STURGES LOOKS OVER AT THE pill, through a scrim of tears, and knows that Mary is right. He deserves to die—for the sin of his cowardice.
Sitting there, with minutes to live, what comes washing into his mind is that afternoon, his senior year at Groton back East, when he and Bruce Clark, they were such close friends, everyone remarked on it, inseparable since freshman year, Bruce was a lovely boy—smart and funny and kind, who grew up to be a lovely man—he lives in Ojai now, a retired lawyer, with his partner of thirty years, and that afternoon, that fall afternoon after soccer practice when they raced not to the locker room but into the woods behind the playing fields, driven by . . . love. Yes, love. And they fell to the leafy ground and kissed and the world opened up for Sturges and he knew he was where he belonged, on the dappled earth kissing the boy he loved.
But then they separated for the summer, and in the fall Sturges went to Cornell and Bruce to UCLA, they were so far away, and the pressure from his family, he was the scion, the heir, he carried the Bellamy name. And he carried his shame. And he retreated, buried his nature and his dream, and became someone he wasn’t. That’s what cowards do.
Oh, Bruce, I will always love you.
Sturges reaches for the pill and puts it in his mouth as Mary says, in her sweetest voice, “Bite down, darling, bite down.” And he does bite down and then his body goes rigid and he can’t breathe and everything goes black and he falls to the floor and his last thought is of Bruce and he smiles . . .