Page 24

CHAPTER 23

August 22 nd

8:08 PM

T HE POOL HALL is quieter than a graveyard at noon. I blame it on the Rockies being trounced, twelve-zip in the third inning. Their manager looks to be on the brink of an aneurysm, which is not unlike how I feel as the boyish bartender brings me what is supposed to be a Tom Collins but has the distinctly battery acid taste of a gin and tonic.

But no, that’s not true, is it? That knifelike pain in my head has nothing to do with a botched drink order and everything to do with the supercut of childhood memories playing in my head. First the good, the pure: chokecherry pies, baby sisters bundled into my arms, Annie the dog, flying high on the rusty swing set. When the horrors resurface, I am not angry, or frightened, or distraught. I am only tired.

I am so, so tired.

“Mind if I join you?”

Josiah’s hat casts a shadow over his face. He approaches me coolly, like a bounty hunter finally tracking down an elusive outlaw. Unlike my father and his compatriots, loyal to their beers, Josiah nurses a clear drink garnished with basil leaves. “Unless you’re expecting someone?” he asks, gnawing on an ice cube.

“I’m leaving when I finish this.”

He sets his drink down on a damp clump of napkins. He whistles for the bartender’s attention. “Another one when you get the chance, son?”

“Fancy running into you here,” I say to Josiah.

“They let me out of the station every once in a while for some fresh air.”

I chuckle into my glass and hope he doesn’t notice. I don’t want him to confuse my amusement for a ceasefire. He fishes another ice cube from his drink to swallow like a pill. “Five years until I retire, God willing and the creek don’t rise. I’m ready to get the hell out of Nebraska.”

“Don’t come to Missouri. It sounds like misery for a reason.”

“You got a fella waiting for you at home?”

“I’m a lesbian,” I deadpan.

The bartender drops off a fresh drink for Josiah. He transfers the soggy basil leaf from the old drink to the new. He sips and grunts approval at the flavor before blindsiding me: “My daughter is too.”

“ Penny? ”

He laughs. “Only one I got.”

“I’m surprised you’re okay with that.”

“What’s there to be okay with? She’s happy and healthy. That’s all a father can ask for.”

It’s all I can do not to choke on my own envy. “My father would beat me bloody if he knew about me.”

“I owe you a proper apology, Providence,” Josiah says. He removes his hat as if to underscore his sincerity.

“I don’t need it.”

“Can you do an old man the favor of hearing him out?”

“Don’t come to me for absolution.”

“You don’t have to forgive me. God knows I don’t deserve it. I’d just like to say my piece.”

I slam my glass down with too much force. The bartender jumps like I’ve fired a gun. “Please don’t, Josiah. The only thing I want is to never see you or speak to you again. That can be your apology,” I say. “It’s too late for anything else.”

“There’s nothing I regret more than not standing up for you girls. It haunts me every day.”

“It should.”

He motions the bartender over and hands him cash to pay for my drink. I want to tell him to take his ten dollars and shove it up his ass, but a free drink is a free drink. “Harmony is getting transferred to York at the end of the week,” he says. “If you want to say goodbye, I’d do it sooner rather than later.”

“Sounds like I’ll have at least ten years to visit her.”

“York isn’t too keen to let former inmates come back for visits.”

“I’m never done repaying my debt to society,” I say with a brittle laugh. “I never get to move on from something I did when I was seventeen years old, and yet my father gets to walk this earth free as a bird. He gets drunk and watches baseball games like every other man. You know what the difference between him and me is?”

“Me.”

“All you ever had to do was arrest him. Stick one charge on him.”

“I’d do it very different if I could now. I know that’s no consolation.”

“Why didn’t you do it different?”

Josiah waits for me to meet his eyes. “Because I was a coward. There’s no nicer way to put it. Tom scared me to death when I was young. Sometimes he still does. I’ve never met a man like him before, where you look in his eyes and you know he’s got no soul. Every time I’d start to think he didn’t scare me, he’d do something to remind me why I was scared in the first place. Shot my dog once, you know.”

“Slept with your wife.”

“Now, that’s just a nasty rumor.”

“Penny doesn’t look much like you.”

“You could tell me the stork dropped her at the doorstep and I’d still be her dad. The rest is background noise.”

I coax the dregs from the bottom of my glass. The straw bores into my gums like a dental instrument, and I dig it in further to sharpen the pain. “I wish I was a big enough person to forgive you, Josiah.”

“If you ever think of anything I can do to make amends,” he says, downing the last of his drink, “please tell me. I can’t undo anything, but I’d like the chance to set something right with you.”

“Don’t bet on it.”

He tips his hat to a young couple playing pool and saunters through the open door, the midnight darkness consuming his burly frame as he crosses the parking lot. Just as he disappears from view, I remember one thing he can do for me—one thing he can give me and my sisters. He nearly flattens me beneath his Jeep as I intercept him in the parking lot. The top has been removed from the car. He doesn’t even need to roll down a window to yell at me. “Sake’s alive, Providence!”

“Can you make sure my mother gets a grave at the church?”

“It’s up to your father what he wants to do with her remains.” He pulls the emergency brake even though the parking lot is flatter than a ruler. His brown eyes are warm. “He’s her next of kin. If he wants to keep her ashes, there’s not much I can do to stop him.”

“I know you can’t take her ashes, but you could make sure there’s a headstone, a plaque, anything. Just somewhere to mourn her that isn’t the mantlepiece in that horrible house.”

“I’ll see what I can do,” Josiah says.

“It would mean a lot to me and my sisters.”

This brief interlude of usefulness is the closest I can come to forgiving him today. Certain grudges, like the one I hold against my father, will fester inside me until I die. Even if my father escapes judgment from everyone else—even the law, even God himself—I can never forget. I can’t allow myself to completely move on. There must always be one place where his sins are unforgiven, and if that place is my heart, then so be it. But one day, even if it is years from now, long after my hair has turned gray and he’s become food for worms, I’d like to think I could forgive Josiah.

He exhales, slow and deliberate, and I worry he is going to try apologizing to me again. “I can call in some favors,” he says. “I’ll get Elissa a headstone.”

“That’s the first time anyone’s mentioned my mother to me by name.”

“I guess we always find it easier to define people by what they mean to others rather than who they are alone.”

His truism sparks another request. “Can you make sure they don’t write anything like wife or mother on the headstone? I want her to be Elissa for once. Even if it’s a fancy rock in a cemetery, she should have something that’s her own.”

“You’ll want something on there. Something more than just her name.” When he sees me racking my brain, he adds, “Sit with it. You don’t have to come up with anything right now.”

“What about a beatitude? ‘Blessed are the poor in spirit: for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.’”

Josiah smiles. “I think that’s perfect.”