Page 139 of Not a Word

“It can be a tough choice to make.”

Gage’s eyes began to glisten.

“You think we need to sit down someplace?” I asked.

He nodded.

“With your mom?”

Another nod.

The following, as best as I can put it together from what Gage told Diana and me, is what actually happened on that Friday.

Fifty-Three

Friday

“I’m gonna do it,” Holden told Gage over the phone. “I’m gonna have it out with her, once and for all.”

“I don’t know,” Gage said. “I don’t think that’s such a good idea.”

“Alicia and me, we’ve been talking. She’s been helping me through this. She says this is what I need to do.”

“What? What is it you need to do?”

“Fucking lay it on the line,” Holden said.

Gage could sense, from the sound of his voice, that Holden was on something. Gage had noticed this more often since his uncle had been hanging out with Alicia. He’d become more emboldened, but that change had not been matched by an increase in good judgment. Gage was worried he’d do something really serious, something he’d regret, and felt a duty to talk him out of it.

He considered telling his parents, or at least his father, that his brother was right on the edge, that he might have reached the point where he would actually harm his mother. That he’d been harboring all this anger toward her, for so long, and it had come to a boil.

But if Gage told his parents, he’d be betraying a confidence. Other than Alicia, Holden had never told anyone besides Gage about the night Catherine committed a murder, and what she’d said to Holden to ensure he’d keep things secret.

“There’s shit you need to know about this family,” Holden had said in the lead-up to his disclosure to Gage. “Your grandparents have been living a lie since forever, and I don’t know if there’s any point telling my brother—it’s too late to clue him in—but I’ve got to set you straight on who they really are.”

And so he’d told him. All of it. Except for the little part about later finding the gun in the pond, restoring it to working condition.

Gage thought he would have been happier never knowing. The longer he kept Holden’s secret, the more complicit he felt. There were days he wanted to tell his parents, but suppose he did? What were they supposed to do with that kind of information? It wasn’t like his dad was going to turn in his own mother. It would destroy everyone’s lives, and the thing was, Gage valued his relationship with his grandfather too much to put it in jeopardy. How would he feel if his grandson spilled the beans on something he’d been keeping secret all this time?

So Gage shared Holden’s burden. Alicia took on some of the weight too. Gage didn’t know, of course, that Alicia had her own agenda, that she’d figured out Holden’s mother was her aunt’s killer.

Alicia, Holden had told Gage, said he needed to stand up for himself. Put things right.

“I can’t keep it bottled up any longer. I’m like this pressure cooker, ready to explode, and one way to deal with that is to let the steam out a little at a time, but that’s a slow process, could take, you know, years. Whereas if you just take the lid right off, that’s it, you’re done with it.”

“What’s that actually mean?” Gage asked.

“I have to confront her,” Holden said.

“Like whaddya call it, an intervention?” Gage had seen something on TV about one of those.

“Kinda, except in an intervention, it’s a whole bunch of people who sit down with one guy and get him to see what an asshole he’s been.” Holden had smiled at this. “I’ve been that guy.”

The time had come, Holden said. He would tell his mother how making him keep a secret to protect her had eaten him from the inside out.

“Isn’t a mother’s love supposed to be unconditional?” Holden asked Gage.

“I guess.”