After an hour, he told me I was suffering from clinical depression.
“I know that,” I said.
He leaned forward. “And how are we going to help you with that?”
I glanced at the door behind him, a closet, I assumed.
“You got Grace or Mae Cole back there?” I said.
He actually turned his head to check. “No, but—”
“How about Angie?”
“Patrick—”
“Can you resurrect Phil or make the last few months not have happened?”
“No.”
“Then you can’t help me, Doctor.”
I wrote him a check.
“But, Patrick, you’re deeply depressed and you need—”
“I need my friends, Doctor. I’m sorry, but you’re a stranger. Your advice may be great, but it’s still a stranger’s advice, and I don’t take advice from strangers. Something my mother taught me.”
“Still, you need—”
“I need Angie, Doctor. That simple. I know I’m depressed, but I can’t change it right now, and I don’t want to.”
“Why not?”
“Because it’s natural. Like autumn. You go through what I went through, and you’d be nuts not to be depressed. Right?”
He nodded.
“Thank you for your time, Doctor.”
Christmas Eve
7:30 p.m.
So here I sit.
On my porch, three days after someone shot a priest in a convenience store, waiting for my life to begin again.
My crazy landlord, Stanis, actually invited me in for Christmas dinner tomorrow, but I declined, said I’d made other plans.
I might go to Richie and Sherilynn’s. Or Devin’s. He and Oscar invited me to join their bachelor’s Christmas. Microwaved turkey dinners and generous portions of Jack Daniel’s. Sure sounds tempting, but…
I’ve been alone on Christmas before. Several times. But never like this. I never felt it before, this dire loneliness, the hollowing despair of it.
“You can love more than one person at the same time,” Phil said once. “Humans are messy.”
I definitely was.
Alone on the porch, I loved Angie and Grace and Mae and Phil and Kara Rider and Jason and Diandra Warren, Danielle and Campbell Rawson. I loved them all and missed them all.
And felt all the more lonely.
Phil was dead. I knew that, but I couldn’t accept it enough not to want—desperately—that he wasn’t.
I could see us climbing out windows in our respective homes as children and meeting on the avenue, running up it together as we laughed at the ease of our escapes and headed through the bitter night to rap on Angie’s window and pull her into our desperado pack.
And then the three of us took off, lost to the night.
I have no idea what we used to do on half our midnight jaunts, what we used to talk about as we made our way through the dark cement jungle of our neighborhood.
I only know that it was enough.
Miss you, she’d written.
Miss you, too.
Miss you more than the severed nerves in my hand.
“Hi,” she said.
I’d been dozing in the chair on the porch and I opened my eyes to the first snowflakes of this winter. I batted my eyes at them, shook my head against the cruel, sweet sound of her voice, so vivid I’d been ready to believe for a moment, like a fool, that it wasn’t a dream.
“Aren’t you cold?” she said.
I was awake now. And those last words didn’t come from a dream.
I turned in my chair and she stepped onto the porch gingerly, as if worried she’d disturbed the gentle settling of the virgin flakes on the wood.
“Hi,” I said.
“Hi.”
I stood and she stopped six inches from me.
“I couldn’t stay away,” she said.
“I’m glad.”
The snow fell in her hair and glistened white for just a moment before it melted and disappeared.
She took a faltering step and I took one to compensate and then I was holding her as the fat white flakes fell on our bodies.
Winter, real winter, was here.
“I missed you,” she said and crushed her body against mine.
“Missed you, too,” I said.
She kissed my cheek, ran her hands into my hair, and looked at me for a long moment as flakes collected on her eyelashes.
She lowered her head. “And I miss him. Badly.”
“Me too.”
When she raised her head her face was slick, and I couldn’t tell if it was all just melted snow or not.
“Any plans for Christmas?” she said.
“You tell me.”
She wiped her left eye. “I’d kind of like to hang with you, Patrick. That okay?”
“That’s the best thing I’ve heard all year, Ange.”
In the kitchen, we made hot chocolate, stared over the rims of our mugs at each other as the radio in the living room updated us on the weather.
The snow, the announcer told us, was part of the first major storm system to hit Massachusetts this winter. By the time we woke in the morning, he promised, twelve to sixteen inches would have fallen.
“Real snow,” Angie said. “Who would’ve thought?”
“It’s about time.”
The weather report over, the announcer was updating the condition of Reverend Edward Brewer.
“How long you think he can hold on?” Angie said.
I shrugged. “I don’t know.”
We sipped from our mugs as the announcer reported the mayor’s call for more stringent handgun laws, the governor’s call for tougher enforcement of restraining orders. So another Eddie Brewer wouldn’t walk into the wrong convenience store at the wrong time. So another Laura Stiles could break up with her abusive boyfriend without fear of death. So the James Faheys of the world would stop instilling us with terror.
So our city would one day be as safe as Eden before the fall, our lives insulated from the hurtful and the random.
“Let’s go in the living room,” Angie said, “and turn the radio off.”
She reached out and I took her hand in the dark kitchen as the snow painted my window in soft specks of white, followed her down the hall toward the living room.
Eddie Brewer’s condition hadn’t changed. He was still in a coma.
The city, the announcer said, waited. The city, the announcer assured us, was holding its breath.
Acknowledgments
For answering what I’m sure were a lot of stupid questions about the medical and correctional professions, I thank Doctor Jolie Yuknek, Department of Pediatrics, Boston City Hospital, and Sergeant Thomas Lehane, Massachusetts Department of Corrections.
For reading, responding to, and/or editing the manuscript (as well as answering even more stupid questions), thanks to Ann Rittenberg, Claire Wachtel, Chris, Gerry, Susan, and Sheila.
About the Author
DENNIS LEHANE is the author of A Drink Before the War, which won the Shamus Award for Best First Novel; Darkness, Take My Hand; Sacred; Gone, Baby, Gone; Prayers for Rain; and the New York Times bestsellers Mystic River and Shutter Island. A native of Dorchester, Massachusetts, he lives in the Boston area.
www.denislehane.com
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Praise
Acclaim for New York Times Bestselling Author Dennis Lehane and Darkness, Take My Hand
“Lehane is one of those brave new detective stylists who is not afraid of fooling around with the genre’s traditions.”
Washington Post Book World
“It’s got the mark of a master, the kind of direct, clear but nuanced prose that carries the reader long into a believable (and extremely violent) world.”
Milwaukee Sentinel
“Outstanding…unpredictable…Lehane’s voice, original, haunting and straight from the heart, places hi
m among the top ranks of stylists who enrich the modern mystery novel.”
Publishers Weekly, starred review
“Stunning and shocking, relentless and terrifying…Darkness, Take My Hand is everything a contemporary crime novel ought to be and more. It’s creepy, chaotic, uncomfortable, and riveting. It’s funny too, but you’re almost afraid to laugh. You may want to put this book down to catch a breath, but you won’t be able to.”
John Dufresne, author of Louisiana Power & Light
“An explosive story…heartstopping…terrifying…Lehane’s perfectly crafted plot leers, teases, taunts, and lulls, scattering bits of humor and heartbreak among the soul-chilling episodes of death and destruction. A tour de force from a truly gifted writer.”
Booklist, starred review
“For Lehane, local color is not mere decoration but the very wellspring of character and thus of action. His thriller grabs us with its blunt talk and breathtaking pace, but what leaves a lasting impression is the brooding authenticity of its atmosphere.”
Boston Globe
“A crackling thriller, which could have been scripted by Raymond Chandler had his beat been Boston’s Back Bay instead of Brentwood, California…A sense of place as palpable as the pungent tang of garlic in the North End air, haunting characters, and a gracefully elegiac style that lingers long after you’ve closed the covers.”
People
“A truly excellent book…it gets my vote as crime novel of the year…. Lehane is an enormously gifted writer, perhaps one of the best two or three hard-boiled authors to come along in the last decade…His prose is that good, his characters are that well drawn, and his story is that well told.”
Mostly Murder
“It took only two books for Dennis Lehane to stake out the blue-collar suburb of Dorchester as prime territory for a new private-eye series…The author nails the distinctive accents and character traits of the all-too-human working stiffs who pace out their lives between Carney Hospital and the Black Emerald bar.”
New York Times Book Review
“Terrifying…The passion of Lehane’s neighborhood nightmare can hardly be denied. And he’s created a villain who’s both surprising and grimly fascinating: the kind of figure one hates but can’t stop reading about.”
Kirkus Reviews
“Masterful…gritty and sometimes hilarious…If Mr. Lehane proved last time out he knows what he is doing stylewise, in this book he adds the substance.”
Washington Times
“I’m betting Lehane is going to be a name to reckon with in years to come.”
James W. Hall
Books by
Dennis Lehane
SHUTTER ISLAND
MYSTIC RIVER
PRAYERS FOR RAIN
GONE, BABY, GONE
SACRED
DARKNESS, TAKE MY HAND
A DRINK BEFORE THE WAR
Copyright
This book is a work of fiction. The characters, incidents, and dialogue are drawn from the author’s imagination and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to actual events or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
DARKNESS, TAKE MY HAND. Copyright © 2006 by Dennis Lehane. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the nonexclusive, nontransferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse-engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.
Epub Edition © SEPTEMBER 2006 ISBN: 9780061807992
Version 08312012
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