Simon Morrow hadn’t said a word since he returned home. He’d just sat in the old lawn chair that had been in all the backyards of their marriage. His wife knew well enough to leave him be; so she’d left a plate of food on the table for him and gone out with her friends. It was moments like these when he remembered he was an alcoholic. He felt a hurtful need for a beer as the light dimmed around him and evening fell.
He’d left the scene in disgust. After the hopes he’d had this morning, he’d felt crushed by the events of the afternoon. Is this what it means to be a broken man? he wondered. That’s how he felt. He knew his wife felt differently. She had told him once that he was her hero. It was after the whole incident in St. Louis. She’d said it was because he recognized his faults and worked to make them better. She’d cried a little when she told him how much she admired him. The fact he knew she was sincere made him feel like that much more of a heel.
But he’d always hoped one day to feel worthy of her pride, of her love. Tonight he believed that day might never come, and it hurt – almost as much as his need for a double scotch neat.
He wondered if Bernard Hugo was long gone or if he was hovering someplace nearby, unsure of where to go and what to do. Simon Morrow wondered if maybe he understood a little of the desperation Hugo must feel right now. They had both lost something that had caused them to lose themselves a little. Different, certainly. But wasn’t there always something recognizable in the most insane human reaction to pain?
How often had Simon Morrow wished he could return to the St. Louis station house? Not to go back there for a visit as the man he was today, but to go back to the man he had been in the days he ran the place, pretty damn well, he thought. How highly he’d thought of himself then. Never a moment of self-doubt, self-recrimination. What he wouldn’t give to walk those halls again as a young man. He wondered if Bernard Hugo felt the same way.
Morrow rose and entered his house through the sliding glass doors that led to his comfortable living room. He grabbed his car keys off the countertop in the kitchen, and pulled a light jacket off the back of a table chair. He walked out the front door and went to the police cruiser parked in his driveway. He felt a twinge of self-loathing as he crawled behind the wheel, as if he didn’t deserve to be operating department equipment. He thought he’d just take a little ride over to the hospital where Bernard Hugo used to work.
Each of Juno’s other senses told him he was in the wrong place. The air smelled of roses and peppermint. The bed was too soft, the sheets too fragrant. He could hear Mrs. Turvey puttering downstairs, cleaning dinner dishes and humming softly. He must have dozed after dinner. He had eaten a great deal in spite of his grief and everything he had learned today. But now he was awake. And he knew with certainty that he was in the wrong place. He must return to the church immediately. It wasn’t his mind that told him this. It was not a desire to be surrounded with the things that were familiar to him. And it was not a desire to be alone. It was something larger, something outside himself that told Juno he was in the wrong place.
It wasn’t far and he could certainly walk. He had done so a million times as a child. He was sure he remembered the way. He had his cane with him. Mrs. Turvey had told him when she’d leaned it against the doorjamb. He would need to wait until she went to bed. Otherwise he would only worry her, or she would try to stop him somehow. So he would lie and wait until the house was silent. And then he would go home.