Page 47

The light is also familiar; he remembers it from that day, the way it spilled through the stained glass and danced across the glossy floors in overlapping lines and shadows the same way it does now, even though the funeral was in the summer and it was late in the afternoon. At the moment, though, it’s the dead of winter and eleven a.m., so surely the sunlight would be different? Thinking about how little he understands about physics is a welcome distraction from focusing on how little he knows about marriage and life. Or obsessing about what state of mind his wife will be in when she gets back from Donette’s. If she gets back from Donette’s; if her mother hasn’t finally convinced her that she’d be better off without him. The anxieties pile up as fast and high as the snow a fierce storm is dumping outside.

A door slams behind the pulpit and Poppy emerges from Father Mike’s office, moving even slower than when he went in, which Alex doesn’t take to be a good sign. Was he in there confessing to Father Mike about these supposed sins Simone thinks she’s uncovered? The kind of unburdening of our souls that comes when we’re nearing the end of our days? No, no, no, no. This slumped old man shuffling toward him did not kill anyone! A secret bastard child or running from an unplanned pregnancy, Alex could see just about anyone—any man—being capable of that, fine, but physically hurting someone? It was a bridge too far. It had to be.

Before she left for Detroit, Simone had asked Alex if he truly believed that there was no chance whatsoever that Poppy had anything to do with whatever happened to Wade, or if he just didn’t want to believe it.

“Is there a difference?” he’d asked Simone.

“Yeah, a big one,” she’d said.

It was one more test Alex had failed.

“You okay?” Alex asks, because in addition to moving at a glacial pace, his grandfather is visibly trembling. When Alex reaches out to steady him, his own hands shake. This is what happens when he goes without drinking, which he has for forty-eight long hours now, since Simone stormed off to Detroit. Alex has “quit” booze enough times to know the side effects well—the shakes, the headache that at this moment is the equivalent of someone bouncing tennis balls against his skull. Alex’s stuttering heart could be another consequence of withdrawal… or anxiety about the conversation he needs to have with Poppy. Before Simone gets back. It has to happen. He has to just ask him about this Wade guy. As much as he doesn’t actually want to know, it will haunt him if he doesn’t ask. A real man faces facts. That isn’t one of his grandfather’s well-worn adages, but it might as well be. Besides, Alex knows Simone will never let this go, and it’s better that he asks Poppy than her doing it when she returns all focused and righteous. Most of the time he loves that his wife is a woman who refuses to be derailed. Except when the stakes are this high.

“Yeah, I’m fine. Let’s get home. Carole will have dinner ready,” Poppy says, allowing Alex to guide him down the red-carpeted aisle of the empty sanctuary. When Alex pushes open the heavy wooden church door, a strong gust plows into them so hard, Alex pulls Poppy close just to keep him upright.

The wind has picked up, but at least the snowfall’s lighter now. A mercy for the drive home. Alex will take it, since there’d been so few of those coming his way these days. He’d parked right by the entrance, and they make their way, bracing against the wind by huddling together. Alex buckles Poppy in the passenger seat, calling to mind the many times he’d wrangled Langston into a car or booster seat. It’s these full-circle moments that mindfuck you so hard. His headache ratchets up from the violence of it.

“Father Mike doesn’t think it’s a sin,” Poppy says once they’re moving, barely inching forward on the as-yet-unplowed roads.

“Think what’s a sin?” Alex asks, though he’s pretty sure he knows.

“Choosing how you want to leave this world. Most priests think it is. Most Catholics do. You can’t even have a funeral in most churches if you take your own life. But Father Mike sees it differently. I knew he would.”

Poppy squints out the window, working hard to stay focused.

“Mike’s mom had it real bad. What I’ve got. Except early, after she’d had half a dozen kids and she was just about your age. His dad was a pharmacist. I think he helped her go when we were kids. Mike didn’t say it straight out, but he let me know he understood what I was going through.”

Alex doesn’t know what to say. He’d, of course, hoped that Poppy had let go of this idea of ending his life, but when he’d insisted on seeing Father Mike again this morning, Alex should have known better.

Once the sale of the company is finalized and Alex has the money, freedom, and more capacity, he vows to focus on Poppy and to show up in whatever ways might still matter, including sucking it up and doing research to figure out what end-of-life options are available and where. He’ll get armed with enough information that he’ll be able to stomach the process or have ammunition to talk Poppy out of it. But as he watches his grandfather wince in pain and twist his arthritic hands together, the latter is harder to imagine.

It’s like time is quickly running out, but Alex isn’t sure what the deadline is or how much of it is left. When he called Connor and told him he’d agreed to the sale, he asked him what it would take to get it done as quickly as possible. As usual, Connor was a step ahead of him and had already concocted a plan to close the deal by end of first quarter. If nothing goes wrong or comes up. Like, say, a PR crisis about the Hartwells? Alex bit his tongue so hard he still has a tender sore before rushing to assure Connor that he saw no reason on his end they couldn’t get this done fast. Now he wants to reassure himself. Which brings him right back to where he doesn’t want to be, these questions he doesn’t want to ask Poppy.

Best-case scenario, there’s nothing here and Alex can make that clear to Simone when she walks through the door later tonight. Worst case… he’ll figure something out. It feels disloyal to even go there yet.

“You okay?” It’s Poppy now showing him concern, a destabilizing twist. His grandfather is eyeing Alex’s thumbs on the steering wheel, tapping in rhythm with the wipers.

“Yeah, yeah, I’m good. A lot on my mind. You know, with the sale and everything. I also wanted to ask you about something…?”

“All right.”

Alex is intentionally having this conversation now while they drive home, to get it over with, but also because doing it while they can stare forward watching the wipers rhythmically sweep across the windshield is a hell of a lot easier than doing it face-to-face.

“Did you know someone named… Wade? When you were at Tate?”

Poppy cocks his head to the side, starts fiddling with a thread on his pants. Alex tries again, reordering the words in the sentence as if to unlock some magical combination. And adding a key detail.

“Do you remember a Black kid you went to Tate with named Wade?”

Let’s face it, a Black kid narrows it way down. Poppy turns toward the passenger window and his breath becomes raspy, leaving little circles of condensation on the glass. Alex’s breathing increases to match without him even realizing, until he’s dizzy from panting. And still Poppy doesn’t speak. There’s just the car filling with loud exhales and stale breath. Until.

“I paid for what I did.” Poppy’s voice is loud relative to the tense silence that had ballooned, yet still weak and raspy. “I lost everyone I cared about. Roger. Carole. Leland.”

He breaks on his son’s name and he starts to cry, shoulders shaking. Alex has never seen him cry. It feels impossible, like watching the sky fall. He pulls the car to the side of the road and takes Poppy’s hand, as much to comfort Poppy as to calm himself for whatever is about to come next. If that’s even possible.

“What happened? It’s all right. You can tell me. It was a long time ago. You were just a kid.”

“It was an accident.”