the prison or Martha Lam. John had never known a moment in his adult life when he wasn’t trying to keep somebody happy just so he could live through another day.
Joyce started to tear up again. He had forgotten what a crier she was. “I hate her, John. I hate her so much. How can you stand to be in the same room with her?”
He used the back of his finger to wipe away her tears. “We need something from her. She doesn’t need anything from us.”
Lydia returned, holding a large photo album to her chest. She put it on the low leather ottoman between the couches as she sat down.
John saw a photograph of himself pasted to the outside of the book. At least, he thought it was his photograph. The face had been scratched out with an ink pen.
“My God,” Joyce murmured, sliding the album over. She opened the cover to the first page, then the second, as John looked over her shoulder. They were both speechless as they saw pictures of John from junior high—class pictures, team photos, John running in his track uniform. Michael had catalogued each moment of John’s teenage life.
“It was Barry who made it worse,” Lydia said. Uncle Barry, her husband, their mother’s brother. “Barry talked about you all the time, used you as an example.”
“An example of what?” Joyce demanded, obviously horrified by the scrapbook.
“Michael went down the wrong path after his father left. He had problems at school. The drugs…well, I don’t know. There was an older boy at school who got him interested in the wrong things. Michael would have never done anything like that on his own.”
Joyce’s mouth opened but John squeezed her hand, warning her not to speak. You didn’t get what you wanted from someone like Lydia Ormewood by telling her what to do. You came with your hat in your hand and you waited. John had done this all of his life. He knew that one false word could ruin everything.
Lydia continued, “Barry thought you would be a good role model for Michael. You always did so well in school.” She sighed. “Michael was a good boy. He merely gravitated toward the wrong crowd.”
John nodded, like he understood. Maybe, on some level, he did. John himself had gotten sucked into Michael’s crowd. So had Aleesha Monroe. She had hung around Michael’s house all the time, had even been there the night of the party. She’d had good parents, siblings who were always at the top of their classes. Would John have ended up like Aleesha if Mary Alice hadn’t died? Would his life have been wasted like hers no matter what had happened?
Lydia’s chest rose and fell as she sighed again. “I made him join the military,” she told them. “I didn’t let him sit around after you went away. He fought in the war. He tried to help keep those Arab people safe and got shot in the leg for his trouble.”
Joyce was so tense John could almost hear her humming like a piano wire.
Lydia picked at a speck of fuzz on her skirt. “And then he came back to Atlanta, settled down, had a family.” She looked up at Joyce. “That girl he married, she obviously had something wrong with her. Tim was not Michael’s fault.” She spoke vehemently, and John looked around the room again, trying to find photographs of Michael or his son. The mantel over the fireplace was bare but for a glass vase of silk flowers. The stark metal table on the back wall held nothing but a neat stack of magazines and one of those princess phones like Joyce had in her room when they were growing up. Even the thick cord dangling from the telephone hung in a straight line, as if it, too, was afraid to displease Lydia.
The whole place was like a tomb.
“He got a commendation for saving a woman’s life,” Lydia continued proudly. “Did you know that?”
John’s reply almost caught in his throat. “No. I didn’t.”
“She was in a car accident. He pulled her from the car before it exploded.”
John didn’t know what to say. Michael may have saved one woman, but he had ruined countless others, selling drugs to the working girls, raping and murdering for his own sick pleasure.
“Michael was good,” Lydia insisted. “That other part of him”—she waved her hand, dismissing the evil her son had wrought—“that wasn’t my Michael. My Michael was a good boy. He had so many friends.”
So many