“Yeah, that might be for the best,” she said. Still, she couldn’t get over how much it felt like defeat.
Frank got up and took the burger. “Tell your dad I said thanks.” He then stepped forward and kissed her. It was soft and brief, as he was always respectful about such things when in her home, especially when Jeffrey was nearby. “I’ll see you in the morning.”
She walked him to the door and watched him leave, wondering what he might be like tomorrow, knowing they were on a clock to get this case solved. She also wondered if he’d be able to give it his full attention after the case he’d worked on today. Ava stood and watched him until he stepped down the stairs and out of sight.
Closing the door behind her, she walked back into the living room, where the other important man in her life had just started chapter two.
***
After putting Jeffrey into bed, Ava took a bath and then sat on the edge of her bed, looking over the notes she’d written at the station. She studied and analyzed for about an hour before sleep seemed to come out of nowhere and claim her.
She fell into a dream that came like a cloud across her sleeping mind, the sort that she knew was a dream as she had it. In it, she was standing in the courtroom again. Only now, there was just a single person there with her. Clarence sat where the judge had been sitting and when he looked down at her, she felt encompassed in a wave of pure love.
“You know you have nowhere to go with this case, right?” Clarence asked.
“It’s starting to feel that way, yeah.”
“But you also know you can’t give up. You’ve seen most of the men at the department. They aren’t all closed-minded, but most of them are. People like you—people that fight for the disadvantaged—are few and far between.”
“I wish you were here,” Ava said. “I bet you would have already closed this case.”
“Oh, I don’t know about that.” When he stood up and walked to her, she saw that he was dressed in his policeman’s uniform. It was clean and it shimmered like gold. “You don’t need to take my place, Ava. You need to be your own person—your own detective. You might just end up doing it better than I ever did.”
He took her in his arms and looked at her lovingly. She lost herself in his eyes, and though she knew he was dead, she could feel something very much alive about him.
“If that’s true,” she said, “then why can’t I find your killer?”
“Maybe you’re not supposed to.” He smiled and she rested her head on his shoulder. “Or,” he said in her ear, “maybe the time just isn’t right.”
“Well, when will the time be right?”
He had no verbal answer, but in the dream, he started to dance with her in the abandoned courtroom. Music came from somewhere, and it was nothing she’d ever heard before. It sounded like angels whispering, like thunder during a summer afternoon, like rain on a tin roof.
She looked up to kiss him, but as is the cruel nature of dreams, her eyes opened and the dream ended.
Ava looked to the ceiling and heard rain splattering against the window and roof. And though she knew Clarence was not there in the bed with her, she thought she could feel him for just a split second. She thought she might be on the brink of crying but she was fortunate enough to fall back asleep before it could happen.