Morning Glory(66)

I hardly notice Jimmy sitting on my deck, and I quickly dry the tears in my eyes so he won’t be frightened.

“Hi, honey,” I say, sitting beside him. “What are you doing up so late?”

“It’s too loud to sleep,” he says with shrug. When he looks up at me, I can see tears on his cheeks.

“Sweetie,” I say, “what’s the matter? You’ve been crying.”

Jimmy sniffs and wipes his nose on his sleeve. I can tell he’s trying to be strong, trying to be a man, but the mere fact that I’ve asked him about his pain seems to have the opposite effect on him, and now tears spill freely onto his freckle-dotted cheeks. He reaches into his pocket and pulls out a wadded-up piece of paper, then hands it to me.

“What is this, honey?” I ask, unfolding it carefully.

“My comic strip,” he says. “I found it in the trash can.”

I think of how proud he was of his sketches. I remember the way he showed it to me so timidly and how I encouraged him to show it to Naomi and Gene. I thought they’d praise him. I only wanted Jimmy to feel some sense of happiness, some sense of worth. Here is a boy who aches for approval from his parents, especially his mother, and my meddling has only made things worse.

“Honey,” I say, searching for the right words. “It must have been a mistake. Surely your parents wouldn’t throw this away.” I smooth out the page, smiling at the way he drew the comic strip, trying so hard to keep his lines straight. “Look at how nice your printing is in the thought bubbles. And see how you drew the farm animals here? It’s magnificent.” I hand the comic back to him, but he shakes his head.

“I don’t want it,” he says.

“Well,” I say, “then I’ll keep it. I won’t let you, or anyone else, throw something so excellent away. Besides, you’ll want it back someday.”

“I will?” Jimmy asks, puzzled, but the idea intrigues him.

“Of course you will. When you’re a famous comic strip artist.”

The corners of his mouth turn up briefly, but his smile fades fast, and he folds his arms across his chest. I worry that it doesn’t matter what I say. The wound is too deep, and I fear it will scar this time.

“Want to rest on my couch?” I say. “It’s quieter down here.”

“It’s OK. I’d rather just look out at the lake.”

“Me, too,” I say, hoping that at any moment I’ll see Collin sailing up, just like we planned. I’ll run inside and get my suitcase and then jump aboard. We’ll wave to Jimmy as we cast off. I might not even leave a note. “Bon voyage,” I’ll whisper to Jimmy. He’d keep our secret.

But the sailboat isn’t anywhere in sight, and a moment later, I detect movement on the deck in front of Collin’s houseboat. It’s dark, but the porch light on his back deck illuminates two figures in the night. Two men in dark suits.





Chapter 26





ADA

Alex drives me home from the restaurant and walks me back to my door. I invite him in and he follows me to the living room. He hasn’t said a lot since I told him my story at dinner. I wonder how it’s affected him, and I worry.

“You’re really brave, you know,” he says, looking deep into my eyes.

“No,” I say honestly. “Really, I’m not.”

“But you are,” he insists. “Coming out here, forging a new life for yourself. That takes guts.”

I sigh. “I wish I could tell you that it was my strength that got me on that plane, but it wasn’t. It was fear. I had to get out of New York. I felt that I had to escape all my memories. All my guilt.”

He turns to face me. “Guilt? Why would you have guilt?”

Tears sting my eyes. “Because I brought them to that godforsaken waterfall,” I say. “It was my stupid job and nothing else. If I hadn’t taken that assignment, they’d still be alive.” I’m making a fist now, shaking it into the air, and Alex calmly tucks it down on my lap.

“You did what you had to do,” he says. “Your work isn’t the reason for their deaths. You must believe that.”

I look down at my lap. I don’t know what to say.

“When I was fourteen,” Alex begins, “my father died. He was an alcoholic. He wasn’t home a lot of the time when I was young—in fact, hardly ever. But the year before his death, he got sober. And it was the best year of my life. I finally had a dad around who was coherent enough to play catch with me, to help me build those model rockets I loved. But it was too late, almost. A fourteen-year-old doesn’t want to hang out with his dad all the time. By then, I wanted to go to my friends’ houses after school, hang out at the mall—anything but be at home. I always worried that my distance hurt him. And then he relapsed, in a bad way. One night he drove home from the bar and hit a tree head-on.”