Joe and Sue watch me hemorrhage, and as they do, it’s like they finally understand.
Joe reaches out to grab my hand as Sue says the words I’ve been yearning to hear: “Oh, baby, no, no, no. Not you. It’s not your fault.”
“I was going to move to Seattle,” I say between sobs. “We were going to have this great life together, but . . .” I don’t know how to finish. I didn’t have the money. I got scared. I got stuck. So she went. And I stayed.
“No!” Joe says. “That’s not it. You were the world to her. You were her rock back here.”
“But that is it. Don’t you see?” I cry. “When she went away, I was mad. At me mostly, but I took it out on her. I wasn’t there for her. If I had been, she would’ve come to me instead of him.”
“No, Cody,” Sue says. “She wouldn’t have.”
There’s a devastating finality in Sue’s voice. She wouldn’t have. Meg would’ve kept it a secret, as she always did.
Joe clears his throat, his way of holding back tears. “I get why you went after this guy, Cody. Because if this Bradford did it, then someone else murdered her. Someone other than her. Then maybe we could grieve her with clean, simple broken hearts.”
I look up at Joe. Oh, God. I miss her so much. But I am so angry with her. And if I can’t forgive her, how can I forgive myself?
“But if Meg weren’t sick in the first place, she wouldn’t have been in that man’s crosshairs,” Sue says, looking imploringly at Joe. “He wouldn’t have had any power over her. Look at Cody. She went on those boards, she tangled with that man. We just read the messages.” Sue turns to me now. “And you’re still here.”
No! They don’t understand. How he burrows into the mind, plays games, hits all your weak spots. He could’ve brought me down too.
But then I look around. I’m sitting at the dining room table I’ve eaten so many meals around over the years. Meg is gone. The last few months have been hell. But Sue’s right. I’m still here.
The file is open, the pages splayed. Everything I went through to get this—the rabbit hole I went down with Bradford? I’d thought it was a mark of his strength. But maybe it was a test of mine.
I’m still here.
I put the pages back in the folder and slide it over to Joe. “I think I need to stop with this,” I say. “You guys do what you think is best.”
He takes the file from me. “We’ll show it to the police first thing in the morning.”
There’s a moment of silence. Then Sue says, “And, Cody,” but it doesn’t scare me like before. “Thank you,” she finishes.
Then she and Joe are up, out of their seats, holding me so tight, and we are all crying. We stay like that for a long time until Sue says, “You’re a bag of bones. Please, Cody. Let me feed you.”
I lean back in the upholstered chair. I’m not hungry, but I say okay. Sue heads toward the kitchen. Joe stays with me.
“You should’ve told us,” he says, tapping the file.
“You should’ve told me, too,” I say.
He nods.
“And Scottie. You should tell him. He already knows. I mean, he doesn’t know the specifics, but he suspects someone helped Meg. He’s the one who clued me in.”
Joe strokes his chin in wonderment. “Nothing gets past kids. No matter how much you try to protect them.” He sighs. “We’ve started talking to families of other suicide victims. Putting it out in the open. It’s the only thing that seems to help.” He grasps my hand so tight, the metal of his wedding band leaves an imprint. “I’ll talk to Scottie,” he promises.
Sue comes back in from the kitchen. She puts down a heaping plate in front of me, some kind of stew.
I take a bite.
“It’s homemade,” Sue tells me. Then she smiles. It may be the weakest smile I’ve ever seen, but it’s there.
I take another bite. It turns out that I’m hungry after all.
41
I fall asleep that night at nine o’clock, still in my clothes, and when I wake up at five the next morning, Tricia is asleep at the kitchen table. I touch her lightly on the wrist.
“Did you just get home?” I ask.
She shrugs, all bleary-eyed and fuzzy.
“Were you waiting up for me?”
She shrugs again. “Sort of.”
“You can go to bed now. I’m fine.”
“You are?” She yawns. “How’d it go with Joe and Sue?”
“Good. I’ll tell you about it later, when you’re semiconscious.”
“Semiconscious,” she repeats. But then she gets serious. “But you’re okay?”
I nod. “I am okay.” I’ve been saying that for a long time, but now I understand that it’s true.
“We’ll go to breakfast in a few hours. Diner?” she says.
“Sounds like a plan.”
Tricia trudges to bed. I unpack my bag and put all my filthy stuff in a pile. I’m going to have to take a trip to the Laundromat today, or maybe I can ask Mrs. Chandler if I can do a load at her place when I’m there next. People have been pretty generous when I’ve asked for help. I put on a pot of coffee and go out to the front porch while the coffee brews.
Dawn is breaking. The hills are pink with the first blushes of morning light, though a layer of mist still covers the ground. There’s almost no one out on the street at this hour, no cars, save for the paperboy’s pickup truck.
In the distance, I hear another car, the tick of its engine familiar, though it’s not the Garcias’ Explorer, and Tricia’s ancient Camry is parked in the driveway. It blurs down the next block, and I do a double take. No. It’s not possible.
But then it loops around and comes back down the next block, going slowly, like it’s lost. I stand up from the porch and walk toward the street. The car stops suddenly. Then it just sits there in the middle of the street, engine idling, before reversing up the block and turning onto my street, stopping right next to the curb where I’m standing.
He looks like hell. A day’s worth of beard on his face and who knows how many months of sleeplessness purpling his eyes. Maybe he got this bad on the trip and I didn’t notice because it happened by degrees, but the Ben who steps out of that car is almost unrecognizable from that pretty, snarling boy I saw onstage a few months ago.
“What are you doing here?” I ask him.