Page 120 of Gone Before Goodbye

“She needed answers. Do you remember when you and Maggie flew over to Tunisia?”

Porkchop does, of course. “She wanted to see where it happened.”

“That would have taken you a day, maybe two,” Sharon says. “You two spent three weeks there. Visiting patients in the hospitals. Talking to every TriPoint camp survivor you could find. Maggie immersed herself in all the horror. She didn’t want to be spared. She wanted to hear how awful that day had been. Maybe Maggie thought hearing it all would be cleansing or healing or help her move on. But it was the opposite. When she came back, she wasn’t the same. I could see it in her eyes. She started self-medicating. She almost killed a patient during surgery. She lost her medical license. She spiraled.”

Porkchop just sits there. His expression doesn’t change, but Sharon’s words are shards of glass ricocheting through his chest. “So you tried to help with this griefbot.”

“Yes.”

“If I’m being kind, your invention is a crutch.”

“Sometimes a crutch is all you need.”

“In the short term. You can’t keep using a crutch.”

Sharon tilts her head. “Why not?”

Porkchop doesn’t have an answer to that.

“We all have crutches,” Sharon says. “We all have something to numb or distract or get us through the day. You have Vipers and your members. You have your bike rides. And…” Sharon points to the center of the room. “Do you think I don’t know what that is?”

Her finger is aimed at Vipers’ display area—more specifically, at the 1996 Honda Blackbird. Porkchop had bought it for Marc as a graduation present. After he died, Maggie had insisted Porkchop take it, ride it himself or give it to another Serpents and Saints member. ButPorkchop couldn’t. He tried, but he couldn’t bear seeing someone else on his boy’s favorite bike. So Porkchop put it in here, in Vipers for Bikers, and every day, he stops in front of it and just stands there.

Yeah, who needs a crutch?

Porkchop stares at the bike now. “Did it help her?”

Sharon knows he’s talking about the griefbot. “I don’t know.”

“But Maggie’s been using it?” He wrests his eyes away from Marc’s bike. “She was talking to…?”

“Yes.”

Porkchop thinks about that for a moment. It stings. The thought of Maggie talking to some computer-generated version of Marc. It stings more than he wants to admit, but what doesn’t? Part of him gets it. Part of him finds it infuriating.

“No wonder Maggie believes Marc might be alive,” he says.

“What?”

“She’s been ‘talking’ to him,” he says with more disgust in his voice than he intended. “Not him. Not her husband. Not my son. Just whatever Frankenstein version of him you created.”

“It’s not like that,” she says.

“I saidat best, it’s a crutch.” He tries but he can’t keep the bitterness out of his voice. “But more likely, your griefbot is a delusion. It’s a full-on lie.”

Sharon sits back. Porkchop immediately regrets his words.

“I’m sorry,” he says. “I didn’t mean—”

“No, no.” Sharon waves him off. “Don’t do that. You do mean it. And I get what you’re saying. It’s fair.” She tilts her head. “Why did you say Maggie thinks Marc is still alive?”

“She doesn’t. Not really.”

“But someone is giving her hope?”

“Yes.”

Sharon shakes her head. “That’s cruel.”