Chapter Sixty
Sixty
I went to the medicine cabinet and pulled out a bottle of NyQuil. I took a generous swig, hoping for rest. Tomorrow I was going to drive to Rawling, Pennsylvania, and find out if Declan Harris was dead.
- - - - -
Declan wasn’t dead. It took me a couple of days before someone directed me to the Bridgewood Apartments.
The place was a total dump—dirty towels as curtains, trash in the bushes, living room furniture on the lawn, molding from periodic rain.
It was the type of place that belonged on the outskirts of town, only it sat right in the middle, on a street behind the post office, across from a park.
I sat in my car for hours before I saw Declan. He came out of nowhere, on foot, and lay down on one of the lawn couches. I proceeded to watch him shoot up and pass out. I’d never seen someone do drugs like that in real life—the real kind, the needle kind.
Once he stopped moving, I climbed out of my car. It was full-on nighttime now, but there were enough streetlights that I could get all the way to him without having to step into the dark.
I could smell him, or the couch, once I reached the lawn. It was a urine-mildew mix that made me gag. A breeze would blow the scent away and then it would come back once the gust passed, reintroducing me to it and never quite letting me get used to it.
I walked right up to the couch and stared down at him.
His face was gaunt and pitted, trying to hide behind a struggling beard.
I didn’t know what I was feeling. It’s hard to tell what’s fair for a person like that.
He was an asshole when he was younger, but as far as I knew, he hadn’t killed anyone.
He hadn’t even really hurt anyone. He was just a jerk. We were the ones who’d poisoned him.
He’d stayed in that facility with me for a year and half after Natalie left.
There were lasting effects. He had some kind of issue with his kidneys and eventually he had to be taken somewhere better equipped to care for him.
I had no clue what kind of man he had become.
Or how much of it had to do with what we had done to him.
I didn’t know why, but I started to fixate on the distance between his mouth and his nose.
They seemed close together. Were they closer than normal?
I put my hand to my own nose, measuring the distance to my mouth, pulling back my fingers to inspect the spacing like it was scientific research.
It was normal, I guess. Maybe I was overthinking it.
I reached down, putting my thumb on the side of his nose, then my pointer finger on the other side, ready to squeeze if I was so inclined.
He didn’t react to my touch so I lowered my palm, confirming the distance was short enough for me to cover his mouth.
I could easily pinch his nose closed and cover his mouth with the same hand.
I didn’t need to be this new person, miraculously cured from all of her dark shit. He didn’t look well. It would be mercy.
“Hey!” a woman’s voice screeched at me.
I yanked my hand back as I turned to see her walking from the park.
“What are you doing? Get away from him!” she yelled.
I wasn’t looking to get in a street fight, so I turned and ran back to my car, this time trying my best to stay out of the light.
I sped away, feeling pretty stupid. I had tried to channel every feeling of guilt and anger I had toward the universe into finding Declan, a guy I hadn’t seen or thought about in years, the only bad guy I could put right in front of my face, and it had really backfired.
This concept of seeking out a single person who’d wronged you in the past, exacting revenge, and finding closure was nice on paper but completely unrealistic. I hoped in the moments before he died, as Abel strangled the life out of him, Cody realized he’d gained nothing from it either.
On my long drive home, I received a text from Dominic.
Barbara had died. I had only met her once, the night I terrified the crap out of her, but it was comforting that he thought I was someone worth telling.
It was a reminder that I wasn’t so alone anymore.
And for the first time in a long time, that wasn’t a bad thing.
The wake was about an hour north of the city. The parking lot was full, but not so much that I couldn’t find a spot. People were going in and out; I didn’t recognize them and probably never would. I was hesitant to go inside. I didn’t want to walk in alone.
At that moment, I saw Kevin get out of his car and it seemed like a sign. I jumped out of my car and hustled to cross his path.
“Kevin,” I said once I was close enough to get his attention.
“Hey, Gwen.” He called me Gwen and I liked it. Did I have to be Marin now? No, I could be Gwen. I was Gwen.
“It’s good to see you again. C’mon,” he said, guiding me toward the entrance.
“I’m late,” he whispered once we were inside, patting me on the back and leaving me to join the already formed receiving line next to Megan.
Jake should have been there, standing in line with Barbara’s litter of stepchildren. Two months ago and he would have been there, maybe in between Dominic and Megan. Were they in chronological order? They must have all loved her to be there, standing in formation to hug strangers.
When I got to Dominic, he was in assembly-line mode, releasing the previous hug and leaving his arms open to greet the next person—me.
“Hi,” he said, blinking out of robot mode.
“I’m glad you came.” He enthusiastically threw his arms around me, and for a sick second I hoped people were noticing how much more important I was than them because of the intensity of the hug I received, as if somehow you could win a wake.
Maybe it stemmed from my desire to belong somewhere.
That seemed like a more respectable reason. I decided to go with that.
“I’m so sorry,” I whispered.
He pulled back to look at me but left his hands on my shoulders. “How are you? Are you okay?”
“Yeah, stop.” I shook off his concern. “Are you okay?”
“Yeah, we all knew it was coming.” I could tell it was just something he was reciting to people.
The lady behind me coughed and we turned to see the line was backing up.
“Will you wait?” he asked. “Wait for me outside? This part will be over in like twenty.”
“Yeah, sure,” I said. I squeezed his hand and moved on to smile and hug Megan, Kevin, and four more people who must have lived with Barbara and Dominic at some point.
I exited the funeral home and scanned the area for a place to sit.
It reminded me of the day I’d waited for Dominic outside Edgar Valley.
That had really been the beginning of it all.
Well, I guess getting the arm was the beginning, but that day at Edgar Valley was the beginning of everything that mattered.
A tuft of bleach-blond hair bounced across the parking lot, and when Porter noticed me, a grin exploded on his face and he started to run. He picked me up off the ground, shaking me in his arms, kissing me a million times on the cheek.
“Porter!” I yelled through my own smile. “It’s a wake.”
He put me down and allowed for a moment of solemn silence to acknowledge my point before taking my hand and dragging me to sit on a bench along the sidewalk. Once we were no longer technically on funeral home property, he bubbled up again.
“What the heck?” he said. “Where have you been?”
“I just needed some time.”
“You’re over that though, right?”
“Yeah.” I smiled. “I think so.”
“Good, you can’t leave me again.” He gave me a quick, forceful side hug and my heart grew three sizes, Grinch style.
“You seem to be doing all right,” I said.
“All the followers in the world can’t replace you.”
“Okay, calm down,” I said. It reminded me so much of before, when we used to sit together for hours in Painting Pots, talking about nonsense, his raging enthusiasm, my…whatever the opposite of that was. “Are you doing okay?” I asked. “Like, about the other stuff?”
“I haven’t killed any cats, if that’s what you’re asking.”
I laughed. “Sort of.”
“I have a therapist. My parents agreed to pay for it. Cheaper than college. I haven’t said anything about Reanne, so don’t worry. There’s enough I can talk about without that. I talk about you a little.” He bounced his eyebrows up and down. “Only the good stuff.”
“Of course,” I said.
“Do you think he told anyone?” Porter asked. “About what we did to Reanne’s body?”
I shrugged. “If he told the cops, they don’t seem to care. How would they prove it anyway? The rantings of a dead madman? They don’t even know where the body is.”
“Where is the body?”
I squinted at him. “Are you wearing a wire?”
Porter’s eyes bulged, the color draining from his cheeks.
“I’m kidding,” I said, and he exhaled, playfully backhanding me across the arm.
We sat in silence for a moment in such a way that it seemed we could almost forget everything bad that had happened. It was short-lived. Somber reflection was never his strong suit.
“I met two of the Teen Moms at a podcast convention in Austin.” He beamed.
“I don’t know what any of that means,” I said.
“Oh, Gwen,” he said, shaking his head with his patented disappointment. “Wait, can I call you Gwen?”
“Yes.”
“Not Marin?”
“No.”
“Good.”
I didn’t know why he said good; it was probably just easier for him, but I took it as acceptance.
“Well, isn’t this a sight for sore eyes,” a female voice came from behind us.
We both turned and there she was.
“Elyyyyyse!” Porter screeched, jumping up and hugging her, leaving her on the ground. Apparently the airborne hug was only for me and I felt special again.
She was in her typical dark clothing—less unique in this setting—eyeliner, haunted face, all the good stuff.
“Hey,” I said.
She close-mouth smiled at me and it was a tense moment.
Porter slid his eyes back and forth and read the mood. “I’m going to go in,” he said. “We’ll catch up later?”
“Yeah,” I said.
“And you too?” he asked Elyse, and she nodded.
“Okay, wish me luck.” He spun around and bounced toward the funeral home like he was about to go onstage. He really was such a light. I was glad he hadn’t become a serial killer. I’d been worried there for a minute.
“Can I join you?” she asked.
“Sure,” I said, scooching over, assuming she wouldn’t want to invade my personal space in the same way Porter had.
She took a seat but faced forward like she wasn’t fully committed to sitting with me. “Where have you been?” she asked.
“Nowhere,” I said. “Just trying to clear my head.”
She still didn’t look at me.
“No, that’s a lie,” I confessed. “I ended up looking up this guy I used to know from when I was a kid in that school with Natalie.”
That got her to glance over at me.
“I know,” I said. “I have problems. It’s just…I don’t even know why I thought of him, but once I did…I don’t know. I think I’m crazy.”
“Did you find him?”
I nodded. “Totally strung out. Really bad drug scene there.”
She went quiet again, thinking before changing subjects. “You know, Cody had the best chance out of any of us to be normal. He didn’t grow up with all these dark, twisted memories like we did.”
“That’s what I thought!” I exclaimed, way too excited. “Sorry.”
“No, it’s okay. I should have known, but he really seemed fine. When they identified James Calhoun, I confronted him. Part of me did wonder, but he was really convincing. He said he had nothing to do with it, and I had to believe him. I wanted to believe him.”
“Listen to me, this was not your fault—not even in the realm of being your fault.” I stared at her and forced her to stare back until it started to morph into something more suggestive and I had to ruin it. “I mean, I’m the one who screwed up killing him in the first place.”
She swallowed that joke hard, wincing. “Jesus.”
“Sorry, that was horrible.”
“Yeah,” she agreed. “True though, I suppose.”
“It’s still all my fault,” I said, “what happened to your family.”
“I know,” she said.
“You don’t seem like you want to kill me anymore. Is that wishful thinking?”
“We’ll see.” She smiled before going quiet again, her focus turning to the funeral home. “Like you said, murder isn’t supposed to be easy.”
“I said getting away with it isn’t supposed to be easy,” I corrected her.
“Hmm.” She shrugged.
At the end of the day, I guess that was the best a person like me could hope for—a thinly veiled threat to my face instead of an obvious one on my doorstep.