Chapter Two

Sometimes I think that what happened to me has given me a bipolar disorder. One minute I feel like a mouse, smaller and more ashamed than I have ever felt in my life. And then in another minute I become a warrior, proud, boastful, cocksure, and out for blood.

Sometimes, I have a great need to be around people. Having Brian in my life has afforded me a great comfort in this regard. It seemed to happen at the right time, that when I really needed it, there was someone to come home to. I need his presence, like some sort of transitional object to help me cope with the real world outside.

But the rest of the time, I feel like I'm going to crawl out of my skin. I feel trapped, suffocated by New York City and the people around me. There is some force inside of me, telling me that the only way I can heal is to be utterly alone.

Today was one of those days, when every voice and every stare rattled my nerves. I've gotten good at stifling my reflexes, but they are still there, and today I jumped a mile because of a skidding tire. I live in terror that someone is going to notice, and take my gun away. My tour came to an end, and still no Jeremiah. The Captain didn't see fit to pursue other leads at the moment, and I could offer no concrete alternatives. I didn't want to go home, not really due to frustration about the case, but something else, this feeling that if I couldn't be alone with my thoughts, I might scream out loud.

It was in one of these moments of self-imposed solitude that I saw her, Alexandra Cabot, standing in the doorway of the same bar we had frequented together for five years. She looked like a runway model and I looked like hell, after a ten-hour tour and wrangling with a Captain whose patience was wearing unusually thin.

My first instinct was to hope she wouldn't see me. I turned my head and looked deeply into my untouched drink, willing myself to acquire that long sought-after power of invisibility. All detectives, I think, would be better off if they were invisible at least some of the time.

I counted to ten, slowly.

"Olivia?"

Damn. I forced my eyes to turn away from the table and to meet her gaze.

"Alex," I said aimlessly. "You're back?"

I found it impossible not to stare at her. I simply could not understand how someone could look so perfect all the time. Her shoes, her stockings with no holes, her black skirt and black suit jacket under a beige coat that was also perfect – and her face, which at the end of a long day never really looked haggard, only thoughtful and maybe the slightest bit complacent. I remembered her steel blue eyes behind black frames, and her bright red lipstick.

She was saying something about being in town for a case, something about racketeering. I wasn't listening. I was examining her hair and asking myself how there was not a strand out of place with the wind howling the way it was. I couldn't figure out if it annoyed me, or if I was envious of it. Or if I was happy to see her.

"Olivia, are you listening to a word I'm saying?"

"What?" I –"

She laughed. "It's okay, I'm not offended. I've been in D.C., and I'm only here for a week or so to do some fact checking. I would have called, but..."

"We all know that isn't your strong suit," I said automatically, ungenerously.

She frowned. "Actually, I didn't call because I wasn't sure you would want to hear from me."

I said nothing, and she quietly slipped into the stool next to me. "Olivia, I heard that... that something happened to you. I don't know the details, and I know it isn't my place to ask. But I want you to know that despite any evidence to the contrary, I'm still your friend."

I considered that point carefully. I had felt very abandoned by this woman, on more than one occasion, and for some reason today it all seemed more poignant; the fact that she had left, and come back, and reappeared in my life years too late, and things had never been the same between us.

"Alex," I said, looking back up at her, resigned. I glanced around the bar, which was filling up and fueling my claustrophobia. "Look, do you want to get out of here?"

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We circled the park for hours, until it got dark, and the street lamps came on. I wondered if she had somewhere to go, but she didn't ask me if I did. I told her about Lewis. I wasn't sure if I should, or if I even wanted to, but the words came pouring out before I could stop them.

"The worst part isn't remembering what he did, or the parts that I can remember. It's that he's still here, he's everywhere to me. In this park, over on that bench, maybe a passenger on that bus. He's with me all the time, and...I know it's affecting my work. I'm on a case right now, the rape-homicide of a thirty-year-old woman. I can't...see straight Alex, I can't even consider the suspect that seems likeliest to everyone else. I see a stranger killing her, a stranger like Lewis. Someone who is hunting the city as we speak looking for another stranger, an unsuspecting young woman he has never seen before, but who he hates, just because she is alive."

I hadn't realized how bitterly cold it was outside until I felt the sharp sting of tears on my cheek.

"Alex, I think I'm going to lose my job. My therapist asked me why I had to do it, why it had to be me and not someone else out there protecting people. I wanted to punch him, but the fact is that he was right. Maybe I can't do it anymore. I nearly had a heart attack today because someone slammed on his brakes at the corner of forty-second street."

We had made another full circle, and I laid my hand on top of the black metal fence. I nearly moved my hand away because the metal was so cold, but I stopped when I felt the light pressure of her gloved hand upon my bare one.

"You know, Olivia," she said, looking out toward the street, "a lot of people probably do question you, and your resolve to continue doing this job. They probably wonder if your ordeal was too much, and if it's prevented you from being able to look at things objectively."

She paused, and I felt the horror of what she was about to say – that she agreed with them, that it was my time to step back, that this trauma had cost me my career.

"I'm not a gardener," she said quietly, "and I've never had much of an interest in the topic. But I've always been amazed by plants that can actually bloom in the winter. Sometimes they just push their way out of the snow, and they're so beautiful, because everywhere else all you see is ice and frozen branches. But there they are, these flowers, and they look so delicate, yet they thrive in the harshest of conditions. I don't know if you've ever seen one. But I have."