As the service came to a close, Mac walked back to his rental car and drove slowly across the long, horizontal run of the cemetery to the far southeast corner. He parked and reached behind his seat for the floral arrangement he’d picked up earlier. He stepped out of his car and walked to the last row of markers, an area informally known as McRyan’s Corner. It was so named as forty-two McRyan family members, spanning generations, were buried here. He reached the last headstone, a marker he hadn’t visited in a long time. It was the gravesite for Simon Liam McRyan, his father.
Mac’s mother visited the grave weekly, tending to it, always laying three roses—the number of roses his father appeared with on their first date on June third. As a result, this early afternoon, Mac only needed to clear away a light dusting of snow from around the edges to set the flowers in the small holder on the left of the headstone.
His father was fifty-three years old when he died in a hunting accident, shot in the chest from a far-off hunter they’d never found. Mac was standing next to his father when it happened. The memory of that day and the nightmares it created were what kept him away from the cemetery. Even now, over sixteen years later, that day still jolted into his mind—the sound of the shot, the gasp his father made when he was hit, and the shock of his expression as he looked up at Mac while the life drained from his body. All of that came back into Mac’s mind when he looked down at the gravestone, reading the inscription.
He was lost in that thought when he heard someone approaching. He didn’t look up. He didn’t have to. “I thought you might come over here,” he greeted without looking up from the gravestone.
“I figured you figured that, too. How long’s it been since you visited here?” Meredith asked, fully aware of how difficult it was for him.
“Five years, maybe longer,” Mac answered.
The two of them stood in silence, paying their respects.
“Thanks for coming today,” his ex-wife said quietly, breaking the silence.
“I know what Teddy meant to you.”
“Yeah, it’s hard on mom.”
“Was it an accident or …”
“We don’t know. Dad seems to think it’s possible he took his life. He told me Teddy wasn’t as flush financially as he once was.”
“I suppose that’s possible,” Mac replied. “Who knows sometimes what drives people to do what they do.”
“That’s so very true,” Meredith replied and then turned her gaze to him. “Take me, for example, and what I did to you.”
“Meredith,” Mac started, shaking his head, “not today. You don’t have …”
“No, I do. I do. It’s why I drove over here.” She reached for his hand and held it in both of hers and looked him in the eye. “I just wanted to say thank you and say how sorry I am, for everything.”
“I know.”
“Yeah?”
“Yeah. I know. I’ve just not been of a mind to let you,” Mac answered as he pulled his hand away. He needed space and stepped back away from his father’s grave. He changed topics. “So are you back at the law firm yet?”
“I quit.”
“You quit?” He was surprised. “Why? You were completely exonerated. They should welcome you back with open arms. You’re a damn good lawyer.”
“Thanks.” She shook her head and sighed. “But, given what’s happened, I just didn’t want to go back and deal with it. The work wasn’t fulfilling, the environment was toxic, and I was always Frederick’s wife around there, and I always would be. When I thought about it, I just couldn’t do it. Besides, I have something else now.”
“What?”
“About two years ago, I took a pro bono case for a friend who worked with Child Services in Hennepin County. I met this little boy named Ezekiel who’d been abused so badly and … I don’t know, something about him made me want to help him. Then I helped another child, and then another, and then I started working with the Prevent Child Abuse Network, and I loved the work. It made me feel—”
“Good,” Mac offered.
She nodded. “Yeah. I felt like I was doing something that mattered for a change. It helped me kind of understand the decision that you made to be a cop. I was doing work that made a difference in someone’s life, not a corporation’s balance sheet. It helped me start to understand the mistakes I’d made. That work made me realize I’d been chasing all the wrong things for all the wrong reasons. When the charges were dropped, one of the first calls I got was from the executive director at the Network, and she offered me a job. She said, ‘Meredith dear, you’ll probably get a big life insurance pay out now and can afford to work for us.”’
Mac laughed. He shouldn’t have—it wasn’t the right place or time, but he laughed nonetheless. Meredith did as well.
“But like you, Mac, I do now have some financial security that allows me to pursue something that makes me happy. This is what I want to do.”
Mac nodded his approval. “It’s a second chance, Meredith. Run with it.”
“Yeah, I’m going to try,” she replied and then finally asked the question he’d been expecting. “Mac, do you think you’ll ever be able to forgive me?”
Mac turned back and peered down at his father’s gravestone.
Simon McRyan was one to often impart lessons on his son.
Was he doing it now?
His father was a homicide detective and often spoke of people making mistakes—horrific, life-ruining mistakes. Yet his father would say, no matter how bad the mistake, almost no matter what you did, there was always the chance at redemption. It could take many forms and mean many things, but there was almost always the chance for forgiveness of some kind. It was why the inscription on his grave stone read as it did, from Matthew 6:14-15: For if you forgive men when they sin against you, your heavenly Father will also forgive you. But if you do not forgive men their sins, your Father will not forgive your sins.
Mac couldn’t help but wonder if the old man wasn’t speaking to him from the grave. If his father could talk of redemption and forgiveness for the horrifyingly dreadful acts he saw as a cop, it seemed small for Mac not to be willing to forgive this.
It was time to move on.
“Meredith, Sally said she wanted us to bury the past as we look to our future.” He smiled down at his father’s grave. “This seems like as good a place to bury the past as any.”
“Yeah,” she replied, nodding, “I suppose it is.”
They stood for a few minutes, letting the sun peeking through the early-afternoon clouds warm them. They were not talking, just getting comfortable with the moment, with the thaw in their relationship, such that it was.
“Let’s go,” Mac finally suggested, and the two of them walked back to their cars in silence. When they reached the cars, they separated. Before getting into her Mercedes, Meredith stopped and looked back. “Mac?”
“Yeah.”
“You were the last person I ever thought would be there for me—the last person I could have ever expected to come through for me. Yet there you were.”
Mac shrugged. “What can I say? I didn’t have anything better to do.”
“Yeah, right,” Meredith replied with a shake of her head but a small, thankful smile on her face. “Thanks, Mac. Thanks for everything.”
Mac finally accepted her gratitude. “Meredith, you’re welcome.”
BOOKS BY ROGER STELLJES
McRyan Mystery Series:
First Case – Murder Alley
The St. Paul Conspiracy
Deadly Stillwater
Electing To Murder
Fatally Bound
Blood Silence
(To receive a message when a new release becomes available visit www.RogerStelljes.com)
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Roger Stelljes is the New York Times and USA Today bestselling author of the McRyan Mystery Series. His books have been downloaded over 1.5 million times worldwide. He has been the recipient of several awards including: the Midwest Book Awards– Genre F
iction, a Merit Award Winner for Commercial Fiction (MIPA), as well as a Minnesota Book Awards Nominee.
Author website and new release alerts: www.RogerStelljes.com
Blood Silence - Thriller (McRyan Mystery Series) Page 36
