I stare at the walls sometimes and wish I could paint them. I would like to have lots of color around me right now. Colors like Radish and Marigold and Violet. But there’s just white and it will have to do. I look at my easel and my palette and my paints, but I don’t hold the brushes in my hand. Because there’s nothing inside of me that wants to come out. Not sadness or fear or love or hate. Just Titanium White.

   I babysit Cassidy still, two days a week, and those are the days I’m forced to smile and put on the mask. We read and talk and I watch her do her homework, because she’s so smart and doesn’t need me to help her with it. But we don’t color with crayons. Not right now. Maybe soon.

   I cook some and eat a little and I always make sure there’s something for Brian to eat whenever he gets home. I watch black and white movies when he’s out and cop shows when he’s home; but that’s not often. And I miss him. I miss his dark, glowing eyes and sweet, deep voice; his strong arms around me and his heart beating against my back. I miss it all. Even when he’s home.

   One night when Brian was out, the night that was two months, one week and four days since Rachel died, there was a knock on the door and it was Rick. He didn’t say anything for a few moments, just stood there on the porch, staring at me; and looking so much like Brian that it almost made me cry. But I held it back and managed to say, “Brian isn’t home.”

   “I know. That’s why I came. I need to talk to you.”

   “Talk to me? Why?”

   He took a deep breath and said, “Something needs to be done about the drug problem here in town.”

   I nodded. Because I’d heard rumors, that weren’t much louder than a whisper, about Someone being back in town. Heard that even though he was still hiding somewhere he was close by. And something did need to be done, the Something that should have been done months ago. Except that someone had chickened out because she was weak. And now Rachel was dead, along with a little girl who had just wanted her mommy on a cold, dark night.

   “And if something ever is done about it,” he continued, “I hope it happens at a time when Brian has someone who can vouch for him. Someone besides his girlfriend.”

   I nodded again and thought for just a moment. Then I cleared my throat and made pleasant chit chat. I told him about my brother in Brookfield who liked to go ice fishing. About my father who had an icehouse on a lake in a town about an hour north of there. Far enough away that, if my brother invited Brian to go ice fishing over the weekend, to get his mind off of things, he’d most likely have to spend the night at his house in Brookfield. And Rick said that sounded just like what Brian needed. Then he gave me a piece of paper with his address and his phone number and made me promise to call him if, for some reason, the fishing trip didn’t work out. And I promised that I would.

   Then I told him about cop shows that Brian liked to watch. Because it’s only natural that a man would be interested in what sort of television programs interested his son. Especially when he didn’t know anything about him. So I spoke to him about plots that revolved around forensic evidence. We talked about tire tracks and luminol and bleach, about black plastic bags. And when I was done with that I told him about bargains I’d seen at Walmart. About boots that were too big and clothes that were affordable enough to throw away after one use. Fibers that could be traced to hundreds of different people. Because when you live in a poor area, everyone you know shops at Walmart.

   He nodded again and thanked me for talking to him. He asked that I not tell Brian he’d been there and I told him that I wouldn’t. Then I watched him drive away in his big boat of a car. Not unlike dozens of other cars in the area, all with the same brand of cheap tires.

   When I didn’t see his taillights anymore I called Dave. He thought that an ice fishing trip was just what Brian needed. And when he called back the next morning, early enough to catch Brian before he left for work, Dave didn’t tell him it was my idea. Just like I hadn’t told Dave it was really Rick’s.

   We went up together, because a visit with my nephew seemed like just what I needed to get my mind off of things. Brian spent Saturday freezing his ass off, drinking beer and Jack Daniels and catching fish on a frozen lake, while I spent it watching Matthew walk around the house without anyone holding his hands. I sang him the Happy Birthday song, because he was going to turn a year old in just four more days. After Kim put him down for his nap she and I talked about Rachel. She said it wasn’t my fault, that I’d tried to help her. And I said I know, even though what I really knew was that I hadn’t done enough. I asked her about Jason and she told me he was doing good. He was still dating the woman he’d started seeing back in the fall, and it looked like it was getting serious. I nodded and said, That’s good, because he deserved to be happy. And I tried not to remember that it had been a year and three days since a judge had banged the gavel that had killed Forever.

   Brian and Dave got back late that evening, too late for us to travel back home. Brian was tired, and a little drunk, so he marched off to bed and fell asleep right away. I joined him shortly afterwards and stayed awake for another hour, imagining Tim as a little boy. I wondered what his family might have been like; wondered what had happened to him that had turned him into a monster. And for about ten minutes I shivered; cold and nauseous and guilty. I made myself imagine what might be happening to him--right now--as I was lying beside Brian, warm and safe in my brother’s house. What might already have happened, while I’d been watching my little nephew try out his new legs.

   But then I thought about Rachel, lying cold and dead in the snow, wearing the jacket I’d given her for Christmas. The jacket that should have been covered, months ago, with Tim’s blood and brains instead of her own. She was lying cold and dead right now, waiting for spring to come so we could put her in the ground near her mother. Then I thought about Little Miss Seventeen and little Samantha and her mother. The boy who had died of an overdose last summer. And about the families of all those people. Their hearts were aching, right now. They were counting days and weeks and months, just like Brian and me. Soon we’d all be counting years. And soon, maybe already--maybe right now--Tim wouldn’t be. And he wouldn’t be taking them away from anybody else, either.

   Not anymore.

   I smiled and snuggled in close to Brian, hoped he could feel my heart beating against his back. Hoped that he knew it meant he was safe and loved. Then I fell asleep.

   We left right after breakfast. We didn’t talk much, but I held his hand all the way home, even when he shifted gears. It was warm and strong and I told myself that everything was going to be alright. And so were we. Soon.

   We were only home for a few minutes, not even enough time to get the fishing gear out of the truck, when we saw Blue Lights pulling into the driveway. Brian jumped when he saw them, the same way he had when I’d driven him home New Years Day and, at 12:26 a.m., he’d learned the truth about Rachel. He recovered quickly and greeted the State Troopers with a confused nod. I stood close beside him, pretending to be confused, too.

   When they left, well over two hours later, he wasn’t confused anymore and I stopped pretending to be. Because there had been a brutal slaying in New Mills and Brian had several witnesses who could vouch for him, not just his girlfriend. A well-respected lawyer and his wife, a clerk from the gas station where Brian had filled up Dave’s truck, and a waitress from the diner where Dave had taken Brian out for supper. Because Brian had a very handsome face, a face that clerks and waitresses were bound to remember. And there was no physical evidence, even though they had looked. Not in the house or his shed or his truck or on any of his clothes. And so they moved on. Because they had a long list of suspects that included known drug dealers and suspected drug dealers and any one of a number of addicts, desperate for drugs or money or both.

   There were other suspects, too. Families of victims we knew about and victims we didn’t. Because there really was a rampant teenage drug problem in town. And lots of people who were happy Tim was dead. We all knew that the drugs wouldn’t go away just because Tim was gone. Someone else would come in--probably someone else already had--and the kids would still shoot up and smoke and snort and swallow whatever they could get from whoever they could get it from. But we were all happy to see him gone just the same. Happy to know that he wouldn’t be able to hurt anymore Sweet Young Things. That his ex-wife and daughter with the ineffective restraining order were finally safe. And, mostly, that he’d met with a painful death. A slow death. He’d been stripped naked and beaten. Nearly every bone in his body broken. Then he’d been sodomized with a blunt instrument. And, finally, his skull was crushed with a rock.

   The killer was smart. He had killed Tim deep in the gravel pit near his house, probably lured him there, begging for drugs. It was a favorite hangout for the local teenagers to make out or fuck or get high, but no witnesses could be found. If anyone had been there at the time it happened--and probably no one was, during the middle of the day on a Saturday, which is when the forensic guy said Tim had died--they’d most likely have been either too high or too preoccupied with other business to have noticed. And who among them would come forward if they had been there?

   There was no helpful physical evidence at the gravel pit, either. The poor cops who’d had to process the scene had found used rubbers and needles and syringes, lighters and empty bottles and cans; months and months worth of litter from dozens and dozens of different people. Some of it on top of the snow and some of it buried underneath. Some of it in layers in between; fossils of loneliness and misery and haze. But nothing useful. Nothing that would lead them to whoever had killed Tim.

   Two months, three weeks and one day after Rachel died I drove into Westville after work, knocked on a door in an apartment building in a very run down part of town, and handed Rick LaChance a business card. It was one I’d filed away in my purse while Brian was fishing because you never know when you might need it.

   “What’s this?”

   “My brother’s a lawyer.”

   Rick had an alibi, too; the girl he was living with. She was younger than Brian but older than Rachel had been. And she was his third girlfriend in six months. He was sober and he had a job, but he still had itchy feet. And once he left her for the next set of tits there was no telling what her conscience would tell her to do or to say. The police hadn’t found any physical evidence, but it didn’t mean that there wasn’t any to be found somewhere. And there’s no statute of limitations on murder. Even the murder of a vicious, drug dealing killer.

   He filed the card away in his wallet and thanked me. Considered for a moment. Then he asked me about Brian. And I told him the truth: He’s not doing good. It’s all I told him and he nodded. Then we said goodbye and he closed the door.

   I didn’t tell him that Brian is doing worse now than before Tim died. He’s home a little more often, and he’s stopped drinking so much. But even when he’s home he doesn’t talk, except to say, It should’ve been me. It was my job to take care of Tim. But most of the time he just sits there, staring out the window or at the television or at his hands. Or at eleven-year-old Rachel in the pink bathing suit. He doesn’t ask me for help. And I don’t know how to offer. Don’t know what it is he needs me to say. Or what to do.

   I tell myself that it will get better, because it has to. It’s just the Process of Grieving. It hasn’t been quite three months, and what’s that amount to? It’s nothing, a grain of sand, especially when you compare it to the twenty years he spent with Rachel. And so, I know, it will get better. Soon. And so will we.

Chapter 34

Chapter 36

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