desperate, like a whispered prayer. Sometimes he pulled the rocking chair over next to the crib and watched over her until late into the night. This night was different. He had to go. He had work