Author's note: Recently, one of the women that I work with lost her father. He was 80 years old and time simply caught up with him. I went to the funeral home to pay my respects and spoke to her mother briefly. They'd been married 62 years and she wasn't sure she could go on without him. While she was talking, she told me that she'd seen him just a few days before he died. He wasn't weak like he had been for months, but strong and vital as he had been when they were young. It reminded me that my mother also said she'd seen my father just before she died, even though he'd been gone for almost a year. And I remembered hearing footsteps and the closing of a door, and hearing my mother say good-bye on the day of her own funeral. As sad as these stories made me, they also gave me comfort and hope. If there really is life after death, can our loved ones be waiting for us to help us take the next step? I hope so. Then I thought of Hutch and Gillian, of a love that was ended almost before it began. And I wondered if Hutch saw her the same way Lois saw her husband, my mother saw my father, and I heard my parents say good-bye. Maybe he did.
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The Last Good-bye
A "Gillian" Aftermath
Detective Ken Hutchinson rolled over in the darkness and stared up at the ceiling, watching the headlights from passing cars make shadows on the white tile. He'd finally convinced Starsky to go home around midnight, after promising he'd go to bed and try to get a decent night's sleep. If he'd admitted that he didn't want to sleep, didn't want to see Gillian's face in his dreams, Starsky would have planted himself on the couch just as he did the night before, and the night before that. He sighed as he thought of Starsky tossing and turning, trying to find a comfortable position on that old, battered couch. Just because he wasn't getting over four hours' sleep a night didn't mean Starsky should suffer with him. Besides, the funeral was over and they were due back on the streets in the morning. It was time to get back to normal.
He thought briefly that he didn't know what "normal" meant anymore. Was it normal to get up in the morning and find his heart in a million pieces again after a night of chasing Gillian in his dreams? Was it normal to realize that fate had stepped in once more and cheated him out of the chance to be happy? Was it normal to feel like he was a pariah, that everyone that he touched died? Was it normal to fall in love with a beautiful, intelligent woman and find out that she was hiding a secret that would destroy them both? If that's what "normal" meant, he never wanted to go back to normal again.
He flung an arm over his eyes, blocking out the shadows on the ceiling. Maybe Starsky was right: it was too soon. He thought the funeral would bring him closure but it only deepened the ache in his heart. It had taken days to find the family Gillian had left behind. Starsky wouldn't let him stay in the room as he'd broken the news to her parents and younger brother. First he had to shatter the image of their daughter that they had by telling them she was a prostitute, and then he had to tell him she was dead, murdered by the pimp that owned her. Starsky didn't think Hutch could see what it cost him, but he did. In just a few minutes, Starsky turned their world upside down and they both knew her family's lives would never be the same again.
Their acceptance of him helped a little when he told them how much he had loved her. He could see that it helped when he told them the monster that put her in her grave had been caught. He saw the understanding in their eyes when he told them he hadn't known about Gillian's secret life until the very end, saw the same frustration in their eyes that he'd felt. They should have known somehow that their little girl was in trouble, just as he should have known. They would live with the "should haves" and "could haves" and the "what might have been's" forever, just as he would.
With a muffled curse, Hutch gave up the pretense of sleeping and climbed out of bed. He took the robe from the foot of the bed and slipped it on then padded bare footed to the kitchen. For a moment, he stared thoughtfully at the bottle of Scotch on the counter. He'd tried numbing the pain with alcohol enough to know it wouldn't work. Instead, he took a bottle of water from the fridge and sipped it as he wandered onto the balcony.
The events of the past few days played over and over in his mind. He saw Gillian coming down the steps at the bowling alley and felt the love stir in his heart. The sight of her always made him lose his breath. The talk of red balloons floating overhead made him smile then brought another stab of pain as he realized she knew some day that those balloons would burst. He saw himself kissing her goodnight then jumping over the hood of his car like a teenager crazy with love. Then he saw her body lying on the floor with Starsky kneeling over her and his heart shattered again.
He sipped the water without tasting it, remembering something that happened a few days before she died. She'd wanted to be alone that night. He didn't understand it then but he'd said okay. So he came back to his apartment and as he lay in bed alone, he thought of her. He concentrated on her face, the way she looked, and the way she smelled, until he fell asleep. It was her scent that woke him up that night. He'd sat up slowly and saw her standing at the foot of his bed. She was smiling at him, but the smile was so full of sadness that he'd reached out to her.
"Gillian, what's wrong?"
The vision of her closed her eyes and shook her head as a tear slowly ran down her cheeks. After a moment, the apparition faded, leaving him alone and afraid. Was she trying to warn him that night? Did she know that her life was nearly over and that he'd be left to pick up the pieces of his broken heart?
His fingers curled like a vise around the bottle of water as he fought the urge to fling it over the balcony wall. He let the tears run down his face as he raged in the night.
"You should have told me! I could have helped you! We'd have worked it out and even if we couldn't, you'd still be alive! Why didn't you tell me?"
The grief inside him rose up and defeated the anger, and he collapsed on the bench behind him. Through his tears he saw a patch of white in front of him as Gillian shimmered in the moonlight.
"I wanted to tell you, Ken. I was going to. Starsky convinced me that I had to tell you the truth. I loved you so much! I was afraid that if I told you the truth, you'd turn away from me and I couldn't bear losing you. But Starsky showed me that I couldn't hide my past from you anymore. I was on my way to you when Al came through my door."
The bottle of water dropped from his fingers as he stared at her. "I loved you! I would never turn my back on you. I wish you had told me."
"I'm sorry. I was ashamed of what I was, of what Al made me. I didn't want to destroy the illusion. I hoped I could stop those balloons from bursting, just for a little while."
She put her fingers to her lips then reached out to him. He felt the breeze kiss his cheek.
"Don't grieve for me, Ken. You made me happier than I've been in a long, long time. No one ever loved me the way you did."
As the image of her faded, he heard her voice in his mind. "I'll always love you, Ken. We'll see each other again someday."
He closed his eyes and drew in a ragged breath as he heard the sound of footsteps walking away, and the closing of a door. As he sank down on the floor and let the tears fall, he heard her whisper a last good-bye. And inside, a small part of him began to heal.