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“Does it matter?”
“You’re a cop, doesn’t intent always matter? If you didn’t intend to hurt…”
He wondered if this was Ruth’s way of apologizing for posting that video. Knowing now the pain she’d caused.
“That could be true,” he said. “But Vivienne is dead, and her killer is free.”
“Not for long. Homer’s going to kill the man who killed his daughter, isn’t he?”
“He’s going to try.”
“Will you stop him?”
“I’ll try.”
“In a halfhearted way?”
Armand turned to her in surprise. “No. With all my heart.”
“Why?”
She looked at him with genuine curiosity. As did the duck. But then, ducks were often curious.
Why would he stop Homer?
“Because it’s not for us to be judge, jury, and executioner.”
“Yeah, yeah, yeah. Cliché. And in the real world, when the system fails?”
“Then we have to look somewhere else for a solution.”
“You mean revenge.”
“For some, yes.”
“And others?”
“You know the answer to that.”
“You mean giving up? Just”—she waved her hand—“letting it go and getting on with life?”
“I mean grabbing hold of something other than rage and revenge. You came over to the house this afternoon.”
“Yes,” said Ruth. “What of it?”
“You said something to Homer.”
“So?”
“I think that’s why you visited him. To offer Homer that option, a way out. If not to forgiveness, perhaps to peace. It was a quote from St. Francis, to a woman who’d lost her child in a river. The thing is, I looked it up, or tried, and couldn’t find it anywhere.”
“Meaning?”
“Meaning, does it exist?”
“Does it matter? Isn’t the power in the belief and not the proof?” She looked at him, hard. “Wouldn’t you want to believe, Armand? If it had been Annie?”
In the silence that followed, he met her eyes.
