Page 82 of A Gathering of Secrets

“Arm was hurting. I couldn’t sleep.” I offer up a reproachful look. “Didn’t want to wake you.”

“Uh-huh.” He’s not buying it. I see him looking at the countless pages of notes and reports and photographs spread out on the coffee table. “Evidently, you do some of your best detecting after hours.”

“I guess I’m found out.” Setting my hand over his, I push myself to a sitting position. I’m wearing panties and one of his Cleveland Division of Police T-shirts. I catch him stealing a look at my bare legs and it makes me smile. “This is getting old, huh?”

“Nothing about you will ever get old.”

I look away, a thought flashing that he deserves better than this, but I shove it away. “I didn’t mean to wake you.” I look around; the windows are still dark. “What time is it?”

“About five, I think.”

I nod, look away.

He notices, tilts his head to snag my gaze. When I don’t look at him, he reaches out, sets his hand beneath my chin, draws my face toward him. “What’s this all about, Kate?”

“You mean the dream? Or the fact that I’m…” I don’t know how to finish the sentence, so I let the words trail.

In typical Tomasetti fashion, he waits.

“All those parallels.” I whisper the words, feeling stripped bare by them. “I don’t like what’s in my head. I don’t want the past to get in the way.”

“As much as we cops like to deny it, some of the cases we work are about us. Not in the way you think, but … It’s about our experiences, good and bad, and everything we bring to the table.”

“I guess I’ve brought a lot to the table with this case.”

He sighs, letting me know in no uncertain terms that he’s annoyed. “So use it,” he says. “Use what you know. Put it to work. Use your insights. Maybe it’s time you started thinking about this case with your whole brain and not just the part that fits your cop’s sensibilities.”

“Sometimes I’m afraid to look that deep,” I say.

“That past can’t hurt you now. If it’s got something to tell you, listen to it.”

“Tomasetti, the truth about what happened to me never came out. I was never punished for it.”

“You killed a man in self-defense,” he growls.

“Did I?”

His eyes narrow on mine.

“I never told you. Because I was ashamed. Because I hated myself. Tomasetti, I wanted his attention that summer. I was stupid and naive and—”

“Cut it out. You had no way of knowing what he was. You were a fourteen-year-old kid, for God’s sake. You were Amish. Your parents didn’t teach you about that kind of shit.”

He’s right, but somehow it doesn’t make any of this any easier. “I thought I’d dealt with all of this. I thought I’d moved past it. But this case…” I shrug.

“Some things never go away, Kate. You know that. The key is learning to live with it in a way that doesn’t tear you apart. If you’re smart—and I know you are—you’ll use it to your advantage.”

He gives the words a moment to penetrate. “I know it’s painful. But you have a unique perspective. You can think about this case like a cop. But you can also think about it from a victim’s perspective. Use that. It’ll make you a better cop.”

“Or maybe my perspective is skewed.”

“I don’t buy that. You know right from wrong.”

“And all those gray areas in between.”

“You’re going to have to explain that.”

I close my eyes. “Is a homicide ever justified?” The words tumble around in my mind, the wrongness of them, that I’d had the audacity to say them aloud.