Burke glances at the box and for a second, we stand in silence, the memory of John Booker between us. Regrets and what-ifs and the burning is back inside my gut.
Oddly, and maybe for the first time ever, I’m saved by my parents strolling up the walk.
“Rembrandt,” my father says, landing on our wide porch. He still carries himself like the farmer-slash-builder he is, and I’m sure we’ll later have a dissection of my current projects. Wide-shouldered, his hair now fully gray and thinning, Vincent Stone bears the scars in his countenance of holding us all together—well, at least my mother—during the years of wondering, a decade of grief and anger and questions that held us hostage.
This week is the unfortunate anniversary of the discovery of my brother’s remains, twenty-three years ago, a
nd I can see it lurking behind my mother’s smile as she arrives. She still walks with a cane, sometimes struggles to form words, the right side of her face sags, always at half-pout.
In this way, it’s always with us, Mickey’s murder, embedded in our bones. But like good Minnesotans, we don’t talk about it, tuck it away along with the anger, the frustration.
But sometimes, there’s just nothing to say.
“Mom,” I say and give her a hug. Her bones are fragile beneath my touch, and she’s lost more weight, her crazy no salt diet stripping the fat from her bones. “You look good,” I add, because that’s our way.
She pats my cheek, knows that I’m lying. “Where’s my favorite granddaughter?” Her words are slushy, but we’re all used to that and I understand her perfectly. Her favorite granddaughter. It’s just a funny thing she says—because we all know Ash is her only granddaughter.
“In the backyard. Waiting for you.” I wink and it feels like we’ve put ourselves back together, that we’re going to be okay, for one more day.
My dad comes in and I know I should mention the fact that it’s his birthday week too. But we long ago stopped celebrating anything—birthdays, Christmas, Thanksgiving. After all, what did we have to be thankful for?
They head into the backyard and it’s then that I turn and, on a crazy whim I know I’ll pay for, I rip free the packing tape on the box and peek inside one edge of the cover.
Inside, nearly packed to the rim, lay files and files of my old cases. Cold cases. Failures, frustrations, and everything I hated about my job.
The cases that won’t let me sleep.
Thank you, John Booker. In his last vengeful act, he gave them to me. Punishment for not being the guy he wanted me to be, maybe.
I pick up the box (the last thing I want is for someone to root through these) and head into my office, a room at the front of the house, away from the chaos of the kitchen.
There’s a smell to my office—coffee, old books, the leather from a chair Eve bought right after I left the force—that should inspire me, I’m sure of it. I even have the cover of my first—and currently, only, book—on my wall. Success, right?
I’m starting to think that first blockbuster is a fluke, a literary anomaly. I’m sure my agent thinks this too, but his emails to me are full of how’s that new ending going, and we have publishers interested.
Everyone, trying to keep me from wallowing in the dark truth.
I blew it, and big, and there’s no going back to the life I had. The career, the legacy that I was good, painfully good, at.
What’s left is my screen saver swirling against a blackness, hiding an empty page.
I set the box on my desk—the first table Eve and I bought together—careful not to bump the mouse, then I leave. Shut the door.
Because that’s where the stories, and the memories, and even the failures should stay. Locked under the cover of darkness.
I turn back to the party, the wounds fresh and pulsing in my gut, now keenly reminded of the brutal truth.
Try as I might, there are no happy endings.
Chapter 2
The worst part about the dream is the helplessness. You know what I mean, the way you watch from the outside, your feet cemented, your body encased in a sort of glue, and even the words issuing from your mouth are garbled as you scream for everything to stop. Or in the case of this particular re-occuring nightmare—to run.
Please, Oh, God, run.
Because every single time I’m standing on the corner, screaming, as a young mother, her toddler on her hip, goes into the Daily Grind coffee shop. That’s when my heart starts pounding, my breathing thickens, and the sweat coats my body because I know her. She’s Melinda Jorgenson, and in her identification photo she had blonde hair, was wearing a pair of yoga pants, a T-shirt and tennis shoes. In my dream, she’s fresh from her morning walk and meeting her mother—I don’t remember what she looks like. Most importantly, she is carrying her two-year-old son.
Blue eyes. Blond curls. He’s holding a Beanie Baby, a frog, I think.