might as well have been months. Time made little sense to me.
Willy stayed with me the entire time. Matteo talked to him several times. I’m not sure what exactly they worked out, but Willy returned the first night with a large suitcase. I told him to take Auntie Jo’s room, but he opted to remain on the couch. Something about moving into that space seemed taboo, even to him.
When I asked for a drink, he gave me cranberry juice instead. I drank so much cranberry juice my piss turned red. This should have been cause for concern, but my body ached so bad at that point, I think I welcomed death—a little red piss was surely a step in the right direction.
On the third day, the shaking stopped. I told Willy about the life insurance money, the trust. I explained in detail what Matteo originally told me. My allowance, the college requirement, my part-time guardian across the hall paid via grocery delivery and the occasional book.
I filled him in on the years between. My trips to the cemetery, each one since our failed meeting ending in my cracked up bike back in ’88. I told him what little I knew of Dunk. I told him about my visit to Stella’s house last year, I told him about the little room in the basement, I told him about Raymond Visconti and how he was found the next day in the same alley across from Krendal’s as Andy Olin Flack years earlier.
I told him everything.
And Willy listened.
Through all, I caught him more than once glancing through my bedroom door at the drawings of Stella or toward the dusty stack of posters still sitting on the table near the kitchen. When I finally finished, he asked me one simple question. “Do you love her?”
To which I answered, “I don’t know.”
“I’m drawn to her,” I explained. “I don’t think a single day, maybe even a single waking hour, has passed where I haven’t thought about her. It’s been like that since I was a little kid. When I’m with her, even if only for a brief time, I feel complete, I feel whole.” To say these things out loud brought Gerdy to mind, and the guilt crushed me.
I’m okay being the other girl.
Was it possible to love two different girls? I was beginning to think it was. Not exactly the same love, different kinds of love, each one filling a different void.
Did I love Stella? I did. Maybe I couldn’t bring myself to say it aloud, but I surely did.
Did I love Gerdy? I wanted to, but I didn’t. Not at first, anyway. Maybe now, yes, but not at first. And admitting such a thing made everything hurt that much more.
Perhaps that was the difference, if there could be one.
I couldn’t not love Stella, even if I tried.
Knowing I would see her soon got me through this past week, through the withdrawal, got me past the alcohol. At least this time.
“It’s almost six,” Willy finally said. “You need to go.”
Outside, dark storm clouds cluttered the evening sky, thick raindrops smacked against Auntie Jo’s window. I nodded and started for the door.
“You should bring an umbrella,” Willy suggested.
“Don’t have one!” I called back from the hallway.
I wasn’t about to let a little rain slow me down, not today.
If not for the rain, I might have noticed Faustino Brier’s Partner, Detective Fogel, round the corner of my building and follow me toward the cemetery.
I paused at my parents’ graves beneath the dripping leaves of the large maple, rain splashing all around. Although the downpour hadn’t started very long ago, the ground was already spongy. Three graves now beneath that tree, the grass around Auntie Jo’s filled in and blending with the others. The vases attached to each gravestone overflowed, the metal lined with rust stains. Neither of my parents’ vases held flowers. I hadn’t been here for months, not even after the funerals for Gerdy, Krendal, and the others from the diner. I just couldn’t.
Kneeling in the wet grass, I peeled away the maple leaves sticking to the surface of the stones, wiped the grime away with rainwater and my hand.
“Kaitlyn Gargery Thatch. February 16, 1958 to August 8, 1980. Loving wife, mother, and sister,” I said softly.
My father’s grave sat in silence beside hers, somehow condemning my recent behavior. The minimal words on his stone were representative of the few words he would speak when angry with me, the silence often more punishment than any