Chapter Forty-Three

Walker

It’s a little chilly on this August night—just a hint of the fall that’s to come. I should try and get some sleep, but I can’t so I don’t even bother going home after I close up the pub. I head to the only place where I seem to be able to clear my head. The roof. At nearly two in the morning, the entirety of Main Street is dark and deserted. Every window in every house and apartment and shop that I can see is pitch black. I’m fairly certain I’m the only person awake in a five-mile radius as I stretch out on a lounger, put a throw blanket over myself, and look up at the crystal-clear night sky.

I’ll start classes full-time in a few weeks, and I should be excited. And I am. Sort of. Just not as excited as I thought I’d be. I’ve been waiting for months now, hoping that the thrill I experienced when I first got the admissions letter will return to me. But it hasn’t. Who knows…maybe it never will. What that means, I have no idea. Is it possible I’m making the wrong decision here? That I’m really just supposed to stay here and run the pub indefinitely?

No. Right? No. I’ve spent plenty of time hashing through all of this with the therapist. I’m not meant to spend my life punishing myself for something that wasn’t my fault. Pops would never want that for me. Never.

I sigh and close my eyes, hoping maybe I’ll doze off. And I do…but then I’m dreaming that someone is calling my name. It takes a few seconds to realize that it isn’t a dream. Someone really is calling my name.

“Walker! Are you up there? Walker!”

Startled, I jump up and follow the sound to the edge of the roof overlooking the alley between our building and the one next door. Looking up at me is Mason Stevens.

“Mason? What are you doing here?”

“I have to talk to you. Can you please come down here?”

I shake my head.

“Uh-uh. No way. Go home, it’s late.”

“Please! Just let me talk to you.”

“I am not coming down.”

“Okay, then let me come up and see you there…”

“Dude! You’re not listening to me. I don’t want to talk to you. There’s nothing to say.”

“Of course there is! I have to explain about Cassandra. And I know what my mom said to you at the pub. Walker, there’s so much I have to say to you. Please, don’t make me do it from down here.”

“No.”

I’m about to turn around and go inside when he does something incredibly bizarre. He grabs the long drainpipe that runs down the side of the building. And he starts to climb.

“Hey!” I holler down at him. “Hey, stop that!”

“Walker O’Halloran, I love you!” he’s saying as he passes the first floor windows and starts on the second floor.

“Mason! That thing is not going to support your weight. Stop! Please! Just go down before you kill yourself!” I hear myself getting louder and shriller. A light comes on across the street in an apartment over the newspaper office.

“No. I won’t stop. Not until we get our H-E-A.”

“Our…what?”

“Happily ever af—”

I presume he was going to say “happily ever after” right up until the moment that the brackets holding the pipe against the brick facade break free and the pipe starts to bend backward, taking Mason with it.

“Oh, shhh—” I hear him mutter just before I lose all sense of time and place.

He’s falling. He’s high enough up that he’ll surely break his back, or his neck, or crack his skull open. Oh, sweet Jesus, he could die! He came here to see me and I wouldn’t let him up. So he climbed the wall…and now he’s going to die! I’m going to kill someone else.

“Mason!” I hear myself screech as he continues his backward descent, still clutching the pipe with his arms and legs.

It’s all happening in slow motion and, for a brief second, he’s almost horizontal, like a pig hanging off a spit at a luau.

“Mason!” I shriek again, running back and forth along the ledge of the building, my eyes scanning the roof around me for inspiration. But there’s nothing. And it’s too late, anyway.

I can only watch in horror as he falls out of my reach. And out of my life.