25. Lance
Chapter twenty-five
Lance
Jonny stops outside the church hall and I can feel him braking. I offer my hand. He hesitates, then takes it. I straighten his collar. “It’s going to be okay in there. I’ve got your back.”
He glances at the building. “It’s just an uncomfortable meeting with bad food. Breaking the news to Aunt Shelley that I was moving in with you was way more awkward.”
“She took it well.”
“‘Good luck’ is pretty ambiguous.”
I smile at him. “Please. Your aunt loves me.”
“You’re cocky.”
“I’m sexy.”
“Did boot camp do that to you? Because it’s a really annoying superpower.”
“It’s all you.” I rub his back. “You ready?”
He looks at the Shiloh Baptist church hall.
It’s a brick building with a huge, unadorned cross mounted in the front.
We go down the concrete walkway together and under the cross, and he doesn’t let go.
Inside, there is a sign with the words “Phoenix Society” written on it, and an arrow that leads us to a meeting room with cinder-block walls, an antiseptic white tile floor, and a drop ceiling lit by fluorescents.
Chairs in neat rows before a podium with a cross on it, and people milling around the back tables, where there are, as predicted, pastries and Lipton sweet tea. They speak in hushed tones.
Behind the podium, mounted on an easel, is a blown-up copy of our picture from that day. Underneath it: “Phoenix Society.”
“Wow,” Jonny says. “I swear they actually made it bigger after I asked them to take it down.”
“I don’t think we’ll ever outrun that picture,” I say. “I think the photographer won a major award for it.”
On the snack table someone has put a framed photograph of Alice Cadwalader.
A candid shot, laughing, taken outdoors.
My chest tightens. I used to see that face on stage every year, watching the Phoenix Society memorial ceremonies from whatever base or barracks I was posted to, scanning the crowd for Jonny and never finding him.
A woman next to us shakes her head at the photograph. “Isn’t that sad? What is this world coming to? And her not even on her own, with Tom right there. If it isn’t safe with a man and a dog, when is it safe?”
“It’s such a tragedy,” Jonny says softly. “We’ve lost so many Denning Court people. Suzannah Drumm, Randy Dare, and now Alice.”
The woman wrinkles her brow in a don’t-I-know-you way, and then looks at the picture of us.
When she looks back, her speech is rushed and awkward.
“That whole street. I don’t think this town has ever really taken it in.
Martha Gillibrand, well, the cancer took her, and Vernon fell off a ladder four years ago, and Eloise Jones—” She shakes her head.
“Did you know Alice well?” I ask, to get us off the subject.
She smiles, clearly relieved to be on a safer topic than excavating the tragedy before them. “Oh yes! She was one of the founding members. I’m sorry—I’m Margaret Vane, 1413 Morris Mountain Road.”
Involuntarily I think of those houses I sped by on Morris Mountain Road, their abandoned Halloween decorations and garden flags, the stampede of terrified deer.
I was probably the last human who saw her home, and I couldn’t pick it out of a lineup.
“Lance Broussard.” I shake her hand. “This is Jonny Bishop. You’d have known him as Parker. ”
Her eyes sparkle. “My goodness, you’re still together after all these years. Well, if that don’t just beat all.”
Jonny looks at me. “Yes, it kind of does,” he says.
“About Alice,” I say. “What was she like? I only knew her from the memorial ceremonies.”
“Oh, Alice was a force of nature. Ran the HR department at the university by the end. Perfect job for her—she was a mother hen. Led the charge for proper maternity leave. Every woman who worked there sang her praises. She was always clucking over some new recruit, helping them with the paperwork, making sure they settled in.” Margaret lowers her voice.
“They’d confide in her about everything.
I think she knew where all the bodies were buried, if you take my meaning.
” She gives me a knowing look that tells me that she’s already been speculating about the motive for her untimely demise.
“But she had no enemies, right?” I ask.
“Oh no. And the only person she ever butted heads with was Henry. Henry! Can you imagine, with the patience of that man? What we would have done without him over these years, I just don’t know.
Especially after everything he’s been through.
” She looks around. “Speaking of which…Henry! Look who’s finally here!
Lance and Parker—sorry, Jonny.” She turns to Jonny. “Sorry, honey.”
“That does sound unlikely,” I say. “What was it about, do you know?”
“Oh, some film she had. From the day of it.” Margaret waves a hand.
“She wanted it shown at the memorial and he wouldn’t hear of it.
Which I understand, mind you—not everybody wants to sit and watch that.
I’ve seen it. It’s just some unedited footage of her walking up the street talking to people.
There’s nothing really interesting in it except the houses are still standing.
” She looks at Jonny. “Some of us just wanted a clean start after that fire.”
“I think we all did,” Jonny says.
“My goodness,” Henry Drumm says. He’s dressed in a clean shirt and tie. “I can’t believe you made it. I think the whole community wants to know how you both’ve been coping. A lot of people have been asking about you. Isn’t that right, Margaret?”
“Oh yes. In fact, I was just about to say that Alice was asking about them. Poor Alice.”
“Poor Alice,” Henry agrees. “Isn’t that awful what happened? So senseless. She was such a breath of fresh air.”
“I was just telling them how much we rely on you,” Margaret volunteers, putting her hand on his arm.
Henry blushes. “You’re too kind. I just muddle through. Somebody had to. After Suzannah passed, I think it’s all that kept me going for years. I think I would’ve lost my mind if I didn’t have y’all to think about.”
“Well, soon, you’ll have a baby to think about,” Margaret coos.
“That’s wonderful!” Jonny says. “You were just telling me last time we met that you had remarried. Lydia, was it? When is she due?”
“She’s not,” Henry says, smiling. “We’ve been going through the adoption process for two years now, and we’ve got an interview next month that looks like the big one.”
“What’s this?” a petite woman with shoulder-length brown hair says, kissing him on the cheek.
“The adoption. Lydia, this is Jonny and Lance.”
“Of course!” she hugs us both. “Cross your fingers for us. They really look hard at people with his medical history, even though it was a long time ago.” Her drawl is gentle and lilting.
“Leukemia,” Henry supplies. “I was nine. So, I can’t have children.
It took a lot of things off the table.” He scratches his chin.
“It’s funny how things changed after the fires, you know?
Before that I hated talking about it. Most people, when they have cancer as adults, they have these really meaningful changes and they come out with this whole new perspective.
I was a kid. I just went off peanut butter and jelly completely, and I still won’t eat it.
” He laughs. “So, weirdly enough, this catastrophe gave me the perspective on the value of life that cancer couldn’t. ”
“I say the same thing about combat,” I tell him. “It’s terrible. But it does reshape you, and you don’t get a say in how you come out the other side.”
“Exactly what happened here. I rose to the occasion, but some people couldn’t.
They got angry, or sad, or they moved away.
” He glances at Jonny. “A disaster like this impacts a whole community, and it’s like the embers are still kind of flying around in our hearts to this day.
” He looks around. “It’s time. I’d better get started.
Find some seats and I’ll call the meeting to order. ”
We sit in the back. Henry leans into the microphone so much it squeals with feedback.
“Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for joining us. Before anything else—I know we all miss Alice deeply, and I want to pay tribute to what she gave this group. None of us would have got through those first terrible years without her.” He waits out the murmur.
“So let’s make this a service that honors her as well.
It’s been a wild ride, but we do have confirmation that the Lieutenant Governor will be attending this memorial service. ”
Gasps, then applause.
Henry beams. “Ten years ago this fire made this society, and it was your work that got the alerts system so much stronger, so that we can look to the future and say, never again.”
More applause. He gestures to tamp it down. “But we also have someone—two someones—even more special to us, joining for the first time since it happened. Mr. Bishop and Mr. Broussard, would you like to say a few words?”
Twenty people turn around and applaud, and we nod back at them, and it goes on slightly longer than any of us can comfortably manage.
“Okay,” he says, standing. “Hi. I’m Jonny Bishop—”
“Come to the podium so we can all hear you,” Henry says. “The mic’s better here.”
Jonny goes to the front. He clears his throat and leans forward hesitantly.
“Hello, I’m Jonny Bishop. You probably know me better by my first name, Parker.
I’m that guy.” He points back at the picture.
“Not my best look.” There’s a small, warm laugh.
“I don’t know what to say, honestly. I didn’t prepare anything. ”
Henry smiles. “Just tell us what you remember from that day, and how it makes you feel.”
“Oh. I don’t remember much about that day.
I used to, but I started letting it go. Except for one moment.
It’s an hour before Lance calls me. I’m taking out the trash, and I’m watching everyone else pack up their cars.
I remember standing there, with the garbage bag in my hand, thinking, I should tell somebody.
I should convince them to go. Just in case.
And I didn’t try hard enough. It’s this one shard of a memory that won’t stop, this one moment when I could have saved my family and didn’t. ”
I watch his hands grip the sides of the podium. His knuckles are white.
“I wish my mother could see me now. I wish I could tell her about my life and my adventures.” He looks down. “I think—I hope she’d have been proud of me.” He lifts his head. “That’s all I’ve got, really. Lance? I guess it’s your turn.”
I step forward and put my arms around him properly, in front of all of them, and hold on for a second longer than I mean to. Then he moves aside and I lean into the mic. The room is very quiet.
“I’m Lance Broussard.” I look back at the picture. Two dirty, terrified kids on a gymnasium cot. “I didn’t even realize until today that I had any right to be in your group. Please believe me when I say I wish I wasn’t.”
I look at the room. “I used to watch your ceremonies online, from wherever I was posted. I thought they were for people who’d lost their homes. I was looking for one face and I never found it. It never once occurred to me that I was allowed to be one of you.”
A murmur greets me.
“I didn’t lose what you lost. That day, hundreds of lives were broken, and connections were lost that can never be made again.
It made people vulnerable, and desperate, and reliant on the charity of strangers.
” I pause. “I was lucky. My childhood home is still standing, and my family is still together. But it did cost me.”
I stop. The room leans forward.
Silence. Absolute silence. And something comes up through me that I have been sitting on for ten years and did not know was still there—not grief. I have done grief. This is older and less polite. But it’s also true.
“And I’m angry,” I say. “I want to say: God damn you. For stealing homes. For decimating families. For destroying futures. And God damn you the most for hurting the person I love, and making me watch, helpless, while he suffered.”
Two women are sobbing quietly. A man is shielding his eyes, his shoulders shaking. Henry Drumm has gone white. I don’t think they’ve ever heard that many damnations in this church hall outside of a sermon.
I look at Jonny. He’s standing just behind me, and his face is open. His grief is, for the first time in a decade, not hidden from me. It is something that I understand now that we will share forever.
“God damn you for the choices we had to make in those moments that we’ll be reliving, every day, for the rest of our lives.”
Jonny takes my hand. In the silence, we mourn together.