All The Stars In Heaven

by Michele Paige Holmes

  Sarah wrinkled her nose. “I’m not sure I like fried pickles.”

  “Your loss.” He shrugged. “More for me.”

  “Oh, I’ll try them. After the meal you fed me in Boston, I’ll try anything you recommend.” She studied her own menu. “Do they have hot chocolate?”

  “We do,” a woman said as she came to their table. “I’m Katrina, and I’ll be your server this evening. Can I start you with some drinks?”

  “Appetizers,” Jay said as his stomach grumbled. “We’ll take a couple baskets of fried pickles, and she’ll have a large hot chocolate.”

  “Is it okay if we share the pickles?” Sarah asked. “In case I don’t like them. I wouldn’t want to waste a whole order.”

  “They wouldn’t be wasted,” Jay said. “But we can start with one.”

  As Sarah questioned the waitress about the different types of burgers, Jay internalized what she’d just said to him. Is it okay if we share? It’s more than okay, he thought, watching her. Anytime. Anything. Just ask. I’ve waited a lot of years to find a woman who wanted to share with me. He hoped, after tonight, that he wouldn’t have to wait several more. He wished he hadn’t let things go so long before telling Sarah about his past. He should have told her everything during the day they spent in Boston, but it had been their first real date, and he hadn’t wanted to ruin it. And at the time, he’d had no idea of the events that would complicate life in the following weeks.

  They both ordered, then handed the menus to Katrina as she left. Sarah dug in her purse for her bottle of hand sanitizer.

  “Want some?” she asked Jay.

  “No. I’ve used that stuff so much lately I hardly have any skin left. I’ll take my chances that I won’t get salmonella from the menu.”

  “More pickles for me if you do,” she teased as she rubbed her hands together.

  “Funny,” Jay said. His eyebrows rose. “Do you realize you just had a voluntary conversation with a stranger?”

  “I did?” Sarah wore an astonished expression as she dropped the bottle into her purse. “You’re right. I didn’t even think about it—wow.”

  “To normalcy,” Jay said, raising his water glass.

  “To normal me,” Sarah said, clinking hers against his. She inspected the rim before taking a drink.

  Getting closer anyway, Jay thought. “Speaking of which—me and abnormal, I mean—we might as well get started.” Might as well get it over with. He held his hands out. “Ask away. Anything you want to know.” He preferred putting it off indefinitely, or at least until they’d eaten, but Sarah had been more than patient, accepting his explanation that he’d tell her later, waiting to learn about his past—especially after he’d dropped the bomb about having a criminal record.

  “Oh, I intend to.” Sarah re-wrapped the music and set it on the windowsill. She picked up her purse, took out a small notepad, and laid it on the table.

  She’s taking notes?

  “All right.” Flipping it open she read, “I know you’re twenty-eight, and you’re birthday is September fifth, but I don’t know anything about your parents.”

  “You made a list?” Jay leaned forward, trying to see how long it was.

  She snatched it off the table. “Yes, I made a list. There’s a lot I want to know. And I don’t want to get sidetracked.”

  “Women,” Jay muttered, though part of him was secretly pleased that this particular woman was so interested in knowing who he was. The other part felt like he was about to collide head-on with a train. One glance at Sarah’s paper, and he knew it was going to be a long evening.

  “My mom and dad weren’t married,” he began. “Dad was a professor, my mom a protestor. How they ever got together is beyond me.”

  “So did you live together as a family for a while?” Sarah asked. “Did they try to make it work—for your sake?”

  “Not that I’m aware of.” Jay realized he sounded casual and matter-of-fact about the whole business. What other way is there to be? You can’t change the past—even if it hurts. “I lived with my dad. He was a good guy.”

  “Was?” Sarah asked. “At the museum you told me your mom had passed away, but you never mentioned you’d lost your father, too.”

  “He had a stroke halfway through my senior year of high school.”

  “I’m so sorry.” Sarah pushed the notepad aside. “And you don’t have any brothers or sisters or cousins or anything?”

  “None that I know of,” Jay said. None I’d want to know, if they’re related to my mom.

  “What did you do after your father died? Who did you live with?”

  Jay’s mouth twisted in a grimace. “This is where it gets kind of ugly. You sure you want to hear it so soon? Maybe I should tell you about elementary school and summer camp. And don’t forget junior high.” He raised his hand in the air, pretending to dunk a basketball. “Eighth-grade state champs. It’s my one claim to fame. You really should hear it.”

  “Maybe later. Right now I want to know what happened after your father died.” She scooted her chair closer and sat on her hands.

  Her nervous habit, Jay observed. He placed his own hands behind his head, trying to look relaxed for a man who felt he was about to face the guillotine.

  “I went to live with my mom. Turns out she’d been in nearby Tacoma my whole life. She’d never come to visit—either because she wasn’t sober enough to visit, or maybe because my dad wouldn’t let her. Either way, I didn’t really care.”

  “Go on,” Sarah coaxed.

  “Her boyfriend at the time was beating her. I found out and beat him up. She told the police I’d started it. I got arrested.”

  “She stuck up for him?” Sarah said, outraged.

  “Yep.” Jay’s head bobbed. “I was lucky, really, since I could’ve been tried as an adult. Instead I spent two months in a detention facility. And all because I’d tried to protect her. I swore when I got out that I’d never see her again.”

  “Oh, Jay.” Sarah’s eyes were filled with sympathy. “That’s awful—what she did, I mean. But what you did isn’t so bad, wasn’t even wrong. I wish you would’ve told me sooner. I’m so relieved.”

  He closed his eyes briefly and expelled a long, slow breath. “Don’t be. You haven’t heard the worst.” Haven’t heard any of it, really.

  “Oh.” She looked down at the table, but not before Jay caught the disappointment on her face. “Did something else happen while you were in jail?”

  “After I got out,” Jay said. “I never wanted to see my mom again, but . . .”

  “What else could you do? Where would you go?” Sarah guessed. “I know what it’s like to feel stuck.”

  “Yeah.” Jay paused, remembering that time, the precise turning point that started him down the wrong path. “I was eighteen, so I could’ve left, but I didn’t have any money or a job—and I still needed to finish high school. My mom pointed all of that out to me when she came to pick me up.”

  “But it sounds like she didn’t want you, so why would she come?” Sarah frowned, a contemplative look on her face as she tried to make sense of his story.

  “She didn’t want me,” Jay said. “She needed me. The bruiser had moved on, and with him her access to crack. She needed someone—preferably male—to get her drugs. I needed a place to live so I could finish school.”

  “Drugs? That’s what this is about?” Sarah raised her head again, absolute shock etched into her delicate features.

  “Yeah. It is.” Jay’s voice was filled with regret. He lowered his arms, placing his elbows on the table. “You want me to stop?”

  “Yes. No.” Sarah started to rock back and forth on her hands. “I don’t know what I want.”

  “Then I’ll keep talking. Tell me to shut up when you’ve heard enough.” He waited until she gave a slight nod.

  “I decided to stay with my mom until I graduated. Then I planned to go to the University of Washington, where I’d already been accepted. I figured I’d apply for financia
l aid, live at the dorms, and everything would be great.”

  “It wasn’t?” Sarah freed one of her hands and reached for her water glass. She raised it to her lips, taking long, gulping swallows.

  “It wasn’t,” Jay echoed.

  Katrina returned with their drinks and appetizers. When she left again he took a bite of hot, battered pickle and closed his eyes in bliss. At least the food will be good tonight. “Maybe we should’ve gotten two orders.”

  “I’m not very hungry anymore.” Sarah nibbled the end of a pickle. After a minute she added, “But these are tasty.”

  Jay brought his straw to his lips and took a drink of his soda. “I’m glad you like them. Are they good enough that I’m off the hook with at least some of those questions?” He glanced at her notebook, pushed to the far side of the table to make room for their plates.

  She stopped with a bite halfway to her mouth. “Do you want to be off the hook?”

  He considered. “Yes and no. On the one hand, I hope you’ll still like me by the end of the evening. The more I tell you, the less likely that is. The flip side is that—other than in a therapy session—I’ve never told anyone a lot about my past. If you did know and still wanted to be with me . . .” He let the unfinished sentence hang in the air.

  Sarah put down her pickle and used her napkin to wipe her mouth. “I . . .” She wrapped her hands around her glass, fingers entwined as she took a deep breath. Jay got the feeling she was trying to shore up her courage.

  “I can’t imagine losing your friendship.” Her grip on the glass loosened, and her eyes softened. “Especially over a mistake you made in the past.”

  “Mistakes,” Jay corrected. “Lots of them.”

  Sarah folded her arms across the table in front of her. “Tell me.”

  Chapter Thirty-Five

  Jay finished the last of his burger and knew that his respite was almost over. Their meal had arrived just minutes after their appetizers, and Sarah had kept up the cheerful front until they’d both relaxed into casual conversation again. He’d told her about eighth-grade basketball. She’d told him about getting the lead part in the school musical and not being allowed to take it.

  But now, seeing her sitting on the edge of her seat, he could tell she was very much on edge once more, waiting for the rest of the story.

  He took another drink then jumped back in. “For a while things with my mom were all right—our little arrangement tolerable. I’d get her a stash every couple of weeks. She’d leave me alone to do my thing—which was going to school, working a minimum-wage job, sleeping on her couch, and trying to keep the place clean and the fridge stocked. I thought I was going to be okay, thought I’d make it out of there.” Jay’s hands clenched into fists on the table. “But I didn’t.”

  He glanced at Sarah and was disheartened by the increasing worry in her eyes. He looked at her burger, only half-eaten, and worried he’d been right about her not being able to accept his past. He’d hoped, but . . . No stopping now, he thought and plunged on.

  “School was rough. Transferring in as a senior had made me a loner, and now I had a bad reputation too. Home was worse. My mom was either high or wishing she was. Life was awful, and one day I caved.” He tried to meet Sarah’s gaze, but she was looking away. “Once I got started on cocaine, it was next to impossible to stop. I used on and off for three years. Somehow, during that time, I managed to graduate from high school and even attend the university a couple of semesters. I held down a few different jobs during my more sober months, took care of my mom . . .”

  He looked out the window at the snowflakes beginning to fall. The Frontier soundtrack still played overhead, but the song was now “Rubicon.” The point of no return. How ironic. He’d arrived there himself. In a quiet voice he told Sarah more than he’d ever told anyone—except Jane.

  “Then one day I really took care of my mother.”

  He pushed his plate aside and took his last drink of soda. He waited, filled with self-loathing as he watched snowflakes drift to the pavement and melt away. If Sarah wanted to know more, she was going to have to ask.

  “What do you mean you ‘took care of her’?”

  The dread in her voice told him she’d already guessed.

  “I killed her.” He couldn’t look at Sarah as he spoke the words. “It was Friday. I picked up our usual stash, brought it home just like I picked up the groceries each week. I’d fix dinner, watch the late show with Mom, and we’d both get wasted. Saturdays were the best for me. I could stay in bed—high, then hung over, of course—wallowing in the self-pity that was my life.”

  He paused, half-expecting Sarah to get up and run away. She didn’t, though the color had drained from her face, and she looked like she might throw up. He waited a minute, then continued, speaking quietly as he had before. Most of the patrons were on the other side of the restaurant near the bar, but there was no need to advertise his vile past to anyone else.

  “I ate by myself that night. I assumed Mom was asleep because she’d worked the graveyard shift the night before. But I sat down to watch TV, and pretty soon she joined me. After a while she asked me to fix her up with the usual hit.”

  Sarah grimaced and turned away. “I feel sick.”

  “I’ll stop,” Jay said.

  “No.” She shook her head, blond hair partially covering her face. “Go on. Finish.”

  Jay’s regrets multiplied as he saw the distress he was causing.

  “I gave my mom her share, and she went back to bed. After a while I took mine too—a smaller dose. I hadn’t been using as long or as much as she had, so a little still went a long way.” Jay pulled his gaze from the street and looked directly at Sarah. “When I got up the next morning, I found her dead—overdosed.”

  “But if it was the same amount she always took—”

  “It wasn’t,” Jay said. “When I thought she’d been sleeping earlier, she’d been in her room freebasing.” At Sarah’s confused look, he explained. “Smoking a very dangerous, pure form of cocaine. She’d cooked it up when I wasn’t home. That she had any to cook up was my fault too. I’d been trying to wean myself off again, taking less and less each week so I could get out. I hadn’t told her, but I’d hidden what I didn’t use in my closet—an addict can hardly ever do it on his own or make a clean break, so I had some around ‘just in case.’” He ran his fingers through his hair and sighed. “I didn’t know it, but she’d found some and used it. The dose I gave her doubled what she already had in her bloodstream.”

  Face ashen, Sarah pushed away from the table. Jay could see that her mind was reeling.

  “Want me to take you home?”

  “I don’t know.” She folded her arms across her middle and bent over, close to her knees. “I want to know how you got from there to here. Why aren’t you in jail? How are you a law student at Harvard?”

  “The grace of God,” Jay said, quite serious. “When I found my mom, I was scared. Called the cops right away. They came. Took her body. Arrested me. I spent some time in jail awaiting trial, but I wasn’t convicted of anything more serious than possession. I was sentenced to a lockdown rehab facility—best thing that ever happened to me.” Next to you, possibly . . .

  “And they cured you and you went to college. Everything was done and fine?” Sarah asked, her tone angry.

  “Nothing was done and fine. My body went through withdrawal. I spent months in counseling and therapy. I had to fight off depression over and over again. I performed hundreds of hours of community service.” He paused. “Each and every day I have to live with the knowledge that I’m at least partially responsible for my own mother’s death.”

  Sarah lifted her face to look at him, something changing as he spoke those last words. Along with anger and hurt, he thought—hoped—he glimpsed compassion and understanding. He held his hand out, but she didn’t take it.

  “She killed herself, Jay—and perhaps almost her son.”

  “Don’t make excuses for me.” He spo
ke with conviction. “I was old enough to make a better choice. I should have left, and I knew it.” He studied her face. “The real issue now is what I have to live with—what you’d have to live with if you chose to be with me. Once an addict, always an addict. It’s something that will be with me the rest of my life. You have no idea how careful I have to be. I can’t even drink a beer—won’t chance taking anything that might replicate that feeling of being high and make me start to crave it again.”

  “How long has it been since you were . . .” She couldn’t seem to say the words.

  He didn’t want to either. “Six years. Never long enough.”

  “Tell me about those years,” Sarah coaxed. “What you did, how you survived.”

  A smile—the first in nearly an hour—crossed Jay’s face. “The center—as I came to affectionately call the rehab facility—was my lifeline. One counselor in particular, a young woman named Jane, reached me in a way no one else had been able to.”

  “Jane,” Sarah repeated. “Brown-haired, brown-eyed Jane?”

  He nodded. “I ate up her sessions, drank in every word she said. But it wasn’t enough, and she became my new addiction.”

  “What do you mean?” Alarm had crept into Sarah’s voice.

  “I stole her wallet so I had her phone number and address. I’d call her just to listen to her say hello. Then I’d hang up. I wrote her letters, followed her around when she was at work. Then one day I cornered her in the hall and kissed her. She wasn’t expecting it. I wasn’t expecting the feelings that exploded between us.” He looked out the window again, realizing for the first time that the memory wasn’t as painful as it used to be. “Her boss really wasn’t expecting it. She got fired.”

  “Good.” Sarah sat up straight in her chair. “Therapists are supposed to behave better than their patients.”

  “She did,” Jay said. “And technically she wasn’t a therapist yet. She was an intern about to graduate. But that kiss was entirely my fault. She was a good girl—wholesome, like you,” he added. “For a long time I felt worse about Jane losing her job than I did about my mother’s death.”