She Has A Broken Thing Where Her Heart Should Be - J.D. Barker Page 0,247

nothing else. When they asked if that name meant something to me, I told them no.

My father died for the second time at his favorite window. For that, I was grateful. I wanted him to find peace with what he had done. I wanted to forgive him, and I told him that I did. I found it far easier to convince him of this than it was to convince myself.

Prior to the disease taking complete hold, my father signed power of attorney over his estate to me, and with Matteo’s help, I was able to complete a financial picture. Without going into detail here, this being a painful subject for me, we found Charter sent my father ten thousand dollars per month beginning one month after my mother died and continuing until the middle of 1996, about two years after Pickford “cleaned up” Charter. He had left many of the employees with instructions akin to autopilot, and someone in accounting saw fit to continue payments to my father.

Part of me wanted to hate my father, and I suppose few would blame me if I did, but in my thirty plus years on the planet, I learned life is far too short and fragile to harbor hate in your heart. It eats at your soul, burns but doesn’t burn. I told myself he did what he felt was right at the time. Fault should not be found in a man protecting his family with the tools provided, only in those who did not try. My father tried. He risked retaliation from Charter every month he sent me money as a kid by way of Preacher.

My father invested his assets wisely, and on the day he died, his estate was worth nearly six million dollars. I donated all of it to Alzheimer’s research. I had no need for his money.

If my father’s death was due to the shot, we never found proof. To this day, Cammie and Preacher show no signs of illness. Stella and I watch closely whenever we’re together. I’m sure Darby does, too.

In the fall of 1999, about a year after the events at Carrie Furnace, I returned to college. I didn’t go back to Penn State. The memories were far too strong. Instead, I went to Carnegie Mellon and earned a degree in art. I learned to enjoy painting, drawing, and sketching again. I’ve had several small showings over the years, mostly friends and family, but nice, nonetheless. If you happen to find yourself in a doctor’s office or bank in the Pittsburgh area, take a look at the paintings on the wall—you may find one with J. Thatch scrawled in the bottom right. A couple others with Pip.

The day I received my diploma from Carnegie Mellon, Dewitt Matteo and Tess were in the audience. I’d be lying if I said Matteo wasn’t ecstatic. He said, although Auntie Jo’s instructions explicitly said I needed to attend Penn State, they did not say I needed to earn out my degree there. He felt this was enough of a loophole to unfreeze the hold on my trust and grant access to the funds she left for me. As executor of the trust, he did, and with nobody to contest, I became a wealthy man that year.

Part of the funds were used to buy a small farm up near Moraine State Park. We live there to this day.

“Can we go soon? I’m hungry.”

“Soon, Dalton. One more quick stop, okay?”

“Oh, all right.”

I picked the name Dalton because I knew how much it would irk his Uncle Preacher. To this day, he despised his real name.

I hadn’t seen him in nearly a year. After the furnace in ’98, he stuck around for a few days. Then one morning, the Pontiac GTO was no longer outside and he was gone. No note, no forwarding address. He insisted he was a nomad and sitting still was not an option. He went back to that thing he did. If you had asked my kid-self if I would ever consider calling a hitman my friend, I probably would have said ‘absolutely,’ because what young boy doesn’t want a hitman as a friend? Preacher was and always will be considered a guardian angel in my mind. His wings might be dirty, but there was a good man in there. Every time I spotted a white SUV in my rearview, I took solace in the fact that there was also a black GTO out there somewhere, a balance in