The Last Breath (22 page)

“That Rogersville grapevine is powerful stuff,” Lexi says, shaking her head.

Just then, a silver SUV slows at the edge of the drive. Shawna Kerney slides out of the passenger seat with a bouquet of yellow and white flowers, places them atop the pile, nestles a creamy envelope between the buds and hoists herself back into the car.

Bo takes off for the door, not bothering with his coat. “Be right back.”

We watch through the pane as he roots around in the flowers, returning moments later with a handful of papers and a wide grin. He spreads them out across Dad’s lap and legs, and then one by one, reads the messages aloud to the room.

With the same feverish fervor they concluded him guilty all those years ago, the people of Rogersville have now switched sides. The collective tides have turned. The general consensus now is that the most heinous crime was our father serving time for a murder he didn’t commit, and for that, the people of Rogersville are deeply, truly, fervently sorry. For the assumed guilt, for all the wasted years, for the cancer now eating away at his insides.

While Bo reads, Fannie and Dad cry, Cal bows his head, Lexi bites her lip and studies her nails, and I wonder how I ever worried about the opinions of the people of Rogersville. Sometime in the past few weeks, my worry has dissolved into apathy, filling up every inch of me. I no longer care what they think.

Am I the only person in the room who sees the pile of flowers and candles on our front yard for what it is? An awfully hollow place for people to bury their guilt.

30

WHETHER IT’S THE
town’s renewed faith in Dad’s innocence or Bo and Lexi’s homecoming, something seems to revive Dad. His face clears and his cheeks flush and his lips turn up into a smile and set. His bony shoulders, until now perpetually hunched up to just under his ears, relax and drop, and that bottomless crease between his eyebrows unfolds into a pink line. And there’s no disguising the way his eyes light up, especially when Lexi pulls up a chair at his right elbow.

He insists we eat lunch—grilled cheese sandwiches and a chunky tomato soup I help Fannie serve up in the kitchen—huddled around his bed. Fannie even hands Dad a bowl, though more for form than function. These days he does more picking at his food than actual eating.

Once everyone is settled, we dig in. Spoons scrape. Lips slurp. Crusts crunch. The air is thick with the cloying scent of salted tomatoes and buttered bread and words none of us know how to say.

Dad clears his throat, and everyone looks up from their plates, waiting. The sound is, I suspect, purely practical, since he doesn’t follow it up with words. Or maybe he simply changed his mind. Regardless, he swirls his spoon around in his bowl until one by one, everyone returns to their lunches.

Everyone but me.

I look at Bo, who’s shoveling food into his mouth faster than he can chew. I recognize the strategy from his high-school days, when Dad would use dinnertime to interrogate us about sliding grades, missed curfews, a fresh dent in the fender. If Bo’s mouth is full, he doesn’t have to talk. I eye his dwindling food supply and think he’d better slow down, if for no other reason than impending indigestion.

I glance at Lexi, tugging off the crusts and nibbling at her sandwich’s gooey center. Though she certainly seems subdued, she doesn’t look the slightest bit contrite. Actually, maybe it’s even worse. Maybe she’s trying not to look contrite.

My veins hum with unreleased frustration. “Fine.”

Across Dad’s bed, Cal sits up straight and glares. I give him a look that says chill the hell out. I’m not planning to mention Ella Mae and Dean, but with Dad lying here—literally—on his deathbed, now is not the time for eating or mincing words.

“Fine,” I repeat, dropping my spoon maybe a tad too hard onto my plate. “If no one else is going to do it, how about I begin?”

Fannie must hear something in my voice, because she pops out of her chair and disappears with her plate into the kitchen.

I turn to Dad, who clearly doesn’t know what’s coming. The crease between his brows is back, and his shoulders are climbing up his neck again. I smile, softening my expression, my tone, my tactic.

“Do you remember when Ella Mae bought us that home-waxing kit? The one we warmed up in the microwave?”

Dad’s shoulders drop a good inch, and he almost smiles. “I came home, and y’all looked like mummies. You were covered in long strips of fabric, and the whole house smelled like tar.”

I laugh. “I think it was tar, because we couldn’t get it off. Our legs were sticky for months. Anyway, neither of us dared to yank off our own strips, because what none of those packages will tell you is waxing hurts like hell.”

“Word,” Lexi says around a soft snort.

“After forever, Ella Mae stuck her foot up on the counter, squeezed her eyes shut and told me to just rip them off. She said fast and clean was the least painful way, and she was right. So that’s what I’m gonna do now. I’m gonna rip off the Band-Aid.”

Bo swallows his food with an audible gulp. His eyes bulge, then rapid-fire blink. Beside him, Lexi puts down her sandwich and crosses her arms, and her face closes up. Neither of them speak.

Rip the Band-Aid off.

I set my plate on the floor and turn back to Dad.

“All these years, I’ve been waiting for proof you didn’t do this horrible thing everybody said you did. I thought if someone supplied me with even a shred of reasonable doubt, this whole nightmare would be over and you could be my dad again. And then I got it. I got my reasonable doubt, and you know what? Turns out you were always my dad. I was just a shitty daughter.”

I hear a hiccup, then Bo sucks in a thick breath. He is on the verge of tears, I know, and I don’t dare look at him for fear his tears will instigate mine. Instead, I focus on a fold in Dad’s blanket, how it lifts and falls with each breath.

“Because sixteen years is a long time to be searching for doubt,” I continue, “when really I should have been more focused on trust. I don’t know why I didn’t trust you. I don’t know why I couldn’t trust you. What I do know is that sometime in the past sixteen years, my suspicions broke me. I am broken because for so long, I thought my own father was capable of murder. And I don’t think I will ever be able to accept how much that must have hurt you.”

Silence settles over the room, swollen and heavy as a lead blanket. There’s a certain anguish in Dad’s face, a faint twist to his mouth, and he’s frowning. He stares at his hands for a long moment then, finally, clears his throat.

“You’re here now. That’s all that matters.”

His answer both disappoints and annoys me—not because I am waiting for absolution, but because I was hoping for more. More acknowledgment of his obvious pain, more blame for my hand in it, more anger and disdain and hostility.

And speaking of more, why are Bo and Lexi so silent? What good is ripping off this family’s Band-Aid if I’m the only one?

I lean forward, shake my head. “It’s not all that matters. We thought you were a liar and a murderer. We were actually relieved when you went to prison. And we never, not once, wrote or visited you there, because it was easier to pretend you didn’t exist than to admit to having a father who was a convicted murderer. How can you not hate us?”

Dad startles at the word
hate,
as if he’d never once considered it.

“Of course I don’t hate you. Y’all are my blood, mine and Rosalie’s, and I couldn’t hate you if I tried.” He looks at me, then to Bo and Lexi. “Once you have kids of your own, you’ll understand.”

Lexi thunks her plate on the tray table beside her, her gaze skittering to the window. “I’ll never understand,” she whispers, and I know she’s not talking about a parent’s unconditional love.

Dad seems to know, too. He reaches for Lexi’s hand, and she lets him, though she won’t quite meet his eyes.

“No one says you have to understand why things happened the way they did, or even that you have to accept them. Your mother died, your stepmother was killed, your father was taken away. I think it’s safe to assume you kids have been in your own kind of prison for the past couple decades.”

I fall back into my chair, my anger fizzled. Dad’s right. We have been in prisons of our own. My stomach twists at the thought of all the years I’ve spent wandering the globe, burying myself in someone else’s drama in order to forget my own. It didn’t help. I didn’t forget. And since Bo and Lexi were reminders of that awful time, it was easier to ignore them, too.

“I’m so sorry,” I say, this time not to Dad.

Bo looks up. His gaze goes from me to Lexi, and I can see he has the same regrets. “Me, too. I wish I’d been a better brother.”

There’s a long silence, one that expands and fills the room until it becomes almost tangible. A strained silence.

Lexi glances at both of us, defensively, as if by asking forgiveness, we have accused her of something. She opens her mouth, closes it, then shakes her head, just barely, but enough that I understand. She wants to apologize, but she can’t. Something—doubt? her pride?—is holding her back.

Dad closes his eyes, and he makes that face again. “I forgive you anyway.”

Lexi stares at her lap. “No you don’t,” she whispers.

“I do.” His eyes are too dehydrated to well up, but even without tears, he looks like he’s crying. “I forgive you.”

“But why?”

“Because I love you kids. Because I’ve missed you. Because I don’t have time for grudges.”

At the reminder of why we’re here, at Dad’s bedside, my sister begins to cry. Not the silent kind of tears, the ones slipping noiselessly down her cheeks and falling with a muffled splat onto her lap, but the heaving, blubbering, sputtering kind. The kind that convulse her entire body with choked-out sobs and turn her pretty cheeks snotty and splotchy. She doesn’t hold back or try to hide it, either, just screws up her face and howls.

A jagged pain ripples up my throat, aching with tears I can no longer hold back. For all my sister’s posturing, she’s always been the fragile one. Up until this very moment, she’s just been better at hiding it than the rest of us.

“It’s not fair,” she wails, loud enough to hurt my ears. “It’s not fucking fair.”

Dad shushes her. “I know it’s not, darlin’. Believe me, I know. But now that I’ve got you kids back, I’ll die a happy man.”

“But I don’t...” A shuddering sob racks her body and steals her breath before she begins again. “I don’t want you to die yet. Not when I just got you back.”

Lexi’s words are not an apology, but judging by the way they light up Dad’s face, they’re even better. I know for Lexi, they were just as difficult to say. He closes his eyes and opens his arms, and Lexi falls into them, holding on for all she’s worth.

I take a moment to let it sink in. This is what I’ve been fighting for—this moment—for Lexi and my father and our family. I can’t save Dad, but at least I’ve saved what’s left of us, of me and Bo and Lexi. Especially Lexi. Something inside me unravels, that tight knot around my heart finally comes untied, and an unfamiliar feeling spreads across my chest like warm honey. It takes me a few beats to recognize it for what it is. Happiness. For the first time in what feels like forever, I am more happy than sad.

Dad smooths down Lexi’s already smooth hair with a palm and smiles, actually smiles at me over the top of her head.

“Thank you,” he mouths.

* * *

Over the course of the next few days, we fall into a comfortable rhythm. After breakfast around Dad’s bed, Bo and Lexi head off to work while Cal commandeers the dining room table, spreading his papers and laptop all over its shiny surface and screaming into his cell phone from one of its chairs all day long. Fannie and I spend the day puttering around the house and caring for Dad, who sleeps more than not nowadays. While he dozes, the two of us watch a mindless string of sitcoms and talk shows and eighties movies, bake enough pastries to fatten up all of Appalachia and chat about pretty much every subject under the sun.

And somehow, every day, all day long, I end up talking mostly about Jake, counting down the seconds until the house goes dark and quiet and he tiptoes up the porch.

Upstairs alone in my room, we make love, and then we make plans. What Jake and I jokingly refer to as my Rogersville Test Drive will begin the day after the funeral, when I will call my boss to extend my leave. Jake suggested I ask for another month. I said he needed at least six to get a good price for his place. We compromised on three.

And every night, he asks me if I’m certain I want to stay. So far the answer has always been yes.

I still don’t entirely know how I feel about remaining in Rogersville after Dad’s gone, but I am certain about one thing: I cannot, cannot leave Jake. He assures me every day and in no uncertain terms that he feels the same. Somehow knowing he would pick up and leave whenever I say it’s time softens the edges of my panic at staying. I know I have an out, one Jake has unconditionally included himself in, and that knowledge gives me strength. Strength to face the Rogersville gossip mill, strength to put up with their whispers and half truths and misguided assumptions, strength to stay in a place where I will always be, before anything else, Ray Andrews’s daughter.

When I tell all this to Fannie, she clutches a pillow to her chest, leans back onto the couch and sighs dreamily. “That there’s the most romantic thing I think I ever did hear.”

“It is pretty sappy, isn’t it? Too much?”

“Gracious, no.” She pats my knee and grins. “Let this old lady live vicariously, will you? What else you got?”

“Well...” I think for a moment. “The other day he told me he wants to take me away for a weekend after...well, you know. He won’t tell me where, only that it’s his second favorite spot in the world.”

“Why not his first?”

“That’s exactly what I asked. He said we were already there, because his first favorite spot was wherever I was.”

Fannie smacks her thigh and whoops.

I make a moony face. “I know. Gross, right?”

“Oh, no, honey, not gross. Not coming from a man as fine as Jake Foster. That boy is one smooth talker. And right smitten, too, sounds like.”

I can’t deny I am just as smitten, and content in a way I never dreamed I could be when I boarded the plane in Kenya. Or maybe
content
isn’t the right word. Maybe what I’m feeling is something more like blissful. Blissful because my family is back, the protesters are gone and Jake is warming my bed at night. What more could I have wished for, considering?

Even Lexi seems to have come around. As soon as she gets home from the bank, she plops into an armchair at Dad’s right elbow and stays there until bedtime, coaxing him into conversation when he’s awake, sitting quietly at his side while he sleeps. I don’t much mind that she’s hijacked my chair and his attention. Bo and I have already had our moments with Dad, and I want her to have hers, as well.

Dad’s bitterness and anger seem to have evaporated, as well, replaced by a calm acceptance of what is to come. I guess his brain has finally accepted what his body already knew, and by some unspoken agreement, he’s decided to make the best of whatever time we have left together.

This new normal makes it almost easy to forget why I came, why we have all gathered here, in our former home, at Dad’s bedside. And then Dad thrashes about on the bed or screams in his sleep, and I remember. Remember what was lost—Ella Mae. Dad. Rogersville. What is about to be lost all over again—Dad, this time around irrevocably.

How is it possible to feel so perfectly happy and so heartbroken at the same time?