An enormous Welcome Alumni sign hung above the lions, which sat atop columns now bedecked with red and gold streamers. The decorations seemed both festive and foolish, like putting a leather jacket on a wolf. The snarling lion looked ready to rip the streamers to shreds; the other gazed coldly at me, the missing eye conferring a sense of dignity unsullied by the crepe paper looped around its base. “Keep the faith, brother,” I said aloud, and as I drove slowly past the lions, I offered them a casual salute.
It was the end of a cloudless June day, the sunlight softly playing over the green leaves, birds flitting from shadow to shadow. I found myself once again wending my way through those trees, although now the sunlight and recent events made the way less haunted, less freighted by the ghosts of memory.
Just past the trees and the security gate, the athletic fields now served as parking lots, and though it was early yet, several cars sat in rows in front of the soccer goals. A police officer in uniform was directing traffic, his gaze lingering on me as I rolled past him, and I recognized Deputy Smalls. I drove down a short aisle, pulled into a spot, and killed the engine. I supposed that I could just sit there in my car until he was distracted, but this was my alma mater, my class reunion, and so I got out of the car, closed the door, and walked toward him.
“Mr. Glass,” he said, nodding affably as I approached.
“Deputy,” I said, nodding back at him. I felt a little like a cowboy who had been run out of town and was now riding back in, daring the lawman to do something about it. That feeling evaporated in the heat of my embarrassment when Smalls stuck out his hand to shake mine. “Glad to see you made it,” he said.
“You referring to my reunion or the whole drug-dealer misunderstanding?” I said. I was still holding his hand.
Smalls smiled. It wasn’t as radiant as Briggs’s smile, but it was nice. “Yes,” he said.
I smiled back, and we dropped our hands. “Okay,” I said. “Um, thanks.”
He nodded. “Someone’s looking for you,” he said, glancing over my shoulder.
Feeling uneasy, I turned, expecting to see Sheriff Townsend. Instead, I saw a uniformed Lester Briggs sitting in an old ladder-back chair. He waved me over impatiently, and I made my way down the aisle of parked cars to him. He looked thinner without looking feebler, as if he had burned away any superfluous weight, distilling his intensity. He had in his hand a clipboard of license plate numbers, which I presumed belonged to the cars parked all around us.
“I like the uniform,” I said. “All law enforcement-y. How’s the sheriff feel about it?”
Briggs snorted, like he was throttling a laugh in his throat. “He brought it to me personally,” he said. “We’re best friends now. The DA loves me, so Ricky Townsend loves me. DA’s not the only one looking to move into a bigger office. I got injured trying to make a citizen’s arrest and prevented a drug dealer from committing a murder. I’m a hero.”
“I’ll buy you a cape, maybe some boots. Your back doing okay?”
“Keep the cape. I’ll take a new pair of boots. And my back is fine.” Briggs eyed me. “You found him, didn’t you,” he said.
“Didn’t pan out,” I said lightly. “You were right. Kevin Kelly went to too many places out west. It’ll take me a long time to check them all out.”
Now he did laugh. “I’ve got a grandnephew just turned four. He lies better than you do.”
“Let’s say I had a talk with Frank Davenport and delivered a message to him. Justice was served, et cetera.”
He looked at me, and I looked back. “You’re not going to tell me anything else, are you?” he said.
I shrugged. “Nothing else I can tell you.”
Slowly, he nodded, and then stood up just as slowly, wincing. “Well,” he said, a whole raft of conflicting emotions behind that one word. He slapped the clipboard against the side of his leg. “You enjoy the rest of your weekend.”
“Will do. You watch your back.”
He began to nod, did the briefest of double takes, and then shook his head. “Everyone’s a goddamn comedian,” he said. I walked away, a smile on my face. When I glanced back, he had sat down in the chair and was looking over the clipboard.
I walked up the drive to the Hill. Here and there, I saw small knots of adults, men in slacks and khakis, some in blazers, some with wives, all talking and gazing around with contented looks of nostalgia. Suddenly I felt exposed, walking alone past the broad steps of Farquhar Gym. Running into Lester Briggs had been a surprise, but a relatively easy one to navigate. I now had the irrational fear that Fletcher Dupree would step out from behind a hedge, a smirk on his face and a “water buffalo!” joke at the ready. The administration wouldn’t want me here. My classmates were strangers to me. Why had I come back?
“Mr. Glass?” a voice said. I started and turned to see a boy in shorts and a red-and-gold Blackburne polo coming down the gym steps, a tennis racket in a bag slung over his shoulder. It took me a moment to realize it was Ben Sipple.
“Ben!” I said. “Hi. What are you doing here? Isn’t school out?”
He shook his head. “Sixth formers are still here—exams next week. The tennis team made it to the state championship.”
“Didn’t know you played tennis. Congrats. You must be good.”
“I guess,” he said. “Thanks. Uh, weren’t you fired?”
For a second I stared at him. Then I laughed. He frowned, puzzled.
“Yeah, I was,” I said. “But it was a mistake. What they fired me for.”
“Oh, okay,” he said. It was the verbal equivalent of a shrug, as if he were thinking adults were strange but didn’t want to say it out loud. Then he added, “I heard something like that. That someone was selling drugs and tried to put it on you.”
So Sam Hodges had understood my e-mail. This buoyed me up considerably. “Yeah, well,” I said, unwilling to enter into specifics. “I’m here for a class reunion, though. Alumni weekend and all that. You doing okay, Ben?”
He considered this for a moment. “Yeah,” he said. “I’m going to go visit my dad this summer, in Boston. He broke up with his girlfriend, so it’ll just be the two of us for a couple of weeks.”
“That sounds good,” I said.
“Yeah, well.” He hesitated and then suddenly stuck his hand out. “Thanks, Mr. Glass, for . . . everything.”
I shook his hand. “Sure thing, Ben. You take care, okay?”
He nodded. “Okay.” He waved and then ran up the gym steps two at a time, disappearing through the doors as I stood at the foot of the steps, watching him go.
REGISTRATION WAS IN THE front hall of Stilwell, printed name tags lined up by graduating class on a long table. I signed in with a woman I didn’t recognize from the alumni office, smiled through her polite greeting, and looked for my name tag. I found myself looking for other names, too—Trip Alexander, Daryl Cooper, Miles Camak. And Fritz Davenport. Even though I now knew Fritz was okay and safely on the other side of the country, it felt wrong that his name wasn’t included.
“Matthias?” A tall, prematurely balding man in a crimson polo beamed at me. It took me a second to recognize him, and when I did, I remembered him playing the Beastie Boys at full volume on dorm and endlessly watching Dracula in the A/V center.
“Max?”
Max Goren laughed and gave me a bear hug, which, startled, I returned as best I could. “Knew it was you!” Max was saying. “God, what’s it been, since graduation? Come on, the alumni tent’s behind Stilwell. Cash bar, but what the hell.” He steered me past the table and on into the dining hall. There were only a couple tables of sixth formers in there, and they all looked up at me and Max, the same look on all their faces: What are those older guys doing here? I knew what they were thinking; I’d thought it myself when I’d been a student. I grinned at them. A few politely smiled back.
Max was chattering about real estate in Richmond, where he lived with his wife. “Expecting a daughter end of next week,” he said proudly. “Kristie’s at home fit to bust, didn’t want to ride in the car over here, but she told me to go on, give her the last peace and quiet she’ll get for a long time.”
As he went on, I nodded and made inquisitive noises at the appropriate moments, but mostly I was wondering when Max Goren had grown up. He’d always been a nice guy but a bit of a clown, and now here he was a bona fide adult, a real estate agent, married with a kid on the way. When had that happened?
At the back of the dining hall were double doors that led outside to a set of steps down to a brick patio, behind which was a little-used lawn ringed by boxwood hedges. The alumni tent was pitched here, bigger than the one at the Game this past fall but with the same fold-out chairs and tables, the same cash bar. This time there were other people scattered in groups, talking, laughing, telling stories. Three wrinkled gentlemen in sweaters despite the warm evening wore name tags declaring them members of the class of 1946. Another group of what looked like college students clutched bottles of beer and looked around a bit confusedly, as if unsure of how to act. I guessed they were here for their fifth-year reunion. I understood how they felt.
Then Max was saying, “Hey, look who I found!” and I saw, in a corner of the tent, a table of beaming faces turned my way. I registered Miles Camak and Roger Bloom and Tom Dodrill among the small crowd before they were all on their feet, shaking my hand and slapping me on the back, someone putting a cold beer in my hand. I was so flustered with all the greetings and questions and smiles that I couldn’t speak for a few moments, just grin bashfully and exchange high fives and drink my beer. Miles introduced me to his wife, a petite blonde with a big smile. Roger had apparently been in the middle of telling the story about the fake list of football players’ numbers he’d been given for Third Form Night, and as he continued, I laughed along with the others, joined with them by both the memory and the ability to laugh at what had seemed so terrifying all those years ago.
Then I saw Fletcher Dupree sitting across the table from me. He looked stouter, something about him a bit blunted. He gazed at me, and I raised my beer in his direction. “Fletcher,” I said, and my classmates grew a bit quieter, sensing a different kind of reunion.
Fletcher nodded. Deliberately he said, “Matthias, what’s going on?”
I shook my head. “Not much,” I said. “You?”
“Heard you were teaching,” he said, and I heard in his voice a hint of goading. I saw Roger Bloom and Tom Dodrill glance back to me.
“Was,” I said. “I was teaching. Here.”
“Didn’t like it?” Fletcher asked. “Kinda different from writing novels.”
I took a deep breath. “I liked it okay up until the point some kid stashed drugs in my desk and tried to frame me for selling to students,” I said evenly.
Silence. Fletcher looked like a dog that had just found a fresh bone to gnaw. “You were framed for selling drugs?” he asked.
“I read about that,” Tom Dodrill interrupted. “It was in the Charlottesville paper. Wasn’t it Kevin Kelly?”
“Kevin Kelly?” Miles said. “That kid a couple of years behind us?”
“Yeah,” Tom said. “He had a grow house outside of Charlottesville. Sold to lots of schools, I read.”
“What, here?”
“Yeah. Heard Pelham Greer was helping him.”
“Greer? No shit?”
Fletcher cut across the questions. “So you were framed?” he asked me.
“Yeah,” I said. “All charges were dropped.”
“But that’s pretty serious,” Fletcher continued innocently. “I mean, did they fire you or anything?”
I felt as much as saw all eyes turn to me. Anger and embarrassment rose to my face. I’d had no interest in hashing this out with Fletcher, or with anyone else, and yet here I was doing it. Then a familiar voice behind me said, “Mistakenly, Mr. Dupree. The issue has been settled.”
I glanced up to see Sam Hodges in his trademark suspenders and bow tie. Startled, I put my beer down and got to my feet. Several of my classmates did the same. “Keep your seats, fellas,” he said genially, waving his hands down, but now everyone stood up to greet our former dean, Fletcher among them, although he looked peeved. “Turns out Matthias here discovered a staff member was involved in criminal activity,” Sam continued, putting a hand on my shoulder. “Unfortunately, we were fooled into thinking Matthias was the criminal. We were wrong, and all has been forgiven.” He looked at me ruefully. “On our side, at any rate. I wouldn’t blame you if you felt differently.”
“Not at all, Sam,” I said. “Thank you.” Sam squeezed my shoulder and then moved among the crowd, shaking hands, laughing, exchanging with everyone a brief word or story. I saw, with a dark kind of glee, that Sam managed to ignore Fletcher entirely as he greeted the rest of my classmates.
The evening sky grew deeper, and lights glowed under the tent. A band began setting up near a dance floor that had been set down on the grass. I sat back in my chair, sipping my second beer and watching my old classmates rather than engaging in conversation. I noticed without rancor that after the initial greetings, everyone was reverting to old behavior. Julian Pumphrey, our class valedictorian, was talking rather didactically about the perils of investment banking to a bored-looking Max. Fletcher, having recovered from his failure to bait me, had gathered Miles and Roger around him and was telling stories about other classmates, smirking and laughing throughout. Tom Dodrill and Jeb Tanner were arguing about SEC football. I realized that Fritz and I had usually joked privately about this sort of thing, the cliques our class had formed, and although I felt a slight melancholy, I was content to sit back and observe. Occasionally I chatted with Max or Tom or Miles’s wife, but mostly I just nibbled at my plate of shrimp and listened to everyone else talk. No one had asked about Fritz, which was both fine and, illogically, just a little disappointing.
Just as the band began playing “Only the Good Die Young,” Sam appeared again at my side, and I stood up. “So, how are you, really?” Sam asked, hooking his left thumb under one suspender in a familiar gesture.
“I’m doing fine, Sam, thanks. And thanks for what you said back there.”
He winked. “I figured Fletcher Dupree needed to shut his hole,” he said.
I looked around at the alums, a few of them taking to the dance floor. “Is Dr. Simmons here?” I asked.
Sam shook his head. “Asked me to come in his place,” he said. “Travis is out in Utah, with Paul. Some family bonding time.”
My estimation of Travis Simmons rose a bit. Maybe he and Paul would turn out okay. “Does Ren Middleton come to these things?” I asked. “Can’t imagine he’d be happy to see me here tonight.”
“No,” Sam said. “He’s not big on these.” He looked at me shrewdly. “You have every right to be here, Matthias, if that’s what you’re suggesting. Travis and even Ren would agree.”
I shook my head. “No worries.” And I meant it.
“So,” Sam said, “what will you do next?”
“Thought I might take a teaching job in Asheville,” I said. “Creative writing instructor. It’s not much, but it’s a start.”
Sam grinned. “Put me down as a reference.” He looked past my shoulder. “You’ve got some more friends just came in,” he said.
I turned. Trip and Diamond had entered the tent. With a roar of welcome, my classmates swarmed forward, nearly pummeling them both on the back, especially Diamond, who got both Miles and Max into a headlock under each arm to shouts of laughter. Before I could reach Diamond, however, Trip saw me and walked over. “Come with me,” he said, touching my arm and guiding me off to the side. Puzzled, I followed Trip, who moved past a few tables until he reached a relatively quiet corner of the tent.
“What’s going on?” I asked.
“Wat Davenport’s dead,” he said.
A sickening void formed in my gut. “What?”
“He drove off the Arlington Memorial Bridge into the Potomac. Happened this afternoon.”
Hope trembling slightly in my voice, I said, “An accident?”
“He was in some sort of souped-up Hummer. Two witnesses say he floored it going onto the bridge, swerved around a delivery truck, and then swung hard right and punched through the railing. You might do one of those things if you’re having a heart attack, but not all three.”
“But maybe—”
“The Hummer was something NorthPoint was working on for the military. Had a reinforced chassis made specifically for ramming. It went through a reinforced concrete parapet like it was a split-rail fence.”
I had to lean back against a table. “Jesus, Trip,” I said. This had not been the plan. At all.
“Frank Davenport just announced he’s resigning as CEO of NorthPoint,” Trip went on. “Saw it on my phone a few minutes ago. Says he was already considering retirement with the tenth anniversary of Fritz’s disappearance coming up, and now with his brother’s death, he’s done.”
“Makes sense, I guess,” I said weakly.
“Bullshit,” Trip said. “It makes no sense. When his son disappeared, he missed four days and then went right back to work. He is NorthPoint. Guys like him don’t retire—they die at their desks. This is the kind of thing congressmen do when they’re about to be indicted.”
“Trip—”
“Did you have anything to do with this?” he asked.
“Did I—did I have anything to do with Wat Davenport killing himself?” I didn’t have to fake the outrage, although guilt crested like a mounting wave, threatening to swamp me. I felt like I might vomit right there.
“No, listen,” Trip continued, relentlessly. “Diamond and I stuck our necks out for you. We dug up dirt on Frank Davenport, and we tell you and you go off to D.C. to talk to his brother. Then you don’t tell us jack—”
“I went to jail, Trip. And then I was almost killed. Kinda threw me off.”
“And a couple of months later,” Trip said, ignoring me, “Wat Davenport kills himself and Frank Davenport retires. I met Wat once—everyone in D.C. does sooner or later. Full of life, full of himself. I don’t see him driving off a bridge. So either he was dying of cancer or AIDS or something and couldn’t face it, or somebody had something on him so bad, it was enough to make him want to kill himself rather than deal with it.”
“Trip,” I managed to get out, “you’re being paranoid. I don’t know why—”
“Matthias,” he said, “look me in the eye and tell me you didn’t have anything to do with this.”
In Jackson Hole, Fritz had insisted on making the video. I’d thought it was risky, but he’d been adamant. If Kevin Kelly found me and you could find me, then it’s only a matter of time, he’d said. Fritz had gotten a handheld video camera and had me film him in my hotel room, a blank wall behind him as he talked into the camera. It was all of three minutes long, and it wasn’t Scorsese by a long shot, but it had obviously worked, albeit not in the way we had planned. Fritz’s demands were simple. Of his father Fritz required that, within a week of seeing the video, he deposit the same amount of money he had withdrawn from Fritz’s trust into a new, separate trust for Tommy. Fritz could access the interest but could not touch the principal, which would go to Tommy when he turned twenty-five or when Fritz predeceased him, whichever came first. Something good out of all that corruption, Fritz had said. Of his uncle, Fritz had said only that Wat was never to seek him out, or Tommy. If his father and uncle didn’t abide by these conditions, Fritz would send another video, addressed not to them but to the world, in which Fritz talked about how and why he had run away ten years ago and spoke in explicit detail about what Wat had done to him. That second video had taken far longer to film, and it had been excruciating to watch Fritz recount his story again. Fritz had included an excerpt from it on the jump drive I’d given to his father. This stays a secret, Fritz had told me. They’ll leave me alone if they think they can keep this covered up. I’ll keep it covered up if they pay the price. But we hadn’t figured on the price Wat Davenport would be willing to pay.
I looked at Trip, who was waiting for my reply.
“I had nothing to do with this,” I said.
He held me in a long gaze. Just when it was becoming unbearable, he closed his eyes and sighed. “Okay,” he said. “Sorry. I just . . . I got freaked out. These are powerful men, and it looks like somebody got to them, and I—”
“Hey, no,” I said. “I understand. Seriously. It’s all right. And I’m sorry I didn’t tell you what happened with Wat. It was a bust, actually.” I briefly outlined Wat’s story about the Chinese spies and Frank Davenport’s fears about losing the Pentagon contracts. As I was telling this to Trip, I was thinking about how I didn’t even have to make this part up—Wat Davenport had done that for me.
My phone started ringing. “Hang on,” I said to Trip, fishing my phone out of my pocket. He shook his head and waved, and headed across the tent for the bar. I looked at the phone display, which showed an unfamiliar number with a Virginia area code. I answered. “Hello?”
“Matthias?”
“Abby,” I said. Oh shit. “Hi.”
“What the hell is going on?” she demanded.
The band chose this moment to begin playing “Brown Eyed Girl,” and I had to hold my free hand over my other ear and shout at Abby to hold on while I made my way to the exit. Outside the tent, I welcomed the cooler air and walked off a little ways, phone to my ear, a boxwood hedge on my left. The back of Stilwell Hall loomed before me. “Sorry,” I said into the phone. “I’m at Blackburne, my reunion. There’s a band—”
“Do you know why my uncle killed himself?” she said.
“I . . . Trip just told me, Trip Alexander, he—”
“Does this have to do with Fritz?”
I stopped walking. “Fritz . . . What?”
“Does it have anything to do with Fritz?”
I looked up at the sky. The sun had set a while ago and was just a dull crimson smear in the west, but above the sky was a deep indigo and the first stars were shining, cold and remote and beautiful.
“Matthias?” Abby’s voice was insistent.
You can’t tell anyone else, Fritz had said. No one. Not my sister, my mother, our friends, anyone.
I drew a breath. “Abby, Fritz is gone,” I said. “Like you told me. He’s been gone for a long time.”
Silence on the other end. “I don’t believe you,” she said.
Jesus. Had her father told her something? Had he sought forgiveness by showing her the map tracing Fritz’s progress across the United States like some bizarre connect-the-dots puzzle? “You don’t believe that Fritz is gone?” I said.
“My father came home last night and announced that he was resigning from NorthPoint, and then he locked himself in his office,” Abby said. I couldn’t tell if she was angry or on the verge of tears. Probably both. “He wouldn’t talk to me or Mother. Then my uncle came over and went right into my father’s office. I thought they were going to kill each other. The last time I heard them like this was just before Fritz . . . disappeared.” There was a hitch in her voice, and she paused for a moment before resuming, in control but brittle. “I listened outside the office door. My father said something about being exposed, and then—then Wat said Fritz’s name. I couldn’t hear the rest of it, but Wat stormed out a while later, didn’t even say good-bye. And today they found him dead. They’re saying he drove off the bridge on purpose, Matthias.” Her voice wavered under the threat of tears, but she still held them in. “Why would he do that? My father won’t say anything. Do you know? Wat always liked you, Matthias. He respected you. Did—did you talk to him, about Fritz?” Ragged breathing, a sniff. “Please.”
I ground my teeth. Not telling Briggs or Trip the truth about Fritz had been simple; not telling Abby was something else entirely. Should I betray my friend, or the girl I once loved—still loved? My throat seemed to swell with the pressure of keeping this lie bottled up, another lie.
“Matthias?”
The Davenport family secret had festered and spread in the dark—it was sending out roots and tendrils like some nightmarish vine, clinging to everything and everyone involved, choking us all.
“Matthias, please.”
Don’t tell my sister.
“He had secrets, Abby,” I said. “Your uncle. They were awful, and he had to live with them.”
“What do you—?”
“I . . . Abby, I can’t explain. You’ll have to talk to your father.”
Pause. Now, ridiculously, the band was playing “Gimme Some Loving” by the Spencer Davis Group.
“Matthias—”
I stared at my phone, a faint glow in the oncoming night, and then with my forefinger I pressed End, cutting off the call. I could only imagine Abby’s reaction right now, wherever she was. But she knew something wasn’t right. My hanging up on her would only confirm her suspicions. And so I’d kept my promise to Fritz while indirectly goading Abby toward the truth. Yet I hesitated in the dark outside of the tent. Was this how I was going to leave things with her? Some cryptic clues, a hang-up, and a vague hope that all would be well?
“Fuck it,” I said aloud, and I opened up Facebook on my phone. Then I typed and sent Abby a message—Hamlet’s letter to Ophelia:
Doubt thou the stars are fire,
Doubt that the sun doth move,
Doubt truth to be a liar,
But never doubt I love.
Then I shut off my phone and stuck it back in my pocket.
I wandered back into the tent out of an essential need for light and company, and the first person I ran into was Diamond. Unable to help myself, I glanced down at his leg, but all I could see was a khaki pant leg with a bayonet-sharp crease. I looked up to see Diamond smiling. “Yeah, it’s still fake,” he said. “Wanna race?”
“I need a drink first. And a head start. And a new Achilles.”
Diamond held up two beers and then took one step back. “Two out of three ain’t bad.”
The crowd around my classmates’ table had grown a bit, but Diamond managed to wrangle two empty seats next to Trip, who looked at me, concerned. “Everything okay?” he asked.
“Abby called,” I said. “Her uncle.”
Max Goren leaned forward. “Hey, I just heard about that—Trip was telling us.” He shook his head. “That poor family. I guess you never . . . heard anything else, about Fritz?”
Others leaned in now, too, lured by the fateful name, the tragic story of our class. I hesitated. Then I shook my head. “No,” I said, glancing at Trip, who said nothing. “No, I didn’t.”
A hush settled on us, each seeming to bow his head before the unlaid ghost. Then Trip raised his beer. “To Fritz Davenport,” he said, “wherever he may be. I wish he were here.”
“To Fritz,” Diamond said.
Two dozen drinks were raised up, mine included. “To Fritz,” we echoed, and we drank. It was a balm, an acknowledgment of a missing comrade. My eyes stung, and I was surprised to see one or two other classmates wipe a finger across their eyes, too.
“So,” Roger Bloom said after a few moments, “are you writing anything new, Matthias?”
Fletcher Dupree smiled. “Drug dealers, arrests, guess you have a lot to write about, huh?” he said.
“Yeah, but not that,” I said. “I’ve got a new novel in mind.” It was true, inasmuch as I had just that moment thought of it.
“No shit,” Max Goren said. “What’s it about?”
“A cowboy,” I heard myself say. “Modern day, though, not the Wild West.”
There were several ohs and hmms of polite acknowledgment. Fletcher, though, looked disappointed. “How did you pick that?” he asked. “You know a lot about cowboys?”
I paused in my reply, letting the moment spin out. Someone coughed nervously. Slowly, Fletcher began to smile in anticipation. I grinned back at him. The hell with it. “Oh, I don’t know, Fletcher,” I said good-naturedly, looking him dead-on. “I’m a novelist. It interests me, and what I don’t know I’ll make up as I go along. Good enough for you?”
There was an awkward moment or two, the tension coiled around us. Fletcher frowned, and then Diamond grinned and said, “Yippee ki-yay, motherfucker!” and everyone laughed, the world righted again. Then we all drank and proposed other toasts: to Blackburne, to Sam Hodges, to the lions. As we laughed and remembered, I thought of Kevin Kelly and his angry rant against the school, how Blackburne held out a false promise of success. But as I looked around at my classmates, I saw that each of them had made his own way—Trip to the Washington Post, Diamond to the Marines, Max to real estate. Even Fritz, I realized. And me, too. I had found my way back to this group, these guys I had thought were lost to me, only to find they had been here all along. I had avoided them for so long because I’d felt damaged, sullied, not deserving of a place at the table. But Fritz had felt that way, too, through no fault of his own. And no matter what we had done, or what had happened to us, our places at this table had been set long ago, waiting for us to return.
I sat there among my classmates, my friends, and let their talk flow over me like clear water, this charmed circle of men with its missing brother who was not forgotten—who might yet be returned to us. Until then, we would go on, his absence a ghostly echo in our hearts that would cease when he appeared and we could welcome him back into the fold, letting the lion’s share of loss and grief slip away.