CHAPTER SEVENTEEN #2
I saw the rickety chairs. Saw the backpack. Saw the stacks and stacks of teetering mail and newspapers. And then …
“There wasn't an H,” I uttered with a gasp. “Holy shit, his name … there was no fucking H.”
Forgetting about the water, I ran to the bathroom, pissed with the light off and the door wide open, and hurried out to grab Meg's iPad from the end table beside the couch.
I perched my ass on the arm of a recliner Dad had gotten rid of and opened the browser, stopping for only a moment to see that my fiancée had been searching for tips on how to get pregnant.
“Oh, Meg,” I muttered quietly, my heart aching for her, for us. “We'll get there, babe.”
We would. Whatever we had to do, we'd do it. But first …
Tomas Nolan, Massachusetts.
I scrolled a few pages of dead-end results, and then …
Obituary for Tomas Jefferson Nolan.
The article had been posted twenty years ago.
“Oh my God,” I said, breathless and scared to open the page, scared to see if a picture had been posted and to see that it was, in fact, him.
My finger shook, hovering over the link, and … dammit.
“I can't do it,” I whispered to the living room. “Oh my God, I'm such a fucking pussy. Why can't I do this?”
I wanted Dad. I wanted him to know my deepest, most horrible secret, and I wanted him to hold my hand while I opened this stupid fucking link.
“Jesus, it's probably not even him,” I said with an incredulous laugh, likely lying to myself, but … well, maybe not, right? There was just as much of a chance that it wasn't him.
I could walk around the corner. Could bang on my parents' door and wake Dad up.
He would answer. But that would complicate things, wouldn't it?
I'd have to explain everything, and then I'd get him involved, and …
no, it didn't need to get that far. I just needed to man the hell up and tap on the fucking link.
“Do it,” I said, readying my finger again. “Come on.”
But … I couldn't.
God, the little boy in my heart was scrabbling at the walls of my chest, begging me to stop this shit.
To carry on with my life and forget all of it had ever happened.
But he knew as well as I did that I couldn't. It'd been twenty years—twenty long years—of trying to forget, and I couldn't fucking do it.
I looked up the stairs, and without another moment to think, I hurried up, walked through the open bedroom door, and sat on Meg's side of the bed.
“Meg,” I said, giving her shoulder a shake. “Meg, wake up. Please.”
She startled, her eyes snapping open, only to narrow with concern.
“Huh?” She yawned and propped herself up on an elbow. “Baby, what's wrong?”
“I-I think I found him,” I said, holding out her iPad. Then I shook my head, startled by how badly I wanted to cry. “I … I can't open it. I don't want to look.”
Her expression softened. “You want me to look first?”
My head jittered with a nod.
“But … I mean, I don't know what he looks like—”
“That's okay,” I interjected, laying the iPad on her lap. “I-I just need you to look first. See if there's a picture or … or something.”
She nodded. “Okay,” she said, sitting up higher and taking the iPad in hand. “All right. You ready?”
I laid my hands over my face, shielding my eyes further from what was about to appear on the iPad screen that wasn't even facing me. I groaned, then uttered a pathetic, “Yes.”
Her fingertip hit the glass with a soft tap. Then, a moment later, she said, “Okay. There's a picture.”
“What does he look like?”
“Um … like a guy you wouldn't want to be alone with.”
“Balding?”
“Mmhmm, yes.”
“Is he smiling?”
“He is,” she said quietly. “Was he missing teeth?”
The breath shuddered from my lungs as I whispered, “Oh God. Yeah.”
The room fell eerily quiet then.
Meg must've understood what this all meant now—that she was looking at the picture of not just a dead man, but one I had seen alive right before my father had shot him. God, Seth had killed him, just feet from where I stood on the other side of the front door, on a cold stoop in Massachusetts.
Now, I knew.
I knew what had happened to at least one of those people that night … and I knew his son had survived.
He’d watched his dad die.
He’d watched my father murder his.
I had to suck in a deep breath to keep myself from falling apart.
“Do you want to see?” she finally asked.
I swallowed and let my hands fall from my face. “Yeah,” I said before clearing my throat.
I took the iPad from her, suddenly braver than I had been capable of being downstairs, and without a moment to hesitate, I looked into the eyes of the man who'd once begged my father to let them live.
He looked almost exactly as I remembered.
Weaselly. Greasy. He was the type of person my biological father would've associated with.
Through the picture, I could smell him, and I could hear his voice.
I could envision his erratic movements, and now, in adulthood, I knew he'd likely been high as a kite.
On what, I couldn't say, but he'd definitely been under the influence of something.
But he cared for his kid, I reminded myself.
In whatever capacity, he'd cared for that boy in the house. He'd begged Seth not to hurt him … and I guessed Seth had listened.
Seth had taken Tommy's life instead. And although I found the tiniest semblance of relief in knowing that, he'd done so in front of Tommy’s son. And what had happened to him? If he'd been left alive all those years ago, where had he gone? Who had he turned to?
I scrolled away from Tommy's frozen face to find the blurb written about his life and who he'd left behind, and I began to read aloud.
“Tomas Jefferson Nolan was a beloved son, wonderful friend, helpful neighbor, cherished brother, and loving father,” I said with a snort.
“I have a hard time believing he was any of those things, but what the hell do I know? He is survived by his half-brother, Gerald Crowley, and son, Benjamin. He will be deeply missed.”
Benjamin.
The boy. His name was Benjamin.
I stared at the name, imagining his face. Imagining his hands tightening around my neck. He would be, what? Thirty now? Thirty-one, thirty-two? I was only guessing his exact age, of course, but however old he was, he was a man, twenty years older than he'd been that night.
What is he doing now?
Is he still alive?
Gerald Crowley …
My eyes fell on that name, and I wondered if maybe that was where the boy had ended up. With his father's half-brother, his uncle.
“Are you okay?” Meg asked, a hint of caution in her tone.
“Yeah,” I said, nodding slowly as I scrolled further down. “I think so.”
The obituary had been posted by The Llewellyn Family Funeral Home in Marblehead, Massachusetts. They would have information about the family. They would know who'd held the funeral, maybe even who'd attended … assuming there'd been one.
I licked my lips, my mind racing a thousand miles a minute.
Marblehead … how far is that from here?
“Noah?”
“Yeah?” I answered, barely noticing that Meg had scooted closer as I typed River Canyon, CT, to Marblehead, MA.
“Tell me what you're thinking.” She cupped my cheek in her palm, lowering her gaze to try and catch mine. “What's going on in your head?”
“I think …” A little over two hours. That was the distance from here to there. “I think I have to go up to Marblehead.”
Her hand fell from my face as she reared back. “What?”
“This funeral home,” I said, switching back to that tab and pointing at the logo, “is in Marblehead. They gotta have more info, right? They have to know something on how I could find this guy.”
“Um … or you could just—I don't know—search social media?” she suggested, taken aback and flabbergasted. “You don't need to go on a freakin' road trip to find him, Noah. Why don't you … I mean, why don't you call them? The funeral home. Give them a call tomorrow or something.”
I shook my head. “I mean, yeah, I could, but if I'm in the area, maybe I could get a few things done at once, right?” I looked up to search her eyes. “I could do some real detective work.”
Her jaw fell open, her eyes wide, her head shaking back and forth. “You're serious,” she finally said after a moment. “You really want to go up to Massachusetts and go on a wild goose chase to find someone who tried to kill you twenty years ago?”
When she put it that way, it sounded insane.
But she hadn't been there. She didn't know.
“He was a scared kid, Meghan,” I said, my tone even. “So was I.”
“But he was one of the bad guys!”
I barked a condescending laugh. “My father shot his father! Right in front of him! This kid watched his father die because mine happened to be loaded. To him, I was the bad guy! Do you not get that?!”
“You were a little boy!”
“Oh my God, now we're talking in circles,” I grumbled with a shake of my head. “So was he, Meg. That's all he was too. He was following orders, no different from me.”
She snapped her jaw shut, pressing her lips into a tight, terse line and crossing her arms over her chest. She inhaled slowly, then exhaled before saying, “I just think you could accomplish the same thing by finding him on-on-on … I don't know—Facebook or something and sending him a message.”
“Yeah, I could,” I agreed. “But this feels more personal to me than that.
This kid and I … I don't know how to explain it to you to make you understand, but that night shaped me, Meghan.
I am who I am because of what happened that fucking night.
And I don't know that I can just shoot off a fucking message on Instagram or some shit, hoping he reads it, and call it a day.
I need to look at him. I need to see that he turned out okay. I don't expect you to get it—”
“I'm sorry,” she said, shaking her head. “I just don't. I can't. I understood you needing to find these people, their information, and I supported you one hundred percent. But this idea of, what? Meeting him face-to-face? This is insane! You don't know what type of person he might be!”
“You're assuming I'm even going to find him,” I gritted out.
“And you'd go up there, assuming that you won't?”
I laid a hand over my mouth, dropping the iPad onto the bed. We weren't getting anywhere, and I was mad. Mad at her. Mad at Seth. Mad at the entire fucking universe for every shitty thing that had ever happened to me.
And I knew what she was saying made at least a little bit of sense—I wasn't an idiot—but it wasn't good enough.
It didn't feel right. And there was nothing I was going to do to change her mind about that—I saw that—and that …
that infuriated me. I didn't need her to understand; I just needed her to support me. And she wasn't going to.
So, I stood up, circled the bed, and got under the covers. She watched my every move, and I felt her eyes on my back as I rolled over to face the wall.
“Noah,” she said softly.
“I don't wanna talk any more tonight, Meg.”
“I know,” she replied. “But I want to say I'm sorry—”
“Fine. You said it. Now I'm going to sleep.”
She was quiet, and I closed my eyes, knowing there was no sleep to be had tonight. But I just needed to think. I needed to mull this over. I needed—
“I'm sorry I can't back you up on this,” she went on, and I squeezed my eyes shut to her voice. “I love you too much to let you risk your life—”
“You are making a lot of assumptions right now,” I said. “And one of them is that you don't think I can handle shit myself.”
“It's not like you're going up there with a whole squad of people. You'd be alone. And you don't know what you'd be walking into.”
“Neither do you, Meg,” I muttered. “Please stop, okay? I'm not going anywhere right now.”
“But you are going,” she whispered.
“Yes.”
“And there's nothing I can say to change your mind.”
God, she sounded so sad, so worried. It encouraged an ache in my chest to grow while I simultaneously thought of how ridiculous it was that she could just assume the worst about someone neither of us knew anything about.
“No,” I answered.
Then she sniffled loudly, and I knew she was crying.
I couldn’t take it when she cried.
I rolled onto my back, turned to face her, and said, “Meghan, come on. Don't—”
“You don't want to talk, remember?”
In a hurry, she climbed out of bed, headed out the door, and down the stairs. A few seconds later, the TV was turned on, and I knew that no amount of trying would get through to her now.
Unfortunately, regarding this situation …
That made two of us.