CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

      It hit him like a fist to the solar plexus. Air rushing out of him. The feeling, from out of left field, that his heart had just been kicked.

      “I just can’t now,” Karen said. “Do you understand? Mel’s not well. He’s not getting better. I asked the kids to come down here on their school breaks. I was gonna have Samantha bring Tobey down for a while…”

      “Jesus, Karen…” Hauck took the phone out of the crook in his neck.

      He had felt her pulling away, just a bit. Her dad was in the latter stages of Parkinson’s. And deteriorating. That’s why she had gone back home. To be with him and help her mother through. That and maybe to find out who she was after picking up with Hauck so quickly. But the couple of weeks had turned into a month. Now a month had become…At least not for a while.

      “You could come down here,” she said. “I just need to be here right now, Ty. You can understand that. They need me. I was with my husband for twenty years, then when everything happened last year with Charlie, and you…I love you, Ty—you know that. I owe my life to you…” She cleared her throat. “But this is where I need to be, honey, until whatever happens does. Not just for them, but for me, too. Don’t be angry with me. I didn’t know it was going to be this way. I told you from the start there were things I couldn’t promise…”

      “I’m not angry, Karen. I’m hoping the best for Mel.”

      There was a lull, both of them stumbling over what they could say. Karen ultimately broke the silence. “Well, I guess this caps off one helluva day…”

      “Did I mention that I was shot, also?”

      “Shot?”

      “More like a graze on my neck. I’ve done worse shaving. It does, however, make it onto the list.”

      “Jesus, baby,” Karen said, “won’t you stop at anything to get yourself on TV?”

      Hauck laughed. Karen did too. There was another pause until she asked, “So, what do you think?”

      “What do I think about what?”

      “What do you think about what? About the state of the goddamn economy, Ty…What do you think about you coming down here?”

      “I don’t know…” He brought his knees up on the table. “I’ve got Jess. We’ve got Thanksgiving this year.” He winced at the lie, not sure why he said it. “Anyway, it’s probably better to just keep it a Friedman thing down there, don’t you think?”

      “In that case, Ty, how do you feel about giving me back the dog?”

      He laughed again. “I don’t know. You’ll have to ask him. I’ve been feeding him pretty good…”

      “Ty…” Karen said, sniffling, “I do love you, baby…You know that. You’re one of the best men I’ve ever met. I just hope you can somehow understand. I’ve been gone since I was eighteen. And now they need me. I don’t know how long. I can’t say no. I always told you I wasn’t a perfect bet.”

      Hauck took a sharp breath. He guessed he’d seen it coming. “I always thought you were a damn good bet, Karen.”

      “You keep yourself safe, Ty Hauck,” she said, “you hear? I’d make you promise me that, but we already know just how little that means…”

      “I’ll do my best.”

      They hung up, the click of the phone carrying a kind of finality that made Hauck pause. He rubbed his head and drained the last of his beer.

      Tobey sat up, his ears perked.

      He could call someone, like Beth had suggested. His sister, Angela. In Massachusetts. Or Warren.

      Talk.

      Instead, he looked straight at the dog, who seemed primed for something. “C’mon—before you bail out on me too.”

      He threw on a sweatshirt and went out on the landing, climbed the stairs leading up to the flat, tarred roof. Tobey followed. It was a clear, starry night, warm for late October. He stared out at the dark expanse of the sound, the lights of Long Island twinkling in the distance, six miles away.

      He kept an old set of golf clubs up here, along with a trove of beat-up range balls he had scrounged. Hauck looked out at the sound and then back at Tobey, who sat watching him.

      “Whaddya think, guy, go with the eight or a friendly seven?”

      The terrier cocked his head.

      Hauck took out his eight.

      He dropped a ball on the worn carpet remnant he used for a tee mat, swung through a couple of practice swings, then launched a crisp, high-arcing fade over the lot next to his neighbors, Richard and Justine, and deep into the darkness of the sound.

      I do love you, Ty…

      He hit another.

      Karen had brought him back from the long slumber he’d been trapped in, in the years after Norah died. From the vise of guilt he felt. From hiding out up here…

      He sent another ball deep into the darkness.

      She taught him how to smile again. To fight for someone again. How to love. He thought of the freckles on her cheeks and the laughter in her drawl and the time they’d spent together. He couldn’t help but smile. You’re a damned good bet, Karen…

      His mind flashed to David Sanger. His daughter, not much older than Jess, in tears. “Why did this have to happen, Mom?”

      I’ll find out, he’d promised.

      Hauck blasted six more balls into the darkness. The last was a high-arcing beauty, soaring with the perfect right-to-left draw, plopping to a stop on some green deep in the void, six feet from an imaginary pin.

      He looked at Tobey. The dog jumped up. Hauck threw the eight iron back in the golf bag.

      “C’mon”—he winked— “we’re puttin’, dude!”