VICTOR AWOKE LATER than he had in decades. The clock on the night stand showed 10:30.
Fran lay asleep on her back, mouth agape. Asleep, Victor knew, she felt no pain.
All these years, she’d been asleep to Victor, too.
By evening, she would be awake to it. It would shatter her, but her son, their son, would be free. It’s going to be all right, he thought. My boy is going to be all right.
He would reveal all, even if it meant losing Fran to free their son.
Victor would be free too. He’d found a way to confess his sins and to be free of them. Finally. God, through this trial, had shown Victor the way to relieve his burden and return to the light of the truth.
His chest felt lighter than anytime since his days on the football field. It was as though his heart had been encrusted in a black shell. And last night, when he’d made his decision, whatever repercussions it might lead to, he felt that shell crack. Pieces fell away, as if another man lived inside him, a better, more Godly man, ready to be born.
“Yes,” he would say. Yes, he would shout. “I did it. A sinful act. Do what you will to me. Call me what you will. Judge me as you will. Only one can truly judge me and He is not you. Just let my son go. Release him.”
Victor rose from bed and stretched, ambled to the bathroom.
The window Brad had smashed in his attempt to flee was boarded over, but the cold air found its way in enough so Victor could see his breath. Everything he touched was cold. The light switch. The counter. The faucet handles. The linoleum floor was icy on his bare feet. He stood before the medicine-cabinet mirror. He was surprised to see his face bearded.
Despite the beard his face appeared skeletal, his cheekbones pronounced. His eyes looked feral. He looked like one of the hikers on the news who’d lost his way in a vast wilderness he’d thought he’d could handle, but couldn’t; and though he’d found his way out, he looked ravaged, as if he’d gone without nourishment of body or soul for years.
He cranked the faucet and filled his cupped palms with cold water, pressed his face into them. Then he lathered his stubble with shaving cream and heated a razor beneath scalding water, swiped a circle in the fogged mirror and shaved.
He was struck by the face gazing back. He looked almost boyish.
Almost innocent.
He took a hot shower. The heat revived. Melted away at the casing he had lived in for so many years. It was nearly too hot to bear. He put his face to the water and let it pound him. His back was still sore where King had pounded on it.
Showered, he stepped out, braced himself against the cold of the room. Steam eddied. He felt as though he were moving through clouds.
In the bedroom, he selected his best corduroys, the ones whose fraying at the cuffs was least unnoticeable. He put on the whitest of his T-shirts and a flannel check shirt. The shirt was missing its lowest button on the front, but when he tucked it in you could barely notice. He pulled on the new boots he’d bought, wishing now he had not scuffed them in a pathetic attempt to appear more salt-of-the-earth. He was done pretending. He put on his windbreaker then left the house with his wife sleeping, safe from the wakened world.
THIS WAS IT. He would tell Merryfield what he knew first; tell him he was going to the cops and Merryfield’s world was about to unravel. It did not matter that Victor’s world would unravel too. His boy would go free with what Victor revealed.
He strode down the sidewalk, hurrying toward Merryfield’s office building on Main Street when his cell phone rang and he was told the news that stopped him.
He turned and ran back for home.
Confronting Merryfield would have to wait.