Guilty (10 page)

I open the door.

His eyes pop wide, as if he's surprised to see me, which I don't understand. Who was he expecting? I'm not sure what to say. So many things occur to me:
Didn't I already
tell you I'm not interested? Don't you know how to listen
when someone tells you something? Do you have any idea
who I really am?

But what actually comes out of my mouth is, “How did you know where to find me?”

His face turns brilliant red. He stammers.

“I—my friend John…he looked it up. Look, I'm sorry, but I just…”

He stops. He's literally tongue-tied. He's taller than me and, I hate to admit it, kind of cute. Okay, really cute. He's got black hair like his father, except that his is an unruly mass of curls. I'm guessing he got that from his mother. He has those blue eyes I noticed at the cemetery—blue like a lake in summer. And he's in good shape. But when he runs out of words and ducks his head and somehow manages to look up at me, he looks like a little kid who knows that he's done something wrong and is hoping, probably against hope, that he won't be punished for it.

But that's only part of the reason I relent. The other part is, he's here. The eyewitness to my father's shooting is right here on my doorstep.

“You want to come in?” I ask.

His head bobs up.

“Really? You mean it?”

He sounds so surprised—again—that I can't help smiling.

“Really,” I say. I step aside to let him in.

Seventeen

FINN

L
ila does not look happy when she opens the door. In fact, she looks as if she'd like to punch me one in the jaw. She's so small—her head just reaches my shoulder—and she's thin. But the fierce expression on her face tells me that she doesn't scare easily and that, if she felt she had to, she would attack.

“How did you know where to find me?” she demands, and right away I realize that John's idea was a lousy one. You don't just appear on the doorstep of a girl who hasn't given you her address and, more to the point, has told you that she isn't interested in speaking to you. If you ignore common sense and
do
show up, be prepared to come across like some kind of stalker.

I try to explain, but I realize that, when you get right down to it, there is no sensible explanation. She stares at me. I feel myself turn red. I feel the heat in my cheeks. And then something happens—I have no idea what—and she invites me in.

My first thought: the place is a dive. I stare at carpets that are threadbare and stained; walls that could use a coat, preferably two, of paint; furniture that looks like it came from the Salvation Army. Then I see a couple of boxes on the kitchen table, and the kitchen cupboards, their doors open, their shelves empty. I glance at Lila.

“I'm packing,” she says, and I swear she knows exactly what I'm thinking. She looks pointedly at my Frye boots that I bet cost more than a month's rent on this dump.

“You're moving?”

“I'm going back to live with my aunt in Boston.”

“Oh,” I say, and I realize that I'm disappointed. I don't know anything about this girl except her name and the fact that her father just died, but I'm disappointed that she's moving so far away.

“You want some tea or something?” she asks.

I glance at the boxes.

“The mugs are near the top,” she says, doing it again, making me think she's reading my mind.

“Okay, sure.”

She goes into the kitchen and takes a cheap kettle out of one of the boxes, fills it from the sink and sets it onto a gas burner. She pulls two mugs from the other box. They're right at the top, just like she said. There are only two of them. In fact, it looks to me that there are only two of everything.

“So it was just you and your dad here?” I say without thinking.

Now
she
stares at
me
, as if stunned by my mind-reading abilities. She nods and moves around the cramped kitchen, fishing out sugar—a handful of packets that look like they were swiped from a restaurant or coffee shop—some milk—a small container, which she sniffs—and a couple of tea bags.

The kettle boils, and she pours water over the tea bags in each mug. She sets them on the table next to the sugar packets and the milk and digs out a spoon. We fix our tea. She picks up her mug and says, “So, what is it that you want?”

I decide on the honest approach. I figure she'll see right through me if I try anything else.

“I don't know, exactly,” I say. “I just…I just thought about you, about seeing you at the police station and then at the funeral, and I wanted to talk to you again.”

She thinks this over and doesn't throw me out.

“You want to sit down?”

I reach for one of the kitchen chairs—metal, with a vinyl-covered padded seat—but she shakes her head.

“In there.” She nods to the living room, and I follow her in. She sits on one end of a dingy brown sofa. I sit on an olive-colored armchair so I can see her.

“So, how are you doing?” she asks.

“How am
I
doing?” Her father has just died, and she's asking me how
I
am?

“You know, since your stepmother's funeral.”

I'm about to say I never liked Tracie much anyway when it occurs to me that this will make me look like, well, like an asshole. I try to think of something else to say. She beats me to it.

“It must have been awful, seeing it happen.”

“It was,” I admit. “It was like watching a movie, only I knew it was real. And when I heard the second shots and saw the guy and my dad both go down…”

I'm not sure how it happens. One minute I'm telling her what happened. Then I flash back to the night my mom died, and I feel something burning me. Lila jumps up. That's when it registers that I must have zoned out, because I've spilled my tea. It's slopped all over my thighs and the ugly olive chair. She's out of the room and back again in a flash with a towel, which she thrusts at me, and grabs the nearly empty mug from my hand.

“Are you okay?” she asks.

I'm on my feet, doing my best to sop up the tea and ignore the burning sensation on my thighs. I press the towel down onto the chair too.

“Never mind that,” she says. “It's going back to the Salvation Army.”

Back
to the Salvation Army?

“You went white there for a minute. Did you get burned?”

Yeah, I got burned. “I'm okay,” I say. I'm also embarrassed. “Sorry about that.”

“I'm the one who should be sorry. If you don't want to talk about it, it's okay. I should mind my own business.”

“What? No. No, it's not your fault.” That's the last thing I want her to think. I glance around for somewhere else to sit.

“You want some more tea?” she asks.

“No, really,” I say quickly. I don't want to chance another accident.

She laughs at how fast I answer. Then I laugh. It feels good. And I'm struck by how different she looks when she seems happy, how much prettier, and she's already a knockout.

She gestures to the couch. I sit on one end. She sits on the other. We're both turned inward to face each other. She brings her legs up under her, and before I know it, I'm telling her about that night, about the man who came to the door earlier, about him going away again, everything my dad said about the man phoning him. I tell her about hearing my dad's voice and then Tracie's. I try not to paint Tracie as the annoying, money-obsessed ex-cocktail waitress she was. But she picks up on it anyway.

“Sounds like you didn't like her,” she says.

“I didn't say that.”

“But you didn't, did you?” she says.

I want to tell her she's wrong, but I can see in her eyes that she already knows the truth.

“No,” I admit finally. “For a while there, I thought she and my dad were going to split up. They argued a lot. Then it blew over. But the ironic thing is, if they had split up, Tracie wouldn't have been at the house that night. She'd still be alive.”

She's quiet for a long time before she finally says, “What about your mother?”

“What about her?”

“It must have been hard, losing her.”

“Yeah.” And then I'm talking again, saying things I've never said to anyone else. I tell her how much my dad loved my mom and how hard it was for him after she died. I tell her he loved her more than anything else in the world, and so did I. I tell her that I wasn't home that night, that I was at the club with my dad. I also tell her that I was the one who found her. And then I say something that I have never, ever in the whole ten years since my mother's death said out loud, not even to the shrink my dad sent me to.

I say, “If I'd stayed home that night, it never would have happened.”

She frowned. “How do you figure that?”

“I would have heard the guy break in.”

“You said it happened really late. You were seven years old. You would have been asleep. And, anyway, you said it wasn't that kind of break-in. Nobody kicked in a door or smashed a window. You said he knew the security code. There wasn't anything to hear.”

“I would have heard my mom scream.”

She peers at me with smoky-gray eyes. “How do you know she screamed? She was in her room, right? You said she was wearing a nightgown. She was probably asleep when the guy let himself into the house.”

“She would have screamed when she saw the gun,” I say. I know it. I've had ten long years to think about it. I never stopped thinking about it, and since Tracie died, it's been on my mind practically night and day.

“And then what?” she says. “You would have run into her room to see what was the matter? And if you'd seen the guy—” A funny look comes into her eyes—maybe pain, like she really cares about what she's saying. “He shot your mom. Do you think he would have let you live if you'd been able to identify him? He would have shot you too, Finn. How would that have helped?”

I stare at her. I want to tell her she's wrong. I would have heard my mother scream. I would have run to help her. I would have attacked the man. I would have wrestled the gun from him. I would have saved her. She'd be alive right now.

“You were a little kid,” she says again. “He was a grown man.”

“But I—” But I what? I would have turned into Superman? I would have tackled the guy to the ground? I've seen him close up. I saw him the other night. He wasn't just a grown man. He was a big man—taller than me and bulky. There was no way I would have been able to bring him down. I'd have a hard enough time now. But when I was seven? I can't shake the memory of my mother, and of all that blood. I also think about all the years since then—the emptiness, the grief, the missing, the longing. “Then I would have been shot,” I say finally. “But I would have done
something
. I would have at least tried. She deserved to have somebody there. She deserved to have someone try, after everything she'd been through.”

“What do you mean?” she asks.

I've thought about my mother a million times over the years, but none of it has been as vivid as it is now that I'm talking about her, now that I'm trying to explain her and her death and my feelings—everything—to someone, to a stranger, out loud. It's as if I've thrown open a window and I have no control over what I see out there right in front of my eyes. And for some reason that I can't explain, I want to tell her. I want to tell Lila.

“She wasn't happy,” I say. “She was tired a lot.”

“Was she sick?”

“I don't think so.” I realize that I don't actually know. “She told my dad she needed some time alone.”

“You mean, like a trial separation or something?”

“
What?
” Where did she get that idea? “No! No, she was just tired, that's all.”

Lila stares at me. She's thinking something, but I can tell she's not going to come out and say it.

“She loved my dad,” I tell her, just to make it perfectly clear. “She married him even though her mother was against it. She was a snob. My grandmother, I mean. She thought my dad wasn't good enough for her daughter. But my mother didn't listen. She married him. She helped him with his club. It was his big dream, and she backed him every step of the way.”

“Okay,” she says. But her eyes say something different. She's agreeing with me so that I'll stay calm. She doesn't want an angry stranger in her crappy little house.

“Damn straight, okay!” I say. “You don't know anything about my parents. She loved my dad. Why would she want a separation?” Except that now that Lila said it, I hear voices, hushed but angry. I see my mother glance through a doorway and see me and then reach out and close the door before continuing to talk to my father, still in a hushed voice. I hear them at night, long after I've gone to bed, probably when my father gets in from the club. “She loved him.”

“Okay,” she says again in that same tone of voice. She's not agreeing with me. She's placating me, using the word to try to calm me down.
Okay, sure, anything you say.

I'm on my feet, and, boy, am I angry.

“You don't know what you're talking about,” I shout at her.

Her feet slide out from under her. She leans forward a little and looks up at me.

“I didn't mean anything by it,” she says. “I was just trying—”

“I don't care what you were trying to do.” Why did I even come here? What was I thinking? I don't know this girl. I don't know anything about her. For all I know, she's some kind of ghoul who gets off on funerals and the grief of others. “I have to go.”

I'm out of the living room and then out the front door before she can get off the couch to stop me—assuming she even wanted to stop me. Maybe she's glad that I'm leaving. After all, she never wanted to see me in the first place.