A pulse beat frantically at Pree’s temple. “It worked out in my case, yeah, but it’s not what I want for a baby. To be separated from her blood family forever.” Her. When had the baby become a girl?
“Then . . . what’s left?”
She couldn’t be angry at him. He was just so earnest. He would believe anything she said, wouldn’t he? Why was that so frustrating? Pree shook her head and pulled him up off the sidewalk, going up on tiptoe for a swift kiss. “Let’s find Robin.”
He stepped closer, taking her hands, pulling her close. She had to crane her neck to look up at his face.
“Okay,” he said, his voice soft. “Okay, then.” Guilt tasted like Flynn’s tongue and the sweet coconut scent that drifted up the street from the tiki bar. Pree tried to lean into the kiss, but incongruously—horribly—she needed to find her brother.
A burst of laughter drifted up from the end of the street and jarred them apart. Flynn touched her chin and repeated, “Okay.” Then, smacking his hands together, he said, “Let’s do this.”
He pointed out a place where the two fences joined, hopefully just out of sight of the camera. Without discussing how they’d do it, Flynn hoisted her up and tossed her over as though she weighed nothing. He came over next, landing with a thud. “Oh, yeah. That’s what I’m talking about,” he said.
“You’re pretty good at breaking and entering, huh?”
He had the grace to look a little embarrassed. “Eh. I’m no angel.” But there, under the halo of light, next to the wide shooting fountain, which was still lit as if the grounds were open, Flynn, with his blond, floppy hair and beautiful, beautiful face, looked like one.
Was it wrong to wish that he’d gotten upset with her? That he’d chastised her—and himself—for being so careless?
Flynn’s gaze slid past her and up the darkened treelined pathways. “This is huge. How do you think . . . ?”
“I have no idea,” she said.
They walked under thick boughs of wisteria just in bloom, the fragrance heady and sweet. To the left and right, headstones stretched as far as she could see, flanked by burial vaults of all sizes. As the road wound up the hill, the crypts got bigger, guarded by stone angels and creepy as hell, the old glass broken, open to the elements. Flynn had a small flashlight on his keychain, and they peeked inside one that was labeled Barton-Sykes. Pree fully expected to see bones—a whole skeleton laid out inside, leaves trapped in the chest cavity—but instead there were just two stone boxes, one on either side, faded fake flowers in a plastic vase resting on top of the left one. A Snickers wrapper caught by an eddy of air whirled in the far right corner. It was gorgeous. All of it.
Pree was ready to run, but so far they’d seen no sign of security. She wondered if trespassing was a misdemeanor or a felony. Flynn wound his fingers with hers. “There has to be some kind of organization to this,” he muttered, casting his flashlight over to a crypt that looked like a mini-mansion with Ionic columns and a stained-glass door. Then he turned, sending the beam toward a low-slung white building that ran almost a block in length.
“There,” said Pree. “Shine it there.”
She led them to a small pedestal that kind of resembled an old phone booth if it had been miniaturized and painted white. Inside a small glass door, attached with a length of silver chain, was a laminated book. The pages had rows of tiny numbers matched to names. “Bingo.”
Her fingers flipped the pages, Castorini, Foster, Giovans, Lemos . . . Monroe, Monroe, there were two and half pages’ worth. Who knew there were so many dead Monroes? Then, there it was. Robin Monroe. Plot 17.68.
They cross-referenced it to the attached map, then took off uphill. Something snapped behind them in the building, and even though no lights came on, they ran faster.
Plot 17 was wide and sloped downward on the back of a hill. Five deco crypts stood at the top, but the rest of the plot was filled with plain marble slabs, simple and clean, old deaths lying next to new ones. Robert Wooster, b. Missouri, 1897. And next to that, Agnes Wu, Oakland, 1972.
Pree scanned the newer ones while she used the moonlight as best she could, but it wasn’t enough. Without asking, she slipped Flynn’s flashlight from his hands. Carmela Justice died in 1979. Pablo Flint in 1987. Ace “Buster” Neville in 1997. Closer, closer . . .
And then, just like that, the narrow beam played across the name that had been spooling across her mind on repeat. Robin Isaiah Monroe. 2002–2011. Our Perfect Love. The slab was tall and thin, almost up to midthigh, and a flower detail trailed downward. No plastic roses here, but Pree spotted something nestled in the grass at the base.
It was a tiny figurine, so small that at first glance it looked like one of those little GI Joe figures. But as Pree knelt to pick it up, she saw it was a teensy Harry Potter, an inch and a half tall, as if Hermione had used the Reducio spell on him. His arms were raised, robes flying behind him, his wand above his head, his features contorted as if he were about to throw down with a Dementor. Goose bumps rose along her arms and legs. A cross was generic. Flowers were silly if they were fresh, and just plain stupid if they were plastic. But this? A tiny, very special boy, casting a spell? Tears ached in the back of her throat, and she put the plastic toy back exactly where she’d found it.
“You okay?”
She nodded. She was. Really, she was. It was just . . . more than she thought it would be, being here. And Flynn was a distraction. She should be using that time to really be with Robin. Pree looked sideways up at his face and said simply, “Hey . . .”
Flynn got it, with that one word. “I’m going to go see if I can find the Ghirardelli crypt. A guy at the steelworks told me about it. Maybe there’s chocolate inside or something. I’d do that if I were a Ghirardelli. I’d always leave candy on the steps. In a skull-shaped bowl—yeah.” He grinned and stuck his hands in his pockets as he ambled away, long-limbed as a giraffe. She heard him whistle low under his breath, a tune she didn’t recognize, and rather than being alarmed that a security guard might hear it, she felt better. Not so alone.
She spent a minute looking at the marble as if something would reveal itself to her. More words, perhaps, scrolling across the bottom if she just waited long enough. But nothing. Just his name, the dates, and Our Perfect Love. It must have been nice for him to be that to someone, even while he was sick.
She turned, sitting so that her back was against the marble. Was she aligned the same way he was? Were his feet pointing downhill the way hers were? She hoped so. Five years earlier Pree and the moms had gone camping in Yosemite. Pree’s tent had been on a slope so gradual she hadn’t noticed it until she’d slid downhill all night toward her head. She woke up again and again, her neck twisted, the top of her head pressed against the cold tent wall.
Better to be like this, feet down, face up, looking up at the night, at the fat quarter moon that shone somehow brighter than she’d ever seen it. As an experiment, more to test herself than anything else, she scooted down, easing her butt along the grass until she could lie on her back on top of the grave. She fought a heebie-jeebie horror movie moment as she imagined Robin’s skeletal arms exploding out of the ground to wrap around her, pulling her under. Then she dug her fingers into the grass. Just so long as the ground didn’t give way beneath her, she was good. She didn’t think she could handle falling into a grave, something she’d read once could happen in older graveyards as coffins degraded and the air pockets below collapsed.
She stilled her heart by taking a deep breath, and then one more. As she gazed upward, the fog parted for just a moment, reminding her of someone pulling a cotton ball apart—thinner, thinner, until the fibers slipped against each other and then the two pieces came free. And even with the Oakland lights, the moon gleamed bright at her. It looked down at her, and even though she knew she was perhaps being the most ridiculous girl in the Bay Area at that moment, she let herself imagine that her brother was there, a small little man in the moon, glowing toward her.
A g
ift.
It was almost like meeting him.
“I don’t have anything for you, though,” Pree said quietly. “Unless you want a piece of Juicy Fruit, which maybe you liked. I don’t know. Or a pen. But what would you do with a pen?”
She lay there another moment, thinking. Then she said, still so softly she could barely hear her own voice, “Hey. I’m pregnant.” She paused. “I guess you’d be too young to understand that when you died, but you’d be, what now, twelve? You’d be getting the gist of it by now. And if you were around, and if I knew you, I wouldn’t tell you. Obviously. Not unless I was showing, I guess. No one else knows. No one except the guy. I just told him.” She paused. It felt silly to talk out loud like this. It also felt right.
“I can’t help thinking that if I had a twelve-year-old brother I’d take him to the batting cage or to the arcade or something. Just to forget about it for a minute. Because I never forget about it. Not even for a minute.” She brushed an ant from the back of her hand. “I wish I’d gotten to meet you, brother.” The word felt bittersweet in her mouth, round and heavy with something that could have been.
Then Pree thought of what she could leave behind with Robin. It was so verboten she surprised even herself. But she leaned forward and reached into her backpack anyway.
A normal predrawn slap wouldn’t do. She needed to make a new one. She got out her black book to use as a lap desk. From an interior pocket, she pulled a “Hello My Name Is” sticker—she’d had to buy the pack, so it wasn’t quite street but it was the most traditional slap, and she was, after all, introducing herself.
Her Pilot squeaked as she dragged it across the paper. She did the Rs perfectly, sharp and bony. The A was a thing of thick, jagged beauty. She just had to nail the E—and she did. She almost wanted to save this one for herself. This was her tag. She added the swirls below, the two dots above, and the most perfect heart she could possibly draw at the end. She held it out, and in the dimness it was as if she were looking in a mirror.
Pree pulled off the backing and, without looking, reached around and stuck it on the back side of the marble slab.
From below her, she heard a distant engine sound, a tinny clatter, like a stuttering golf cart. Then there was a piercing whistle and Flynn came running. “They saw me! Hit it!”
Pree leaned forward and kissed the top of the stone. Her lips, afterward, tasted like chalk. “Good-bye,” she whispered.
Then Flynn took her hand and they ran.
Chapter Thirty-three
Thursday, May 15, 2014
11:15 p.m.
They waited until the coast was clear, until the last news van had pulled reluctantly away after the last newscast. They wouldn’t be back, Nolan guessed. They hadn’t gotten anything from them, and new atrocities, new tragedies would be waiting for them to report on by noon tomorrow.
When Nolan was leaving Kate’s house, at the last minute, at the front door—his old front door—Kate reached out a hand and brushed the top of his forearm for a split second before she drew it back. “Wait.”
Nolan stopped immediately. He’d do anything she said.
“Can you . . . ?”
He waited. It didn’t do to rush Kate, ever.
“Will I see you again?”
For a second Nolan’s heart soared so high he could have touched a satellite if it was going by. I didn’t want to leave you. He should say it. God, he should say it. “Of course.”
“I’d like that.” She bit her bottom lip. “Not for . . . Just to talk and—”
It broke his heart that she thought she had to spell it out. “Katie. Of course. Anything you want.”
She shut the door.
“Anything. Anytime,” he said quietly to no one. I didn’t want to leave you.
Nolan drove home and pulled up in front of his apartment complex. He caught his breath as the pain hit him, as it always did, fresh as ever as he realized again that the man his son had known was gone. That man lived in an apartment now. Alone.
When Robin turned two, it had been as if he’d gotten the memo straight from the Department of Children. He was a Terrible Two from his second birthday until the instant he turned three. There were nights when he’d scream for three hours in a row—nights when nothing would soothe him, and his voice went raw from shouting his utter outrage. Those nights, Kate had looked at Nolan, exhaustion in her eyes (but nothing like he’d see, five years later, when they were up all night for different—worse—reasons), and ask, “Is he always going to be like this?”
“No,” Nolan had said, putting a hand on top of her head. “He’ll be seventeen someday and he’ll be out all night, and you’ll call all the hospitals and the morgue and the police, and when he comes home at six in the morning smelling like beer and weed, you’ll be the one screaming louder than he is now.”
She’d grinned at that, and they’d known that, no matter what, they’d be together. With Robin.
And then they weren’t.
He unfolded from the car and stretched. Late as it was, he’d take Fred Weasley for a lap around the block.
“Hey.”
The voice behind him in the courtyard made him jump.
Rafe stepped into the light, with Johnson on his heels.
Happiness warred with confusion and was quickly snuffed out by realization. “Shit.” They knew.
“Yeah.” Rafe nodded, his baseball cap pulled low, casting a dark shadow over his eyes in the dimness.
“Brother, it wasn’t that I was hiding it from you—”
“Brother?” Rafe asked.
Something fragile inside Nolan broke into tiny, sharp shards. “You want to come in?”
Johnson and Rafe looked at each other. Rafe pulled a work bandanna out of his pocket and moved it back and forth, threading it through his fingers. Nolan had seen him do that a million times when he was thinking about where exactly to start a job or what kind of gravel to use next.
Finally, Rafe said, “A minute.”
Inside, Nolan poured them the best scotch he had. Okay, it was the only kind he had, a Glenlivet that had been on sale at Trader Joe’s. He splashed a little water in each and handed them the glass tumblers he’d found at a garage sale.
“Fancy shit,” said Johnson from his perch on the wooden side chair. He didn’t look comfortable, and he didn’t look as if he wanted to stay.
“Just whiskey.” Nolan looked at the carpet.
“You killed your kid?” Rafe took a deep swallow of the alcohol, and it didn’t seem to faze him—he breathed as easily after it as if he’d shot an ounce of plain water. “Your son?”
Rafe had daughters. All three of them girls. He’d admitted to Nolan once that he thought it made him less of a man that he couldn’t make a boy.
“Yes.”
Rafe pounded the rest of the pour and then leaned forward, running his hands through his hair, tugging hard when his fingers got stuck. “Jesus, Monroe, how could you let us think you were in for something stupid?” His words were on the edge of slurred. The scotch wasn’t the first drink he’d had that night. “White-collar shit, that’s what we all thought it was. It’s my ex, Tanya, that calls me. I’ve got the kids, and she’s screaming something about the TV, and I turn it on and it’s you, and then she says she’s gonna come get them from me because she’s worried that you’ll come around. And now Rita’s pissed that Tanya’s calling me freaking out and I don’t know what to think.” Rafe thought in black and white, good and bad. That left no middle ground for Nolan to stand on.
“I’m so sorry.” This was why he’d never wanted them to know. That, and he knew they wouldn’t care about him the way they had.
“You were our family, pendejo.” Rafe’s voice broke. “And I’m gonna take you to my mom’s for her birthday, huh? Murder? Premeditated? What about our kids? Rita’s not so freaked out ’cause she says it sounds like euthanasia. I didn’t even know that word till today. That’s some kind of mercy? I’m trying to wrap my head around it, how yo
u would do something like that. What about the man I know? Huh? Where’s that guy?”
During the surprisingly short trial, the entire world had broken into three camps. There were those who supported Nolan, who thought it was just a horrible accident, who said it could have happened to anyone. They tried to shake his hands in the courthouse’s hallways and used his name as if they knew him.
Then there was the group of people who believed in and fought for the idea that people could take care of their own loved ones, including escorting them to the grave. They were the ones who felt sorry for him, because he hadn’t managed to off himself, too. Nolan had become—unwillingly—their poster boy for a year or two, the man who was prosecuted and imprisoned for loving his son too much. They’d never gotten the quote they’d wanted from him, though. He wouldn’t talk to them. They could think what they wanted.
Then there was the third group: the ones who felt that only God should decide, that continued medical intervention was necessary for all struggles for survival, and God would decide the final outcome. Because Nolan didn’t verbally embrace the voluntary euthanasia side—never said a thing either way, in fact—the God-people chose him for their example, too. He was their example of how badly assisted suicide can go. He was left without his child and for a time without his memory, never able to know exactly how long medicine could have extended his boy’s life. Indubitably, the Catholic Rafe would fall into this camp.
Nolan had fit into none of the groups. For a long time, he’d had no memory of what had happened that day. None at all. It was common, he’d been told, after carbon monoxide asphyxiation.
Rafe continued, “I don’t even know who you are, man.”
“Who knows?” said Johnson, who’d been worrisomely silent until now. “Who knows if you won’t do something like that again?”
Rafe glared. “You know that’s bullshit. It’s Nolan.” But he didn’t look convinced.
Nolan held up empty hands. “Won’t happen. I’m fresh out of kids.”
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