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"So are you," Miles had answered.
Miles remembered that she'd asked him to turn off the camera so they could sit at the table; he also remembered that after dinner, they had gone to the bedroom and made love, lost in the blankets for hours. Thinking back to that night, he barely heard the small voice behind him.
"Is that Mommy?"
Miles used the remote to stop the tape just as he turned and saw Jonah at the end of the hallway. He felt guilty and knew he looked it, but he tried to hide it with a smile.
"What's up, champ?" he asked. "Having trouble sleeping?"
Jonah nodded. "I heard some noises. They woke me up."
"I'm sorry. That was probably just me."
"Was that Mommy?" he asked again. He was gazing at Miles, his eyes fixed and steady. "On the television?"
Miles heard the sadness in his voice, as though he'd accidentally broken a favorite toy. Miles tapped the couch, not knowing exactly what to say. "C'mere," he said. "Sit with me."
After hesitating briefly, Jonah shuffled to the couch. Miles slipped his arm around him. Jonah looked up at him, waiting, and scratched the side of his face.
"Yeah, that was your mom," Miles finally said.
"Why's she on television?"
"It's a tape. You know the kind we used to make with the videocamera sometimes? When you were little?"
"Oh," he said. He pointed to the box. "Are all of those tapes?"
Miles nodded.
"Is Mommy on those, too?"
"Some of them."
"Can I watch 'em with you?"
Miles pulled Jonah a little closer. "It's late, Jonah--I was almost done, anyway. Maybe some other time."
"Tomorrow?"
"Maybe."
Jonah seemed satisfied with that, at least for the moment, and Miles reached behind him to turn the lamp off. He leaned back on the couch, and Jonah curled against him. With the lights off, Jonah's eyelids began to droop. Miles could feel his breathing begin to slow. He yawned. "Dad?"
"Yeah."
"Did you watch those tapes because you're sad again?"
"No."
Miles ran his hand through Jonah's hair methodically, slowly.
"Why did Mom have to die?"
Miles closed his eyes. "I don't know."
Jonah's chest went up and down. Up and down. Deep breaths. "I wish she was still here."
"So do I."
"She's never coming back." A statement, not a question.
"No."
Jonah said no more before he fell asleep. Miles held him in his arms. Jonah felt small, like a baby, and Miles could smell the faint odor of shampoo in his hair. He kissed the top of his head, then rested his cheek against him.
"I love you, Jonah."
No answer.
It was a struggle to get up from the couch without waking Jonah, but for the second time that night, he carried his son to his room and put him in bed. On his way out, he closed the door partway behind him.
Why did Mom have to die?
I don't know.
Miles went back to the living room and put the tape back into the box, wishing Jonah hadn't seen it, wishing he hadn't talked about Missy.
She's never coming back.
No.
He carried the box back to the bedroom closet, wishing with a terrible ache that he could change that, too.
On the back porch, in the darkened chill of night, Miles took a long drag on the cigarette, his third of the night, and stared at the blackened water.
He'd been standing outside since he'd put the videos away, trying to put the conversation with Jonah behind him. He was exhausted and angry, and he didn't want to think about Jonah or what he should tell him. He didn't want to think about Sarah or Brian or Charlie or Otis or a black dog darting between the bushes. He didn't want to think about blankets or flowers or a bend in the road that had started it all.
He wanted to be numb. To forget everything. To go back in time before all this began.
He wanted his life back.
Off to the side, fed by the lights from inside the house, he saw his own shadow following him, like the thoughts he couldn't leave behind.
Brian, he assumed, would go free, even if Miles brought him in.
He'd get probation, maybe have his license revoked, but he wouldn't end up behind bars. He'd been a minor when it happened; there were mitigating circumstances, the judge would acknowledge his sorrow and take pity.
And Missy was never coming back.
Time passed. He lit another cigarette and smoked it down. Dark clouds spanned the sky above; he could hear the rain as it soaked the earth. Over the water, the moon made an appearance, peeking through the clouds. Soft light spilled into the yard. He stepped off the porch and onto the flat slate he'd sunk into the ground as a pathway. The path led to the tin-roofed shed where he kept his tools, his lawn mower, weed killer, a can of gasoline. During the marriage, it had been his place, and Missy seldom ventured there.
She had, though, on the last day he saw her....
Small puddles had collected on the slate, and he felt the water splash around his feet. The pathway curved along the house, past a willow tree he'd planted for Missy. She'd always wanted one in her yard, thinking they looked both sad and romantic. He passed a tire swing, then a wagon that Jonah had left outside. A few steps later, he reached the shed.
It was padlocked, and Miles reached above the door and found the key. The lock opened with a click. He opened the door and was greeted with a musty smell. There was a flashlight on the shelf, and he reached for it. He turned it on and looked around. A spiderweb that started in the corner stretched toward a small window.
Years ago, when his father had left, he'd given Miles a few things to keep. He'd packed them away in a large metal box; Miles hadn't been given the key. The lock, though, was small, and now Miles reached for the hammer that hung on the wall. He swung the hammer and the lock popped open. He lifted the lid.
A couple of albums, a leather-covered journal, a shoebox full of arrowheads that his father had found near Tuscarora. Miles looked past them to the bottom and found what he was looking for. His father had kept the box, and the gun was neatly tucked inside. It was the only gun that Charlie hadn't known about.
Miles knew he was going to need it, and that night he oiled the gun, making sure it was ready to go.
Chapter 36
Miles didn't come for me that night.
Bone tired, I remember forcing myself from my bed at dawn the following morning to shower. I was stiff from the accident, and as I turned the faucet on, I felt a shooting pain from my chest to my back. My head was tender when I washed my hair. My wrists ached when I ate breakfast, but I finished before my parents made it to the table, knowing tha
t if they saw me wince, they would ask questions I wasn't prepared to answer. My father was heading into work; because it was nearly Christmas, I knew my mother would head out for errands as well.
I would tell them later, after Miles came for me.
Sarah called that morning to check on me. I asked the same questions of her. She told me that Miles had come by the night before, that they talked for a minute, but that she didn't know what to make of it.
I told her that I didn't, either.
But I waited. Sarah waited. My parents went on with their lives.
In the afternoon, Sarah called again.
"No, he still hasn't come," I told her. He hadn't called her, either.
The day passed, the evening came. Still no Miles.
On Wednesday, Sarah went back to school. I told her to go, that I'd reach her at the school if Miles came. It was the last week of school before Christmas break, and she had work to do. I stayed home, waiting for Miles.
I waited in vain.
Then it was Thursday and I knew what I had to do.
In the car, Miles waited as he sipped a cup of coffee he'd picked up at a convenience store. The gun was on the seat beside him, beneath a fold of newspapers, fully loaded and ready to go. The side window was beginning to steam with his breath, and he wiped it with his hand. He needed to see clearly.
He was in the right place; he knew that. Now all he had to do was watch carefully, and when the time was right, he would act.
That afternoon, just before dusk, the sky was glowing red and orange over the horizon as I got in the car. Though it was still chilly, the bitter cold had passed and temperatures had returned to normal. The rain over the previous couple of days had melted all the snow; where I once saw lawns blanketed in white, I now saw the familiar brown of centipede grass, gone dormant over the winter. Wreaths and red bows decorated windows and doors in my neighborhood, but in the car I felt disconnected from the season, as if I'd slept through it all and had another year to wait.
