They didn’t catch Ruby Pegg in the car chase, but they got the plate number, and have alerted the public. On the ride back up to Massachusetts, Elliot told me that Stacey Collins isn’t the last attempt, that Ruby will be on the lam for a while and will have other victims, but that when she does it will help police to convict her.
The plan is for us to help them catch her, and that it will go down similar to what happened a few days ago. He said now, we have plausible deniability in calling earlier, since sketches and eventually photographs will have been posted in the media.
When I got back after dropping him off at his house, Melanie was asleep on the couch, and little Elliot was in his crib.
Melanie woke when I came in, and she asked all about what happened. When I told her, she welled up in tears and then kissed me. I’ve thrown so much helpless information of the future at her over the past two years, and now to show her we saved someone, even if it was someone who always in all versions of this moment got saved, she had a profound need for me. We hadn’t been together that softly and sweetly in months, and it was needed.
When I had woken up the next morning, she wasn’t in bed, and I thought that perhaps that had been a goodbye. I would have completely understood if she’d decided it was goodbye. I brought Elliot to daycare, and continued on with my day convincing myself that it was what was best for her, and that she deserved better.
That night as I was cooking dinner, I was relieved and then ashamed when she walked back in from a shift. She looked tired, but still held some of the optimistic glow of knowing the future wasn’t completely helpless.
This morning, I called a travel agent— I feel like this might have been the final step to me being part of the 80s—and I started planning a trip. Melanie and I need a vacation, and I’m gonna get us one. I need it as badly as she does, but I suspect that if I didn’t have her around, I would just let myself burn out. I’m going to take her to Acapulco.
I’m planning the trip for June, that way if by some chance we get an invite to my parents wedding, we can decline. I think it’s best we not go, not only for the obvious reasons, but I wouldn’t want my grandmother to be put in an awkward position of spending time with me.
I have the itineraries printed out, and I’m going to give them to Melanie at dinner tonight.
Judy is going to take Elliot for the week that we’re gone. He’s been bonding a lot with her again since she was released, and while I don’t want to let him go, I do think he needs as much time with his mother as possible.
Michael Christopher Cole 
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