Vengeance (5 page)

“Paige!”

She stopped, but she pressed her whole body against mine, sending us upright. I could feel her warmth against my thigh as she grinded. She reached down with one hand and grabbed my ass and pulled us together firmly.

“Paige! Shit. Stop it!”

I reached behind my head to peel off her hand and pushed away from her. She stumbled and dropped to a seated position on the edge of the bed, bouncing to a stop with a vacant stare like a dashboard bobble head.

“What?” she finally said.

I wasn’t sure what to say. But she either remembered or she could figure out what had happened from the way I was backed up practically to the wall.

“Oh shit. Oh shit. I’m sorry. Oh God.”

I eased away from the wall and sat back in my chair. She had her face in her hands, elbows on her knees. When she looked up at me, she seemed half as drunk as she had been a minute before.

“I’m sorry. God! It’s just… Jesus, you look so much like him. And I miss him so much. God, I’m so sorry.”

“It’s all right.”

I wasn’t sure if I thought it was all right now that she had snapped out of it, but I was sure I wanted that moment to be over as soon as possible. My shame overwhelmed the fleeting arousal.

“What am I doing?” she said. “God. What am I doing?”

I wondered if she could drive herself home. But asking that would make things more awkward, as if admitting what had happened had made it impossible to spend another moment around her. Instead, I asked, “Do you want to get some air?”

“Yeah.”

I reached out to help her up, but she refused my hand and said she was fine. Outside, the air was refreshingly brisk. The concrete walkway along the front of the motel gave way to the pool of asphalt, which ran all the way to the concrete curb along the road. There were no sidewalks for a stroll in the area, or any patches of grass with benches. So we wandered to the dark end of the motel, where the lot was empty, and stood in a parking place. We found ourselves staring in different directions. Me toward the interstate, her toward the glow of town. We finally turned and faced each other.

“We were in a rough spot,” she said.

“I didn’t know.”

“It doesn’t matter now. I loved him. I know he loved me. That’s all I can remember. It hurts right now. I won’t lie. It fucking hurts.”

I could have told her that I knew he loved her to reassure her. But what could I tell her about his love that she didn’t know? I hoped my silence served as acknowledgement and not doubt.

“Did they tell you about the motorcycle?” she asked.

“The motorcycle?”

“At the scene of the accident. They called your dad. He got over there after they had taken Aiden away, but the cops were there and the motorcycle was still there. He says it wasn’t even scratched. And it wasn’t even in the street. The motorcycle was leaned up against a tree twenty feet off the side of the road.”

“Aiden’s motorcycle? That doesn’t make any sense.”

“Yeah. The one he supposedly crashed on. You’re right it doesn’t make any sense. Not if he died in a motorcycle crash.”

This is what she had started to tell me at the wake. And her proof was that the motorcycle wasn’t scratched? And that it was leaned up against a tree? The police could have moved it by the time my dad got there. As for the scratches, who knows how it landed. Maybe that could be explained.

“That’s it?” I said.

“That’s it? Jesus! You don’t believe me?”

“Paige, I don’t know what to think. My head’s been going in a lot of directions since it happened. Yours must be, too.”

“Yeah, my head’s all over the fucking place. But I’m not making this shit up! Ask your dad. He’s the one who told me. The bike wasn’t even in the road. And Aiden’s helmet was hanging on the handlebars. Not a scratch on it. You don’t think that’s weird?”

I knew Aiden didn’t always wear his helmet. But the bike’s location and the fact that the helmet was hung from the handlebars would be hard to reconcile, if true.

“Yeah, it sounds weird. But this is coming out of nowhere. You think it wasn’t bad enough to hear Aiden died? Now I’m hearing this? What am I supposed to think about this?”

“Someone killed Aiden! That’s what you’re supposed to think about this.”

I could tell she wanted to grab me by the collar and shout in my face. Instead, she thrust her arms for emphasis then brought them back down to her sides in a quick slice that relayed her frustration.

“Great. So why was it reported as an accident? Why aren’t the police investigating?”

“Like I said, ask your dad. I’m just telling you what someone should have told you.”

I had no response to that. Was I supposed to thank her? For all I knew, she was making up the whole thing. Or she might have been latching on to a detail that could be explained away easily. After all, she might have been in deeper shock than I was over Aiden.

“All right,” I said. “I’ll talk to him.”

She seemed satisfied by that promise, so we walked back to the room for her to get her bag. I waited outside, propping the door open. I walked her the few feet to the front fender of her car and watched her get in.

Back in my room, I checked the time and called Tucson.

“Hey,” Natalie answered. It sounded like she was putting dishes away.

“Hey.”

“How’s everything going?”

She meant it sincerely, but I had to calculate what to tell her. She didn’t need to know anything about this business Paige had brought up. It wouldn’t get her worked up the way it did me, but it might make her worry about me. And that wouldn’t be fair of me to do to her. Not with where things stood between us.

“About as good as can be expected, I guess.”

“Was it—God. I almost asked if it was a nice wake, or something. I know it wasn’t. How could it be? But were there a lot of people there?”

The background noise had stopped, so I knew she was focusing on me. I appreciated that.

“Yeah. There was a good turnout.”

“Good. That means something, you know.”

“I know.”

A silence drifted between us. She probably didn’t want to probe or didn’t know if I needed to keep my composure. And I guess I wasn’t ready to hang up yet. We let the silence float away at its own pace.

“I know tomorrow might be tough,” she finally said. “You can call me if you need to. In fact, I want you to. You need someone to talk to when something like this happens.”

That she would offer wasn’t lost on me. Nothing good about her had ever been lost on me.

I said, “I might want to be alone.”

“I don’t want you to be alone,” she said. “Promise you’ll call me.”

“I’ll call,” I said.

The silence entered the conversation again, but it wasn’t intruding. Not talking to her on the phone, I felt more connected to another human being than I had since I boarded the plane a day ago.

“Do you need me to let you go?” she asked, not impatiently.

I laughed. Something like a chuckle made its way through the line and I knew she was also slightly amused at the irony that triggered my reaction.

“No,” I said. “Not yet.”

Chapter 5

Every weekday morning, millions of kids wish they could stay in bed. Same goes for countless workers, especially on Mondays. It’s not that they think the world will wait for them. In fact, they hope not. As for me, lying there on the morning of Aiden’s funeral, I certainly did not want to get out of bed. I did not want the world to turn without me, though. What I wanted was for my mass to transfer its inertia through the motel mattress to the floor below, to the ground, to the core of the Earth, where all that gravity would act like a brake against the world’s rotation. If I lie in bed and concentrated on the physics, I could stop the world, stop time. Stop that day from happening. Prevent my brother from sinking into a wound in the ground and being covered over with sod, never to see sunlight again.

As if hopes held any power.

Nothing I did could prevent anything. It had already happened. I had already said my goodbyes at the wake. Still, that didn’t stop me from crying as I prayed to a vague notion that might have been God. Then I spoke directly to Aiden, who was no longer in that body or in this world. Apologies, promises, and confessions streamed like my tears as I sobbed, eyes clenched tight. Each moment he was dead, his spirit must have been fading further from where I could reach him. If I hadn’t said those things then, I might never have had the chance to say them. But once they were said, I felt better. I wiped my face and rolled off the bed, shedding the gravity. I showered and dressed as if it were any other day. The funeral was a formality. Aiden was already gone. The ritual of hiding his body had nothing to do with his passing and everything to do with comforting those left behind. Aiden would not be granted peace through a ceremony and neither would I.

I pulled into the cemetery and meandered around the curved lane toward the back corner where Aiden would rest. The hearse and a short train of cars lined the edge of the road down the slope from the grave. I pulled in behind the last car and scanned the people milling around. My dad was there, as were Vickie, Casey, Paige, and a few others. People think it’s important to have a large turnout at a funeral. But seeing these few people didn’t make me feel sad for Aiden. Dozens of people had attended his wake, which is where numbers count. A funeral should be a more intimate gathering, reserved for those who knew certain secrets, like where you were ticklish or your nickname from when you were seven.

Abundant sunshine gave the impression it was warm out, but the chill was so stark it stung to take those first breaths as I got out of the car. The crisp, dormant grass crushed faintly below each step between the headstones to where everyone was gathered. Casey was wearing a well-fitting black suit with charcoal pinstripes and black leather driving gloves. He looked more stylish than warm. Below her parka, Paige wore a once-upon-a-time cocktail dress transformed into a more somber number but still too high above the knee to look completely dignified. The parka sported a mottled brown fur collar, but was otherwise black, as were the leggings she wore. The daylight made it obvious that while she was dressed all in the same color, none of it matched. Each was a subtly different shade.

As if it were a fashion show. As if we were there to be seen. Who had the money to buy a new outfit for a funeral? I wore the only suit I had ever owned. It didn’t fit as well as it had five years before, and I felt the gray wool was too bright for a funeral. My dad had on a pair of slacks over a pair of badly scuffed tan oxfords, a white button-down shirt that hadn’t see an iron in years, and an outdated tie striped with a color scheme from before I could ride a bike, all topped off with a navy canvas coat that he left unzipped.

I hadn’t seen him dress up since I was about six or seven. He used to wear suits when he went out on dates after my mom disappeared. A suit and what seemed like a full ounce of cologne. I could still feel the burn that had invaded my nostrils and seared the tight seals of my closed eyes as he picked me up to hug him before leaving us with the babysitter for the evening. As he bent to set me back on the ground, I used to put my hands on both of his cheeks and was always shocked at how smooth his skin was. After all, those were the short-lived days when he had taken to kissing us at bedtime, those nights when he was home for it, and his face was usually prickly. He always looked so happy, but also concerned, on his way to a date. I wouldn’t see him again until late the next morning. By then, his face was back to its determined self. I seem to remember wanting him to find something those nights when he walked out so full of hope. But that was back before either of us had suffered the torrent of disappointments, imagined or otherwise, from the other.

“Dad,” I said as I stepped up to him and placed one hand on his upper arm. I nodded at Casey and made brief eye contact with Paige. Each of these was a tailored greeting. I could have shaken his hand, and I could have given her a light hug, but all of that would have seemed contrived to me. I especially was not eager to embrace Paige after what had happened at the motel.

“Don’t you think you should zip up your coat?” I said to my dad. It seemed he wasn’t doing his heart any favors by exposing it to the cold. Still, I was surprised to hear the words slip out of my mouth. Since when had I cared?

“He should be getting to it soon,” my dad said. It was ten-thirty on the nose.

As if he had overheard, the priest left his preparations on the podium and approached. “Are there more coming?” he asked.

“Not that I know of,” my dad said.

“Well. We can begin if you are ready,” the priest said. He received an affirming nod from my dad and returned to the podium to supervise as we all gathered at the front row of metal folding chairs. There were a dozen chairs, and the priest suggested that we might want to be seated, but none of us sat.

As the priest spoke, my thoughts wandered. I thought of the wake and of what Paige had told me afterwards. I wanted to be present in this moment, but the questions that were swirling in my head made it nearly impossible. Standing in front of the casket didn’t affect me as it had at the wake, which I was thankful for. I could imagine Aiden wasn’t in there at all. I could pretend he had woken in the night and was hitchhiking carefree away from here, on his way toward summer. Jacket collar up, locks of dirty blond hair blowing across the top of his aviators, and a smile that welcomed and dared all who dwelt on it.

The service ended without fanfare. The priest simply stopped speaking, folded his book, and blessed the coffin. I expected the casket to be lowered into the grave, but when my dad shook the priest’s hand and walked away, I realized the service was over. It seemed odd to leave the casket hovering above the gaping grave. From what I had seen in movies, we should have been watching it descend then casting the first dirt onto its polished surface.

“Is that it?” I asked my dad as I caught up to him.

“What did you expect?”

He kept walking toward the passenger door of Casey’s Lexus. Casey called to me over the roof. “Come over to the house.”

I saw Paige getting into her car behind them. She pulled out first, which indicated she wasn’t going to my dad’s house. I cast a glance over my shoulder at the abandoned coffin. I reminded myself that Aiden wasn’t in there. Not in any way that mattered.