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It was just after sunset when Frannie was let into the Boulder County Jail. Norris hadn't wanted to let her in to see the prisoner - 'the prisoner', that's what they'd been calling him, not wanting to name the sorry sack of bones huddled up in the corner of a cell as Harold, as Hawk, as one of their own - but she was Stu's woman, and that carried a lot of weight. In the end they had allowed her to pass but grudgingly, warning her to stay away from the bars, asking if she wanted to have someone come with her, for protection.
'No, that's ok,' Frannie said, waving Norris away. 'I want to speak to him alone. Just let me into the block and I'll come knock on the door when I'm done.'
Norris looked displeased at this, but did as she asked. Frannie knew that he and the other members of the Watch were intensely distressed at this whole situation. They hadn't signed up to be prison guards, and the Free Zone had never needed to lock anyone up before. And no one knew what was to be done about him in the long-run. A trial of some sort, Frannie supposed, once Stu, Glen, Larry and Ray returned. If they returned, a nasty, frightened part of herself supplied, and she hastily crushed it underfoot.
As she approached the single occupied cell in the block she steeled herself, as she had done when she had said goodbye to Stu. He has been heading towards his own battle, and this was hers. One of hers, at least. We all fight battles, every day, she thought to herself. Some of us inside our own heads.
Frannie walked up to the bars of the cell without speaking. She kept her gaze averted for a long time, not wanting to look straight ahead of her, not wanting to see the person in the cell. Not wanting to see what expression would be in his eyes.
'Fran?'
His voice was cracked, disused, trembling. Frannie felt her stomach lurch. With great difficulty, she turned her head.
Harold sat on the floor of the cell, beside the bunk. His clothes were dirty, his right eye blackened - from the fight, she supposed, when they'd brought him in. He had blood in his hair. She nodded, not trusting herself to speak yet.
'Fran. I - I didn't think you'd come. I wish you hadn't.'
He was looking down at his hands, cracked and filthy.
'Did they get Nadine too?'
No answer. Harold snorted.
'No, I expect not. She double-crossed me. Handed me right over to - to those guys. I expect she's a thousand miles away by now.'
Harold's voice had tapered away and he was overcome by a bout of sudden, bone-shaking coughs.
'I came here - ' Frannie began, then stopped. She took a deep breath. She knew she needed to continue, if only for her own sake, but seeing him there - curled in on himself, pathetic - was harder than the hundred times she had rehearsed this in her mind.
'I came here because I want to tell you about Nick,' Frannie finally said, sucking in a harsh gasp of air. Harold shook his head, as if he suddenly couldn't hear, and turned his face to the wall.
'I want to tell you who Nick was,' Frannie continued, voice growing stronger and surer with every word. 'When Nick was a kid his Mom died and he grew up in an orphanage, until he ran away at sixteen. He drifted around after that. Nick… Nick never caught any breaks. He was deaf and mute, in a world where people are cruel and vicious just as easy as breathing. He was poor. He struggled. He never had anything, or anyone. He was beaten up in a bar, by a guy whose fist took one of Nick's eyes. And then when Nick woke up, he saw the man who'd hurt him, saw him in pain - sick with Captain Trips but still alive, still clinging on - and do you know what Nick did? He cared for that man. He comforted him, washed him, fed him. Until he died.'
Harold had his head in his hands, his long pianist's fingers tangling in his lank hair. A low moan, animal, terrible, welled up in his throat.
'Then Nick came to Boulder. He came with his first real friend, Tom, and he found love here. Acceptance. Respect. For a few weeks, he was happy. And then - then you…'
Frannie trailed off. She had to take a moment to gather herself, the tears which threatened to spill from her eyes clouding her vision. She blinked them away. Leaned closer to the bars. Started again.
'After it happened, I went to Mother A's house. What's left of it. There was a patch of blood by the door - '
Harold groaned again, a shuddering death rattle.
'Stu kneeled down on the ground. And I asked him to put his hand on the patch of blood. That's Nick's blood, I thought. It may not have been - there were so many injured that night - but I think it was. I asked Stu to swear something to me - something that doesn't concern you - and he did.'
'Why - Why are you telling me this?' Harold croaked, his voice sounding a thousand years old, a thousand years spent in Hell.
'I'm telling you because I put my hand on Nick's blood too. And when I did, I understood something.'
Frannie moved suddenly and Harold flinched, as if expecting the sound of a gunshot, the subtle shiver of a knife's blade. Then he saw she had thrust only her hand through the bars, palm up, an invitation. He stared at it like it was some strange animal.
'I understood that Nick forgives you. Don't ask me how I know that, but I do.'
'I don't deserve his forgiveness.'
'No, you don't,' Frannie replied, and was saddened to hear the steel in her own voice. She had never sounded like that, in her old life. All things go.
'You don't deserve forgiveness,' Frannie continued, 'I know that. And I don't forgive you. But Nick does, anyway. That's who he was. That's the man you killed.'
Harold's eyes were wide, ringed with dark circles, bloodshot from lack of sleep. They looked, to Frannie, like huge black stones of deepest jet. He sat looking up at her, unblinking, for a length of time which seemed immeasurable.
Then he moved, slowly, like a continent. Over to the bars where she still stood, hand outstretched, and took it, tentatively. Bent over it, like a suitor about to bestow a kiss. Frannie reached out and touched his head, felt the feverish heat of his brow, cupped his cheek.
'I'm sorry,' Harold murmured, voice small, as if it came from a long way away. Perhaps from Ogunquit, from their old lives, dead and buried now. Dead and buried beneath the flower beds in her father's garden.
Frannie didn't reply for a very long time. Only held his head in one hand and felt his tears fall into the other.
'I know,' she whispered finally, and felt herself begin to weep along with him. 'I know.'