I sit staring at Thorolese Myllstone in her sparsely decorated room. Most of her belongings are still in boxes piled against the wall behind me. The walls are painted a cheery yellow; a window behind her reveals the tops of budding tree branches made bare by the harsh winter. The architect said bright colors and lots of natural light were good for seniors, said there were studies done proving this. On a small maple shelf, a picture of Syrus, smiling wide and happy, a look so completely foreign to the boy I knew, the boy I killed that night in the snow.
“He only smiled like that for me,” she brags like so many mothers, undeniably proud of their child and completely blind in the moment to their faults. She picks up the framed picture and hands it to me.
My hands tremble holding it. “He looks like a nice kid,” I manage to say. I hand her back the picture.
“My niece is gonna help unpack the rest of this stuff an’ finally get me nice an’ settled. Patrice is a good girl. Takes care of me like she my own child,” she boasts.
Thorolese smiles, the same as Syrus, and pats my hand. “Patrice the reason I sought you out. She took me to your church this morning. That was a mighty powerful sermon today. Mighty powerful indeed.”
“I’m so happy you think so.”
“Mmm-hmm. Sat right up in front.” Her eyes glimmer searching mine for some recognition of her face. I don’t remember her. I don’t remember the face of the woman whose son I murdered. I saw her only once standing outside of the church where they held Syrus’s funeral. Six men carried his oak casket down the stairs. She followed it, hunched over, face covered by a handkerchief while she bawled and wept and mourned her son, mourned Syrus.
Thorolese gets up and pours a cup of tea and serves it to me without request. I don’t like tea, but I drink. The cup is small and delicate. I think about the tea parties Layla made me have with her when she was three or four years old. The cups and plates seemed tiny in my hands and so did she. Small and fragile, something to be protected and cherished. I failed at keeping her safe. I’ve failed at her loving me. Now God has delivered me to the hands of the woman whose life I’ve irreparably destroyed.
Words escape me, so I sip my tea and watch Thorolese do the same. She puts her cup down and tightens the scarf around her head, blue with white lilies.
“I know you got places to be, Reverend Potter.”
“Call me Jackson, Mrs. Myllstone.”
“I will do no such thing! That’s disrespectful the way I was raised,” she gasps. “And it’s Ms. ’cause I was never married.”
Fluorescent lighting emits this annoying buzz-hiss. “I asked you here ’cause what you said this morning when you was preaching about letting go of the people who’ve hurt you. I wanna do that for the man who took my baby, my Syrus. I know you know him. That y’all are friends. I saw him at your church today. I’d never forget his face, but I couldn’t bring myself to say anything to that man.” She sighs. “Thought I forgave him, but when I saw him, it all came back. Maybe I ain’t as over everything as I think.”
I almost drop my cup so I set it down on the small brown table. “Ms. Myllstone, to forgive someone who took from you what was taken, your child, some would say that’s practically impossible.”
“Pastor, you know better than anyone else with God all things are possible.”
Would she believe all things possible if she knew the real murderer of her son is sitting across from her? That she served him a cup of tea?
“I do know Lebanon King. We are friends, but I’m not sure what you want from me, how you think I can be of service.”
“I don’t know. I was hoping you’d pray with me, for me, for my son, that he found peace away from this earth since he never found peace on it.”
“You don’t think he was at peace? Do you believe he is now?”
She rises again and shuffles behind me to refill her cup of tea. “I don’t know, Pastor Jackson. I know he was, how you say it? Troubled. He could be downright mean, a bully, and he had the ability to hurt others. He’s hurt me.” Thorolese puts down her cup and softly pulls down the collar of her blouse, four small dark dots are embedded beneath her collarbone. “Syrus did this when he was twelve. Took the fork he was eatin’ with and stabbed me with it. His daddy said he was comin’ to visit him and never showed up. It hardened my boy, being disappointed like that, and I couldn’t make it better. I tried though. But he still took his disappointment, his anger out on me.”
Thorolese raised her sleeve where a scar, shaped like a crescent moon, was etched on her forearm. “Syrus did this when I didn’t want him to go out that night, the night he was killed. He pushed me out the way and I cut myself on a broken door frame. I just knew something bad was gonna happen that night, but he didn’t listen.” She sniffles and wipes her eyes with the back of her hand. “He was still my child. I birthed him. I knew the bad, but I knew the good. He helped me with rent. Never forgot my birthday, and, if he was havin’ a real good day, he gave the best hugs in the world, like a warm mountain of love surrounding you. My Syrus was hurt so he hurt other people. Maybe this was always gonna happen. Too many wounded out there. And maybe, well, I can’t help but think to do what that boy did to my baby, that he was hurtin’ somethin’ awful, too.”
“I’m sure he was Ms. Myllstone. I’m so sure he was.”
She stirs honey into her tea and slowly nods, affirming there was enough pain in this world that plenty can be brought to any and all doorsteps, from a janitor to a president or even a pretend holy man like myself.
“Maybe then I can tell him, I can forgive him or learn to at least. Maybe I can look on his face and give him some peace and find some myself.”
“Do you want me to bring him to you?”
She smiles wide, her gaze is far away, like Mom’s and Sara’s in the hospital room. “Well, Pastor, I think you can help me so when I get ready to see him, I can bear it. And then, maybe I’ll get some peace for myself. Like I said, I know me and I knew Syrus. He wasn’t a good boy, but he was my boy, and he didn’t deserve what happened to him, that boy hittin’ him all those times, but maybe I can find out why he did what he did.”
Of all the wisdom Thorolese has shared, one fragment rings loud as a bell in my ears. Syrus was hit all those times. I hit Syrus once and I ran. One time.
“Ms. Myllstone, what do you mean all those times? From what I remember about—what Lebanon told me, I thought Syrus was hit once and died.”
“Naw, baby. I saw my Syrus’s body. I saw it.” She shudders. “The doctor told me, what was the term? Blunt trauma.”
“Blunt force trauma,” I correct.
“Yes! That’s what he said. Multiple blows. The first hit hurt him. Didn’t kill him. He got hit at least seven times. Seven. Can you imagine what it took to do that?”
She finishes the rest of her tea and sets the cup down in front of her. “We had a closed casket. Couldn’t let people see him like that.”
Only from the edges of my vision do I see Thorolese make her way around the table to sit down next to me. “You okay, Pastor Jackson? You ill?”
“Where’s your bathroom?”
“Just down the hall, first door on the right.”
The bathroom is compact and smells like lavender. I vomit into the sink. And now the bathroom smells like lavender and rancid meatloaf.
Thirty years! I’ve wasted thirty years. And I’m raging at myself, but even more than I want to yell and shout and scream, I just cry in sorrow and relief. I use a fancy rose-colored lace towel to muffle my sobs.
I’m not a murderer. I’ve spent what feels like an eternity believing I was! Lebanon was the only one there after I hit Syrus once and ran off. Lebanon was the one who hit Syrus over and over again. He was responsible for Syrus’s death and held it over my head. And I’ve spent decades loathing and hiding and hating myself, keeping everyone around me far away and it was for nothing. Nothing!
All this time. All this damn time!
Ms. Myllstone might not get the closure she craves because I might kill him.
I might kill Lebanon.