Early the next morning, she did.
We buried Josh on Christmas Eve.
Paulie squirmed in my lap while the preacher read a passage from Ecclesiastes and said a few words about stray lambs. Someone played some songs I didn’t recognize. Wendy had found them on Josh’s iPod. Caitlin read a poem and got all the way through it before dissolving into tears. I was proud of her.
Halfway through the service, I glanced over my shoulder at the congregation. Saw a blur of faces. Strangers, mostly, but a few I recognized. Maria, sobbing against D. W.’s shoulder, fist clenched against her swollen belly. Seeing them together, I felt a weary sadness. Elisha, dabbing at her eyes with a tattered Kleenex. She was beautiful, and she had loved Josh, which made her even more beautiful to me.
Frank and Harry sat together, looking uncomfortable in their funeral suits. Marta Savales. Sherilyn and Earl. Even Miss Aleta and Kelly Malone had made an appearance.
Absinthe sat hunched in a back pew, clutching her mother’s hand.
At the back of the chapel, face shaded by a wide-brimmed black hat, sat Hannah Eddington.
Beside me, Wendy sobbed and pounded her thigh with a clenched fist. Randall reached across the space between them, but she moved her hand away before his fingers brushed her skin.
After the service, I handed Paul off to Maria and made my way through a gauntlet of well-wishers. I lost a few seconds in Absinthe’s damp hug, then pushed through the chapel doors, and caught Hannah Eddington just as she slipped her key into the driver’s side lock.
“I didn’t want to intrude,” she said. “I wasn’t sure you’d want to see me.”
“I’m not sure either,” I said. “But let’s see how it goes.”
She said, “Doug is pleading guilty. His lawyer thinks he can get a good plea bargain.”
“How do you feel about that?”
“Guilty, mostly. And relieved. Then guilty again.”
“Don’t,” I said. “That isn’t what he wants.”
Her smile was sad. “We don’t always get what we want. You of all people know that. Anyway, I’m sorry for your loss. That’s all I came to say. I’m sorry all this happened.”
“Josh isn’t yours to carry,” I said. “Razor set it in motion, and Elgin carried it through. It had nothing to do with you.”
She gave me an awkward hug and hurried to her car. I turned to go inside, and came chin to forehead with Marta Savales.
“You found my son,” she said. Her eyes were wet. “I didn’t believe you when you said you would.”
“I’m not sure I believed myself.”
She looked off into the distance, a little furrow forming between her eyebrows. Then she gently touched my hand and said, “Thank you.”
I found Randall in the meditation room, a tiny chamber with two vinyl chairs and a coffee table with a live orchid in the center. The orchid was from Keating, who had written his message in uniform block letters. BYRON’S WITH ME. I SWEAR I’LL KEEP HIM SAFE. P. S. I OWE YOU EVERYTHING. The thought made me grimace. I didn’t want Keating to owe me anything.
I slid into the chair across from Randall. “How you holding up?”
He looked exhausted, and probably was. I wondered if he’d had a full night’s sleep since Josh’s death. He glanced at me with glazed eyes. “How should I be holding up?”
I couldn’t answer that. Instead, I said, “I’m going to see Jay. You want to come?”
He couldn’t meet my gaze. “I don’t think so,” he said.
“You can’t possibly be blaming him,” I said. “He did everything right. He called 911, barricaded the door. Hell, he even shot the bastard.”
“I don’t blame him. I just can’t look at him. Every time I do, I hate that he’s alive and Josh isn’t.”
“I know,” I said.
“You don’t know. He’s your little faggot friend, and that’s just fine, but—”
“What the hell is wrong with you? He tried to save Josh.”
“I know,”he said. His eyes were wet. “But he didn’t. And every time I think of him, I think, my God, Josh had his whole life in front of him, and Jay is—” He stopped.
I said it for him. “Jay is already dying.”
“What kind of justice is that?”
“Justice,” I said. “What the hell does justice have to do with anything?”
He looked away and said, “Wendy wants me gone.”
“What? For how long?”
He gave a small, bitter laugh. “A day, a month, a year. Forever. I don’t know. She blames me. Hell, I blame myself.”
“You didn’t kill him, Randall.”
He looked away. “I was thinking Alaska, maybe. Work on one of those fishing boats.”
“What about the girls?”
He shook his head. “I’m no good to them. Not now.”
I wasn’t sure what he meant by that. Not now, when I’m falling to pieces? Not now, while my marriage unravels like a badly knit sweater? Not now that I’ve killed a man?
“When will you go?” I said.
“Soon.”
“And when will you be back?”
“I don’t know. When she’s ready, I guess.”
“You guess?”
He shrugged. “We have a lot to talk about. But neither one of us is talking. I can’t . . . I just don’t have the words.”
Maybe he was right. Maybe he needed time to heal. A place to crawl away and lick his wounds like an injured wolf.
“Call when you get there?” I said.
“When I get settled.”
“You need anything . . .”
“I know. I’ll call.”
CHAPTER FIFTY-SEVEN
Elisha was waiting for me beside the Silverado. She handed me a long white envelope. It was sealed. “Frank asked me to give you this,” she said. “He said to open it when you’re alone.”
I tucked it inside my jacket and opened the passenger side door. “I’m going to the hospital. You want to come?”
“Of course.”
We stopped at the office on the way. I shoved the stack of Richie Barron photos into a nine-by-fourteen metered envelope and addressed it to Richie’s wife,Marissa Barron. Before I dropped it in the mailbox, I scrawled across the flap, Richie is the Hindenburg . . . Here’s your parachute.
Jay was in a private room. Fabulous Greg had decorated it with tropical plants, circus balloons, and half a dozen get-well cards the size of Oklahoma. An outpouring of goodwill from friends and friends of friends.
None of them were from Jay’s parents.
When we arrived, the door was ajar. I peered in and saw Eric spooning a block of cherry Jell-O into Jay’s mouth.
“Well, well,” I said, more heartily than I felt. “Have we declared an armistice?”
Jay looked up and whispered, “I’ve decided to forgive him.”
“New Year’s Eve,” Eric explained. “He says he needs someone to kiss.” He laid the spoon back on the tray. “And now, boys and girls, I’m parched. If you’ll be here a minute, I’ll go downstairs and get a Coke.” He looked pointedly at Elisha. “Be a sweetheart and join me?”
She raised her eyebrows, and he gave her what I surmised was a meaningful smile. “Sure,”she said. Gave Jay a peck on the cheek and followed Eric from the room.
When they were gone, I pulled a chair over beside the bed. Thought of the last time I’d stood by a hospital bed. A hundred years ago, when Josh asked me to find his molester’s killer.
Jay said, “I’m sorry.”
“Sorry for what?” I asked. But I knew.
Sorry for not saving Josh. Sorry for not killing Elgin. Sorry for being the one who survived.
I said, “I’m the one who didn’t put Elgin down when I had the chance. If I’d put a bullet in his brain at Barnabus’s place . . .” I stopped.
“Don’t,” he said. “Don’t apologize for not being a murderer.”
He was my best and oldest friend. I loved him like a brother. He’d have laid down
his life for me, and I’d have traded it for Josh’s in a heartbeat.
I saw that knowledge in his eyes.
“I’m sorry,” he said again.
I forced the words past the tightness in my throat, knowing they were not enough and never would be. “You have nothing to be sorry for.”
He turned his head toward the wall and said, “Everyone has something to be sorry for.”
I dropped Elisha off at the funeral home and watched until she pulled out of the parking lot. Then I pulled Frank’s envelope out of my pocket. Scrawled across the back, he’d written, “This was on the table beside your bed.”
Inside was a Xerox copy of a piece of notebook paper, and on the paper was a handwritten message. The writing was Josh’s. Swooping and even, almost like calligraphy.
A copy. Of course. The original was evidence.
The note was brief. Only five lines.
Dear Uncle Jared,
I’m going to do the right thing.
Love,
Josh
P.S. I wish you were my father.
CHAPTER FIFTY-EIGHT
Sometimes in the evenings, I sit on the front porch with Luca in my lap and a beer in my hand and wait for the phone to ring, hoping it will be my brother.
It never is.
Two weeks after New Year’s, Randall sent a check. It was addressed to me, but it was meant for Wendy and the girls. The postmark was from Omaha. In February, Montreal. In March and April, Nome, Alaska.
There’s never a return address, and I don’t try to find one. That’s the way he wants it.
I carry Josh’s letter in my wallet, between Paulie’s picture and one of Randall’s family, all four of them, taken a few weeks before Josh opened his veins. They look happy.
Sometimes, I think of what might happen if a semi should roll over on my pickup, or a bullet were to shatter my window and drive into my brain. What it would do to Randall to open my wallet and read those words. I think about burning the letter, or shredding it, or dropping it into a landfill. Once, I held it to a candle, watched the edges brown and curl before I yanked it away from the flame. I know the words by heart, but I can’t bring myself to destroy the page. It’s as if some part of Josh lives in the ink and in the fibers of the paper. As if to destroy the letter would be to destroy all that’s left of him.
Jay rarely talks about that night. He bakes cherry cobbler. Plants miniature roses in his garden. Goes to dance clubs with Eric the maybe-mensch. On weekends, he sometimes sings my son to sleep. The scar on his throat is fading, but his eyes still carry the scars on his soul.
This is what we do, he says. He hands me another beer and sinks down on the porch step, a glass of lemonade in his hand. This is all we can do. We bend. We break. We carry on.
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