Page 100 of Twice
“ButIwant you to live. I don’t want to be in a world without you!”
Alfie smiled. “I want, and you want, and God does what God wants.”
“ALFIE LOGAN! GIANNA RULE!”
LaPorta had exited the car and was sprinting down a pathway and screaming. “HEY! YOU STAY RIGHT THERE!”
“Alfie?” Gianna spun toward him. “Run!”
And because he would do anything she asked, he inhaled, took a final look, then broke free and hurried up the steps. To his surprise, Gianna was running behind him. Two steps. Six. Ten. Twenty.
“What are you doing?” he yelled.
“Take me with you!”
“What?”
“I want to go wherever you go!”
He stopped, panting.
“So you believe me, then?”
“Yes. I believe you.”
He smiled. “That’s all I wanted, Gianna.”
She grabbed his face.
“No! Want more, Alfie!”
His gaze shot from Gianna to LaPorta, who had almost reached the bottom step. Alfie reached into his pocket, removed a crumpled envelope, and dropped it.
Then he took the hand of the woman he had silently loved for this lifetime and another lifetime and, in truth, from the day he met her, and they ran up a miracle of a staircase together with a detective chasing them in the moonlight.
Just before they reached the top, Gianna looked at Alfie and wished to herself that she could have her time with him all over again. She wished it more intensely than anything she had ever wished for in her life.
LaPorta tripped on a step, came down hard, slammed his knee, and cursed. He scrambled back up. But by the time he reached the top of the staircase, the suspects were gone.
Eight
Nassau
LaPorta slumped in his chair and moved the ice pack around his knee. He grimaced. It was early morning in the police station, and he wanted a cup of coffee but couldn’t easily get up. He cursed himself for not having more officers with him last night. It was stupid to race out there alone—which is what he’d done after reading the final pages of the notebook.
“Good morning, hero.”
Sampson was walking toward his desk.
“You all right?”
“I’ll be fine,” LaPorta said. “Eventually.”
Sampson smiled. “There’s sixty-four steps in that staircase. For an old man, you did pretty good getting to the top.”
“The people I was chasing were older than me.”
“Yeah, that’s sad.”
