Moonlight Mile by Dennis Lehane

know.”
    We sat there for a bit. There was nothing much to say. We were getting numb to it, the fear, the weight of worry.
    “I’ll leave school.”
    “No, you won’t.”
    “Yeah, I will. I can go back in—”
    “You’re this close,” I said. “Finals next week, one internship, and then you’re bringing home the bacon by summer, at which point—”
    “ If I can even find a job.”
    “—at which point, I can afford to freelance. You’re not packing it in this close to the finish line. You’re top of your class. You’ll find a job no problem.” I gave her a smile of confidence I didn’t feel. “We’ll make it work.”
    She leaned back a bit to study my face again.
    “Okay,” I said to change the subject, “lay into me.”
    “About what?” All mock-innocence.
    “We made a pact when we married that we were done with this shit.”
    “We did.”
    “No more violence, no more—”
    “Patrick.” She took my hands in hers. “Just tell me what happened.”
    I did.
    When I finished, Angie said, “So the upshot is that in addition to not getting the job with Duhamel-Standiford, the world’s worst mother lost her child again, you didn’t agree to help, but someone mugged you, threatened you, and beat the shit out of you anyway. You’re out a hospital co-pay and a really nice laptop.”
    “I know, right? I loved that thing. Weighed less than your wineglass. A smiley face popped on-screen and said, ‘Hello,’ every time I opened it up, too.”
    “You’re pissed.”
    “Yeah, I’m pissed.”
    “But you’re not going to go into crusade mode just because you lost a laptop, am I right?”
    “Did I mention the smiley face?”
    “You can get yourself another computer with another smiley face.”
    “With what money?”
    There was no answer for that.
    We sat quietly for a bit, her legs on my lap. I’d left Gabby’s bedroom door slightly ajar, and in the silence we could hear her breathing, the exhalations carrying a tiny whistle at their backs. The sound of her breathing reminded me, as it so often did, of how vulnerable she was. And how vulnerable we were because of how much we loved her. The fear—that something could happen to her at any moment, something I’d be helpless to stop—had become so omnipresent in my life that I sometimes pictured it growing, like a third arm, out of the center of my chest.
    “Do you remember much of the day you got shot?” Angie asked, throwing another fun topic into the ring.
    I tipped my hand back and forth. “Bits and pieces. I remember the noise.”
    “No kidding, uh?” She smiled, her eyes going back to it. “It was loud down there—all those guns, the cement walls. Man.”
    “Yeah.” I let loose a soft sigh.
    “Your blood,” she said, “it just splattered the walls. You were out when the EMTs got there and I just remember looking at it. That was your blood—that was you —and it wasn’t in your body, where it belonged. It was all over the floor and all over the walls. You weren’t the white of a ghost, you were light blue, like your eyes. You were lying there but you were gone, you know? It was like you were already halfway to Heaven with your foot on the gas.”
    I closed my eyes and raised my hand. I hated hearing about that day and she knew it.
    “I know, I know,” she said. “I just want us both to remember why we got out of the rough-stuff business. It wasn’t just because you got shot. It was because we were junkies to it. We loved it. We still love it.” She ran a hand through her hair. “I was not put on this earth just to read Goodnight, Moon three times a day and have fifteen-minute discussions about sippy cups.”
    “I know,” I said.
    And I did. No one was less built to be a stay-at-home mom than Angie. It wasn’t that she wasn’t good at it—she was—it was that she had no desire to define herself by the role. But then she went back to school and the money got tight and it made the most sense to save on day care for a