Page 166 of Dying to Meet You

It’s not very hard to picture. My mother was so angry when Harrison got arrested. She raged, and said it only confirmed what she already knew about him.

“She said the right thing to do was give Natalie up. And I believed her.”

God, they said the same thing to Laura Peebles at the Magdalene Home. “I’m so sorry. I hate that she did that.”

He reaches over, puts his hands under me like a forklift, and pulls me into his lap. “She probably thought she was doing the right thing for Natalie.”

“And yet Natalie wouldn’t agree.” I tuck my head against his shoulder and relax into his arms.

He drops his head and kisses my jaw. And then my neck.

I forget what we were talking about, because he cups my chin and tastes my lips slowly. The way a vintner takes a contemplative taste of a new blend.

I wrap my good arm around him. “Harrison?”

“Mmm?” He kisses me again.

“Would you ever want to move upstairs?”

“Yeah, right now,” he says, kissing the corner of my mouth. “While the kid is at work.”

“No, I meant for real.”

“How about...” He kisses my throat. “Right now, and then also later.”

“Okay. Sure.”

He stands up suddenly, keeping me tightly in his arms. “Hold on, Gallagher. Watch that hand, m’kay?”

I let him carry me toward the stairs. Both animals follow us. “Your cat sure made herself at home,” I point out as he begins the climb.

“Yeah, I still owe her fifty bucks for that,” he says.

I laugh so hard that he has trouble carrying me.

68

Coralie

She walks slowly up the stairs, the same way she has every day for twenty-five years. When she reaches the top, she’ll do a slow tour of the third floor and gaze out her favorite window.

Her baby girl isn’t here at the mansion today. She wasn’t here yesterday, either. But this doesn’t bother Coralie much, as she has only a vague sense of time.

Maybe her girl will come back tomorrow. She isn’t worried, because her girl is strong, and she loves this house almost as much as Coralie does.

She’ll be back.

On the third floor, she discovers some men standing on a scaffolding, taking careful measurements of the window opening. They’re wearing hard hats and work boots and pencils behind their ears.

She drifts past them without so much as a glance. There’s no need to pester them anymore. She won’t flicker the lights or drop their tools, because she’s in a peaceful mood these days.

This isherhouse. It will always be hers now. She won it the hard way. And now that they’ve removed the tool trailer, things are back the way they should be.

Moving leisurely, she sweeps into her favorite third-floor room. Unlike most visitors to the house, she favors a view of the back of the property. She stops at her favorite window and sees that the grass is growing back in, now that the hideous tool trailer is gone.

This is the unobstructed view that makes her happy—the one of Mr. Wincott’s headstone. This is her favorite spot in the whole house,because she can see the crisp granite monument rising from the grass. With the baby angels carved into its surface.

Every day she visits him. It’s a ritual. Now she leans through the glass in the window and feels the breath of the wind rush through her.

Then, as she always does, she spits—three stories—right down onto Marcus Wincott’s grave.