[Author's Note: This story takes place after the events recounted in "A Beautiful Heart" and the game itself, Fallout 4, but before "The Last Word" – a companion piece to "Ghosts", which are chronologically the last and second last in my Fallout 4 series. Readers who have not yet read those stories are cautioned that they may contain spoilers for this one, and that I have taken liberties with canon.
While this work will stand alone, it builds on the relationship between Ellie and Nick developed in ABH and contains references to events from that story. Warning for violence, sexual content, and horror. This is a work of adult fiction intended for an adult audience, and some may find elements of it disturbing.]
-OOO-
Some days, Nick felt older than others.
The winter had been long and cold, and even wetter than usual for Boston, with storms gusting in off the ocean, heavy with snow and rain. The cold thickened the lubricating fluid in Nick's knee joints, and the constant damp messed with his capacitors, translating as a stiffness and a dull ache that made movement slow and painful. He'd been down to the market to see Antonio about it this morning. A shot of gun oil in his joints usually helped him get past the worst of it. But the bearings themselves were starting to break down, and with the Institute a distant memory, spare parts for aging synths were nowadays nearly impossible to find.
Nick missed Antonio's father, who'd been a genius with a lathe and a soldering iron. But Arturo was gone, carried off like so many others when the Great 'Flu of '98 came roaring down the eastern seaboard. Hard to believe that had been almost 30 years ago, or that little Antonio now had adult children of his own.
At least the weather had finally turned. The last couple days had been warm and spring-like. He doubted it would hold, but it was nice while it lasted.
Nick turned his attention back to the typewriter in front of him, squinting as the letters on the page blurred in and out. The motors behind his eyes whirred back and forth, hunting unsuccessfully for focus. Finally he sighed and reached for his reading glasses. Adjusting them on his nose, he read over what he had written. He grimaced, then back-spaced over several lines of type and x'ed them out. He tried again, laboriously pecking at the keyboard with two fingers.
"Would he have killed us?" he wrote, "If we'd stood our ground and dared him to do his worst? I don't know. Hancock always seemed to me like a decent guy, for a ghoul. But among the criminal class you are either predator or prey, and once the word gets out you're prey, the predators start lining up. It was pretty clear Bobbi No Nose had her own reasons for organizing that raid on Hancock's warehouse, ones she never got around to sharing with the rest of us until it was too late. So when he gave us the choice of walk away or die, we walked. I'm not proud of myself for leaving Bobbi behind. But self-preservation is a powerful motivator."
Nick leaned back in his chair. "Ellie, can you get me the Hancock file?" He twisted his head around to look at her desk. It was empty, of course. He shook his head at himself. It had been years since Ellie last sat there. Nowadays it was her youngest grand-daughter, Lily, who came in for a couple hours every day after school. Or at least, that was the arrangement. There always seemed to be something getting in the way, and even when she was there her heart wasn't really in it. Plus she couldn't type worth a damn. Of course, she was young yet, and he was remarkably fond of her. But he missed Ellie.
Nick looked back at his memoir and added: "Besides, she treated her girls like slaves. Wore them out, used them up, and threw them away. So whatever happened to her, probably it was what she deserved. And good riddance."
He ripped the page out of the typewriter and added it to the pile on the desk. Probably he'd have to re-write that last sentence, even if it was the truth. He growled, remembering Ellie's mother trying to barter her ten-year-old daughter for a fix. On second thought, maybe he'd leave it in there. Besides, who was going to see this besides him? And Ellie, of course. He'd been reading bits of it to her when he went up to visit.
Mostly it was a way to pass the time. Things were a lot slower in the private detective biz than they'd once been. Nick blamed Danny Sullivan for that, for cleaning up Diamond City Security and turning it into a real police force instead of a gang of armed thugs. Hell, they even had their own detectives now – Nick had trained most of them – and there was a system of courts and judges to weed the innocent from the guilty. Danny was long gone, but the current Chief was almost as good. Competence gets to be a habit, after a while.
The Commonwealth itself was a changed place. There had been a day when people's lives here played out against the rattle of distant gunfire, like background music coming from a radio. But peace had come, finally. A person could walk from Sanctuary Hills all the way down to Quincy and never see anything more threatening than a farm dog barking from the other side of a fence.
It had been a long time coming.
A thought interrupted Nick's reverie and he fed another sheet into the typewriter.
"Funny, how much the violence subsided when the Institute fell. It makes you wonder if the unrelenting chaos of those days wasn't deliberately engineered. It wouldn't take much – a nudge here or a poke there – to keep the fires of anarchy burning. And the Institute had agents everywhere, including nearly all the traders, albeit unwittingly so, mostly.
So much of it was fed by easy access to weapons. Where did they all come from? Not the homemade stuff – pipe pistols and the like – but the rest of it. And the endless supply of ammunition and power cells? And all those explosives? "Salvage" they'll tell you – army stockpiles, supplies from abandoned Vaults and the leftovers from a society so heavily-armed that school teachers kept hand grenades in their desk drawers. But after so many years? Not likely. Nor could even the best of the Commonwealth's craftsmen have ever turned out one perfectly-machined automatic rifle after another, exactly sized to fit standard shells. That kind of mass-produced manufacturing takes machinery and facilities, and there isn't anyone around here doing that kind of work. Plus it takes money, and lots of it. All this goes double for the high tech stuff – lasers and fusion cells and the like. I haven't seen a working laser rifle in 40 years.
We'll never know now for sure who was responsible. When the Institute blew, all its records went with it. But after it was gone, things were different. There is a reason why we celebrate Independence Day not on July 4, the birthday of the old United States of America, but on April 17, the day the Institute was destroyed.
He missed it some days, in the way of old men in every era who come to look back on their younger, wilder selves with a mixture of nostalgia and relief. But where once the days blazed with fire, now they simply drifted by, leaving nothing behind to mark their passing. Maybe that was why he stuck so doggedly to his typewriter: because it gave solid form to the events of those days and the people who made them happen. Gone now, mostly, living only in his memory. And now, on these pages.
Besides, it wasn't like he didn't have a lot of time. Hell, he'd even started taking divorce cases.
Nick stared at the page, drumming his fingers on the desk. It was well past suppertime by now. He had to get out. Anything had to be better than sitting around here. He climbed stiffly to his feet and jammed his hat on his head. As an afterthought he took his .45 out of the drawer and checked the load, then slipped it into his shoulder holster. Not much chance a gunfight was going to break out, but a guy could hope.
"I'm going out," he said to the empty desk as he went by.
-OOO-
It was Friday night, and the Dugout was busy. He'd thought about heading up to the Colonial instead where it'd be less rowdy. But the Dugout was livelier and he'd had enough quiet contemplation for one day. The band was just finishing off a set when he walked in, and there was laughter coming from a big group by the bar. Lily was there, on the arm of a tall, young man, a few years older than her, with smiling eyes and teeth that gleamed in a confident smile. She was leaning back against him and smiling up into his face, and he had his arm around her waist, his hand sliding up underneath the front of her shirt. She had a cowboy hat on - it must have been his – and she was laughing as she slapped at his hand. It moved, but not very far, and he only grinned more widely. His friends were egging him on, and everyone seemed in grand spirits. There were a couple boys in the group Nick recognized, but the others were strangers. He frowned a little and caught her eye, shooting her a look of disapproval. She looked at him briefly then looked away.
"Nick, my friend!" a huge voice roared from across the room as he worked his way toward the bar. "You're just in time to help me settle some of these ruffians down." Boris Bobrov grinned at him, planting his ham like fists on the bar top. He was a big, heavily-muscled man in his late 40s, standing well over six feet, with black hair and a thick black beard, now heavily streaked with grey.
Nick laughed as he approached. "I can't imagine you needing my help," he said. Someone obligingly vacated a stool for him and he sat down on it, nodding his thanks and wincing slightly at a sudden stiffness in his hips. "How about I watch the bar while you settle the ruffians?"
"Probably that is best," Bobrov answered. "I only said that because you are my favourite uncle and I want to make you feel welcome."
"You can make me feel welcome by pouring me a whiskey and leaving the bottle," Nick said. "And I'm not your uncle. Unless you've got some mechanical parts you never told anyone about."
"Ha! That's good. But Mama, she loved you, and so to me, you will always be my Uncle Nick. You know, the strange one we don't talk about very much! But we love him all the same."
"Well, it's good to be loved." Nick accepted the bottle and a glass. He pushed a handful of caps across the bar and shook a pair of cigarettes out of his pack, passed one to Boris and lit up himself, the smoke coiling upward to join the haze already filling the room.
Boris stayed a few minutes, smoking and making idle conversation before excusing himself to go look after customers. Nick drained his glass and re-filled it. Mostly he drank for appearances. Alcohol didn't normally hit him the way did humans. His converters ate it up like they did any other organic, turning it into fuel for the tiny fusion furnace in his gut. Which was too bad. There had been many times over the years he'd wished he could have gone on a bender. Lately, though, he found himself feeling lightheaded after a few drinks. An imbalance in his main power delivery systems, probably. He could head down to Antonio's and get it adjusted. Or he could leave it alone. It made drinking a lot more fun.
He sat quietly, drinking steadily and feeling himself drift away. The noise ebbed and flowed: music and laughter, voices raised in drunken conversation, all fading into the background. Memories unwound around him. An afternoon on someone's sailboat, sunlight reflecting off the water, a pretty girl leaning her head on his shoulder in that long-vanished time before the War. Ellie, squealing with delight at a brand new, still-in-plastic, crossword puzzle book. Her favourite obsession. A lucky find, he said, rather than telling her how much he'd paid the collector for it. The Bobrovs – Vadim and Yefim, Boris' uncles – the look on their faces the day he'd walked in with their long-lost sister and her young son in tow. Ellie, learning to read, trying hard to catch up to the children her own age. Ellie, barely in her teens, getting ready for a date, half in tears because her hair wouldn't stay flat. And then, taking her arm to walk her down the aisle to where her fiancé waited and wondering how the half-wild waif he'd once rescued had become the tall, graceful woman beside him.
"Hi, Boss!" a voice in his ear interrupted his reverie. Lily draped herself over his shoulder. Her eyes were bright and her face was flushed, and she seemed to be having a slight problem with her consonants.
"Hi, Lily," he answered, patting her hand. "Missed you at the office today."
"I know," she said straightening up a little unsteadily. "I'm sorry, Uncle Nick. I was all caught up and there just didn't seem like much to do."
"Gee, sorry about that. I'll see if I can find more work for you next time."
"Maybe if you got out once in a while, had a few adventures, I'd have some filing to keep me busy. Plus, then I wouldn't have to listen to you swear at the typewriter all the time." She'd lost the cowboy hat from before, so now she snatched Nick's battered fedora off and perched it on her own head, tilting the brim down and grinning at him from underneath it. He cracked a smile in spite of his mood. Ellie's grand-daughters had all gotten blonde hair from somewhere, but Lily was the only one with her grandmother's eyes.
He retrieved his hat and set it back on his head. "I'm too old for adventures," he said. "Just putting up with you kids is adventure enough for me. Besides, it's harder to find adventures in the Commonwealth these days. Things are a lot quieter now."
Lily made a face. "A lot more boring, you mean. Did you see the paper? There's a new show opening at the Pickman Gallery this week, and – brace yourself, Uncle – people are worried it will conflict with the premiere of 'My Fair Lady' at the Combat Zone. Oh. My. God. I can't stand the excitement."
Nick grunted. "Happens I did see that. So what? It's a sign of prosperity. Means people aren't scrabbling just to survive anymore."
She rolled her eyes. "But Pickman? Didn't he dissect people while they were still alive then use their blood for his paintings? And didn't they fight to the death at the Combat Zone?"
"Yes, he did and they did. Raiders, mostly, which to be honest I never could get too upset about. Good riddance to the bunch of them. Pickman included." Nick took another drink and lit a cigarette.
Lily stomped her foot. "Oh, God, Uncle Nick, will you listen to yourself? How can you stand it? Back in the day, there were real problems. Feral ghouls everywhere, and raiders, and evil robots – sorry, Uncle, you know what I mean – and the Institute always waiting to pounce. It's like the world was teetering on the thin edge of disaster all the time. People like you and Grandma really made a difference in the world. Now, the biggest thing we have to worry about is if the coach to Quincy is on time."
"Good," Nick said morosely. "The fact you can say that means we really did make a difference. You should be thanking me instead of complaining about it."
"I do. Really I do. It's just that…" she gestured helplessly. "Everything is so civilized, now. Boring. I wish it was the way it used to be."
"Boring?" Something inside Nick snapped and he slapped his hand down angrily on the bar, knocking his half-empty bottle over. Whiskey slopped out onto the countertop. "Boring?" he repeated. His voice rose and he could feel his fight-or-flight systems begin to kick in. The world around him slowed down a little. "You're damned right it's boring. Boring enough that you can spend your nights hanging out here getting drunk with your pretty-boy friends instead of scavenging in the ruins for your next meal. Is that boring enough for you? Too many good people died making it that way for you to stand there and complain about it. If you really want excitement, there's lots left in the world. All you have to do is go look for it. Me, I'm going to sit right here and enjoy all the boredom. I've earned it."
Lily's eyes blazed and her cheeks burned bright red. "So you spend your days cooped up in that stupid office typing your stupid memoirs no one's ever going to read." She sneered at him, stung by his angry words. "The great Nick Valentine."
Nick lurched to his feet, his eyes blazing. "How dare you?"
She took a step back, a look of horror in her eyes at the realization of what she'd said. "Uncle, I'm sorry –"
"What's going on here?" a new voice demanded. "Is this guy bothering you, Lil?" Lily's companion from earlier forced his way between them. He was tall, wide across the shoulders with long hair gathered into a pony-tail at the back and the beginnings of a downy beard spreading across his cheeks and chin. His arm badge identified him as a Minuteman, one of that quasi-military group tasked with protecting the outlying farming communities in the Commonwealth.
"No, Garrick, I…"
"Mind your own business, son," Nick said brusquely, beginning to turn back to the bar.
The Minuteman growled, jabbing a finger at his arm badge. "You see this patch, old man? This patch says I'll mind whatever business I decide to mind." He grabbed Nick by the shoulder and spun him around. His jaw dropped as he got a good look at Nick for the first time.
"What the… what the hell?" he stuttered, stepping back. "What the hell are you?"
"Garrick, don't be stupid," Lily said, her eyes wide.
He shook her off. "It's a … a robot. A synth. A fucking synth. All dressed up in clothes and pretending to be human. Who do you think you are, coming in here, talking sass to your betters?" He grabbed Nick by the front of his coat with one hand, hauling him off his feet while fumbling at the holster on his hip for the automatic that rode there. "I'll show you what we do to things like you where I come from."
Lily screamed, a high, piercing shriek that cut through the hubbub in the bar. In one lightning move Nick brought his hand up – the metal hand, the one with all the skin stripped off – breaking the Minuteman's grip and wrenching his head back by the ponytail while drawing the revolver from inside his coat with the other. The man's jaw dropped open and Nick jammed the barrel up hard against the roof of his mouth and thumbed back the hammer.
Garrick froze. Then swallowed, carefully. Nick glowered. The bar was silent.
"Hey now… hey!" There was the sound of the bar hatch slamming open, and Boris Bobrov's booming voice. "What the hell? I go into the back for two minutes and there's a gunfight? Get out of my way, you." There was a noise like a scuffle, and then a thud and the sound of a body slumping to the floor. Boris' voice continued. "The rest of you put your guns away unless you want to go for a nap like your friend."
Nick spared a glance across the room to where Bobrov stood scowling at the small group of young Minutemen – recruits, Nick now realized – in the far corner. "I talk to your sergeant," the bartender was saying, "you'll spend your enlistment slopping out pig barns. And you, Howie Garcia… Drunk and stupid I expect from out-of-town hicks like these, but you're from around here. You want I should tell your mother? You're not so big she won't paddle your behind for you."
He stumped across the room, a short, weighted club in one hand. "Nick Valentine, I would appreciate you didn't kill him. He still has caps in his pocket he hasn't spent. Also I just washed the floor right where you're standing from the last guy got killed in here."
"A little lesson in manners is all," Nick said.
"Just make sure it doesn't involve getting blood on my floor."
The Minuteman rolled his eyes in Boris' direction, then back to Nick.
The detective smiled dourly up at him. "Look, kid," he said, "I can see you're young. You ever want to get old, there's a couple of things you should know. First off, don't fight unless you have to. Second, you want to impress a girl, try flowers. Finally, I ever see you groping my favourite niece again, I'll rip your arm off and make you eat it. She's in high school. Last thing needs is a lowlife like you trying to get in her pants."
Nick drew the man's sidearm and tossed it to Boris, who emptied the magazine and gave it back. He released him then uncocked his revolver and holstered it before handing back the automatic. "Nice piece," he added. "Needs oiling. You want to stay alive on the frontier, take better care of your gear. Now beat it." He pushed him away.
Garrick beat it, along with his friends carrying their unconscious comrade between them. There were some dirty looks thrown, but no other trouble.
After they left, Lily came up to him. "Uncle Nick, I'm sorry," she said contritely. "I didn't mean any of it the way it sounded. Please don't be mad at me."
Nick laughed. "You are your mother's daughter," he said, shaking his head. "I'm sorry, too. I'm not sure where that came from. Guess I'm getting grumpy in my old age."
"You're not old!"
"Yes, I am." He sighed. "Maybe it's my fault, telling you kids all those stories when you were little. The truth is, the world back then was a hard, dirty place. We paid a high price, all of us, trying to clean it up a little, maybe make it safe for you to grow up in." He looked over his shoulder at the puddle of whiskey on the bar. "And now look what I've done. Perfectly good whiskey, wasted."
"Well, I'm sorry, anyway. And for how he acted, the big jerk. As if I couldn't take care of myself." She looked sharply at Nick as if about to say more. Then her expression brightened. "Am I really your favourite?"
"Sure," he nodded. "If I had a favourite. Now get on home. Say 'hi' to your mother for me. And tell your grandmother I'm going to come see her again tomorrow. How's she feeling, by the way?"
"I meant to tell you! She was up yesterday for a little while, and today she ate a real breakfast. We sat outside in the courtyard and she was talking about getting the garden in and having Dad put up some new flowerpots. Just like her old self. Maybe she's turned a corner. I hope so. I miss my Nan the way she used to be."
"That's great news," Nick said. "I'll come by tomorrow morning sometime, after she gets up. Make sure you tell her. Now, look – you better get moving. Your mother finds you in here, she'll tan both our hides."
"Oh, Uncle. I'm almost eighteen, which means legally I'm almost an adult."
"That's right. But until then you're legally not an adult. Now scat."
"Okay Mr. Bossy, I'll go. But not because you told me to! I just want to see how Grandma's doing." She grinned impishly and leaned over and kissed him on the cheek, then skipped out, waving to Boris as she went by.
Howie Garcia had stayed behind when the other recruits left, and now he came over. He had his Minuteman armband off and was twisting it in his hands. "I'm sorry, Mr. Valentine," he said, his eyes downcast. "I didn't mean for that to happen, before. Garrick's okay. He just likes to show off."
Nick grunted. "Well, either the Minutemen will beat it out of him or someone else will. I saw the recruiters set up in the market this morning," he added. "Does your mother know you signed up?"
The boy looked even more miserable. "No, I haven't told her yet. I'm afraid of what she'll say. It's not set in stone, anyway. We march north tomorrow, but Sarge said anyone who doesn't show up doesn't go, that's all. I thought it would be pretty cool, defending the Commonwealth and all. But after what happened here, maybe they're not my kind of people."
Nick smiled. "Oh, those boys'll all shake out just fine. You'll see. Even your pal, Garrick. The Minutemen are a good outfit. They need smart guys like you up there, keeping the rest of us safe. Just make sure to keep your head down and your ears open."
"I will."
"Good. You might want to head home, though, and tell your mother. And keep an eye out for Lily on your way, too, if you don't mind."
Nick stayed, drinking whiskey while the bar cleared out. Finally, it was just him. Boris brought out another bottle and a clean glass and sat down beside him. They smoked together for a while and finally Nick said:
"She's right, you know. The Commonwealth is boring, compared to what it used to be. It feels like a spark has gone out of the world."
"Good. Safer that way. Better for business."
Nick laughed. "Boris, I feel old. I feel creaky. Most days I feel useless, too. Like the world has passed me by. So I spend my days sitting in the office writing up all my old case files and slowly going to pot." He finished his glass and poured another drink for both of them.
Boris drank. "Nick, I have known you since before I can remember. In all that time, you have always been old and creaky. But never useless. I could name a hundred people in Diamond City alone who are in your debt, me included. Without you, Mama and I would never have escaped the bad place, would never have come here. Mama lived a long, happy life, surrounded by people who loved her. All because of you. That's why I always give you the good whiskey when you come in."
"Very kind of you to say." Nick lit up another cigarette and passed one to Boris. "Still, it would be nice to go out with a bang."
"You talk as if you're going to die," Boris said. "Probably you'll outlive me."
"Maybe that's the problem," Nick said. "Maybe I've outlived too many people already."
-OOO-
Nick was at his desk again the next morning. He was going through his stack of cold cases. Some of them went back nearly fifty years. Kidnappings and murders, mostly. Unsolvable now, for the most part. He pulled out a folder at random. "The Mechanist Murders", it said in Ellie's neat script. A series of seemingly disconnected, gangland-style slayings apparently perpetrated by robots. But Nick had been able to prove the victims were all connected to the jet trade, and he figured someone – Donny Marowski was his guess, but he'd never been able to prove it – was whittling down the competition. Didn't matter now, anyway. Marowski was long gone and his organization with him, along with most of the other mafia-style Triggermen gangs. And good riddance to them, too.
He shoved the folder back into the drawer and closed it. The sun was out this morning and the day was warming up a little. His knees felt a little looser today. Might be a good day to get out of DC, go for a walk and relive a few old memories. Hell, he could even take in the show at the Pickman. Might help fill in some details for his memoirs, too. At the very least, he wouldn't have to spend the day fighting with his typewriter.
Just then the door banged open. It was Lily. She was crying.
Nick started out of his chair. "What on earth, child?"
"Uncle Nick, you have to come. It's Grandma. She won't wake up."
Nick swore and grabbed his hat. Outside, the narrow, crooked streets were full of people enjoying the spring sunshine. He took Lily's hand and pushed his way through the crowds, his haste making him rude.
"Did you call Doc Tandy?" he called over his shoulder. She nodded, blinking back tears. "Good." He led them around a slow moving farm cart, piled high with produce. "I thought you said she was feeling better."
"She was!"
They crossed a small plaza where a flower vendor was hawking her wares and started up a wide staircase. Ellie lived with her daughter's family in a house overlooking what would have once been left field, back when Diamond City was Fenway Park, the home of baseball in the city of Boston, Massachusetts. Not so long ago, this area had been gardens and greenhouses. But it was all built up now, and new staircases snaked their way up the stands into new neighbourhoods. Nowadays, the city imported the food needed to support its growing population.
Tandy was already in with Ellie by the time Nick arrived. The family was gathered around the front room, waiting.
"Nick, I'm so glad you're here." Ellie's daughter, Annie, greeted him, standing up to put her arms around him. He hugged her, feeling the wetness on her cheeks. She was in her early 40s and dark-haired, like her mother. Jack, her husband, sat on the couch with Lily's older sisters, Harper and Jeannie.
"What's going on?" Nick said, letting Annie go and nodding toward the closed bedroom door. "Lily said she was feeling better?"
Annie sniffed back tears. "She was. I was so worried about her after this winter, but then the sun finally came out and she just perked right up. We had a wonderful day. Nick, I should have called you. I said we should, and she said no, we'd come over to the office today. And then - " her voice caught, "then I went in this morning and she wouldn't wake up."
Nick sat with them on the couch, listening to them talk. Ellie had been sick most of the winter. Cancer, of course. Ubiquitous, nearly inevitable, if you lived long enough. Too much radiation – in the soil, in the water, in the air, even. There were treatments – she'd had both breasts removed a few years before – but they didn't do much more than delay the inevitable. Funny, Nick thought. The doctors could re-attach a limb, re-grow tissue, fix a bullet hole, but they were helpless when the body's cells suddenly began growing out of control.
He tried to remember how old Ellie was. Almost 70, he thought. A very respectable age in the Commonwealth. It didn't make it any easier.
Tandy came out, looking sombre. He was a young man, with thinning, sandy-coloured hair and grey eyes. A wash of freckles sprayed across his nose, adding to his youthful appearance. He nodded at Nick. "She's awake," he said. "I gave her a shot to bring her out of it. She wants to talk to you all."
The family filed into her room, Annie holding tightly to Jack's hand. Tandy motioned to Nick to stay behind.
"What's going on, Doc?"
The doctor shook his head. "It's not good, Nick. Her body's starting to shut down. The cancer's back, and it's everywhere. And the pain is… very bad. She has a few days now. Maybe less."
"I thought she'd had some kind of remission? The way they were talking, she was up and around the last little while..." Nick stopped, then closed his eyes. "She used stimpacks on herself," he said, realizing. "Must've had some squirreled away, just waiting for the weather to break. Probably only needed a couple, just enough to give her some energy."
Tandy nodded. "That's my guess."
Nick laughed without humour. "Not a bad exchange, really. Traded a few weeks of dying slowly in bed for a day with her family. I'd do the same, come to think of it."
The girls were crying in each other's arms when they came out of the room. Annie was holding on to Jack. He had the look of a man trying hard to be strong for the sake of others and only partly succeeding.
"Nick," he said. "She's asking for you."
-OOO-
Ellie lay on the bed, propped up on the pillows with the covers pulled up closely around her, as if by wrapping her tight they could keep the life inside from escaping. She was thin and frail, her skin like paper, almost translucent in the sunlight that streamed into the room. Her eyes were closed, and a halo of white hair surrounded her face against the pillow.
The walls were covered in photographs, carefully framed and mounted. Ellie sitting at her desk at the detective agency, frowning in concentration as she worked at a crossword puzzle. Her and Eddie on their wedding day. The two of them at the seashore somewhere, baby Annie lying on the blanket between them. Nick doing his best Humphrey Bogart, leaning against a wall with his collar turned up and the brim of his hat down low. Annie as a toddler, sitting on Nick's knee and looking gravely up at him. All three of the grandchildren dressed in costumes for a school play. Keepsakes and knickknacks lined the shelves, mementoes of years gone by all neatly arranged. Her little .38 was even there, the one Nick had given her so many years ago, on a stand on the dresser. It had been cleaned recently and gleamed with fresh oil, and there was a box of shells beside it.
She opened her eyes as he sat down in the chair beside the bed. "I'm glad you're here," she said.
"Came as soon as I heard. How is it?"
"Bad." She coughed weakly. "Nick, I'm not getting through this one."
"Ellie, don't talk nonsense."
"It's okay," she said. "We knew this day would come. Happens to everyone, sooner or later."
Nick shook his head stiffly. "No, don't talk that way. You know I can't manage the office by myself. I've just been mooching around this last little while, waiting for you to get back to work so we can get those damned memoirs finished."
"Lily will help you with them."
"Huh. She's a smart girl, but she's mostly interested in boys, at the moment. Reminds me of her grandmother a little bit that way." He grinned at Ellie, then his face fell. "What am I going to do without you?" he said, his voice thick with misery.
Ellie laughed, then grimaced at the pain. "Carry on, I guess, like people always do." She touched his hand. "Nick…There's something I need."
"Of course. Anything."
She motioned toward the drawer in the little bedside table. He opened it. There was a syringe inside.
He looked at her and shook his head. "Ellie, I can't. "
"I had Doc Tandy bring it," she said, as if she hadn't heard him. "Some time ago. Such a nice young man. I think he's rather fond of Jeannie. It would be nice to have a doctor in the family." She trailed off. Nick waited. After a while, she said: "Nick, I meant to come see you yesterday. But we were having such a wonderful time, and I thought I'd have one more day and that I would be able to come down to the office and spend all of it just with you. But it turns out I didn't have one more day. I'm sorry." She turned her head painfully toward him. "It hurts everywhere, Nick. And it's going to get worse. Just this one last thing I need you to do for me. I won't ask you for anything again after that, I promise." She laughed at her own joke, but the laugh turned into a cough that left her curled in agony, a thin thread of saliva hanging from the corner of her mouth. "Please, Nick," she finally whispered.
He picked up the syringe. "Annie, and the children?"
"We've said our good-byes. They'll be fine. Jack's a good man, and they have you to look after them, too. So now there's no good-byes left to say. Except you and me."
"I'll miss you, Ellie."
"I won't go far. The wind in the leaves. The sunlight on your face… that will be me. Just close your eyes and I'll be there. I promise."
Nick turned back the covers and smoothed the skin on the inside of her elbow, looking for a vein. He found it, uncapped the syringe and squeezed out a bead of fluid from the tip. He looked at her. She nodded and closed her eyes. She winced a little as the needle slipped under the skin, then opened her eyes and looked steadily into his. He looked back at her, and their gazes locked as he pushed down on the plunger. When the syringe was empty, he eased it out and set it aside. He took her hand in his and waited.
"He loved me," she said suddenly. "Eddie loved me with all his heart. I was lucky to have him." She was breathing slow and shallow, the air whistling in and out of her lungs. Nick could feel the pulse slowing in her wrist.
Her eyelids started to droop. Then they opened again, one last time. "But he wasn't you."
Nick sat still for a very long time. Once, someone looked into the room, then retreated. Somewhere, a clock ticked. Finally, he reached out and closed her eyes then folded the blanket up over her face.
-OOO-