Why didn’t he feel better?
Because he wasn’t finished. Ogden might be safely stashed away, but Gibson still had much to do. The rest of the weekend was dedicated to being seen. To establishing an alibi and passing convincingly for someone who hadn’t kidnapped a CIA officer and imprisoned him in an abandoned power plant. Gibson couldn’t very well do that from his bedroom floor. He would feel better once the weekend was behind him.
That had to be it.
He dragged himself from the floor and into the shower. At the diner, he worked a double shift. Operating on only a few hours of sleep, he still had to sell himself as energetic and well rested. He mainlined caffeine all day and feigned a cheerful, upbeat demeanor. After his shift, punchy and exhausted, his body begging for sleep, Gibson forced himself to hang around and eat dinner with Toby. Priority one was minimizing the amount of uncorroborated time he spent between now and when Damon Ogden officially went missing on Tuesday morning.
Maissa was coming home for a weeklong visit in February, and Toby was in high spirits. He talked animatedly throughout dinner while Gibson nodded in the appropriate places. He appreciated the opportunity to listen without needing to contribute much to the conversation. When the plates had been cleared away, Toby remembered something. He left the table and returned with a cardboard box. He put it on the table between them.
“What is it?” Gibson asked.
“It’s yours.”
Gibson lifted the lid. Inside he saw framed photographs. A bust of James Madison that had belonged to his father. His passport. His discharge papers from the Marines. A tattered social security card and other personal effects. His wedding ring. A bundle of letters in blue envelopes. From a stack of photographs, he picked out one of Nicole holding a sleeping Ellie at the hospital.
At the bottom of the box, he found a framed photograph that his father had kept on his desk. In it, Gibson sat in an armchair, Bear cozy in his lap. She’d been seven, Gibson eleven, brother and sister in all but name. She’d harassed him for a year to read her a book, and when she finally wore him down, she’d been ready with The Lord of the Rings. It had taken them two years to finish, but Grace Lombard, Bear’s mother, had snuck a photograph that first night. It had come out so perfectly that most assumed it had been staged. To Gibson, the photograph represented an idealized version of his childhood. He hadn’t noticed before, but when he saw Bear now, she was the girl from this picture. She even wore the same dress.
He felt a sweeping gratitude to have all these memories back but didn’t understand how. Gibson looked up at Toby questioningly.
“I might have bribed your landlord to let me go through your apartment before he sent everything to the dump,” Toby said.
“Thank you so much.”
“I’m just sorry it’s taken until now. I wanted it to be a surprise, but we’ve been so busy, and I kept forgetting.”
“No, it’s amazing. I thought I’d lost all of this.”
Toby picked out a photograph of Ellie on her first day of kindergarten. “You have a beautiful daughter, Gibson. I’m proud of how hard you’ve worked to get back on track. How is the job search coming?”
Feeling guilty, Gibson updated Toby about his nonexistent job search. Toby asked question after question, and Gibson’s lies became more and more convoluted. It surprised him how hard it was to keep it up. Thankfully, Toby’s work soon interrupted.
Around eleven, Gibson dragged himself home. He unpacked the box and set the pictures out on the floor close to where he slept. When he came back from turning on all the lights, Bear was sitting on the floor, looking at Ellie. He braced for another lecture, but Bear didn’t say anything. That was almost worse, but Gibson was too tired to argue about it tonight. He stretched out on the floor and fell asleep looking at his daughter.
His alarm woke him at 5:45 a.m. The last thing Gibson wanted to do was to go for a run at this hour, but he got up and got dressed anyway. Then he lurked at his front door, peering out through the curtain until he saw his landlady begin her morning pilgrimage to fetch the Sunday paper. He met the seventy-five-year-old widow on the sidewalk. Normally, Mrs. Nakamura didn’t have much to say to him, but this morning she launched into an excited soliloquy about how the Packers were going to trounce the Cowboys. Her green-and-gold Packers jersey flapped excitedly around her knees, and it seemed a little early to be this fired up, but there was no stopping her. She invited him upstairs to watch the playoffs that afternoon. Gibson said he had to drive down to Richmond but promised to stop by if he got back in time.
At first glance, Hammond Birk’s retirement home looked like a college campus. The white stone fa?ades lent the main building a magisterial, academic pedigree, and Gibson imagined it would be a beautiful spot in the springtime. He parked the Yukon in a side parking lot and tucked the keys above the visor. He signed in at the front desk and had his picture taken. A nurse issued him a visitor’s pass and escorted him to Jefferson Hall, the pretentiously named south wing.
As they walked, the nurse explained that Judge Birk slept most of the time now. His dementia had entered stage six, which made completing even simple tasks now a challenge. Speaking had become increasingly difficult over the last twelve months. The last time they’d seen each other, the judge had emerged from his haze long enough for a conversation. There would be no such reunion today.
Sure enough, they found Hammond Birk sleeping peacefully. The brochure from the lobby described it as a suite, but the judge’s room felt like a hybrid between an economy hotel and a hospital. The air freshener couldn’t mask the smell of antiseptic any more than the handmade throw could disguise the hospital bed. Still, it was a vast improvement on the broken-down trailer where Gibson had found Birk eighteen months ago. Gone were the matted beard and filthy clothes. The judge looked clean, comfortable, and well cared for.
Dementia had stolen the judge’s mind while still on the bench, and Charles Merrick had stolen his retirement. Gibson had stolen a piece of it back for him. It wasn’t much, but it comforted Gibson knowing the judge would see out his days with some dignity, despite the enormous cost. Here, at last, he could point to something decent that he had done.