Most days when he woke up he had to work to remember what had transpired the previous day, taking a mental inventory upon opening his eyes, deciding whether he’d left things in good or bad condition before giving in to sleep, all while pushing back against the foreboding feeling he carried. This day was no exception as he lay still in his childhood bedroom, recalling where he was, and why.
He peered at the clock radio that had sat on his bedside table since high school and was pleased to see he’d managed to sleep half the day away. Then two disturbing recollections came in rapid succession: One, Davy was dead. And two, Nicole was here. But not at his house. At least not that.
He heaved himself out of bed with a sinking feeling as he went in search of coffee, hoping he wouldn’t find Anissa in his kitchen. He wondered when she would stop coming to the house and guessed it wouldn’t be until after the funeral. With the discovery of not just Davy’s body but also the new evidence implicating Gordon Swift, public curiosity would remain at a peak for a while.
He didn’t find Anissa in the kitchen, but he did find his mother. She was loitering there, pretending she wasn’t ready to pounce before he’d even had his first jolt of caffeine. This meant she had an unfair advantage, but at least she’d kept the coffee hot for him. He retrieved a cup from the little mug tree she’d had for as long as he could remember and filled it.
“Your publicist called this morning,” she said as he was lifting the first sip to his mouth. “Nicole, was it?”
He caught the suspicious tone in her voice, and it occurred to him that the years she’d spent guarding and observing and caring for him had given her a pervading awareness of what simmered under his skin, even the things he worked to tamp down, to keep hidden.
He nodded. “She probably tried my cell, but I was still asleep,” he said, making sure to sound nonchalant. Nothing good could come from his mother picking up on whatever was happening with him and Nicole.
“I’ll call her back.” He looked around the room, grateful there was no sign of Anissa, the memory of sprawling in her foyer a little too recent.
“Where’s Anissa?” he asked, changing the subject. “Shouldn’t she be here by now?” He wondered if his mother knew that Anissa lived in the spot where Davy was last seen. Anissa had acted like it was a coincidence, but he wasn’t sure he bought the act. The world was a strange place, but he wasn’t sure it was that strange. He sucked down more coffee, willing it to enter his bloodstream, to fuel him to get through another day.
“She was needed at the station,” his mother said. “I hope it’s because they’re finally gonna arrest that SOB.” She pointed at the newspaper that lay unfolded on the kitchen table. The headline read, “Davy Malcor Discovery Yields Incriminating Evidence.” Under the headline were two photos, side by side: Davy’s last school picture and Gordon Swift’s bio photo, lifted from his artist website.
Thaddeus felt his free hand involuntarily clench into a fist, an old habit. He understood in the most basic way the need to exact justice, to take an eye for an eye, a life for a life, something that was less of a conscious decision than a conclusion reached in his soul. Perhaps he’d write his next memoir from prison as he did time for justifiable homicide. He’d have to give phone interviews instead of in-person readings when the book came out.
He looked away from the front page, out the window above the kitchen sink, needing to see anything but the image of Davy, forever linked to a man Thaddeus hated. Was there a stronger word for hate? He thought of synonyms: despised, reviled, loathed, abhorred. He needed le mot juste. Yet none of these came close.
He looked into his empty cup. He’d sucked down the coffee like a shot. He reached for the coffeepot for a refill and saw Larkin through the window back at the picnic table. He remembered kissing her there all those years ago. And for once, instead of pushing away that particular memory as he should, he let himself have it. It was healthier to think about that than harming Gordon Swift.
He lifted his coffee cup toward the window.
“I’m going to talk to Larkin.”
“You’ve been spending time with her,” his mother said.
He stopped his trek to the back door and made a face at her, meant to indicate that he thought she was crazy. “No, I haven’t.”
She shrugged like it was no big deal. “More time than you did when you lived here. As I recall, you basically pretended she didn’t exist once you two were in high school.”
He felt a shimmer of anger flash through him. Not because what she said was untrue but because she had noticed it.
“We just didn’t have much in common, Mom,” he said, as if that explained why after October 12, 1985, he’d pretended he’d never kissed Larkin, ending their burgeoning relationship after deliberation and with intent. As if it had been a simple thing to forget, to never wonder what might’ve been.
“But now we do have something in common.” He took a sip of his coffee.
“Oh, and what’s that?” his mother asked.
“We’re both stuck back here with our mothers.” He carried his coffee outside, chuckling to himself over the look on his mother’s face.
Larkin, bent over a book, didn’t hear him approach and startled when he said hello.
She put her hands over the book and scolded him. “Thaddeus, you scared me!”
Thaddeus looked down to see what she was covering up, then recognized the typeface they’d used for his book, as familiar to him now as his own handwriting. He pointed at the book.
“What are you doing?”
She kept her hands in place, as if she could keep him from seeing the words on the pages, as if he hadn’t written every one of them.
“My mom had a copy of your book. So I thought I’d read it.”
He shuffled his feet. “I kinda figured you already had.”
She rolled her eyes. “You mean because everyone else in the world has?”
He gave her a look. “My own mother hasn’t.”
“Well, in her defense, she lived it, so . . .”
He shrugged. “I guess. But then, so did you.”
Their eyes met and a moment passed. He saw her consider, then decide where to take the moment.
“Not really,” she said, an edge to her voice. “You decided to save me from it. Remember?”
“Look, I’m sorry for what I said.”
“Why?” she asked. “Didn’t you mean it?” She closed the book without marking her place.
“I mean, I guess. Yes. I meant it. I just . . . didn’t know I was going to say it until it came out. Then I was so mortified that I’d said it, I ran away.”
She pointed at the closed book. “That admission’s not in here, though. At least, not that I can find.”
He smirked at her. “So you’re trying to see if I wrote about you?”
“No,” she said, a defensive tone creeping into her voice. “I just needed to see if I’m the last to know.”
He squinted at her. “Know what?”
“The truth about what happened to us, the reason things just . . . stopped. I mean, we were only fifteen years old, and it was probably never going to be anything, but I think about it sometimes. You know, what might’ve been. I always thought it was something I did—or didn’t do. I spent a lot of my life telling myself it didn’t matter, but the truth is . . . The truth is, I never understood and . . . Well, I guess I’ve always wondered. And it never entered my mind that you . . .”
“That I what?” Thaddeus asked, placing his coffee cup on the picnic table. The coffee had gone cold anyway.
She looked down as she spoke. “That when you started avoiding me, you thought you were saving me.”
“I did,” he said, his voice low, almost a whisper. “I wouldn’t wish our lives on someone I hated. So why would I wish it on someone I lo—”
She jumped up, finger in the air. “Don’t you dare finish that sentence. Don’t you dare.” She started to walk away from the table, but then turned back and picked up the book, hugging it to her chest.
“The thing I don’t understand is why I never got a vote. Why didn’t you let me decide?”
He pressed his lips into a hard line and studied her for a moment. “Because you’re a kind and loyal person. You’re one of the best people I’ve ever met, to this day. I knew what you’d choose. And I couldn’t let you do that.”
This time, she walked away from him, and he had no choice but to let her go.