Life Before (24 page)

From Gary. At my café. In Burlington. Where my trail was cold.

I can’t move.

I have to move. My life depends on it.
My
life. Right now. It all comes down to this moment. I can’t lock myself in Jill’s bedroom. I can’t assume the fetal position and let Mom take one for the team again. I can’t run away.

And, for the first time, I don’t want to. I want to end this. Gary’s destroyed my past, but I want to control my own future.

What does that even mean? My stomach flips over. I’m going to be sick.

Controlling my future requires getting out of range and calling the police. I tug Curt’s sleeve and whisper, “We have to go.”

“Two minutes,” Curt says, accepting his cappuccino from the barista without missing a beat of his conversation with Boots.

I drop my pastries on the counter and frantically fish through my cargo pockets for the knife. Palming it, I pull up my own hood. It’s ten paces to the exit.

A huge group of people floods through the door, blocking my way.

I can’t get out. I need to know that he hasn’t recognized me. I turn and find Gary’s seat empty. Where—

He grabs my forearm and spins me to face him.

This is where it ends. Here, in an overpriced Internet café in a tourist town, seven hundred miles from where I’m supposed to be. After only seven hours and one awkward kitchen encounter with Gretchen. Here, four weeks before my life was supposed to begin.

“Stop running from me.” Gary pulls off his hood. He looks like hell. Or like he’s been through hell. He hasn’t shaved in several days, and his face is ashen and gaunt. His other hand is empty. No gun, or knife, or anything.

He’s going to use his bare hands on me, just like he did on Mom. I try to jerk away from him, but he holds tight.

This is my life; I’m holding onto it. “Get off!” I kick as high as I can and get him in the knees. Gary arches back, screaming in agony, but he holds tight to me. The café goes still.

“Graham?” Curt, my friend, is confused.

“Curt. Call 9-1-1. Tell them there’s a fugitive here.”

Frozen, I keep my eyes locked on Gary’s. They’re deep, dark brown like mine, but bloodshot and empty. I search for something in his cold stare, something to tell me what’s going to happen, hoping that somewhere there’s a shard of humanity left.

“Curt. Please.”

Curt says, “Wait, you’re serious? Is that—”

“9-1-1. Now.”

Gary is so close that I could spit in his face. I whisper, “Dozens of witnesses. And my friend is buddies with the police. Fucking. Let. Go.”

He won’t. And even if he would, stunned bystanders are still lingering in the doorway. I’m cornered.

Gary grabs my other arm, and I’m eleven years old again, about to get thrown into the wall for losing the remote. Or I’m four years old, being tormented for crying over my broken arm. I understand why I peed my pants that time; right now, all my organs are threatening to unload.

Gary’s voice is low. “You know what you did was wrong, and I can forgive you. But right now, I need your help.” He loosens his grip very slightly. “You can set things right. You and I both know what happened to your mom: she provoked me, and I reacted.”

I’m a soccer player. World football, not American football. I’ve never tackled anyone before. I jerk backward, releasing my arms from Gary’s grasp. Every muscle engaged, I jam my right shoulder into Gary’s gut, with the full force of my body behind it. Together, we tumble across the stretch between the counter and the storefront, shattering The Byte’s front window and rolling onto the sidewalk. I land on top of my father, who’s on his back, stunned from the impact of his head against the sidewalk and struggling to catch his breath.

Screams and shouts echo all around me as some people rush to get closer and others scramble to get away.

Springing to my feet, I pull out my knife. A bit of peanut butter lingers where the blade meets the handle. “Don’t move. I’ll use my knife. I swear to god.”

Gary is still.

Curt is talking to the 9-1-1 dispatcher.

“Gary Fife!” I shout. “Tell them he’s a fugitive. From Ohio. Who murdered his wife.”

Gary tries to sit up. My knife threatens very near his chest. “I said don’t
move
. You’re done hurting me.”

Gary watches me grip the knife tighter. He’s out of breath. “I’m not here to hurt you, Alexander. This is you and me here. I’m the only family you have left. You know I’m not a murderer. I went there that day to talk to you. Your mom said you weren’t there, but I know you were. So you
also
know that she provoked me. I didn’t have a choice.”

I could just carve out a space in his gut. Sink my knife deep into his body and let his guts seep out.

“I’m not here to hurt you,” he says again.

“Bullshit. That’s all you’ve ever done.”

Curt stands inside the window frame, “Okay, man. Let’s cool our heads.” His feet sort of tap dance across broken glass as he steps through the window, hands in the air. “Put the knife down, man. The police are coming.”

Gary flashes a grateful smile at Curt before refocusing on me. “Your mom and I were like oil and water. I kept trying to have a life and she kept making me jump through hoops and play house and all that crap. And then I’d try to have a life again, and she would never let me.”

“Bullshit. You didn’t like your life, you should have changed it instead of beating her into submission.”

Gary squeezes his eyes shut. “I need you to be with me on this, buddy. We can get through this together.”

Maniacal laughter bursts from my body. “
With
you? Are you kidding me?”

“Look.” He tries to right himself, but I kick his supporting arm out from under him, widening my stance and moving the knife toward his throat. He whispers, “Do you know what it’s like, Alexander, having a person keep you from who you were meant to be?”

His words hit me harder than his backhand ever did. Part of me—something bigger than me—fights to get out of my body and into the knife and thrust straight into Gary’s gut. My brain keeps trumping the impulse, but the impulse keeps coming back. I flip the knife handle left and right. I could take care of this right now. I want to gouge him. Make him scream. I want him to pay. To beg for mercy. I want him to fear for his life, to be scared to sleep, to know how Mom felt, that last time, when he closed her windpipe so she couldn’t even beg.

I want to kill him.

But Mom was right: if I kill Gary, I will become him, and that would be the greatest injustice to her memory and everything she did to keep me safe.

I need to keep it together. Deep breaths, slow words. “That is
exactly
what you did.
To me
.”

To keep from crying, I bite the inside of my cheek so hard that I taste blood. The pain shapes my resolve.

Everyone—or everyone who’s left—is watching us. Watching me.

“Uh, Graham?” Curt says.

“Curt.” I keep my eyes on Gary.
Deep breaths.
“This is Gary Fife. He killed my mother. He beat my mom for years before he killed her. He beat me up from the time I was just a kid—kicked me down a flight of stairs, used my head to knock holes in our drywall—and he always explained why it was my fault. For a long time—for years!—I believed him. And I was so ashamed. But I’m not ashamed anymore. It wasn’t my fault, it was his fault. And I am not him. I’m me.”

I am not him
. The thought bursts the dam and I’m sobbing in the street.

“I get that you’re angry,” Gary says.

“You have no idea. I want you to
suffer
.”

“I just exploded—”

“You murdered my mother!”

I may not
be
my father, but I am my father’s son. That thing inside of me wages war with my brain again. I desperately want to stab him—to kill him—to avenge my mother and my childhood and every single way he fucked up my life. But my brain keeps saying no.
Acting in anger will lead to a lifetime of regret.
Those were almost her last words, but not quite.

My brain—and my mom—is still winning when the police arrive—in three cruisers, no less. A minute more, and my rage may have overpowered me, but I’ll never know.

Officer Amy nods at Curt while her colleagues take in the scene. Curt gently touches my arm. “It’s gonna be okay, man.”

I let an officer take the knife. I don’t need it anymore.

The crowd disperses, Gary winds up in the police cruiser, and I have a genuine physical breakdown, vomiting in the street and crying uncontrollably. Seventeen years of garbage pour out of my body, as if I have been waiting my whole life to dispel them.

Curt stands by me, his hand on my shoulder, assuring me as I hurl.

With the vomit and tears, my nausea and fear and anger evacuate until I am just Xander. My life and my body are my own, and Gary owns no part of me. I am my mother’s son. Exhausted and empty, I still feel stronger than I have ever been.

_______

After another two-second trip in a Burlington cruiser, I’m back at the station. The interviews are shorter this time, mostly because Gary is here to tell them what he did.

Gary found me. And he didn’t kill me. And he’s going to prison.

And it’s over.

The café owner, probably awestruck over the whole murderer thing, says not to worry about the window. The cops don’t exactly see it that way, and I may face misdemeanors for battery and destruction of private property. That’s fair. The police are fair.

Once I’ve provided the officers with Jill’s address and assured them I have a safe way to get home, they let me go.

They will extradite Gary to Ohio as soon as possible.

I may never see him again. I certainly will never talk to him again. “Can I talk to him for just a minute?”

Officer Amy eyes me, confused. “You’re kidding.”

I assure her I have only one question. There’s just one thing I need to know. She escorts me to an interrogation room and whispers with the guy who’s holding Gary.

Curt is behind me, his hand on my shoulder, as I stare at Gary.

“I need to know how you found me.”

Gary grins. “I’m a smart guy, Alexander.”

“Tell me.”

“I inserted a one-pixel transparent web bug—a tiny, invisible picture—into my messages. When you opened my email and that little picture loaded, the server log gave me your IP address. I tracked it to the café and have been waiting for you since.”

My shock and confusion must register on my face. Gary smirks at me. “I know the Internet like the back of my hand. I can find you when I need you.”

“Not from prison, jackass,” Curt says from behind me. “Maybe you’ll get on a ten-year-old computer to play Solitaire for twenty minutes twice a week, but they’re never gonna give you Internet access in prison. My friend here is safe.”

I’m safe. I’m alive. Content with that miracle, I head for the door.

“Alexander?” Gary shouts. “Alexander!”

I don’t need anything from him. I never did.

“Let’s get out of here, Curt.”

On our way back to the deli, Curt doesn’t quite know what to say. “So, uh. Alexander?”

“Xander, actually,” I say. “I thought I saw his car. That day I was peeking through the blinds at the deli? I was terrified he was going to hunt me down and kill me.”

“He said he didn’t want to hurt you.”

“Yeah, well, last I heard, he did.”

“You have some heavy-duty shit in your life, man.”

“Not anymore I don’t.”

It’s really over. Gary is done. The levity is surreal, in the best possible way.

At the deli door, Curt says, “You should probably take the day off.”

It’s tempting. “Tell you what. I’ll head back to Ohio tomorrow. Let me finish out my shift, finish what I’ve started.”

“You sure?”

“I’m sure. Can I use your phone first?”

“Course, man.” We share a look—of understanding, of grief, of relief—before Curt leaves me outside.

The hostel is only a few steps away, but I can’t believe how far I’ve come. Curt’s phone weighs heavy in my hand. This is my actual homecoming call, and I’m making it myself.

Jill won’t be home from camp yet, but her parents should have picked her up already. I dial her dad.

“Dale Bernard.”

“Chief? It’s me. It’s … Xander.”

“Fucking hell. Hold on. I’m driving.”

Janice gets on the phone. “Hello?”

“Hi, Janice.”

“Are you okay, honey?”

There’s a commotion—a happy one—and a second later Jill is on the phone.

“It’s over.” The story spills out of me. She repeats every line back to her parents, so it takes a while to get through it. I leave out the part with the knife because I will never tell her about the knife.

Plus, I’m not ready to process the murderous rage I felt with it in my hand.

When I’m done, Jill says, “Hold on. We’re pulled over. Here’s Dad.”

Dale is incredulous. “How did he find you?”

“Online. He tracked my emails.”

“No way.”

“And he was waiting at the Internet café where I’ve been checking my mail.”

“Well, that was stupid.”

Dale is so right. This could have ended horribly.

“I just sort of thought Gary was blowing smoke up my ass with all his Internet tracking stuff. And then I got the brilliant idea to track him, and I thought I could be a hero because
I
knew where
he
was when he sent the email. He was in Elyria, by the way.”

“I’ll be damned,” Dale says. “I thought you were safe up there.”

That bounces around in my brain for a few seconds. “Up where?”

Gargantuan pause. “Uh. Up in Vermont?”

“You knew where I was?”

“Not immediately, no.”

“How long have you known?”

“A few days. I talked to Mack Davies, the captain up there, after he picked you up for sleeping in the park. Convinced him to report back on you.”

Well, shit.

“I’m glad you’re safe, son. I hope to see you in Laurel as soon as you can get back.”

“Thanks, Chief.”

Jill’s back on the phone. “He’s wearing the cat that swallowed the canary face again. You’re in Vermont?”