52

As much as I hated the thought of professional counseling, I found it impossible not to be charmed by Aaron Gillespie. He sat in his office on a brown leather couch, white shirt rolled up at the sleeves, a paisley tie hanging down over his soft stomach. I took my place in a wingback chair and crossed my legs. He knew I was there under protest, but within minutes we had picked up where we left off at the gym a few weeks before.

He had a way of asking gentle questions and waiting patiently for the responses. Are you getting any sleep? Are you planning to attend Antoine Marshall’s execution? How do you feel about that? How are you dealing with your dad’s death? The rhythm of the conversation relaxed me.

The questions were straightforward, and he didn’t take notes or make any of those soft, guttural noises that signaled deep insight about some psychological flaw in me. We talked for about forty-five minutes before he even mentioned the incident in court.

“Do you think Bill Masterson overreacted when he required that you get counseling?”

“Yes.”

“Do you think you need to be here?”

“Not really.”

“Do you think he did it just to save political face?”

That one made me stop. The Republican primary was next month, and Masterson was certainly a political creature. But I had always believed that he had my best interests at heart.

“Not really. I’ve seen him make some pretty unpopular decisions even though he’s in the middle of a campaign. I think he was just reminding me who’s boss.”

Gillespie stuck out a bottom lip and nodded. He pulled his arm down from the back of the couch and leaned forward slightly. “Jamie, if you want me to, I’m perfectly happy to sign off that you’ve been through counseling and that you’re good to go. Frankly, I was glad to see you blow off a little steam in court the other day. I think your biggest problem is that you tend to hold too much inside and don’t have anybody to talk with.”

He was right about that. Partly right, anyway. I did hold a lot inside. But my biggest problem was that the one thing bothering me most was the one thing I couldn’t talk to anybody about. At least not until I figured it out. I certainly couldn’t talk to Gillespie—someone who had known my mom and dad. But the days for Antoine Marshall’s scheduled execution and Caleb Tate’s trial were ticking closer. And I was sitting on a piece of dynamite that could blow my father’s reputation into tiny pieces of shrapnel.

“Jamie?” Gillespie said, bringing me back around.

“Oh . . . sorry.”

He tilted his head. “Is there something you want to discuss?”

“No. I’m fine.”

He paused. “Okay, but let me ask you a question that’s unrelated to what happened in court. Like everything else, this stays between you and me.”

Gillespie waited until I nodded my assent. He had made a subtle shift from friend to professional counselor, and there was a new tone of seriousness in his voice.

“Do you blame yourself, even a little, for your mother’s death?”

The question landed like a sledgehammer, and I jerked my head back, furrowing my brow. “No. Why do you ask?”

“Are you sure?”

He must have been able to read the guilt on my face. When my mother died, I was sixteen. I had been in some trouble that week and had a midnight curfew. But that night, when I still wasn’t home and didn’t answer my cell phone at one in the morning, my parents sent Chris to my friend’s house to pick me up. He left the garage door open. Fifteen minutes after he left, Antoine Marshall slipped into our house and tried to steal enough stuff to feed his meth habit. My mother heard him and came downstairs, thinking Chris and I were home. She screamed. Shots were fired. My dad came running to see what had happened. Marshall shot him, too. Chris and I discovered the bodies. My dad was unconscious, my mom dead.

“No. . . . I’m not sure.”

It was the truth. But it was also the first time I had admitted it out loud.

“Jamie, you can’t put that on yourself. There’s nothing you did to cause it, and there’s nothing you could have done differently to prevent it. That man was high, and he had a gun. If you and Chris had been home, there might have been two more deaths.”

I had heard it all before. And I couldn’t argue with the logic. But none of that made the guilt go away.

“I still ask the questions, Doc. What if the garage door hadn’t been open? What if Chris or I had heard somebody and called out—would Marshall have left?” I felt myself getting emotional, which I was determined not to do. “Plus . . . the hardest thing . . . is that the last time I saw my mom, we had a fight.” I felt my bottom lip begin to tremble and decided not to dig any deeper. I bit my lip and looked down at the floor.

“You want to talk about that—your relationship with your mom?”

I shook my head. Not right now.

“Okay,” Gillespie said. “But if I can be honest with you, I think you’ve got some survivor’s guilt, and it wouldn’t hurt for us to talk some more about this.”

“I’ll be fine,” I assured him.

I left without scheduling another appointment.

But later that evening, I couldn’t let it go. I kept reliving that night twelve years ago and wishing I had been at home. The what-ifs kept churning through my mind—and in every scenario, if I had just stayed home or at least kept my curfew, things would have turned out differently. Antoine Marshall would have moved on to another house, and my family would have been saved.

A few minutes before midnight, I sent an e-mail to Aaron Gillespie requesting available dates for my next session.