Margo turned back to me. “Alcoholics are professional blamers. I blamed everything and everyone else for drinking myself out of a great job and a great family and a great marriage. It sounds like your son’s blaming too. And you? You’re probably mortified by your own actions. But the first step is to admit that you were at fault.”
“I don’t feel we were entirely at fault. At one point I did. But I’m not my son. I’m myself. I didn’t put him in that situation. I didn’t make him kill his girlfriend. I saw that Stefan was obsessed with Belinda. He loved her almost too much. But I didn’t see other things. Stefan was an athlete. He didn’t even drink so far as we could tell. So we didn’t see that coming. As for him, he has admitted he was at fault. He’s admitted he had no power over the drugs he used.”
Becky spoke up then. “There were definitely things with Alice I didn’t let myself see. Because if I let myself see them, then things would have had to change. I would have lost my job. I would have lost her. I tried to convince myself that she would get better.”
Feeling undressed before these strangers, I gripped my cold cup of espresso and gazed down at my shimmering plate of lush custard, the spicy food I had so enjoyed now scalding my guts. I took a bite of the flan. Then I got up and smiled at them all. “You know, I think I need to get going now. Thank you all for a lovely meal. This place is fabulous. I’m tempted to move in!”
“You don’t have the résumé for that,” another of the women said. I didn’t know how much more awkward it could get.
Becky got up with me. “Want to take a little walk before you head home, Thea? I could use some exercise.”
We headed down across a few streets to the Lakeshore Path, where dozens of strollers and bikers were ambling along under the benign moon. After a short while, Becky said, “You know, they were hard on you. I’m sorry, I should have warned you. These are women who have not had the easiest time at the hands of men, as you might imagine.”
“Not for nothing, but The Healing Project is Stefan’s idea. He’s the one who created the charter. He’s the one who picked out your letter. He didn’t even realize how close I was with Alzy. He didn’t make the connection until I told him.”
“When we have our lights-out meeting, I’m going to make the point again about Stefan being behind the idea that’s helping all of them.”
We walked, and talked about Becky’s excitement and hopes for her baby, whom she wanted to name either Julian or Patrick.
“Name him both,” I said. “Let him pick. Patrick Julian. Julian Patrick. Patrick Julian Broom. Those are both names that have gravitas and music.”
“Unless they call him PJ or JP.”
“Are you having that hallucination that makes you think you have any control over your child’s destiny? You need to let that one go.”
Becky put her hand on my arm, then linked her arm through mine and said, “I didn’t realize you don’t really know exactly what happened to Belinda that night, do you?”
“Bits and pieces, but no. Stefan had no memory of that night. He needed our help to navigate the grief, the judgment, the overdose, the addiction, being incarcerated. We thought rehab and prison were the hard work. But it was when he got out that he needed us even more, to overcome his demons and find a way to accept himself and feel accepted. And now, I’ve been over the police reports and...” Should I tell her? I didn’t even know her. “There’s something else. There’s this girl, Stefan’s age, and she’s been calling me for months, on and off for years, really, and she kept saying she was so sorry. She kept saying she couldn’t live with the guilt of what she did, that she was there that night and she knew the truth.”
Becky eased herself down on a corner bench. “You think she’s involved with Belinda’s death?”
I nodded. And I had to reassure her—and myself—that it wasn’t just because of Stefan’s nature. “I mean, he’s just not violent, except once, when he just got out.” I told her about the lumberyard and the fight there.
Rebecca said, “That could have happened to anybody.” But she looked thoughtful for a moment. “Women aren’t usually physically violent. It’s pretty rare. So you think this girl was violent by nature?”
“No, not necessarily,” I said. What did I think? It was no more likely that Esme snapped than that Stefan snapped. She probably didn’t go around battering people. On the other hand, if she let someone else go to prison for her sin, her crying and wailing were all show: She had no conscience at all. “It all just seems to fit together, it makes sense. She was Belinda’s lover, and she was just like Stefan, terrified of losing her.”
Maybe, by that point, any way was better than facing the wide span of life without her. How could I know what drove Esme? How could I know how people had treated her in her life before? I’d never even spanked Stefan. I hadn’t struck a person in my life, not since I was nine and slapped my sister Phoebe for stealing my ten silver dollars from my jewelry box. What cyclone of emotion could whirl someone into such rage as evidenced by the photos in that box was beyond my ken.
“It’s an interesting hypothesis. Is this just a thought you’ve been having? Have you told anyone?” I told Becky about Pete Sunday and his promise to find Esme. While it might be a slim chance, even the detective seemed to think it was worth investigating.
I told Becky, “Either way this turns out, the guilt they brought up. I really don’t feel that way.”
“That’s good.”
“It was the drugs, just like it was the drink for Alice.”
“I’m glad that’s how you feel.” There was a reserve in the statement that snagged my defenses.
“Wait, am I missing something? You don’t think that Alzy would have frozen to death in a snowbank unless she was drunk, do you? I know Stefan wouldn’t have hit Belinda or anybody else unless he was so messed up he didn’t know what he was doing. That isn’t just me rationalizing things. The judge thought the same thing, or he would have sent Stefan away for murder.”
“I know,” she said. “But it’s not the same as with Alice.”
“Do the Hodges feel guilty, like they could have done more or something different?” I asked.
“I don’t know,” Becky said. “They’re political people. They put up a brave front. And they’re also actually brave. But Alice didn’t do anything to...anyone else. Both of these things are tragic. Tragic mistakes. But not the same.”
She was correct about that too. But no matter what the outcome, if this was as good as it ever got for us, would I exchange our fate with Stefan for the Hodges’ fate with Alice? No, I would not. A thousand times, I would not. Especially not now, I would not. For that, maybe I should have felt guilty.
I told Becky that the reason Stefan got parole on his first application was because he didn’t describe his actions as “a mistake.” What he had done was wrong, he went on, much worse than the things violent criminals did, because he wasn’t a violent criminal. He wasn’t raised to do wrong. He had no excuses. He could never atone for what he had done. But he swore he would never hurt another person as long as he lived.
“I think he means that, and I believe him,” Rebecca told me.
Finally, having put way too much out there already, I told Rebecca about the threats Esme had made.
“She keeps saying that if Stefan ever remembers more about that night, someone is going to get him. I know, it’s crazy. But doesn’t it really stand to reason if she’s the one who would get him? If she already killed one person, might she feel like what has she got to lose? I’m sorry for bugging you with this. This wasn’t what you meant by taking a little walk.”
“Just go on. Tell me the rest.”
“Well, she was livid because Stefan wouldn’t back down from talking publicly about Belinda’s death. He wanted to take responsibility. But when he did talk openly, nothing happened. I mean, I’m glad nothing happened...but was it all a hoax? Or was she afraid that he would reveal details he didn’t know about at first, because his memory was blocked? I thought she was trying to protect Stefan but was she just trying to protect herself? She must have hated Stefan.”