person in the entire world who remembered John the way he used to be. She was like a precious box where all his childhood memories were stored, only she had thrown away the key the minute the police had dragged him out the front door.
Joyce sat back in her chair. She looked at her watch. “I really should go.”
“Yeah,” he said. “Your friends are waiting.”
She met his eyes for the first time since she’d walked in. She saw he knew she was lying.
Her tongue darted out and she licked her lips. “I went to see Mom last weekend.”
John blinked back sudden tears. In his mind, he saw the cemetery, pictured Joyce standing at his mother’s grave. The buses didn’t go out there and a cab would cost sixty dollars. John didn’t even know what his mother’s headstone looked like, what inscription Joyce had decided on.
“That’s why I called you,” she told John. “She would’ve wanted me to see you.” She shrugged. “Christmas.”
He bit his lip, knowing if he opened his mouth he would start crying.
“She always believed in you,” Joyce said. “She never once thought you were guilty.”
His chest ached from the effort of reining in his emotions.
“You ruined everything,” Joyce told him, almost incredulous. “You ruined our lives, but she wouldn’t give up on you.”
People were looking, but John didn’t care. He had apologized to her for years—in letters, in person. Sorry didn’t mean anything to Joyce.
“I can’t blame you for hating me,” he told her, wiping a tear with the back of his hand. “You have every right.”
“I wish I could hate you,” she whispered. “I wish it was that easy.”
“I would hate you if you had done…”
“Done what?” She was leaning over the table again, an edge of desperation in her voice. “Done what, John? I read what you said to the parole board. I know what you told them. Tell me.” She slapped her hand on the table. “Tell me what happened.”
He pulled a napkin from the container on the table and blew his nose.
She wouldn’t let up. “Every time you were up in front of the board, every time you spoke to them, you told them you weren’t guilty, that you wouldn’t say that you had done it just so you could get out.”
He took another napkin so he’d have something to do with his hands.
“What changed, John? Was it Mom? You didn’t want to disappoint her? Is that what it is, John? Now that Mom’s gone, you could finally tell the truth?”
“She wasn’t gone when I said it.”
“She was wasting away,” Joyce hissed. “She was in that hospital bed wasting away and all she could think about was you. ‘Look after Johnny,’ she kept saying. ‘Don’t let him be alone in there. We’re all he has.’ ”
John heard himself sob, a bark like a seal that echoed in the restaurant.
“Tell me, John. Just tell me the truth.” Her voice was quiet. Like their father, she didn’t like to show her feelings. The more upset she got, the lower her tone tended to be.
“Joyce—”
She put her hand on his. She had never touched him before, and he could feel her desperation flowing through her fingertips and needling under his skin. “I don’t care anymore,” she said, more like a plea. “I don’t care if you did it, Johnny. I really don’t. I just want to know for myself, for my own sanity. Please—tell me the truth.”
Her hands were beautiful, so delicate, with such long fingers. Just like Emily’s.
“John, please.”
“I love you, Joyce.” He reached into his back pocket and took out a folded piece of paper. “Something is going to happen,” he said. “Something bad that I don’t think I can stop.”
She took her hand away, moved back in her chair. “What are you talking about, John? What have you gotten mixed up in?”
“Take this,” he said, putting the credit report on top of the Christmas card. “Just take this and know that whatever happens, I love you.”
John hadn’t brought the Fairlane with him, but he didn’t want Joyce to see him waiting at the bus stop outside the entrance to the mall so he jogged up the street toward Virginia-Highland, catching MARTA there. He didn’t want to go home, couldn’t face his roach-infested hovel or his fellow rapists in the hallway, so he went to the Inman Park station and picked up the Fairlane.
He didn’t normally follow Woody until the evenings on the weekend. John’s first two weeks of reconnaissance had proven the guy