I turned the weapon over slowly in my hands, inspecting its angles and contours, its meticulously milled surfaces. Pulling back the slide, I noticed the smoothness of the action, the precision and solidity of the metallic click as the weapon cocked. I turned the barrel toward me and studied the small round opening, a darkness as black and deep as my despair.
The siren song grew louder, accompanied by the sound of blood roaring in my head, roaring like the sea. Then I heard something else: I heard voices. Children’s voices. “Grandpa Bill! Grandpa Bill! Where are you, Grandpa Bill?” I heard two pairs of small feet running down the hall, running toward my bedroom. I hid the gun, tucking it behind my back, sliding it surreptitiously beneath my pillow.
Tyler was the first to reach the bed. Without breaking stride, he launched himself like a missile, soaring upward in a graceful, gleeful arc, then belly-flopping onto the mattress with enough force to rattle the headboard against the wall. Walker, smaller and slower, tried to emulate him, but barely cleared the edge of the mattress, landing like a spent fish—but giggling as exuberantly as his aerobatic brother. When I reached out and gathered them in my arms, holding them hard, Tyler squirmed halfway free and looked up at me. “Are you crying, Grandpa Bill?”
“No, honey,” I lied. “I just have something in my eyes.”
Walker snuggled against me. “I didn’t see Grandmommy in the kitchen,” he said. “Where is she?”
“Grandmommy’s gone, buddy,” I said hoarsely.
“Where did she go?”
“To heaven, stupid,” said Tyler.
“But when will she come back?” There was a new note of urgency in his voice.
“She’s not coming back, buddy,” I whispered. “She can’t.”
I could not have said who felt the worst: the yearning three-year-old, the heartsick fifty-year-old, or the tough-guy five-year-old, who was perhaps just big enough to reach the bitter fruit of the Tree of Knowledge, and to grasp that something precious to him was lost beyond all finding, broken beyond all mending.
WE ATE THE TAKE-OUT PIZZA JEFF AND JENNY HAD brought as a surprise, or a gesture of kindness, or an act of pity. Sitting around the kitchen table, we made awkward small talk, all the adults careful not to look at Kathleen’s chair, which loomed monumental in its emptiness. I took a bite, but the crust felt and tasted like cardboard in my mouth, and I laid the wedge on my plate. The boys, on the other hand—their tears dried, their upset trumped by their hunger and the pizza’s aroma—wolfed down two slices apiece, then bolted from the table and ran squealing down the hall.
Jeff nodded at my virtually untouched food. “No dessert unless you clean your plate,” he said with a wink, echoing a line he’d heard from me a thousand times growing up.
I shook my head. “It’s good—and y’all were sweet to bring it. But I’ve got no appetite tonight.”
Jenny reached across the table and laid a hand on my arm. “I’m worried about you,” she said. “You’re skin and bones—like one of your skeletons.” She looked me up and down. “I’ve seen coat hangers fill out a shirt better than you do these days.” It was a good line, and I did my best to give her a smile, but it felt more like a grimace.
Down the hall, the rhythmic creak of bedsprings ceased, and the boys’ chatter changed tone, shifting from giggling to squabbling. Jenny noticed it first, of course. “I founded it,” protested Walker. “Give it back. Give it back!”
“You’re too little,” scoffed Tyler. “You’re just a baby.”
“Boys,” Jenny called toward them. “Cut it out!”
“Give it back!” wailed Walker. “Give it back!”
Suddenly a terrible realization hit me. “Oh dear God,” I gasped, leaping up so suddenly my chair toppled backward. “Please no.” I ran from the kitchen, my feet scrabbling on the tile as I made the turn into the dining room and dashed down the hall.
“Let go. Let go!” yelled Walker. I heard a growl like that of some wild, angry animal, and then a howl of pain.
My feet seemed mired in mud or concrete, moving in excruciating, exhausting slow motion. “Boys,” I called out desperately. “Stop! Don’t move!”
“Dad? What’s going on? Dad?” Behind me, as I ran toward the bedroom, I could hear panic in Jeff’s voice.
“Jeff, go,” I heard Jenny saying, her voice panicky. “Hurry! Something’s wrong!”
“Boys, don’t move!” I shouted again. I reached the bedroom doorway and froze in horror. My grandsons, on my bed, were wrestling over a nine-millimeter handgun, the weapon seesawing back and forth in their hands as they fought for possession. “Boys! Stop it! Put it down!”
But they were too caught up in the struggle to hear or to heed. I hesitated, afraid to grab for the gun but terrified not to. Jeff and Jenny lurched against my back, then craned to see what was happening in the bedroom. Then came a jolt and a scream as Jenny hurtled past me. An instant later a gunshot cracked, and voices around me and within me began to shriek.
THE EMERGENCY DEPARTMENT AT UT MEDICAL Center was surprisingly quiet, the waiting room empty except for the three of us. Jeff, Tyler, and I sat without speaking. I sat hunched over, my elbows on my knees, my chin in my hands. Jeff cast occasional glances at me, his expression a mixture of confusion, anger, and sorrow.
Jenny emerged from the treatment area, shaking her head, and sat down beside Jeff and Tyler, ignoring me. Tyler crawled into her lap, and she wrapped her arms around him, enfolding him to her breast, one hand over the ear that wasn’t pressed against her. She drew a deep breath and blew it out slowly. “Well,” she said to Jeff. “They just finished splinting the fingers. Luckily, the breaks weren’t bad. And kids heal fast.” She gave a quick, almost i
mperceptible smile. “Walker’s in love with the nurse. He’s listening to her heart through a stethoscope. She said she’d bring him out in a minute.”
Jenny looked at me for the first time, and I braced myself against the anger I saw in her eyes. “The doctor asked me how it happened,” she went on. “I told him the boys were fighting over a gun, and Walker’s fingers got twisted in the trigger guard.” I nodded grimly; the police were probably on their way to arrest me, and I deserved it. Leaving a loaded handgun lying around where kids could find it—what would the charge be, criminal neglect? Reckless endangerment? She held my eyes, then, after an uncomfortable pause, added, “I told him it was a cap gun.” I stared at her, dumbfounded. She shrugged, though her eyes still glittered with anger. “Now, why the hell was that thing laying right there where the boys could get ahold of it?”
How could I explain? “Decker—Captain Decker, from KPD—loaned it to me,” I said lamely, “when Satterfield sent me . . .” I trailed off, not wanting to say too much in front of Tyler. “When Satterfield sent me that package. Decker thought I might need it.”
Jeff frowned. “But what was it doing on the bed?” he demanded. “You said Satterfield’s in solitary, and his girlfriend’s in jail.” I nodded but didn’t offer any other explanation; I was too ashamed to tell them the truth, and I didn’t have it in me to conjure up a plausible lie. Jeff’s eyes bored into me. “Tyler told me you were crying when we showed up.”
“Well, I’m pretty sad these days, son, you know?”
“Well, yeah, Dad, I do know,” he snapped. “I am, too. Mom’s gone, and it hurts like hell. Hurts you most, maybe, but hurts me, too. And Jenny. And the boys, even though they don’t really understand it. But here’s the thing you don’t seem to get. If something happened to you—if we lost you, too?” He was speaking low now, in an angry whisper, so Tyler couldn’t hear. “Do you have any idea how damaging that would be for these boys?” I blinked, blindsided by the turn the conversation had taken. “You lost your dad when you were a kid,” he went on, “and that sucks, and I’m sorry,” he said, though he sounded more fierce than sympathetic. “But you had your grandparents—all four of ’em, all good as gold, the way you tell it. Tyler and Walker just lost one. Don’t you dare take another one from them.” With that, he stood up and strode to the far side of the waiting room, staring out the window at the ambulance parked outside.