No answer.
“Harry!”
Duckworth slipped the key into the lock, turned it, then put his hand on the knob and turned, pushing slowly on the door at the same time.
“Oh, man,” he said.
SEVENTY-FIVE
“I’VE only been here once before,” Thomas said as we turned off the main road and into the well-manicured grounds of the Promise Falls cemetery. “When Mom died, remember?”
“I remember,” I said, taking the Audi down to a crawl as we meandered along the narrow, paved roadway, stones and memorials gliding past our windows. Thomas, who did not think much of the navigation skills of Maria, my in-dash GPS lady, didn’t touch the system on the way over.
The events of the last week had changed him. Changed us all.
But Thomas wasn’t like the rest of us. He’d always seemed, certainly to me, incapable of change. He was a prisoner of his illness. And yet, he was not the same person he used to be.
A couple of days after Harry Peyton had taken his own life, I bought Thomas a new computer. We got it all set up at home, and he was right back onto Whirl360 as I went downstairs to open a beer.
Twenty minutes later, he was down in the kitchen. It wasn’t time for lunch, or dinner. He just needed a break. He took a Coke out of the fridge, sat at the table and drank it, and then went back upstairs. When I peeked in on him later, he was reading the Times online.
Wonders never ceased.
He’d been to see Dr. Grigorin, and when she spoke to me after his appointment, she said she’d noticed a change, too.
“Let’s just see,” she said, careful not to raise any expectations. “But I think he’s going to make the adjustment well. It’s possible, and I don’t want to read too much into this, but Harry Peyton’s death may have been, in some way, liberating. Maybe Harry was one of the reasons Thomas didn’t want to come out of the house.”
Thomas claimed to be looking forward to his new accommodations. “Staying in this house,” he’d said to me that morning, “reminds me too much of Mom and Dad. When it was me and Dad, that was okay, but with both of them gone, the place feels kind of strange.” He’d paused. “And I know you don’t want to live here with me.”
“Thomas, that’s—”
“You want to live with Julie. So you can have sex with her.”
“Yeah, well,” I’d said.
“I don’t want you to get me into any more trouble,” he’d said. A familiar refrain these days. Like I’d knocked over the first domino. Like it was me who saw Bridget Sawchuck online.
After breakfast, he’d asked to be driven to our father’s grave, so that he could finally pay his respects.
I’d told him what had happened at Peyton’s office, that I had figured out a few things. That Peyton had assaulted him back when he lived above a shop on Saratoga. That Dad, having seen the pictures on Peyton’s phone, had finally come to believe Thomas. Everyone was a believer now. The police, as part of the investigation into Peyton’s suicide, seized all his computers and found plenty of the kinds of images that made my stomach turn just to think of them.
I did not tell Thomas my belief that Harry Peyton was responsible for our father’s death. It was mostly conjecture on my part, but it made sense. I could imagine Harry coming out, trying to get my father to back off. The two of them arguing, the tractor flipping over.
I chose not to tell Thomas because I felt he’d been through enough. And since there weren’t going to be any charges leveled against Harry, this was never going to go to court. None of it would ever come out.
“They’re in the same plot, right?” Thomas said as I brought the car to a stop. “Mom and Dad?”
“That’s right.”
“Did you know you can see this cemetery on the computer? There’s a really good satellite view of it. I’ve looked at it lots of times. I know exactly where to go.”
And he did. He hopped out of the car with enthusiasm and strode off across the lawn. I came around the car and caught up with him.
As he approached the gravestone, he slowed, stood a respectful six feet away directly in front of it, and bowed his head ever so slightly, his hands clasped together in front of him.
I came up behind my brother and rested a hand on his shoulder.
“Hi, Dad,” he said. “I would have gone to the funeral but I didn’t want to see Mr. Peyton. But I thought I should finally come and see you. Mr. Peyton is dead now, and I think that’s a good thing, even though you’re probably not supposed to say something like that.”
I squeezed his shoulder.
“Anyway, I miss you. Ray is teaching me to do more things. I’m making meals and learning how to look after myself more, which is another good thing, because I’m moving to this place where you have to help out.”