Mason tightened his grip on the steering wheel. He closed his eyes for a moment. Everything is wrong, he said to himself. Every reason for getting out of prison, for signing that invisible contract with Darius Cole, it’s all falling apart right in front of me.
He waited for his heart to stop pounding. Then he got out of the Mustang and walked up the driveway to the house. He went to the front door and stood there for a few seconds. Then he rang the bell. Four notes chimed from somewhere deep inside the house.
When he first met her, her name was Gina Sullivan. She had dirty-blond hair and green eyes. They were kids back then. Gina was eighteen and just out of high school. Nick was nineteen and already on his own most of the time, crashing at Eddie’s house some nights, other nights at Finn’s house. Other nights, wherever he landed.
There was this party they had all gone to. There were a dozen girls there, and this one in particular. Young Gina asked young Nick what he did for a living, already guessing he wasn’t Sigma Phi Epsilon. Nick said he stole cars. Gina thought he was joking, so he told her to pick out a car and he’d steal it for her. She did and he did. They ended up in the backseat a few hours later. Not long after that, Gina confessed to him that the car he had stolen was her father’s.
Gina went away to Purdue University that fall. When she came back, they picked right up where they had left off. She went away again that next fall, but only lasted another semester and came back to the family home up on the north end of Canaryville. After getting thrown out of the house, she lived with relatives for a while and in the midst of all that she broke up with Nick, then they were back together, then they broke up again. He was past auto theft and on to high-end work by then. Nick had written his rules, a whole set of them, refined through experience, and by learning from Finn’s mistakes.
Gina had one rule for Nick. The only rule she needed. The straight life with me or the life you’re living without me.
Nick chose life with Gina Sullivan. Because nobody on planet Earth could ever push his buttons like this woman could. Nobody could make him happier. Nobody could make him crazier. Even when he was trying to settle down. Trying to be a normal working stiff. Even then, maybe it was still more crazy than good most of the time.
But when it was good, man, it was fucking great.
They got married. They bought the house on Forty-third Street. They had a daughter. Nick kept his promise.
Until the harbor job.
Five years and a month later, he was standing at her door, waiting for someone to open it. He was starting to think nobody was home.
Then the door was pulled open and Gina looked out at him.
She hadn’t changed. Not really. It was the same dirty-blond hair, even if she had it cut at an expensive salon. They were the same green eyes. Mason saw the spark of recognition in those eyes just for a fraction of a second. That old fire that had burned so bright between them. But then it was gone just as quickly.
“What the hell are you doing here?” She came out onto the porch and looked up and down the street like her neighbors would all be out in their yards, watching them.
Mason had seven or eight questions to ask her. He couldn’t decide which one should come first.
“You’re supposed to be in prison,” she said. As soon as those words were in the air, she covered her mouth. “My God, you escaped! Then you came here?”
“No,” Mason said, reaching out to her with one hand.
“Get away from me,” she said, taking a step backward.
“I didn’t escape,” he said. “Will you fucking listen to me? I got out yesterday.”
“That’s not possible. You’re in for another twenty years. At least.”
“The conviction was overturned. They had to let me go. I swear, Gina, I’m telling you the truth.”
He was watching her as she talked. The movements of her mouth. He could practically feel the heat of her body. He wanted to grab her, wrap her around himself.
God, he wanted that so bad.
“That’s bullshit, Nick. Nobody told me anything about letting you go.”
“They didn’t have to. I’m not out on parole. I walked out of there a free man. They said if anybody else needed to know about it, it was up to me to tell them.”
“Then how come you didn’t tell me?”
“Here I am,” Mason said. “Now you know.”
She looked away from him, rubbing her forehead. “I don’t get it,” she said. “I mean, wait. Just stop it. This isn’t happening. There’s no way they overturned your conviction.”
“Clean record,” he said. “Like it never happened. I even have a letter of apology from the prosecutor. You want to see it?”
She turned and looked at him again. “Nick, if this is really true . . .”
“You never came,” he said. “Not once.”
“Nick . . .”
Five years, he thought. Five fucking years to finally say that to her.