Page 161 of Whisper

Wherewashe? Where was David? He’dsworn, one night after they’d had too much to drink and war was everywhere, and the fear of dying was a real, heavy thing, that he would come back if the worst happened. He would haunt Kris, find some way to break the barrier between life and death. If there was a way, he swore he would find it. He wouldn’t leave Kris alone. Kris had sworn the same, promises drenched in alcohol and tears and kisses that turned to endless lovemaking.

He’d carried David’s ring like a totem, like an idol, praying to it as if it were a signpost for David’s soul.Come back to me. I’m here, I’m waiting for you.

Damn it, he’dpromised. He’d promised he would.

If there was any place on the planet that Kris would find David’s ghost, it would be on their back porch. He’d been waiting, he knew, until the last moment. He wanted to walk out there and see him, see David in his chair. Holding out his hand for Kris to join him.

He’d promised he would come back.

But the porch, his chair, was empty, and David’s ring was cold in the palm of his hand.

David wasn’t coming back.

There wasn’t anything to come back from.

Whirling, he puked, heaving a stomach full of bile over the railing. He hadn’t eaten in days, and his stomach had started to turn on itself. He swayed, fell. Landed in a heap, a bag of brittle bones and rancid blood, powered by a broken heart and a soul full of shame.

Kris was alone.

He stormed out of the house hours later, Dan trailing behind him. Dan had crashed on the couch, slept for what looked like the first time in days. Dark bags under his eyes seemed etched into his skin, and new frown lines arched across his forehead like furrows and canyons.

Kris kept pacing, trying to bottle up every memory, every moment he and David had spent together. It was too much, the house full of hope, of dreams. Too, too much. He was being smothered by all the broken hope, the ghosts of their love. He had to get out.

Dan took him to a hotel, checked him in. Crashed in the second bed while Kris barricaded himself in the bathroom. He turned on the shower and crawled in, sinking down the tiled wall until he was a heap on the floor, soaking wet, shivering down to the bone. But he couldn’t feel it. He couldn’t feel anything anymore.

He called hismamá, only his second call ever outside of their annual Christmas and Easter calls. The first time, he’d called to tell her he was married. When she answered, she was excited, her voice full of joy, of wonder. “Am I going to be a grandmother?”

“He’s dead. David’s dead.”

He heard hismamádrop the phone, heard her scream, curse, and then pray. Fast Spanish, breathless prayers rushed together in a long, unending string. He sat on the floor of his hotel room like a rock. Hismamá’s grief washed over him and around him, but he was an unmovable boulder. Nothing could touch him anymore.

She came back on the line with her voice choked full of tears. She wanted to know how, when, why. He gave her the barest details. “It’s been on the news. Haven’t you seen?”

“You never tell me details,mi chico. I didn’t think it was you.” She moaned, prayed again. “What will you do?”

He swallowed.

“Come to Puerto Rico. Come here. I will take care of you. Leave all that behind, all of that. Just come here. It can be like it was, yes?”

For a moment, he thought about it.Mamáhad run after he left for college. She’d escaped a life she hated, a man who resented her, and a city that had brought her nothing but grief. She’d returned to the island she loved, lived away from the world and all of its hurts. She’d hidden herself away, carving a new world for herself where nothing could ever reach her again. It was tempting to fall into that, to disappear into Puerto Rico as well. Run, and never stop running. Run until he outran himself.

But his life sentence had been issued. He was made to live. He was made to suffer, to endure.

So suffer he would.

His mamá’s prayers, her sobs, over the crackling phone line brought him back to Sunday mornings he’d spent at her side, incense and candle smoke in the air as he shifted in his too-tight shiny shoes. The low rumble of the priest’s chanting. Jesus’s nude body on the cross, his muscles glowing, gleaming by the light of the sun carved through stained glass. Verses read aloud in Father Felipe’s deep baritone sank through his mind, the remnants of his soul. Hubris and punishment, God’s wrath.

Because you have done this, you are cursed upon all else. Because you have done this, dust shall you eat for all the rest of your days.

Dust you are, and to dust you shall return.

Ashes to ashes. Dust to dust.

For all the rest of your days.

He wouldn’t take any shortcuts, no easy way out. Death would be too easy. Living on without David was a punishment worse than any Hell envisioned by any religion. His sentence was harsh, but just. To live, and to suffer. For the rest of his days, until he too returned to ash, after a million torturous days.

He had an ocean of blood to clean up, thousands of lives to avenge.