breaking in a dozen different places. “She was my everything. My every day. But Koko’s the one who patched me up. She saved me. And I knew it was wrong while it was happening, but I couldn’t get my head on straight. Without her, I didn’t feel alive, and without Jenny, I didn’t have a reason to be. So I let it go on until the day Koko told me she was pregnant, and then I . . . I . . .”
“I’m sure you did what you had to,” I said, disgust seeping out.
“I did what I thought was right,” he spat back. “What was I supposed to do? Go be with . . . some other woman? Jenny didn’t deserve that.” His face pinched up, angry. “And I was a church lector, for God’s sake.”
I raised my eyebrows and waited.
He shook his head, frustrated, and amended his answer. “I came up short—I know that. I’m not stupid. I missed my daughter’s first steps, her graduation. I never even held her like I held my son, and that little girl hated me for it. Hated. I don’t blame her either, but I meant to make it up later. Then later came, and she wouldn’t let me. Those letters kept coming back, and coming back, and . . .” His eyes cut to his closet. “So I decided to will them to her, along with everything I own, because I knew by the time it all arrived, there’d be no place to send it back to.”
He turned to me, face wet with tears and red as a blister. “Don’t you see, Duffy? She was supposed to forgive me after I went, but now she’s gone. They’re all gone. Jenny, Koko, my . . . my children. I did them all wrong, and now they’re dead.” He tipped his head back to choke down a cry, then said to the ceiling, like it was an actual prayer, “I wish to God I was dead too.”
The words hung in the air, and I objected to them with every cell in my body, even as mad as I was at him. Still, I let his wish pass without a word because it fell into all that talk I refused to deal with—being put in a box, being put in the ground. Later, I thought, understanding that the vagueness of the promise made it possible to think it. We’ll fix all of this later.
Eventually, the quiet in the room quieted him. His whimpering tailed off, and the shake in his shoulders settled. But somehow the air seemed worse. Now it was thicker than before, downright engorged, full enough to remind me of the day Cormac died instead of the day we buried him.
I could feel myself turning eight years old again, curled up in the indent of his empty bed at the farmhouse. I could smell him—haystacks and cap guns and sweat. I could hear my mom wailing in the room next door. I could feel myself holding my breath, trying to be soundless, trying to dry it up. It was a lifelong skill set that was suddenly failing me.
I withdrew my hand from Carl, but I could still feel the thrum of his pulse radiating from him like heat. Or maybe it was my own blood rushing past my eardrums, pounding behind my eyes.
“Carl,” I said, my voice tight, “I think you could use a rest, don’t you?”
He wiped his eyes with his sleeve, then fished a handkerchief from within the cuff and sat there, twisting it tight as a rope. Finally, he let it unwind and offered a listless nod.
“Okay. Okay, good,” I said, almost as a reassurance to myself. He could sleep it off. He’d feel better when he woke this afternoon—we both would, like new—and then we’d talk about what to do with Josie. Now wasn’t the time.
I stood and put his walker at his feet, then folded down his bedcovers and fluffed his pillow—my normal routine whenever I left him for a nap. I joked that I did it because it took him so much work to get up, all so he could go lie down. But, really, it was a favor turned into habit. “Do you need anything else?”