Page 148 of Boardroom Mask

Afterwards, I take her back to her brother. I leave them alone together and retreat to my car. I sit in the dark and think about mothers, fathers, daughters, sons, exes, lovers, futures, pasts.

What does it mean to love someone enough to bring them into this world?

What does it mean to love them enough to carry them out of it?

Can we forgive the people who break us? Or are we all crying endless tears beneath the masks we’re forced to wear?

I don’t know.

I don’t know.

I don’t know.

I don’t know anything anymore.

62

JILLIAN

“I spoke the words but never gave a thought / To what they all could mean”

— “Play Crack the Sky” by Brand New

I almost ignore my phone when it rings again. Until I see the caller ID.

F.T.

Forensic Tech.

It’s like being slapped in the face with the cold, dead fish of the past. I haven’t heard from F.T. since he handed me the lab report in that alley behind the crime lab three weeks ago. I assumed he’d gone to ground like everyone else who gets within spitting distance of the Lazarev family.

I snatch up my phone and answer the call.

“They logged something new from the burial site,” he says right away in a hushed mutter. “A journal or, like, diary or some shit. It was sealed in a plastic bag, buried right next to the remains.It’s been in evidence processing, but I got photocopies before it went into the system.”

I sit up. “How soon can you meet?”

“I’m in the parking garage at Queens Municipal right now. You have twenty minutes before my shift starts.”

I’m dressed, in Macy’s borrowed Honda, and hauling ass down the highway in four.

He’s leaning against a concrete pillar on the third level, smoking. He looks worse than last time. Nails chewed to absolute nothing. Bloody, scabby, ugly. He hands me a manila envelope without making eye contact.

“Photocopies,” he explains gruffly. “That’s the best you’re gonna get. The originals are shut up in an evidence locker and I’m not touching them again.” I start to open it, but he puts his hand over mine. “Read it somewhere else. I don’t want to be standing next to you when you do.”

He drops his cigarette and grinds it under his sneaker. I ask if there’s anything else. He shakes his head once, shoves his hands in his jacket, and walks quickly toward the elevator.

I retreat to the car, then sit in the driver’s seat with the dome light on and the envelope in my lap for a full minute before I open it.

Eventually, I work up the nerve. Then I dive in.

The handwriting starts neat and elegant. Blue ink on what looks like unlined cream paper, photocopied in grayscale.

March 3, 2007

He keeps begging me to try another round of treatment. He doesn’t understand: I’ve already decided. I just need to make him strong enough to do what I’m asking.

I turn the page.