Just three more weeks until we revist PV again. and hopefully get some answers. I thought the recap/promo video posted this week was well done, and gave an interesting potential peek into things to come.
As for things to come in this version of PV, it is, unfortunately, another funeral day…
####
Five funerals in five days.
It sounded like the tagline for some bad, ill-advised Hollywood high concept movie. As he sat in another hard wooden pew and watched another rank-and-file of the people he was supposed to be protecting, all he could think of was how this had become their reality.
Each person, just as they had at the memorial just a few months ago, took a familiar seat and assumed a familiar position in this well-worn ritual. The faces were largely the same, with a few additions - like Ryan's brother Jonathan. Word was that if Jesse had been on the force a few years earlier, he would have gotten to know the guy quite well.
Before, during that week from hell, those faces had slowly moved from reddened eyes and puffed cheeks to numbing blankness. It was as if each passing day, each new coffin, each hastily arranged memorial represented a different stage in this town's collective grief. And he had put the final touch on the final bid for the acceptance that never quite came on that last day, when he delivered the eulogy for Angela. That was also the day he said goodbye to the little girl he had once called a daughter, as Maya apologetically moved herself and Lucy away for a fresh start.
Jesse then, as he did now, wished her luck, because if he knew one thing, it was that fresh starts were the true endangered species.
Greenlee had taken pains that this time would be a celebration…or at least an attempted deflection of the latest blow. But every joke was forced, the light laughter canned and bitter, like expired tuna. And every story, every reminiscence was a reminder: a creeping bump in the night. When the uptempo rock and roll song began, even the erratic drum beats dripped with desperation, pounding the silent room.
And when a different source of pounding frenzy appeared at the back of the church, it was almost a relief. Because at least this source had found a passion, a purpose. A reason. Meeting each hardened gaze, she was the life in a room of death.
But for the first time in a long time, when Jesse touched her, it was a touch of restraint.
"Now is not the time," he whispered into her ear.
"Then when is the time?" she whispered back, before adding a louder, "Actually, now is the perfect time, Jesse."
"You are dishonoring this man's memory." He made one last half-hearted grab at decorum, at easy, knowing all the while this was anything but.
"I'm the only one honoring it!" she hissed, her words directed at the room….and at the short ball of fire heading her way.
Not good.
The irresistible force met with temporary resistance, however.
"What does this do, Greenlee?" Liza swept a hand around the room, until her finger curled in an accusation. "We dab at our eyes, we put on a fake smile for the memories, and we wax poetic about how they're in a 'better place,' and all the while the next victim, the next family, the next town is put into the crosshairs." Somehow, she had jerked herself from Jesse's grip. Or maybe she hadn't needed to. "Let's make this matter," she said. To Greenlee.
To all of them.
"You want to use Ryan's death as some kind of political platform? You want him to be the posterboy for your latest cause du jour?" Greenlee scoffed. "That dye has effected more than your hair, counselor."
With just one quick survey of the room, he knew that particular barb might be a firecracker in comparison to the grenades he saw in some eyes. This wasn't gonna devolve into a debate on gun control or birth control or cruise control. Not today.
As he pulled Liza from the hostile crowd, she managed one final parting shot: "Until we all meet again."
Jesse pushed her out into the cold, where both of their quickened breaths battled in the frozen air. He considered following her when she turned and stalked away. The insistent beep redirected his focus, though, and subsequently shot all his plans to hell and back.
He pulled out his phone, read his latest message, and promptly cracked the screen in two as it met the pavement.
Tell us what you know, or you'll be revisiting the funeral home sooner than you think.
Someone had made a prophet out of Liza Colby.
####
Bud.
Classic. Basic, with a kick.
He liked to think there was some kind of symbolism hidden in there.
Leo lifted the can.
He also liked to think the ghostly clink he imagined was not so much imagination after all.
"To you, man. It was always…" He'd considered downing the whole can and getting a little lost in the buzz. He settled for a sip instead. "Interesting." To say the least.
It was funny, in a twisted kind of way, because when he heard the door open, he wheeled around in the office chair, smile on face, ready to greet his old drinking buddy with a 'how the hell have ya been?'
When he saw the semi-widow, the ex-wife, the girl who always defied all labels, sweeping in instead – ever the force of nature – the smile dropped, but that crazy-twisty feeling didn't.
It only twisted a little more.
She swept right on past him, one hand clutching a phone and the other scanning the room for something she obviously couldn't find. Something she might not be able to find anywhere.
"You know, this place could really use a good interior decorator. The gray, the white, it's so….uninspired."
Before his muddled mind could formulate much in the way of a response – maybe he'd indulged in the beer a little more than he thought – she whirled around to him. Except not exactly to him. Her attention was mostly focused on the phone, which she was stabbing with manic enthusiasm.
"Where's David?" she asked, not bothering to pair the question with so much as a glance.
"He's…not here." Every word was measured, and he could pretend like that was because he realized this conversation needed to be weighed and evaluated carefully. Or he could admit that his response was just him flying by the set of his pants, on instinct.
"I need to talk to him now. It can't wait, because there's already something else on my agenda for today. I've got a company – a gnat – to crush."
"Greenlee, what's this about?" He slid closer until he was right underneath the phone. Right into the path of avoidance.
Her eyes flickered, but she held tightly onto the normal, just-another-day with both manicured hands.
"I just need to let him know that I really don't have time to play guinea pig. I think I'll be fine. But you can tell him that, so I'll just –"
Leo didn't grab her arm. All it ever took was one touch. Another constant, another no-change.
"This is over, okay?" This question that was anything but brought back a bit of the old ferocity, the Greenlee fire. Still, she didn't move.
"I'm so sorry," he said.
She pulled back only slightly, with a slight chuckle. "Sorry for what, Leo?"
A rhetorical question she would willingly answer for him.
"Sorry for your bad decorating sense?"
When his finger found that place – that hollow in her thumb – quite against his own will (if he was in the business of lying again), the pull became a push.
"Sorry for defying Death himself when others can't? Sorry for being just a little bit glad that your replacement has been banished for good?" The bitter smirk gave way to a gasp. "I'm sorry, that was –"
"Cruel? Yes, it was."
But she wouldn't be Greenlee if it wasn't….if she wasn't trying so very hard.
"He was my friend, and I missed him too. I never got a chance to see him again and make things right." To give him a fair fight.'"I'm just sorry for the chances I never got, and for the chances the two of you will never get. Mostly, I'm sorry that my friend is gone."
They hung in the air, those words, battling with gravity.
He had her full attention now. And, as she rolled her eyes to the left (left for truth), he almost wished he could give it back.
"If anything, be sorry for the fact that while he was being murdered, while he was taking his last breath, all I could think about was you."
The small victories she had managed in this battle against herself didn't matter, because she was losing the war quickly.
She wasn't the only one. He knew logically it wasn't the right time. He knew he should just back off.
But logic had always been his enemy, especially when it came to her.
He rose and his arms reached out. Instinctively. Naturally.
She jerked away, swiping ferociously at her eyes and snatching away that last bit of warmth that still lingered where she had been.
"No!" Her finger sliced through that warmth. An icepick. "I don't get to do this with you!"
As the door slammed seconds later, that icepick crashed to the floor.
Shattered, actually.
####
Red tributaries.
He'd long since scrubbed them away, but the deposits were always there. Hiding in plain sight. In a way perhaps only Lady MacBeth could understand.
One tributary remained broken. Maybe he had discovered the bridge when he discovered her, his family.
This disjointed trubutary smashed into the main source, into the shallow, short river with its one major branch. He'd accepted the stream, and so many times, he thought he'd reached the moment of that divergence….the life-altering in the lifeline.
He might've been wrong.
Zach wished for the palm reader he had once employed in a long-ago location, a best-forgotten time. Magic and spells were ever-so-much more attractive than the cold, hard wand of reality.
He closed his fist and dug into his lifeline. Turned it red again.
When his eyes focused, he convinced himself she was just a vision: a dark accusation. Yet he could never deny the compulsions – some equally dark, some countered by the brightest light he would ever know – that could only claim him in her presence.
She crossed the room, his wife - and every bit of black fabric, every dropped purse, every discarded, cramped shoe accentuated the quiet: his own familiar cross to bear.
He, for once, for always, would have to succumb first. "The boys?"
"Spike wanted to spend some time with his sister, and Mom wanted to spend some time with Spike and Ian. So she took all the kids for ice cream. I think they could use the distraction, especially Spike."
She stood over the table. Unmoving.
A few hours earlier, it had been filled with covered dishes and tiny suits and carefully arranged flowers.
Now, it was…empty.
When he rose, the stings and pricks covered his legs. They slashed away the numb that had been drowning him. Temporarily, at least. If he'd learned one thing, it was that the greatest affirmation of life was pain.
Was just feeling.
It's why Spike's slow retreat into himself after they had told him about Ryan worried him so much. Zach loved that his boy shared his affinity for hockey and lazy Sundays on the sofa, but there were some ways he never wanted Spike to take after him.
He approached her, resting his palms rested on shoulders that didn't quake. Didn't shake.
Didn't acknowledge.
One touch and she could crumble.
But she would not.
A pale face, a steady chin, and dry, piercing eyes turned to meet his own. You should have been there.
She didn't say it.
Yet the words echoed off of every wall.
You should have cared.
He could explain…
He could explain how he cared just a little bit more than anybody congregated around that coffin.
He could explain how he couldn't be there and stare into the face of the man he'd hated and respected in equal measure.
He could explain how he couldn't mourn the friend he may very well have murdered.
So he opted for his one reliable, his faithful standby: stoic silence.
His wife, however, had other plans. "I know, Zach."
He closed his eyes, because of course she knew. She knew him, better than anyone ever would.
So he would not hide anymore. He would look into the eyes that could stir his very soul, and give the other half of that soul the only thing he could right now.
Truth.
"I know what you did to my brother."
She walked away, depriving the killer of his confessional.
Leaving the defendant to his gallows.
His hand could only rest on the table, palm up.
Not for the first time, Zach wondered what tales a dead man's hand could tell.