Chapter 18

He looked at his crowded workbench and began to put it back in order.  “A place for every thing and everything in its place,” he muttered to himself.  The words of his father scrolled through his mind repeatedly.  When he was younger, Evan was a slob and lost things continually.  His mother referred to his room as a sty, and cleaning his room was torture.  This phrase was used by his father often to convince him that putting things away was the fastest way to keep a clean room, keep his mother off his back, and know where his stuff was.  It wasn’t until he was on his own that he finally got it.  Every since then, Evan couldn’t stand clutter.  Nothing put his mind more at peace than a workbench with nothing on it.  But with all of the work, a tidy bench hadn’t been a reality for weeks.

As he placed hammers on hooks and bolts in coffee cans – a little more forceful than necessary – Evan tried to beat back the thoughts of regret and failure.  He was to blame if Katherine walked out for good.  He was to blame for Lillian’s demise.  He was to blame for his selfishness.  Evan’s arm clipped a shelf, and his electric drill fell, landing on his foot.  The pain shot through his mind, and he picked up the drill and saw himself hurl it across the garage.  I would feel so good to do it.  But instead, he slammed it down on the workbench and stared daggers at the offending tool.

How could she be so cold?  How could she not see all that he was trying to do for her?  Why was it okay that she was getting everything she ever wanted but he was supposed to suffer in silence over the guilt of allowing an innocent person to die.  He was supposed to help.  Lillian had him promise.  But he was supposed to walk away from his honor.  Evan saw that either Katherine was so self-absorbed that she couldn’t see his turmoil or she was so callused to not care that Lillian was only getting closer to her death.  He was not the one being selfish.  Not this time.  It was her.  And he was suffering for it.  He pounded his fist on the wooden top.  Pain flared up through his knuckles.  Good, he thought, might as well add one more ache to his life.

Once he got his emotions back under control, Evan plopped onto a stool and thought about what he would do.  He needed a plan.  He likely needed several.  A plan for where to live, a place for where to work, a plan for getting Katherine back, and several backup plans for when all of those fell apart.  If he could figure out how to get to Lillian, he would throw that plan on the pile.  He was certain it was wasted effort.  After all, his best laid plans had brought him to this point.  Why was he so good at predicting the moves of criminals, but when it came to his own life, he was blind as a bat?

As he sat hunched over and feeling sorry for himself, he began to rub the mark on his palm – the hopeless momento from Lillian.  As he did, the mark would glimmer with a blue light.  It seemed that the harder he pressed, the brighter it gleamed.  He pressed and pressed as the thought and thought not really conscious of what he was doing.  The only thought he had was that he would finish the fence around the Jensens yard, beg to get out of the rest of it, and, he didn’t know, maybe find a job as a janitor a the university like some poor shlub.  It what he deserved.  He’d made his life a trash heap.  Might as well take other people’s trash to the dumpster.

Then, the unexpected happened.  The mark on his hand didn’t just gleam or glow, it shot out a beam of light like his had that day in his detective office.  Not only that, but the same man appeared in the glowing beam.  The man looked surprised, irritated, and scared.

“Who is this?” he whispered.

“Evan Gold.”

“What do you want?  It’s very dangerous to call me.”

“Is Lillian still alive?”

“What do you want?” the man repeated.

Evan said the one thing he’d thought to say if he ever talked to this man again, “I don’t know how to get to you.”

The man, exasperated, said, “I don’t know either, but she thinks you can.  If I had the original controller, I could get you here instantly.  But I don’t have that.”

“Could you get it?” For the first time hope sprouted in Evan’s heart.

“Impossible.  If you had access to another fetterseal that could work.”

“A what?” Evan asked.

“A fetterseal.  The mark on your hand.  If you touched yours to another might work, but it would be a risk.  Listen, don’t worry about it.  People will get suspicious if you contact me again.  Do what you can, but I have things under control here.”

And with that, the beam went dark.

Whatever hope had risen in Evan fell even further into the abyss.  He sat in the garage, shoulders slumped, staring at his hand.  It was, as the man said, impossible.

Then, the door to house opened and Evan looked up to see Katherine standing in the doorway.  Her chin was jutted out, her lips were pursed, and she slowly shook her head back and forth, back and forth.

“Since you would rather be over there with her than here with me, and since I don’t know that I can stand to look at you much longer, you can use my, this is so stupid, you can use my mark to go rescue your precious princess.”

The dime fell in Evan’s mind.  Eye Patch had given Katherine a mark like his, well, mostly like his that night in the apartment.  The man appeared in her mark at the office, and it obviously had done the same now.

“You heard that?”

“I don’t know what the experience is like for you, but it makes me think I’m having a heart attack.  It’s a little hard to miss.”  She stepped into the garage and Evan stood.  “So, here,” she opened her blouse just enough for her to display her mark.  “What did he say?  You place your mark on mine and you jump to where he is?  Do it.  Do it if you’d rather have her than me.  Do it and I’ll be rid of you for good.”

Evan saw the hurt in his wife’s eyes.

“It’s not —” he began.

“Don’t tell me you don’t want to or that I don’t understand.  Isn’t this what all men want, to have some helpless damsel they can rescue from a dragon and then live happily ever after?”

Evan narrowed his eyes.  “You think I’m in love with her?”

“No.  I think you’re in love with the idea of her.  I think if you got to know her, you’d eventually toss her aside like you’ve done to me and move on to some other helpless thing in another place.”

Now it was Evan who had been stabbed in the heart.  He understood what hurt Katherine, but she had aimed her guns at the wrong target.  “I don’t love her,” Evan said.  “I made a promise to her, and it pains me not to keep it.”

“You made a promise to me, too,” Katherine shot back.  “I have the pictures to prove it.  ‘To love and to cherish, forsaking all others, till death do us part.’  I believe that’s what you said to me.”

“You married me because I was an honorable man.  Because I keep my promises.  How can you ask me to give that part of me up?”

“I’m not,” Katherine said.  “I’m saying run after it as hard as you can.  I’m saying, she can have you all to herself.  I hope she knows what she’s getting.”

“A person is going to die if I don’t do something,” Evan said.

“This marriage is going to die if you don’t do something,” Katherine said, her green eyes boring holes in Evan’s spirit.

“Fine,” Evan said, defeated.  “You win.  But that man you’ve come to loath, the one you said, ‘Get out there and be a handyman,’ that guy is what you’ll have.”

“Is that a threat?”

“No.  Helping me people has been what has given me energy.  Not, your self-help book.  My purpose is helping people find justice, and you’re telling me to find something else.  I don’t know how to do anything else.  I lost my detective partner because I lost sight of that.   I don’t want to lose you because of it, either.

Katherine took a step closer.  She gave a bitter smile.  “Well, then, let me help you out.”  In one motion, and without taking her eyes off Evan’s, she reached out and grabbed his right wrist.  Then Katherine put his palm on her mark.  The garage filled with a strange blue light.  When it faded, the garage was empty and the only sound was of the crickets chirping at one another in the back yard.