<Isn't this just perfect. Some beautiful woman who sews and lives in a Victorian gingerbread house. Just great. I can see petunias and blue birds. Wonderful.> Karen followed his pacing as the comparisons between this mystery woman and herself continued. Kermit's eyes betrayed the mystic way this 'Claire' remained in his heart. <Claire.> His voice was almost a whisper when he'd said it. <Claire. Why couldn't it be Helga....or Prudence....something less poetic. Oh well, she couldn't be that perfect or she wouldn't have hurt him this way. Bitch.>

After Kermit had walked off his initial tension, he continued. Karen braced herself as he began to speak. "It happened so slowly. She had this routine. Everything about her was routine. Appointments in the morning. Down the street for coffee at three every afternoon. A movie on Friday nights. Church on Sunday." His hands were buried inside his pockets nervously fiddling with his change and whatever else ex-mercenaries kept in their pockets. "I found myself arranging to change shifts with my partner so that I could walk down the street behind her."

"So, you followed her around her neighborhood?" The thought of Kermit as the shy suitor was nearly comical.

"Until the day she stopped in the middle of the sidewalk, turned around and said, 'You'll eventually have to speak to me if you want to get this going, ya' know.' After that, it was like I'd known her forever. She told me about being all on her own since her parents had died. She talked about her business.....said she didn't make dresses, she made memories. She liked Gregory Peck and reading and listening to old scratchy jazz records."

The heat was rising with the sun and remembrances. Karen slid her jacket off her shoulders and folded it beside her. "What did she think about having coffee with a mercenary?"

"Ah," he stopped pacing and donned the trademark twisted grin, "I elected to become the man she saw across the street. Griffin Banner of Banner Security. Since that was the name on our little fake business it was the easiest thing to be. I had left the service and was now selling residential burglar alarms. I liked to read. I could stand Gregory Peck and if she wouldn't mind a little opera, I could put up with scratchy jazz records."

"In other words, you lied." The word 'lie' seemed to slap him in the face. The grin flattened back into a thin line. <Nice going. Make it worse, Karen.>

"Yes, I lied to her."

Weariness began to settle over him. Karen patted the hard cushion of concrete -- half in apology and half in invitation. <She must have found out and dumped him. Damn her. Princess Claire couldn't take it.> In the same thought, Karen wondered if she could take it.

"After we dispatched our target," Kermit paused at his tactful choice of verbs, "I just kept up the life I'd created. Told my partner and the Company to go to hell and made Griffin Banner a real man. The business became real and little by little I became part of Claire's world. It was easy. Business was good and I had a life that belonged to me." He loosened his tie and swallowed deeply. "Maybe it was her life itself that I fell in love with first. I was so ripped at that point in my life. Living with death rends your very soul. I needed to be stitched back together. I was thirty-three and felt ninety. The longer I stayed with her, the easier it was to live. I got greedy for it. Greedy for every ordinary, average, decent minute that we were together. I didn't have to watch my back or have someone else's in my sights. Claire was kind and gentle and easy to be with. She didn't want anything from me except love. That was it."

"You loved her very much, didn't you? She must have been very special." This was costing him. She could see the blood nearly seeping from his chest.

"I did. And she was."

"You still do, don't you?"

"That doesn't matter."

<Yes, it does matter, damnit! You loving someone else matters plenty.> Whoever this Claire was, she still had pieces of Kermit, pieces Karen was beginning to want for herself. <What did she do to you?> Whatever chisel she'd driven into this man had left permanent cracks.

Karen held out her hand. "Come on, lets walk for a while."

The hands linked again. This time, he held on tighter than before.

"Where is she now, Kermit?" Karen didn't look at his face as they walked. Seeing the longing for another woman was beginning to be too much to take.

"She's dead."

The words hung in the noonday heat, heavy and sad.

******

The walking stopped. That word 'dead' always ground motion and words to a halt. Kermit searched her face for cues and found far too many. "And, no, I didn't kill her."

"It didn't occur to me that you did." It was a lie. He could see it in the way she deflected her eyes a fraction of an inch. "Was it someone you knew?"

Quickly, he rattled his head back and forth, then started walking again. "I wanted normal and ordinary, Karen, and I got it. No retaliatory strike killed Claire. No stray bullet or explosion." <God....I miss you.> He could hear his heels thumping over the fitted blocks of sidewalk. The sound intensified with his heartbeat. Karen laced her fingers in a more tangled knot with his own. "We were together almost a year. I was breathing again. Nice clean air. Nice clean life. We were.....happy." Her face played across his memory once again. <I love you, Griffin. I love you, Claire.>

"Claire didn't have a great deal of money," he said, quietly. "But, she always seemed to work things out and would never let me help her. Like so many people, she didn't have health insurance and avoided the doctor like the plague. I didn't know she was sick. She didn't say a word. By the time her pain had become too intense for her to cover or ignore......," his voice trailed off before a break could take root, "it was too late. They did an exploratory and stitched her back up within thirty minutes. The cancer was everywhere, eating her alive."

"I'm so sorry, Kermit. It must have been heartbreaking." Now, it was her turn to lead. They reached a grove of trees and detoured off the sidewalk. Karen leaned back on a gnarled oak and offered her expressive face in sympathy. Kermit found a prop and rested himself. The kindness in her features struck him. That classical face that could assume hard lines of solid command was now softened. No captain. No mask. Just, Karen. He felt naked, as if that kindness were a weapon. <Point of no return, Kermit. You're out there now. Finish it.>

"She lasted two months. I moved in to try to take care of her. 'Make her comfortable,' they said and gave me morphine to pump into her. But she didn't want it. Said she wanted every minute to be...clear. She wanted to read and talk and listen to music. She tried to sew for a while but had to turn over all the unfinished dresses to someone else." That memory was the worst. "All those white dresses moving out the door seemed to take what glimmer of life Claire had left with them. I'd follow her wishes about the morphine until she was too delirious with pain to tell me no, then I'd give her a shot."

Karen was silent, standing there with long wet streaks painting her face. <Please don't cry......I can't take your tears or mine.> Reaching into his pocket, he pulled out a plain white handkerchief and put it into her hand.

"She simply faded away." Soft white skin. Lips paling from rose red to bleached flesh. Eyes misted with pain and longing. "That last day, she smiled once then drifted off to sleep. No dramatic last words. Just sleep. I was grateful that she went easy. She deserved that much."

"I've never lost anyone that way," Karen said, brushing away more tears with his handkerchief. "How did you get through it?"

"I'm not sure. Claire had no family, so I gave her home and her business to the girl who took over those final dresses. I buried her. That's it. The end of a life."

"Where did you go afterward?"

"I rotted for a while," he answered, breathing deeply. "You see, Claire did this nasty little thing to me. She left me hanging in limbo. I couldn't go back to....that life of before after being with her. But, I couldn't stay there without her. I actually hated her for a few self-indulgent moments for doing that to me. Luckily, Blaisdell crossed my path and offered me an out. He never asked any questions, just showed me an office and shoved me in it. I could hang somewhere between merc and man and hide out as a cop for a while. I never intended to make it forever."

"Is it going to be forever?"

<Don't ask me that.> He paused, debating not answering at all. "Forever seems an unrealistic goal given my track record."

She moved closer, never touching, just closing the space down to whispering distance. "You loved her very much. I can see that. And I'm sure that Claire wouldn't want you to mourn her for a lifetime. She loved you and she'd want you find some peace."

His voice hardened. "But you see, Karen, that's the sticky part. I'll never get the chance to be sure of that."

"Of which part?"

"I'll never know if she really loved me or not."

*****

"You never told her the truth, did you?" Karen felt the pain radiate from his body. The self-loathing was tangible. "Not even in the end?"

"No. Sounds like a coward, doesn't it?" Kermit shifted away, putting an arm's length between them. "Claire loved an invention. Griffin Banner. Former serviceman making the neighborhood safe one burglar alarm at a time. That's who she loved. I couldn't risk changing that love to disgust by telling her she was sleeping with a killer."

<Damn...> Karen calculated her words carefully. The sudden realization of his confession was overwhelming. <He's told you more. More than he told her. That means something. You can trust me, can't you?> "Kermit, you made mistakes. That's not inhuman. But, I know enough about you to know that--"

"Karen, there are some means that can never be justified by noble ends. I didn't know that when I was twenty-five. By the time I was thirty-five, it was too late to undo the things I'd been part of; too late to save the innocents who were caught in the middle." He turned toward her, blocking the sun and casting a long shadow that covered her. "Do you know what it's like to love someone so deeply, for the first time in your life to have someone love YOU, and have that life built on a lie? I can think about it and analyze it for all eternity and I'll never be certain that what she felt would have survived the truth. Never."

"Do you actually think that she didn't suspect that you were trying to hide something?" Karen realized sympathy wouldn't cut through the guilt. "You fancy yourself a master of concealment but those glasses don't hide everything. You wear your grief like a shroud, Kermit. You showed her what she needed to know and she let you keep your secrets. I think that's your answer right there."

He stood there in his manmade shade. <He's trying to believe you.> "Kermit, some things don't have to be earned. Some things are just given. All you have to do is take them." <Please believe me.>

The words were blowing into the shadow across Kermit's face. Deep lines marked years of mourning and doubt and isolation. "Can I ask you a question, Kermit?"

"Yes."

"Why did you tell me these things?" Karen fixed her eyes on the deep green glasses and waited. Moments ticked by without one movement to break the stifling silence. Then, one large hand moved upward, grasped the arm of the shades and peeled them away. Sad brown eyes blinked only twice as they bared themselves to the harsh afternoon sunlight.

The gesture was a momentary shock. <Be careful what you do now, Karen. Be careful.> Karen touched his hand lightly with her fingers then pushed his offering back toward him. "You should hang on to these until you've settled your business with Claire. I don't require any sacrifices, Kermit." She smiled up at him. "You helped me escape a trip to prison. Work on your own escape for a while."

She had said enough. If there was one thing Karen had learned about Kermit Griffin it was that he had to percolate information. No more revelations were required. She knew enough for now. As he returned the shades to his face and settled them comfortably on his Roman nose, Karen allowed herself an indulgence.

With one feather-light stroke to his cheek, she left Kermit alone to think and watch four children gobble up more ice cream.

*****

Very little had changed on Garden Way. The city had shifted around this pocket of Victorian structures but had not intruded. Careful management by a local historical society had battled progress and held on to the gentle grace of the neighborhood. Through traffic was no longer allowed over the newly uncovered brick streets, so Kermit left the Corvair behind and walked down the sidewalk toward the remains of another life.

Going to the cemetery was out of the question. He'd buried her body a few miles away under that smooth green sod and placed a stone angel there as a sentry, but she wasn't really there. All that was Claire was here. All that he'd known of her was still here within three blocks. A phony business. A bookstore. A coffee shop. A painted-lady Victorian with vines slowly seducing the corners of the porch. A squeaky oak bed where they made love....where she died. A window with a seamstress and mother and a bride-to-be.

Kermit paused at the gate leading to Claire's old home. He recognized her assistant, now ten years older, busily fitting a satin gown to a twenty-something who was babbling away to her mother. The seamstress was working around the exuberant young woman whose arms bounced up and down in gestured time to some excited storytelling. <I don't make dresses, I make memories.>

He smiled. Claire was still here. A quiet presence that wouldn't make a ripple in the busy ocean of modern life, she could still be found in this place. He'd spent ten years avoiding this part of town and the pain he was certain lay in wait for him here among antique roses and picket fences. <Once again, you prove yourself a moron, Kermit.> There was no pain here. Claire had never brought him pain. Her death was painful, but not Claire.

<Here I am, Claire. I'm sorry to have ignored you for so long. This isn't really a confession. Confession seems just a bit redundant considering you're probably privy to all my secrets from where you are now.> In a sudden self-conscious gesture, Kermit straightened his tie. < Karen seems to think you knew I was holding back and loved me anyway. Could that be true? If so, I don't understand why you wouldn't ask. Were you afraid to know or is she right -- was it irrelevant? You never even asked about the shades. Everyone in the neighborhood asked and I told so many different lies I lost track. Everyone asked but you. I suppose that's my answer, sweetcakes.

<Somehow, those months with you shifted my life, Claire. You had no way of knowing that then because I didn't have it in me to risk telling you. I doubted myself....not you. That fantasy time with you was the break between a life of dark and one of light. Hell, without you I'd probably have been dead in a year. The hunger for that life was dying and you fed me another to take it's place. I love you for that.

<I've been holding on to you for so long...so long, hiding behind you. Now, I think it's time to move on to something between the ideal of you and this life here on Garden Way and reality. I'm somewhere in between Griffin Banner and the man I was before we met. Maybe Karen can accept that. I don't doubt that she wants to but, she knows I'm not there yet. I'm trying. God, I'm trying. I don't know if anyone can see that, if she can see that. But you can, can't you, Claire? That's you needling inside my head night and day, isn't it?>

The mental dialogue coasted to a stop. The heavy burden in his chest began to unload into the peaceful surroundings. As the mother and daughter exited from the house, Kermit stepped back to the corner. His appearance, dark and rumpled, could be disturbing. He wouldn't bring disturbance here. They walked down the street, talking non-stop all the way, before disappearing around opposite corner. They had a memory full of hope and new beginnings. A woman was sewing away in the window, putting the finishing touches on that memory.

<I still miss you. I suppose I always will. And, I love you, but you know that already. I didn't have any trouble telling you. Maybe it can be that way again. We'll see.>

With one last look, he turned and walked back to his car. It was time to get back to the precinct. Someone was expecting him.

The End

Part 1   Part 2

Back to author's index      Back to Story index