Epilogue
The air is warm and the leaves are beginning to turn.
An ice-cream truck passes by.
Dennis Davenport is waiting for me outside the library.
He waits because he wants to see me and he wants to walk with me, not because he is checking.
It took me many months to trust him, to hear him.
When he asked me out for a coffee, the year after, I said no.
Then I changed my mind and suggested we go out for lunch.
I have grown very fond of him. Dennis does not ask me who I have been speaking with or what I have been wearing.
We have lived in town these past years, close to the high school.
Eventually we moved in with Dennis, to his bungalow opposite Jeff Turner’s old place.
Sammy enjoyed being back on Bakersfield Avenue, visiting the corner grocery, cutting through the park with the public pool they empty every fall.
He and Dennis liked to gaze at nebulae and shooting stars together on clear nights.
I can sense the weight of the bracelet on my wrist. It is made from Mom’s gold necklace. I am still not comfortable wearing anything around my neck, even after all this time, but the jewelry store at the mall did an excellent job adapting it.
We walk hand in hand past the pawnshop, the post office, the hair salon.
My heart: full of sadness.
Aching.
I fought hard to give Sammy a new life, with stability and reassurance. For years I’ve worked two jobs. He has always been my priority.
I am far more confident now, and I finally believe I deserve the library job Mrs. Appleby helped me to get.
I have reorganized some of the admin and the place is looking better than ever.
I am in charge of inviting local, and even not-so-local, authors to come and give talks.
It is the children’s authors I focus on.
The kids around here need their stories.
It is important for local children to see that things might be possible and exciting, even for them. It is vital they feel seen.
It took a long time for Sammy to work through what happened that night.
Talking to a professional with me there.
Talking to her on his own. His grades recovered when he finally felt comfortable in Dennis’s bungalow, although that was not a smooth process, especially in the early days.
It wasn’t only that Dennis was head of Lower School.
I think it would have been challenging with any new man in the home.
But then Sammy fell in with the wrong crowd.
Dennis called them troublemakers. Tensions grew.
I don’t know why Sammy hung around with them, but he would not leave them alone.
They accepted him, I suppose. Smoking weed and shoplifting.
Probably worse I don’t know of. He believed he was strong in their presence.
A bus passes. The bus I used to ride each day out to the canal.
I have had two novels published by a small press. They have been well received. I am working on my third. Writing helps me process what has happened.
The ache in my chest intensifies.
He was doing ever so well. Grew tall and began to impress his teachers. But people started saying he was crazy like his mother. He would defend me, bless his heart, say there was nothing wrong with his mother’s mind.
Thin, wispy clouds high in the sky.
I was more concerned that he might have inherited his father’s mind.
When he confessed how he had hidden my jewelry I felt like the whole cursed cycle might continue through him and beyond.
I was bereft. But then he explained to me, eloquently, calmly, how he worried I might flee if I had the means to do so.
He knew I would be committed again, and he was scared of losing me forever.
It took me months to unpack and come to terms with his reasoning.
I told him I thought what he did was wrong.
I explained how he did not have the right to make that decision on my behalf. And then, thank God, I forgave him.
I walk past Jeff Turner’s bungalow most days. A young family live there now and they have a terrier that looks a little like Amber.
It is terrifying to imagine how many crimes go unsolved or mislabeled in this world. How many perpetrators take their dark secrets to their graves.
A pigeon picking at the crust of a discarded slice outside the pizza place.
If I see someone scared or lost in the library I try to offer them some comfort, some support. I have placed helpline leaflets by the entrance. I do what I can.
Two dogs barking at each other.
Dennis does not hold my hand because he wants to own me or control me. He holds my hand because he wants to hold it. And I want to hold his. The difference is nothing from an outside perspective, but here, on the inside, it is everything.
If I didn’t have Dennis I don’t know if I would manage the long years ahead.
We walk on past the discount furniture warehouse and the pet food store.
Clear skies.
The churchyard is up ahead, a narrow steeple basking in the last warmth of summer.
“All right?” asks Dennis, squeezing my hand.
I squeeze his hand back.
“You sure?” he says.
I squeeze his hand again but I cannot answer him.
Drew took me away from Sammy for weeks. A black hole missing in my life: that hospital, that Christmas. He separated us and I will struggle to ever forgive him for that.
Sirens in the distance.
Fatima helps me work through it all. To process what has happened since. We meet for coffee each week at the bakery. I can talk to her about things nobody else understands.
An empty Dr Pepper rolls down the road, spinning and rattling in the drainage gully.
Drew did not try to kill me that time in the bath.
He tried to soften me, to quiet me, to deplete me.
He wanted me subdued but alive: medicated, shamed, and living with reduced credibility and self-belief.
Alive, yet contained. Hospitalized and shrunken.
I fear a similar thing happens in one of a thousand ways to women all across the globe every day of every year.
My dear boy wore Phoenix’s jacket for years after he passed on.
He wore it with such pride. Sammy only knew Phoenix for a few months but, in a way, for that brief time, he was the paternal figure he needed and deserved.
I saw a photo of Phoenix as a schoolboy at the memorial service.
Big kid with thick blond hair and a bent nose back then.
Dreadful what Drew and the others put him through.
Horrific bullying. Maybe that is why he and Samson formed such a quick bond.
After the service, Sam wouldn’t wear a raincoat, not even in a November downpour.
It was Phoenix’s black leather jacket or nothing. He told me once it smelled safe.
We walk to the graveyard railings.
My boy never deserved what happened to him.
Fresh flowers on some of the graves. A squirrel dashing up the trunk of a twisted ash tree.
Sammy deserved so much better.
So much more.
I look over at the far corner of the cemetery and squeeze the LEGO brick I keep in my coat pocket.
I squeeze it so tight it hurts.