Gone for Good - Страница 3

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"I've talked about it, Will." "Not with me."

"You're not my therapist."

"I'm the man you love."

"Yes." She turned to me. "But not now, okay? Please."

I had no response to that one, but perhaps she was right. My fingers were absently toying with the picture frame. And that was when it happened.

The photograph in the frame slid a little.

I looked down. Another photograph started peeking out from underneath. I moved the top one a little farther. A hand appeared in the bottom photograph. I tried pushing it some more, but it wouldn't go. My finger found the clips on back. I slid them to the side and let the back of the frame drop to the bed. Two photographs floated down behind it.

One the top one was of my parents on a cruise, looking happy and healthy and relaxed in a way I barely remember them ever being. But it was the second photograph, the hidden one, that caught my eye.

The red-stamped date on the bottom was from less than two years ago. The picture was taken atop a field or hill or something. I saw no houses in the background, just snowcapped mountains like something from the opening scene of The Sound of Music. The man in the picture wore shorts and a backpack and sunglasses and scuffed hiking boots. His smile was familiar. So was his face, though it was more lined now. His hair was longer. His beard had gray in it. But there was no mistake.

The man in the picture was my brother, Ken.

2

My father was alone on the back patio. Night had fallen. He sat very still and stared out at the black. As I came up behind him, a jarring memory rocked me.

About four months after Julie's murder, I found my father in the basement with his back to me just like this. He thought that the house was empty. Resting in his right palm was his Ruger, a.22 caliber gun. He cradled the weapon tenderly, as though it were a small animal, and I never felt so frightened in my entire life. I stood there, frozen. He kept his eyes on the gun. After a few long minutes, I quickly tiptoed to the top of the stairs and faked like I'd just come in. By the time I trudged down the steps, the weapon was gone.

I didn't leave his side for a week.

I slipped now through the sliding glass door. "Hey," I said to him.

He spun around, his face already breaking into a wide smile. He always had one for me. "Hey, Will," he said, the gravel voice turning tender. Dad was always happy to see his children. Before all this happened, my father was a fairly popular man. People liked him. He was friendly and dependable, if not a little gruff, which just made him seem all the more dependable. But while my father might smile at you, he didn't care a lick. His world was his family. No one else mattered to him. The suffering of strangers and even friends never really reached him a sort of family-centered ness

I sat in the lounge chair next to him, not sure how to raise the subject. I took a few deep breaths and listened to him do the same. I felt wonderfully safe with him. He might be older and more withered, and by now I was the taller, stronger man but I knew that if trouble surfaced, he'd still step up and take the hit for me.

And that I'd still slip back and let him.

"Have to cut that branch back," he said, pointing into the dark.

I couldn't see it. "Yeah," I said.

The light from the sliding glass doors hit his profile. The anger had dissolved now, and the shattered look had returned. Sometimes I think that he had indeed tried to step up and take the hit when Julie died, but it had knocked him on his ass. His eyes still had that burst-from-within look, that look of someone who had unexpectedly been punched in the gut and didn't know why.

"You okay?" he asked me. His standard opening refrain.

"I'm fine. I mean, not fine but…"

Dad waved his hand. "Yeah, dumb question," he said.

We fell back into silence. He lit a cigarette. Dad never smoked at home. His children's health and all that. He took a drag and then, as if suddenly remembering, he looked at me and stamped it out.

"It's all right," I said.

"Your mother and I agreed that I would never smoke at home."

I didn't argue with him. I folded my hands and put them on my lap. Then I dived in. "Mom told me something before she died."

His eyes slid toward me.

"She said that Ken was still alive."

Dad stiffened, but only for a second. A sad smile came to his face. "It was the drugs, Will."

"That's what I thought," I said. "At first."

"And now?"

I looked at his face, searching for some sign of deception. There had been rumors, of course. Ken wasn't wealthy. Many wondered how my brother could have afforded to live in hiding for so long. My answer, of course, was that he hadn't that he died that night too. Others, maybe most people, believed that my parents somehow sneaked him money.

I shrugged. "I wonder why after all these years she would say that."

"The drugs," he repeated. "And she was dying, Will."

The second part of that answer seemed to encompass so much. I let it hang a moment. Then I asked, "Do you think Ken's alive?"

"No," he said. And then he looked away.

"Did Mom say anything to you?"

"About your brother?"

"Yes."

"Pretty much what she told you," he said.

"That Ken was alive?"

"Yes."

"Anything else?"

Dad shrugged. "She said he didn't kill Julie. She said he'd be back by now except he had to do something first."

"Do what?"

"She wasn't making sense, Will."

"Did you ask her?"

"Of course. But she was just ranting. She couldn't hear me anymore. I shushed her. I told her it'd be okay."

He looked away again. I thought about showing him the photograph of Ken but decided against it. I wanted to think it through before I started us down that path.

"I told her it'd be okay," he repeated.

Through the sliding glass door, I could see one of those photo cubes, the old color images sun-faded into a blur of yellow-green. There were no recent pictures in the room. Our house was trapped in a time warp, frozen solid eleven years ago, like in that old song where the grandfather clock stops when the old man dies.

"I'll be right back," Dad said.

I watched him stand and walk until he thought he was out of sight. But I could see his outline in the dark. I saw him lower his head. His shoulders started to shake. I don't think that I had ever seen my father cry. I didn't want to start now.

I turned away and remembered the other photograph, the one still upstairs of my parents on the cruise looking tan and happy, and I wondered if maybe he was thinking about that too.

When I woke late that night, Sheila wasn't in bed.

I sat up and listened. Nothing. At least, not in the apartment. I could hear the normal late-night street hum drifting up from three floors below. I looked over toward the bathroom. The light was out. All lights, in fact, were out.

I thought about calling out to her, but there was something fragile about the quiet, something bubble like I slipped out of bed. My feet touched down on the wall-to-wall carpet, the kind apartment buildings make you use so as to stifle noise from below or above.

The apartment wasn't big, just one bedroom. I padded toward the living room and peeked in. Sheila was there. She sat on the windowsill and looked down toward the street. I stared at her back, the swan neck, the wonderful shoulders, the way her hair flowed down the white skin, and again I felt the stir. Our relationship was still on the border of the early throes, the gee-it's-great-to-be-alive love where you can't get enough of each other, that wonderful run-across-the-park-to-see-her stomach-flutter that you know, know, would soon darken into something richer and deeper.

I'd been in love only once before. And that was a very long time ago.

"Hey, "I said.

She turned just a little, but it was enough. There were tears on her cheeks. I could see them sliding down in the moonlight. She didn't make a sound no cries or sobs or hitching chest. Just the tears. I stayed in the doorway and wondered what I should do.

"Sheila?"

On our second date, Sheila performed a card trick. It involved my picking two cards, putting them in the middle of the deck while she turned her head, and her throwing the entire deck save my two cards onto the floor. She smiled widely after performing this feat, holding up the two cards for my inspection. I smiled back. It was how to put this? goofy. Sheila was indeed goofy. She liked card tricks and cherry Kool-Aid and boy bands. She sang opera and read voraciously and cried at Hallmark commercials. She could do a mean imitation of Homer Simpson and Mr. Burns, though her Smithers and Apu were on the weak side. And most of all, Sheila loved to dance. She loved to close her eyes and put her head on my shoulder and fade away.

"I'm sorry, Will," Sheila said without turning around.

"For what? "I said.

She kept her eyes on the view. "Go back to bed. I'll be there in a few minutes."

I wanted to stay or offer up words of comfort. I didn't. She wasn't reachable right now. Something had pulled her away. Words or action would be either superfluous or harmful. At least, that was what I told myself. So I made a huge mistake. I went back to bed and waited.

But Sheila never came back.

3

Las Vegas, Nevada

Morty Meyer was in bed, dead asleep on his back, when he felt the gun muzzle against his forehead.

"Wake up," a voice said.

Morty's eyes went wide. The bedroom was dark. He tried to raise his head, but the gun held him down. His gaze slid toward the illuminated clock-radio on the night table. But there was no clock there. He hadn't owned one in years, now that he thought about it. Not since Leah died. Not since he'd sold the four-bedroom colonial.