Saturday was a sunless, overcast day at St. Raymond’s Cemetery in the Bronx. After a private service in the chapel, Rose McCabe’s small immediate family had gathered around as her casket was lowered into the ground. A memorial service for Rose’s friends and others would be held later, but for now it was just family. The date of her death would soon be added to the granite monument that stood in the center of the small family plot that already included the names of Rose’s husband, Thomas McCabe Sr., and her eldest son, Thomas McCabe Jr.
Father Fred said a brief prayer. Then Zoe, her face still bruised and her injured wrist encased in a black brace, was the first to toss a handful of dirt on top of Granny Rose’s coffin. So much more elegant than the plain pine box she’d dreamt of on the night of her kidnapping just six days earlier.
The rest of the mourners followed, each in their turn. Bobby. Sister Mary Frances. McCabe himself. His daughter, Casey, who had flown in from London for Granny Rose’s funeral. And finally Bobby’s wife, Cathy, and then Maggie.
As cemetery workers began filling the grave, the family McCabe all filed out and got into two cars that were waiting at the cemetery entrance on Lafayette Avenue in the Bronx to take them to Bobby’s apartment for a quiet gathering.
Half an hour later they were sitting in the living room on Sutton Place South and quietly reminiscing about Rose’s life. McCabe mostly sat silently thinking about his niece and what she had said after the death of Tyler Bradshaw. He got up and poured himself a Macallan and a glass of Sancerre. He handed the wine to Zoe. “May I have a few minutes alone with you?” he asked, “I need to get a sense of how you are.”
Zoe looked up at her uncle questioningly. The shallow cut in her neck was covered with a bandage. The bruises from her ordeal were still visible, but the swelling had gone down considerably and she could now see out of both eyes. X-rays taken in the emergency room at the small hospital near Stanfield showed the injury to her right wrist had turned out to be nothing more than a bad sprain—her wrist and one finger were encased in a black wrist brace—and there were no broken bones in her face.
Since her return, Zoe hadn’t wanted to talk about the kidnapping, and the family had respected her wishes. Still, she followed McCabe into the small study he and Maggie had briefly used as an office.
Zoe spoke first. “I don’t know what you want to talk about. I told you pretty much everything that happened on the drive back from Connecticut. All the horrible things he did. And you told me about poor Annie. I’m not sure what there is to add. I didn’t tell my father everything I told you because I didn’t want to burden him with it. If he knew everything that happened to me, the things I told you and more, it might kill him. At the very least it would make him want to kill Tyler all over again. The one thing that’s been bothering me since then is what’s going to happen to poor Tucker. I just hope he’ll be taken care of. He’d be helpless if he was left to himself.”
McCabe didn’t answer for a few seconds, then finally said, “Tucker’s uncle, the rich lawyer, said he’d, quote, make arrangements for him.”
“Arrangements? What kind of arrangements?”
“He said something about placing him in a supervised group living facility but I don’t really know what he means by that.”
“Why can’t he just take Tucker into his own home and hire a private caregiver like we did for Granny? He’s certainly got the money for it.”
“Honest answer? I don’t think he really gives a crap about his nephew. A group facility relieves him of any responsibility.”
Zoe shook her head. “I may try staying in touch with him. Visiting occasionally if I can.”
“I’m not sure that’s a good idea.”
“I’m not either. But he’s such a helpless being, and now, with Tyler gone, he’s got no one at all who really cares for him.”
“Think carefully before you get involved.”
Zoe nodded. “I will. Now what was it you wanted to talk about?”
“I wanted to get a sense of what you’re planning to do going forward after all this. Or if you even know yet. I also wanted you to know that if you decide to make a major change in your life as a result of what you’ve gone through, you might want to think about moving to Portland. It’s a great little city even in winter, and you might find living there, even if just for a while, and having Maggie and me nearby as support, majorly therapeutic.”
Zoe smiled and got up and kissed McCabe on his cheek. “Thank you, Uncle Mike. But I don’t think that’s what I want.”
She sat back down again and sipped at her wine. “My first instinct after Bradshaw’s death and after I got back here was that I had to totally change everything in my life. How and where I lived. How I wanted to spend my life. And mostly about whether I’d be able to walk onto a stage and face an audience again. The idea of performing in front of an audience, especially in risky kinds of roles like Nora in Wave, let alone Desdemona, and not knowing what kind of sick voyeur might be sitting out there in the dark watching and fantasizing about me like Bradshaw did . . . The idea of it totally creeps me out. And it’s going to take a long time for me to get over it. I’m sure that some level of fear that something like this might happen again will never go away. And that did make me wonder if I should stop acting. Maybe leave the theater altogether. Do something totally different with my life. And yes, maybe even live somewhere totally different like Portland or California or wherever.
“But the more I thought about it, the more convinced I became that I couldn’t let the fear of there being more sick people like Tyler Bradshaw out there in the dark dictate how I was going to live my life. I just couldn’t do it. I know it’s going to be hard and I know I’m going to be looking at the audience and seeing them in a whole different way than I ever have before. I know there will be times when I’ll be terrified of who might be out there. Plotting and planning. But I’ve dreamt of being an actress since I was a really little kid. Like five years old. I’ve worked hard at it. Studied hard. And I think I’m really good at it. Hell, I know I’m good. And now, just when I’m getting to the point where, thanks to someone like Randall Carter, I might be on the edge of a major career breakthrough, I’m simply not going to let a sick and terribly damaged person like Tyler Bradshaw take it all away.”
“Are you going to date Randall Carter? He implied to us that he was interested in doing that.”
“No. I’m not going to date Randall Carter or anyone else. At least not for a while. But I’ll jump at the chance me to play Desdemona when the show goes uptown. If he still wants me to.”
McCabe nodded, hoping Zoe could stick to this resolution. “At the very least I think you should move to a new apartment.”
“I’m planning to. What happened to Annie because of Bradshaw’s fixation on me makes me want to cry every time I think about it. I’ll never get over that. And I’m going to start seeing my old therapist again. On a regular basis. I always liked her, and Dad said he’d pay for it. Still, it’s going to take me a while to get over everything else that happened. If I ever do.”
McCabe nodded. “I think you will. In fact, I’m sure you will. We McCabes have always been a tough bunch. And the fact you’re not letting the trauma of what you went through destroy the life you’ve always wanted proves it. Still, if and when it ever starts feeling like it’s too much, Maggie and I will always be there for you. Think of us and of Portland as your escape hatch.”
“Thank you, Uncle Michael. What you did for me. Finding me. Rescuing me. How smart you were about not charging in screaming and yelling and shooting like cops always do in the movies . . . well, that probably saved my life. I can’t tell you how much it will always mean to me.”
“Thank you, Zoe. There’s one other thing I wanted to share with you. We just got the results of Bradshaw’s autopsy. They examined his brain, and it turns out that he had a severe case of CTE.”
Zoe looked at McCabe questioningly.
“The letters stand for chronic traumatic encephalopathy. Brain damage caused by repeated concussions like you told me Bradshaw suffered at the hands of his father. It leads to the kind of symptoms he exhibited. Violent mood swings, uncontrollable rage, depression and other cognitive difficulties. Same thing football players get from being banged on the head too much. The damage to Bradshaw’s brain was about as severe as the docs had ever seen in someone as young as Bradshaw, except maybe for that football player who murdered a couple of people and then killed himself.”
“Aaron Hernandez?”
“Yes. Hernandez. And in Tyler’s case it was almost certainly caused by the way his father abused him. Punching him in the face over and over again year after year. And then finally tossing him headfirst into the swimming pool and causing a very serious concussion.”
“Interesting.”
“In what way?”
“Remember at the end when you heard me tell Bradshaw I loved him? Just before he died?”
“Yes.”
“And I told you I was just a good actress? Well, I wasn’t totally acting. Not that I really loved him. But for some reason I wanted the last thing he heard to be that maybe I did.”
“Why?”
“I don’t know for sure. But I sensed, in the time I was there, that in spite of his rages and the terrible things he did to me, that maybe in his own weird way he did love me, and that was the reason he chose to kill himself instead of killing me.”
“Well, if he hadn’t done it that way after what he put you through, there’s a damned good chance I would have done it for him.”
“I know. I could see it in your eyes. And I’m glad you didn’t have to. I really believe that underneath, if Tyler hadn’t been so tortured as a child, he might have turned out okay. Maybe even been a good and decent person.”
“You can never know that.”
“I think I do.”
Zoe’s phone buzzed. She took it from her pocket and looked at the screen. “Hi there. Hold on a minute,” she said into the phone. “Uncle Mike, I wonder if you’d mind letting me take this call privately?”
“Not at all.” McCabe bent down to give his niece a kiss. And then left the room.
“Hi Randall,” she said when he was gone. “So nice to hear from you.”
THE END