“Are you okay?” I asked.
He nodded, and after a moment, he got out of the car and headed toward the funeral home.
I had been waiting only a little while when Ezra came barreling down the sidewalk.
He slowed to a stop as he reached the parking lot in the distance, stood for a moment, and then turned swiftly and headed right back down the street in my direction. For one wild second I thought he was coming to my car, to see me, but he didn’t even look up as he walked past.
He was parked farther down the street. In my side mirror I could see him approach his truck. He didn’t get inside, though. He just stood, his hands braced against the doorframe, head down. I leaned closer to the mirror to get a better look; he seemed to be talking to himself.
I don’t know why I did what I did, but I got out of the car and headed down the street.
I don’t think he heard me coming, but I could hear him as I approached. Muffled but still discernible, Ezra was counting.
“Fiftysevenfiftyeightfiftyninesixtysixtyone—”
“Ezra?”
He straightened up fast, almost tripping over the curb behind him. And when he looked at me, it was that thing he did … like it took a moment for him to recognize me. But it was different from the way it usually was. This time he seemed preoccupied, almost as if he wouldn’t recognize anyone who crossed his path.
“What are you doing here?” he said.
I didn’t know if he meant “here” at the visitation or “here” on the sidewalk. “I drove Foster,” I said, a sort of blanket statement.
“Why aren’t you inside?”
“Why aren’t you?”
“I don’t want to hear about him. He was a fucking idiot.”
“Ezra.”
“He was. And you know it, and I know it, and everybody knows it, and we’d just have to stand there and listen to people talk like it was so fucking tragic. But it wasn’t tragic. Tragic deaths aren’t avoidable, and Sam’s was.”
I didn’t know what to say, and I wasn’t sure what Jane would say, either. Although romance was definitely a hallmark of her work, her books weren’t without tough truths—sometimes things don’t turn out the way you want them to. Sometimes there’s loss. Sometimes your sister marries a douche bag. So maybe she would simply admit that there was some merit to his statement.
“Sorry.” He looked back toward the funeral home. “I probably sound like a dick.”
“I’m not much of an authority on what dicks sound like,” I said without thinking. “Limited personal experience.”
One corner of Ezra’s mouth lifted, for about half a second.
“What … what were you doing?” I gestured to the car, like somehow that indicated Ezra’s odd behavior. “The … counting?”
He just shook his head, and then it was quiet.
“I’ll go in with you,” I said. “If you want to see him.”
“I don’t. Is that bad?”
I swallowed. “No. No, I don’t think so.”
“It’s too much.” He shook his head again. “I don’t … I can’t…”
Ezra trailed off, and when he looked at me, I thought he might cry. I felt an instant need to stop that from happening. I could make another lame joke, but my mind drew a blank.
I had never lost a friend before. A couple of grandparents when I was a baby. An uncle I hardly knew. But I didn’t know what it was like to lose a friend, even one you weren’t so close with. There were all these people in my life that I wasn’t so close with, and even the loss of one of them—a Rachel Woodson or a Maria Silva—was unimaginable to me.
I stepped off the sidewalk, moved toward Ezra, and closed my arms around him. He didn’t hug back right away, and I felt dumb for the first few seconds, but then he circled his arms around me and held me close. He was taller than me, just the right height to rest my face in the crook of his neck.
“You okay?” I asked, finally, without letting go.
“Uh-huh.” I could feel his voice resonate in his chest.