Ethan leaned on Graham as they lowered Sadie's coffin into the ground. He cried freely and Graham cried too, but for the moment Graham was the strong one. Ethan would never have made it this far if not for his son.
Only the tail end of September, yet the first snow flurry of the year fluttered through the air like pure white flakes of ash. Gloves and winter coats were the norm for those who attended the funeral. Sadie's father wore a red and white stripped scarf that clashed with his otherwise black attire. Ethan doubted the man imagined he would need a scarf for his daughter's funeral. During the entire ceremony he didn't so much as look in Ethan's direction. He wasn't the only one who blamed Ethan for Sadie's death. Staver and Randy had done a good job of constantly reminding Ethan during the hours of questioning that had followed Lazaro's death at the amusement park that if he'd trusted in their investigation instead of running off with Graham, things could have ended differently.
He didn't argue with them. He couldn't justify all his decisions to himself; explaining his choices to anyone else didn't matter. The only one he hoped would forgive him was Graham. And so far Graham had given Ethan more support than he felt he deserved.
After Sadie's funeral, they wandered over to Alison's grave. A mound of dirt marked her resting place, the sod not yet laid, nor the gravestone set in place. Then Ethan drove downtown and took Graham to another cemetery. He'd promised Graham he would bring him here eventually, and no day seemed better than today.
They stood quietly on the overgrown and weedy ground before his parents' gravestones with the matching dates marking the end of their lives.
Graham had insisted on brining a single white rose—probably something he'd read in one of the books he loved—and he placed the rose on the ground between the gravestones.
Ethan's insides curled up, but he remained quiet. This is what Graham wanted, for whatever reason. And no matter what they had done, they were his grandparents and he deserved to visit their grave.
“When was the last time you came here?” Graham asked.
A snowflake landed on Ethan's cheek and melted, the closest thing to a tear he had ever shed over his parents.
“Their funeral.”
“Do you hate them still?”
Ethan opened his mouth, but found he didn't have an answer. He said, “I haven't really thought about it.”
“You have to think about it? Don't you just feel it?”
“I try not to.”
“Are you mad at me?”
Ethan frowned. “For what?”
“Because I wanted to come here to see them.”
“No,” Ethan said. “Not at all.”
“Even after what they did?”
“What are you trying to get at, son?”
He chewed on his lip, thinking. “It's like with Mom. You didn't want me to see her 'cause of the bad things she did before. But she's my mom.”
Ethan nodded. “Okay. I get it.” He looked down at his parents' gravestones again, read their names and the dates. Read them a second time. Then a third. Each time paying attention to his body, seeing how their names written in death's stone affected him.
Do I hate them?
He used to. But what was the point in still hating them. They were gone.
“I was so determined not to be anything like them.”
“You're not like them.”
Ethan shoved his hands in his coat pockets and stared at the rose between the graves. “I wish I had realized that sooner.”
A month after killing her brother, Rain still looked the same as she had standing on the platform of the Phantom Screw. Her hair was longer, but she still had those circles under her eyes and the haunted look of a woman who had killed God Himself and gotten away with it.
It was the first time Ethan took Graham to see her since she checked into the Madison Center for Mental Health. They sat with her in the recreation room that looked as stark and dismal as Ethan expected a mental hospital to look. A trio of patients, a woman and two men, played two against one—the woman a team of her own—at a ping pong table with no net. The tick-tock of the ball going back and forth created an almost soothing rhythm that broke apart the moment anyone scored.
Contrary to the cliché, instead of a robe, Rain wore a pair of faded jeans and a loose t-shirt. She sat on one of two facing couches, her arms folded across her chest, body slouched. Ethan and Graham sat on the couch across from her.
“I guess it's better than a fucking rehab joint,” she said. Her eyes darted around the room, seldom stopping to focus on either Ethan or Graham.
“How you holding up?” Ethan asked and winced at the stock question.
She snickered. “Would you believe they got me on the same fucking pills Laz was taking? Keeps me calm.”
He didn't know what to say to that. He didn't know what to say to Rain at all. This was his third time visiting since she checked in, and still he couldn't find a way into some normal kind of conversation. He felt obligated to try. In the end, she had saved Graham's life while almost losing her own. If Graham hadn't reached out and grabbed her, Lazaro would have taken her onto the tracks with him.
He owed her a civilized and ordinary conversation. Yet he hadn't a clue what to say.
Graham said, “They let you go outside ever?”
She wrinkled her nose. “Why would I go outside? It's freezing out there.”
“Fresh air.”
“They let us, but I never go. I'm afraid if I step outside I won't want to come back in. But I need to stay in. I . . .”
The ping pong ball bounced in a high arc, bounced a second time, then landed right in Rain's lap. The three of them all stared at the ball resting in the groove between her thighs, then Rain cracked a smile and laughed. Graham joined her.
Ethan tried to laugh, at least got a smile to his lips. Laughing still seemed too gratuitous a disrespect to Sadie's memory. His logical side could argue the point in his head that moving on was all right, that laughter was not in any way disrespectful to Sadie, and that she would probably want him to laugh a little. Logic didn't stand a chance, though. His heart wasn't ready to listen to logic.
Rain returned the ball to the players, the laughs petered out, and the next ten minutes went by without words.
Finally, Ethan stood. “We should get going.”
Rain nodded slowly. “Yeah. Thanks for coming by.”
She stood. Graham stood.
She reached out and touched a curl of Graham's hair. “Maybe next time you can bring me something good to read. The selection here sucks ass.”
Graham smiled. “Sure thing.”
To Ethan the exchange between the two of them looked painfully similar to the way Graham and Sadie interacted. It was so obvious now why he had fallen in love with Sadie. She had been the good, responsible version of Rain. But the similarities also shed some light on why Ethan had fallen in love with Rain. There was a part of her that deserved loving.
“Want us to come by next week then?”
“Whenever you have time. Don't worry about me.”
“Okay,” he said. “Then we'll see you next week.”
Ethan and Graham emerged from the hospital onto a thin blanket of snow. Ethan put his arm around Graham's shoulder as they walked to the car. Someone had their fireplace going in a nearby neighborhood. Ethan could smell the smoke. He inhaled deeply through his nose. Sweet scent of firewood. Cold breeze against his face.
They had one last stop to make.
When he reached the overpass, Ethan pulled the car to the shoulder and cut the engine. His and Graham's breath grew visible as the remaining warmth from the heater seeped away. The windows fogged.
They left the car without speaking.
The snow made walking down the incline toward the Red Run tricky, but they reached the edge of the flowing water without falling. Neither of them knew for sure where Lazaro had left Alison's body. Randy had said she was found half in the water.
The rotten smell wafting up turned Ethan's stomach, made worse by the thought of his daughter lying dead in what amounted to a sewage drain pretending to be a creek.
The water rolled into a pair of large cement tubes beneath the overpass. Spray-painted scrawls wound and zagged from the edge of the twin culverts and into the shadows.
“I don't know why we put this off,” Graham said. “It doesn't mean anything. It's just a place.”
Ethan nodded. He understood, but didn't agree. He hoped Graham would never have to learn how some places could haunt you even after you'd run away. Even if the place had burned to the ground.