“I know where you live.”
Corinne started to say something, then stopped. “All righty then.” She turned on her heel and huffed away. Those pistonlike legs of hers, just like her mother’s.
With some effort, Reg was able to back away from the memory. So many things he’d destroyed in his life, that little boy being only one of them.
He looked through the rest of his mail: an ad for a home security device, a book of coupons from Vons, a postcard from his dentist, telling him he was due for a cleaning, his Social Security check, a brochure about the world’s most comfortable shoes. At the bottom of the pile was a letter, addressed to Mr. Reginald Sharkey in neat capital letters. A man’s handwriting, Reg decided. A professional man. He looked at the postmark, turned the envelope over. Strange. The return address was South Pasadena, but the postmark said New Jersey.
He waited to open the envelope until he was back in his own house. It had been written on nice stationery, a watermark and everything. Hotel stationery, as it turned out.Garden Suitesembossed on the bottom. It was two single-sided pages long and it began, “Dear Mr. Sharkey” and ended with, “Your grandson, Quentin,” and though Reg wasn’t sure he had any interest in reading it (That boy and his mother. Always up to some scam...) he did anyway:
First of all, I want to apologize for my behavior at your house the other day. I had no right to speak to you like that. It was very unprofessional.
“Okay,” Reg said to the letter. “That’s a pretty good start.”
Second, there is something you need to know.
Reg read on. A group of sentences he would never be able to read again. “Oh God,” he whispered. “Oh Katie.”
He made it through the rest of the letter, the talk about how difficult life was, and how everyone had done the best they could, Reg included.It’s all just a matter of surviving. I know that now. I’m not sure that Mom ever wanted to survive. But you are a survivor, and I’m like you that way.He read about how Quentin still saw his mother’s face in dreams, and how he’d live the rest of his life wondering if he could have said or done anything to ease her sadness and heal her addiction.I don’t think either one of us was the right man for that job.He read too about the podcast Quentin was making—how Quentin now felt that it had been a mistake, lifting all those rocks just to look underneath, disrupting so many lives in the process. He said the only reason why he’d decided to make the podcast in the first place was that it seemed like a way to better understand Kate and Reg—the huge parts of them that had been stolen by April Cooper and Gabriel LeRoy.It’s not your fault, Mr. Sharkey, Quentin had written.We all make our own choices in life. My mother made hers. Please stop blaming yourself for everything. The only thing you did was go to a gas station.
Reg’s face was wet again, and he was sobbing, convulsing.
Katie, his Katie. All of his children, gone. And Quentin was wrong. It was Reg’s fault. All of it. From the very beginning.
Once Reg caught his breath, he picked up the kitchen phone. Called the number Quentin had given him, back when he’d first set up their interview.I’ll tell him, he thought.I’ll explain everything.But then Quentin’s voice mail was full, and Reg’s brain got the best of him, that gnawing, ever-present fear.I can’t do it, he thought, thesecret staring him in the face, baring its sharp, yellowed teeth.I’m not strong enough. I can’t.
He hung up, pulled his bottle of Dewar’s out of the kitchen cupboard, poured himself a glass. Reg drank a toast to Katie. Then another, to everyone he’d ever loved and ruined, from that little boy on. “May they all rest in peace,” he said.
Twenty-Seven
Robin
IT WAS ROBIN’Sfourth day of scrambled eggs and wheat toast in the hospital cafeteria. She’d ordered it her first morning here because it had seemed like a safe choice, and since she’d barely touched it at breakfast, she ordered it again for lunch. It had gotten to the point where the women behind the counter gave her a plate of scrambled eggs without even asking, and she didn’t want to be rude by correcting them. Like any safe thing, the plate of scrambled eggs and toast had begun to get oppressive with time, and now Robin could barely stand the sight of them. Luckily, the coffee wasn’t bad.
The cafeteria was close to empty—just a few members of the hospital staff grabbing a quick bite between shifts. But Robin had a long table all to herself—the better to be alone with her thoughts. She’d been sitting here for a good half hour, maybe longer, thinking about her mother, how she’d snapped at her in the hospital room, then recovered, thinking about what she’d said as she was drifting off, about her father being an anchor and not knowing where she’d go.
She wondered if this was something she might have to get used to, these sudden bursts of rage and worry. Renee had lost a lot of blood in the shooting and had been on life support long enough that it could have affected her brain chemistry. Anxiety and anger issuesweren’t uncommon for survivors of traumatic attacks, and the very fact that she couldn’t remember a good portion of the night she was shot seemed like proof—at least to Robin—that she’d been changed in ways that the doctors here hadn’t taken into account. Therapy, that’s what she needed...
Interestingly, Renee had never gone in for analysis when Robin was growing up. Despite the fact that she’d obviously had a sad, bleak childhood, Robin’s psychiatrist father discouraged her from talking to anyone about it. Robin could distinctly recall the topic coming up—her mother mentioning a friend of hers, a fellow volunteer at Tarry Ridge Hospital, who’d been going to group therapy and loving it.You don’t want to do that, Renee.Her father had said it as though it was a fact he was reminding her of. Which was strange, now that Robin thought about it. She’d gone for therapy herself as a high school student. And Dad too saw an analyst for a while. But not Mom. Maybe she’d suffered for it. Maybe it was time to change things, to find out who Renee Bloom truly was without that anchor holding her in place.
Last night, Robin had woken up from a dream that felt more like a memory. Her mother sobbing behind her parents’ closed door, and her father urging her on.That’s it, Renee. That’s it. Let it out. Don’t run from it...
Had that really happened?
“Mind if I join you?”
Robin glanced up from her eggs and into those sharp blue eyes. “Nikki.”
“They told me your mom was resting, so I thought I’d grab a little bite.”
Robin gestured to the seat across from her and Nicola Crane eased into it, setting her tray down. Like Robin, she had a cup ofcoffee, along with a donut that looked like a reconfigured version of Robin’s wheat toast. She took a delicate bite. “I should have stopped at Dunkin’.”
Robin smiled. “Tell me about it.” She took a sip of her coffee. “So I remember you now.”
“You do?”
“Why didn’t you introduce yourself as CoCo?”
“Oh, I practically forgot about that nickname,” she said. “Only you called me that, you know.”
