But she’s already talking.
“We already made a statement. Can you please respect our privacy?”
“No, it’s Scott. The painter. From the hospital.”
Her voice softens.
“Oh, sorry. They just—they won’t leave us alone. And he’s just a boy, you know? And his mom and dad are—”
“I know. Why do you think I’m hiding out?”
A silence as she switches from the call she thought it was to the reality—a human moment with her nephew’s savior.
“I wish we could,” she says. “I mean, it’s hard enough going through this all in private, without—”
“I’m sure. Is he—”
A pause. Scott feels he can hear her thinking—how much should she trust him? How much can she say?
“JJ? He’s, you know, he’s not really talking. We took him to a psychiatrist—I mean, I did—and he said, just—give him time. So I’m not pressing.”
“That sounds—I can’t imagine what it’s like—”
“He doesn’t cry. Not that he—I mean, he’s four, so how much can he really understand? But still, I thought he’d cry.”
Scott thinks about this. What’s there to say? “He’s just processing, I guess. Something that—traumatic. I mean, for kids whatever they go through is normal, right? I mean, in their heads. They are learning what the world is, so that’s what he thinks now. That planes crash and people die and you end up in the drink. Which, maybe he’s having second thoughts about the whole thing if that’s what life on this earth is all—”
“I know,” she says. And they sit for a minute in a silence that is neither awkward nor uncomfortable. Just the sound of two people thinking.
“Doug doesn’t talk much either. Except about the money. I caught him the other day downloading spreadsheet software. But—emotionally? I think he’s freaked out by the whole thing.”
“Still?”
“Yeah, he’s—you know, he’s not good with people. He had a hard childhood too.”
“You mean, twenty-five years ago?”
He can hear her smile over the phone.
“Be nice.”
Scott likes the sound of her voice, the pace of it. There is an implication of intimacy to it, as if they have known each other a long, long time.
“Not that I’m one to talk,” he tells her. “Given my track record with women.”
“That is bait I will not take,” she says.
They talk for a while about the daily routine. She gets up with the boy while Doug sleeps—he goes to bed late, it seems. JJ likes toast for breakfast and can eat a whole container of blueberries in one sitting. They do art projects until nap time and in the afternoons he likes to look for bugs in the yard. On trash days they sit on the porch and wave at the haulers.
“A normal kid, basically,” she says.
“Do you think he really understands what happened?”
A long pause, then she says:
“Do you?”
Chapter 20
On Wednesday the funerals begin. Sarah Kipling is first, her remains buried at Mount Zion Cemetery in Queens, a graveyard in the shadow of looming pre-war smokestacks, as if there is a factory next door manufacturing bodies. Police hold the news trucks to a cordoned area on the south side of the wall. It’s a cloudy day, the air stilted, tropical. Thunderstorms are forecast for the afternoon and already you can feel the unsettled electricity in the atmosphere. The line of black cars stretches all the way to the BQE, family, friends, political figures. There will be eight more before this is through—assuming all the bodies are recovered.
Overhead, helicopters circle. Scott arrives in a yellow cab. He’s wearing a black suit found in Layla’s guest closet. It’s a size too big, long in the sleeves. In a dresser drawer he found, conversely, a small white shirt, too tight in the neck, that leaves a noticeable gap under his necktie. He’s shaved badly, cutting himself in two places. The sight of his blood in the bathroom mirror and the sharp slice of pain startled him back to a kind of reality.
He can still taste salt water in the back of his throat, if he’s being honest, even in sleep.
Why is he alive and they dead?
Scott tells the driver to leave it running and steps out into the mug. For a moment he wonders if the boy will be here—he forgot to ask—but then he thinks, Who would bring a toddler to a stranger’s funeral?
The truth is, he doesn’t know why he came here. He is neither family nor friend.
Scott can feel the eyes on him as he walks up. There are two dozen guests in black ringing the grave. He sees them see him. He is like lightning that has struck twice in the same place. An anomaly. He lowers his eyes out of respect.