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“I’m not sure she can possibly understand the circumstances,” retorted Jamison.
“All I’m saying is thather mother should talk to her about it. If it’s going to affect her, why not?”
Amber and her sister exchanged a glance.
Amber said, “I actually think he might be right.” She rose from the table. “I’ll talk to Zoe and then I’m going to bed. I’m just very tired.”
Jamison rose too and hugged her sister. “I’m here for you, sweetie. Whatever you need, for as long as youneed.”
“Alex, you have your own life, and you have a job. You can’t babysit us forever. Not that I’d want you to. I’ll get my life together. I have to, for Zoe.”
She glanced at Decker. “Thanks for the advice, Amos.”
Decker nodded.
She left the room and Jamison sat back down.
Decker rose and poured himself another cup of coffee.
He satdown and drank some of it.
“You going soft on me, Decker?”
He looked at her. “How do you mean?”
“You’re worrying aboutotherpeople a lot lately.”
“I investigate homicides. That means there are always lots of people to worry about.”
“Do you think they should stay here or leave Baronville?”
“I don’t have a good answer for that, becauseI’m not them.”
“But there’s nothing for them here.”
“Frank Mitchell is here,” replied Decker. “He’s always going to be here now.”
Jamison changed color and looked down. “Right. I…I guess I wasn’t thinking about things that way.”
Decker took another sip of coffee and glanced out the small window into the dark. “I didn’t want to leave Burlington. And at thesame time, I wanted to get the hell out of Burlington. My family was murdered there. They’re both buried there. When I left, I felt like I was abandoning them. I used to go to the graves every day when I lived there. I would sit and talk to them. Now I haven’t been in months.” He set his cup down. “I don’t want to end up with my only connection to them being faded pictures on the wall, Alex.”
“You of all people should never worry about forgetting them.”
“It’s not the same. I buried them there. That is my connection to that place. It will always be a part of me whether I want it to be or not.”
“So, based on that logic, you think my sister should stay, then?”
“I think…everybody is different.”
With that he rose, cleared the table, and heand Jamison loaded the dishwasher. Then he left the kitchen and went to his room.
Decker opened his closet and pulled out two things: the construction drawings he had found in the hall closet, and the piece of graph paper he had uncovered at Toby Babbot’s trailer.
After looking over the pages for about a half hour he decided he needed something else in order to make sense ofit.
He left his room, walked down the hall, and knocked on the door.
A few moments later, a sleepy-eyed Zoe opened the door. She was in her pajamas and was holding her cat.
