About an hour later, I hear the automatic garage door open for Piper’s car. I hear her high heels on the wood floor as she walks around the kitchen. She pulls something out of the refrigerator, probably a cold bottle of Smartwater. Before long, Piper is in the bathroom, brushing her teeth, then in our bedroom and taking off her clothes. I don’t open my eyes, don’t stir, wanting her to think I’m asleep. Piper climbs into bed next to me. I can tell she’s lying on her side, her elbow on the bed, her hand holding up her head. I can’t see her, but I can tell she’s looking at me. Studying me.
Piper stays this way for what seems like a long time, and I begin to get the sense that she wants to say something. Emotion surges suddenly through my chest. Is this the night she’s going to confess? Is she ready to tell me? Am I ready to hear it? I hold my breath, start to count. One thousand one. One thousand two. One thousand three. Piper turns on her back, exhales. Tonight is not the night. I exhale, too.
I wake up to the smell of bacon. Sunlight washes through the front bedroom windows. The alarm clock reads 8:00—the latest I’ve slept in a long time.
“Look, Daddy!” I turn to see Gabby standing in the doorway, a white porcelain mug in her hand. “Mommy made you coffee. You can drink it in bed!” Taking her time so as not to spill, Gabby delivers the mug to me. I take the mug, inhale the rich aroma of freshly brewed Starbucks French roast. Gabby climbs into bed with me and tells me how she’s been helping her mother cook our breakfast. “We’re having eggs and pancakes and bacon, and you’re going to read the Sunday paper, and me and Mommy are not allowed to bother you, and that’s an order.”
I smile, tousle Gabby’s hair. “You can bother me all you want.”
What is Piper up to? Watching me sleep last night, coffee in bed, and a big breakfast this morning? I search my memory of the past few days, searching for some reason for Piper’s apparent warming, but can find none. In earlier years, such solicitousness was typically a prelude to request to make a major purchase. But Piper no longer seeks my approval before buying big-ticket items. She now prefers to spring them on me and coil for the counterattack she knows she’ll launch in response to my protestations.
Our breakfast proves to be the most pleasant meal I’ve had with Piper in years. She tells me all about the show she saw last night, and how she and her friends reacted to it. Gabby pipes in that she wants to go to a play, and Piper says she’ll find one the three of us will enjoy. I say what great fun it would be to go to a show with Piper and Gabby, and we all agree we’ll see one before Thanksgiving.
After breakfast, I move into my home office, crank up the computer, and work on an appellate brief that’s due to be filed with the superior court. Piper knocks on the door’s frame and asks if I want a sandwich before I leave to meet Tommy. Still full from breakfast, I beg off but thank her for asking.
An hour later I’m in the car, heading to Lancaster. I wonder why Tommy was so insistent on visiting our parents’ graves this weekend, why it couldn’t wait until after the Hanson trial. I let my thoughts drift to the period after Mom died, when it was just Dad and Tommy and me, groping our way through it. The memory that comes to mind is of Tommy and me hiding behind the trunk of the big tree in our backyard one December evening as our dad grilled us all some steak; Dad was awful with the oven and cooked most of our meals on the grill, even in the winter. Tommy and I waited until Dad opened the grill lid to flip the steaks, turning his back on the tree. We sprang from our hiding place and pelted him with snowballs. He dropped his spatula into the grill and engaged us in a snowball fight that took us from the backyard to the front. All of us forgot about dinner, and the meat and the plastic handle of the spatula were burned to a crisp. Dad ended up taking Tommy and me to Burger King, the three of us laughing our heads off over the mess we’d made.
I suddenly can’t wait to see Tommy, smile with him over the snowball fight. As I turn into the cemetery parking lot, I’m in the best mood I’ve been in for months. This is exactly what I needed. I’m glad Tommy persuaded me to do this. I get out of the car, walk past Tommy’s black-and-silver Harley. It’s a chilly day, overcast and in the low fifties. I’m surprised Tommy rode his bike. He’s told me before how cold it can get riding on a day like this, even with leathers.
I walk through the arbor leading into the cemetery and make my way down the path to my parents’ graves. In the distance, I see Tommy in front of the big marble headstone that marks their final resting place. Tommy is kneeling, and it seems to me he’s talking to them. He sees me approach and stands up. His solid, 210-pound frame is covered in black leather from collar to foot—a guy you wouldn’t want to meet in an alley. I smile and wave to my brother. Tommy waves back. I step up beside him, and we shake hands. I’m still smiling, feeling light.
“Drive by the old house after this?” I ask, something we often do after visiting the grave site.
Tommy looks at the headstone without answering. He kneels back down, adjusts the fresh flowers he brought with him. I never remember to do that. Tommy never forgets.
I kneel beside Tommy, brush my fingers across our parents’ names. “Thanks for suggesting this,” I say. “I needed to do this more than I thought.” After a minute, I remind Tommy of a time that all four of us went together to Long’s Park for a picnic. How pretty Mom looked. How strong Dad was, how far he could throw a football. How young we all were.
Tommy nods but keeps staring at the tombstone.
After a while, we both stand up, and I ask Tommy how he’s doing. Whether Lawrence Washington is still hiding out at his trailer and if he is, how he’s holding up.
“Still there,” Tommy answers. “How’s he doing? He’s dying. He’s down about forty pounds.”
“He should be in a hospital.”
“He doesn’t want to be in a hospital. Hooked up to all that equipment. Nurses in and out all day and night, sticking needles in him. Maybe have some roommate who can’t stop talking. Where he wants to be is home, but he can’t go there. The DA would be all over him for taking off. And his former buddies might smoke him before he’s ready to go.”
“Tough situation,” I say.
This isn’t going like I’d planned. Tommy has only smiled once since I arrived. Hasn’t volunteered a single good memory of Mom or Dad. Okay, so it’s up to me.
“Do you remember that big snowball fight we had with Dad by the grill?”
Tommy stares at me, then looks down at the marker. A raindrop smacks against the top of the tombstone. Then another, and another. I’m thinking that I wish I’d bought a baseball cap when Tommy says, still looking down, “He didn’t just die.”
Tommy waits for the words to sink in, but they don’t. I stand there, uncomprehending. Tommy looks up at me, and I see his eyes are wet—and not with rain. “He was in so much pain,” he says.
Now I get it.
“Jesus, Tommy. What did you do?”