Walk a Mile

by Sarah Madison

  He followed her inside.

  The interior, like Jean Flynn’s clothing, retained an air of being trapped in time, like a fly in amber. Nothing so bad as the avocado-green appliances in the days of Starsky and Hutch. No lava lamp or blue shag rugs. Nothing like that would have been tolerated here, even when it was in fashion. In fact, Jerry suspected the house had recently been redecorated; it had sense of newness while retaining a feeling of preservation. The thought that there might be a room somewhere upstairs, perfectly maintained like a sort of shrine, made him break out in a light sweat, and he felt a lurch of nausea again.

  The sorrow the house held made him pause uncertainly at the entranceway. Dear God. No wonder people believed in ghosts. He was certain that other people, ones who called themselves mediums or psychics, could feel this energy too. Strong emotions had to leave a resonating imprint that sensitive people could perceive.

  His mother—Flynn’s mother—entered the living room and sat down on the brocaded sofa. Not a comfortable space. A room for receiving guests. Jerry glanced around curiously. He felt a small surge of triumph when he noted several photographs of horses. It felt like a piece of intuition he’d come by on his own, without the benefit of the telepathy. Somehow that made it all the more valuable an observation.

  Jean Flynn indicated the wingback chair beside the sofa. “Please, sit down. Would you like something to drink? I have some tea in the fridge.” He won’t want to sit next to me. The chair would be best. Will he drink some tea? He looks too thin. Should I offer him the cookies? What am I thinking? He’s not a small boy who can be tempted with sweets.

  Jerry couldn’t help it; he smiled. He understood her need to be doing something, to offer something, to give structure to this meeting and a framework for interaction. “Sweetened or unsweetened?”

  She visibly relaxed at his words. “Unsweetened. You can add sugar if you like. I brewed it fresh this morning.” Brushing her thighs lightly with her hands, she stood up gracefully. He started to rise as well, but she quickly intervened. “It won’t take but a minute.” She preemptively waved off any offers of help.

  The coffee table bore only a single book, a compilation piece of a photographer’s work in the Serengeti. He flipped through it briefly. Next to a photo of a line of elephants silhouetted against the blaze orange sky of a setting sun, a cheetah lifted bloody whiskers from the neck of a Thompson’s gazelle. He shut the book and pushed it aside.

  Curiosity pulled him to his feet. He wandered the perimeter of the room as he waited for her return. On the mantelpiece there were a couple of small, framed photos. In the first, a young, tousle-headed Flynn held up a string of fish with a wide, gap-toothed smile. There was an adult in the photo as well, but the picture had been cropped to showcase Flynn. Even then, he had been a charmer. The beaming delight on his face made Jerry smile at the photo, as though it were one of those magical images from the Harry Potter films, and any moment now, Flynn would wave at him.

  A second, slightly larger photo showed Flynn jumping a well-groomed pony over what appeared to be an impossibly large fence. The look on Flynn’s face was a mixture of intense concentration and fierce joy; the gray pony, with black forelegs neatly tucked, jumped effortlessly. Beside that was a professional looking studio shot, probably Flynn on his acceptance into the FBI. The formal pose made Jerry realize that Flynn, while probably the most photogenic person he’d ever seen, appeared stiff and wooden when he was aware of the photographer. In the professional photo, Flynn’s features were still unformed in youth, his face a blank mask. Jerry would have loved to have known him then. He suspected the John in the photograph would have had nothing to do with him had they met back then. It was a depressing thought.

  He trailed a finger across the mantel as he moved to the next photograph: no dust. Someone was doing their job. He bet a maid or housekeeper.

  The next photo was of a small girl, long black hair in shining pigtails. She wore a red wool coat tightly buttoned over a dress with a white petticoat, and white tights with black patent leather shoes. Her mittened hand was held by another, but like the photo of Flynn, the picture had been cropped to show only the child. Her cheeks were pink with cold and excitement. She was obviously going someplace special. A light dusting of snow was on the ground, and when Jerry leaned in for a closer look, he could see that snow was falling in the picture. The gesture that the girl was making made sense now; she was trying to catch a snowflake.

  Jerry realized with a start that she looked a lot like Lauren King, the inspector with whom Flynn had worked on the Grimm Fairy Tale serial killer case. Jerry remembered his reaction on seeing the two of them together that first time, and how he’d suspected they were cut from the same cloth. Flynn’s overprotectiveness of the inspector fit into place now. The girl in the photo had to be Rachel, his dead sister. Lauren King could have been Rachel as the woman she never grew up to be.

  He reached out and gently touched the surface of the glass.

  He felt more than heard the short intake of breath as Jean reentered the room.

  No, not yet. Please don’t bring her up yet. I’m not ready. Jean’s thoughts were almost a litany, words murmured while holding a rosary.

  He turned to see her standing at the entrance of the room, bearing a silver tray with a glass pitcher of iced tea, several frosted glasses, a dish of sliced lemon, and a plate of cookies. She’d obviously gone to some trouble to make things nice, and Jerry was irrationally angry with Flynn at this moment. The least he could have done was answer his mother’s phone calls.

  When was the last time you talked to your mother? Jerry pushed the thought away as having no bearing on the subject.

  “Let me help you with that.” He moved easily to intercept the tray, noting Jean’s wide-eyed glance at his face before she looked down again. He almost had to pry it from her hands. She slipped around him to the coffee table, shifting the photography book to one side.

  “Just set it down here. I thought you might like some cookies.” You used to love these when you were a child.

  Jerry eyed the store-bought frosted oatmeal cookies with disfavor. Of course, Flynn would love junk food. He didn’t see any way to refuse the cookies without offending Flynn’s mother, so he selected a couple and set the tray down. For convenience’s sake, he sat on the couch. Maybe she wouldn’t notice that he’d slipped the cookies into his pocket. Warily, as though he was the cheetah at the kill and she was the photographer trying to sneak up on him, Jean took her seat on the couch, perched on the edge. She reached for the pitcher only to subside when Jerry poured a glass for both of them.

  The little amenities of fixing the tea to everyone’s satisfaction took a few moments, and Jerry could feel the effects of the ritual on both of them. By the time he had leaned back, resting a cold glass on his knee, Jean looked calm again.

  Her emotions were anything but. She had something to say. Jerry knew what it was, but he waited her out. She needed to say it.

  “You have a little piece of paper….” She trailed off, touching her face near her chin.

  Annoyed, Jerry pulled the piece of toilet paper from his face, wrinkling his nose when he saw the dried blood on it. He tucked it into the pocket of Flynn’s suit, where he felt it would be right at home.

  Jean spoke of the weather they’d had this past winter, and asked whether Flynn liked his new job in California. Jerry answered her questions vaguely, not entirely certain what Flynn would have said. He almost laughed when he realized his manner was in keeping with Flynn’s general lack of communication as Jean merely nodded and sipped her tea. He could feel the steady tick-tick-tick of the artifact in his pocket, and he couldn’t help but be reminded of a bomb wired to a timer.

  “Do you think you’ll stay in San Francisco?” Jean had set her glass down on the tray and was studying her hands, neatly folded in her lap.

  “I don’t know. I think so. For now.” Jerry certainly hoped so.

  Jean looked up intently. “I think you s
hould,” she said. “There are too many bad memories here for you.”

  “Mother—” Jerry began, but Jean cut him off with an abrupt lifting of her hand.

  “I’m not just talking about Rachel’s murder.” There, I said it. “I’m talking about living here in the aftermath of that, and the way things ended between you and Nancy, and Mitch’s death on that mountain-climbing trip. There’s nothing here for you anymore, John, except pain and suffering. You should go make a new life for yourself in California.”

  Mitchell Markham had been Flynn’s former FBI partner. Jerry hadn’t realized Mitch was also the friend who had died during Flynn’s mad quest to conquer as many of the 14K mountains in the US as he could. It was one of the many things Flynn didn’t talk about. Jerry had read the bare bones case report in Flynn’s file, back when he’d first been assigned to work with him. At no point had the connection between Agent Markham and “John Flynn’s climbing partner” been made. It had probably been there had he looked hard enough at the file. But he’d been in a hurry that day and had skimmed it at high speed. Fuck.

  “The weather’s not bad,” Jerry said at last, hoping for a sufficiently Flynn-like answer as he processed the bits of information coming his way. Really, it was a miracle Jerry could manage a single sentence, what with all the extraneous information bombarding him. Jerry thought he was doing pretty well, all things considered, but he had the sneaking suspicion if things had been reversed, if it had been him who’d become telepathic initially and not Flynn, Jerry would have wound up in the psych ward. Flynn had a lifetime of compartmentalizing on his side. It was possibly part of his underlying temperament as well. It was a strange thought.

  Jean gave him a thin, tight smile. “I don’t want you to think you need to come back here through some misguided notion to keep an eye on me,” she said. “I’ll be fine. I’m getting married and selling the house.”

  “What?” Damn, that was the last thing he’d expected to hear. How could a telepath be blindsided by that? His hand jerked, and he spilled some tea on his trousers. The cold liquid soaking through to his skin was even more startling, and he lurched forward to set his glass on the tray and grab paper napkins.

  He blotted his pant leg repeatedly, unable to look at Flynn’s mother.

  Oh dear. Not the reaction I was hoping for! Worry and amusement vied for the upper hand in her thoughts.

  He quickly met her gaze. “No, this is good, really good, great, actually. I’m just surprised, that’s all. I wasn’t—I mean, I thought—well, I thought you wanted to see me for another reason.” He balled up the damp napkin in his fist, certain he was making a hash of this. Dead. He was so dead. Flynn was really going to kill him now.

  The shy smile utterly transformed Jean’s face. “I met Charles through A.A. I’ve stopped drinking—I wanted you to know that. Know that, and apologize to you for everything I’ve put you through, for not being the mother you should have had.”

  Jerry was on his feet and across the room by the mantelpiece before he knew what had happened. “No, no, I’m all right.” He stopped Jean’s movement with an outstretched hand. He followed that action by threading the same hand through his hair, and caught himself when he realized how characteristic that was of Flynn. “I’m just surprised, that’s all. I didn’t think anything you could do could surprise me.” He shook his head. Obviously, being a telepath didn’t mean you knew everything. He paced back and forth in front of the mantelpiece. “When is this all going to take place?”

  Jean shrugged. “I’m putting the house on the market, but you know sales are down right now. Charles and I are planning to marry sometime early this summer. I’d like you to meet him, John.”

  Shit. It was going to be hard to hide this meeting from Flynn, which, up until now, had seemed possible. Perhaps that was better, though. Hiding things from your partner wasn’t really the sign of a healthy relationship, now was it? Jerry told himself to shut the fuck up and tried very hard to figure out how he was going to get himself out of this one. “I don’t really know what my schedule is. If you have a time in mind, you should call me.”

  Maybe he could slip away without Flynn knowing—like he had today.

  Jean stood up and took several quick, light steps in his direction before stopping in front of him. “I know there’s nothing I can do to give you back your childhood. I wish I could. I took that from you. I realize that now. I just want you to know how sorry I am I couldn’t deal with Rachel’s death any better than by looking for comfort in the bottom of a bottle of wine. It’s funny.” She glanced out the window, as though something there held her interest. “Somehow, I thought because it was only a few glasses of wine I didn’t have a problem. That I wasn’t an alcoholic. Alcoholics drank hard liquor and had blackouts. It didn’t occur to me that living my entire life in a state of anesthesia was the same thing.”

  Jerry opened and closed his mouth, unable to speak.

  She fixed a piercing gaze upon him, and for a freakish moment, Jerry was certain she could see through him, that she knew he wasn’t really Flynn. He remembered something Flynn had said to him once, and it seemed appropriate.

  “You pay the rent you can afford to pay.”

  “I’m not sure I follow you, dear.” Jean’s brow furrowed.

  Jerry wasn’t sure he could put it into Flynn’s words. “Life. You go through life making choices. Some people buy houses. Other people rent them. You make the choices you can live with at the time, the ones you can afford to pay. They may not be good ones, but they are the ones you can cope with at the time. As soon as they no longer work for you, you move on.” He hesitated. He had never really been sure what Flynn had meant by this particular philosophy in the past, but now he suddenly got it. “We all have our crutches. For some of us, it’s drugs, or gambling, or drinking, but there are lots of little, everyday things that are crutches, too. Watching television. Exercising. Religion. Spending time online, or cooking.” He started to pat his belly out of habit and halted in the middle of the action. It made little sense to pat Flynn’s firm abs in the same rueful way he would have poked his own.

  “Sometimes,” Jean said with a slow smile, “I’m not entirely convinced you’re my child. I think you must be a changeling. Especially with those ears.”

  Jerry grinned sheepishly and fingered the appendage in question. Flynn’s triangular shaped ears were a source of endless amusement to him, and, if he was honest, attraction, too.

  Jean nodded as though she got it, though. “Yes. I see what you mean. I drank because it helped me get through the day. I blamed you for Rachel’s death because it seemed easier than having no one to blame.” She reacted to his involuntary movement. “I don’t anymore, you must believe me. I know it was unfair, but there really was no one else to blame. Without a killer to prosecute, you were the only person I could be angry with. I’m so sorry.” Your father left us because of that. He couldn’t watch it anymore, but he couldn’t intervene to save you either. I don’t know that I can forgive him for that, but I must. I’m asking you to forgive me for so much more.

  Jerry knew Flynn. As someone he’d lived with, slept with, and depended on for the last six months, he felt he knew Flynn as well as any person alive. As much as Flynn would allow, at any rate. There was nothing to forgive; Flynn had forgiven his mother years ago. It was himself he couldn’t forgive.

  Jean was crying. Two tracks of tears silently trailed down her face, and she brushed them quietly away.

  “I know, Mother. You don’t have to tell me that.”

  “Yes, I do.” She wiped her face briskly with the heel of her hand. “It’s part of the program. It’s necessary for me to say it and for you to hear it. You probably knew that was why I’d asked you here.”

  “Thought it might be the case.” He shrugged casually, lifting the right shoulder higher than the left. Flynn had better not give him any flack about this. He only regretted Flynn hadn’t been here to hear it firsthand. “I’m just sorry it took me so long
to get back to you. You know, time difference and all. Besides, I knew I was coming back here soon.” It sounded lame even as he said it, but it was the best he could do.

  Her expression suggested he wasn’t fooling her, but that it was all right, she understood. He suddenly felt the pressure to be gone and knew it was coming from Jean as well as Flynn’s inherent antsiness to move when he got stressed. His phone buzzed.

  It was a text from Flynn. Where are you? He repocketed the phone without responding.

  “I really should be going. I’m supposed to meet my partner. We have an appointment this afternoon.” He began edging his way toward the door.

  “Wait! Take some cookies with you!” Jean swooped over the coffee table and gathered a handful of cookies, wrapping them in a napkin and handing them to Jerry. That’s all he needed, more cookies. To refuse, however, felt wrong. He tucked them into his pocket with the others. He wouldn’t think about crumbs, and was only mildly surprised the idea of crumbs in his pockets did not worry him.

  Jean walked him to the door. “I’m sorry you couldn’t stay longer.”

  He hesitated before speaking. “Things are complicated right now. I’m happy for you, and I’d like to meet Charles. We’ll make it work, okay? Call me.” He leaned in to hug her, and felt the fragility of her bones beneath the strength of her personality.

  She hugged him back, a moment of tight clutching in which it felt like she might not let him go.

  “This new partner of yours—how are you getting along?” She released him only to toss out a question that would prolong the conversation.

  Jerry pulled back to aim Flynn’s wicked little smile at her. “Oh, he’s okay. A bit prissy. You know, like Felix Unger in The Odd Couple.”

  Jean raised an eyebrow. “That doesn’t sound like someone you’d get along with.” You probably tease him unmercifully.