By the Light of His Lantern Page 40

  “I know. I’m sorry.”

  “Stop saying you’re sorry. I make my own decisions. I’m a big girl. A big, middle-aged girl.”

  Catherine grimaced. “Don’t say that.”

  “What, middle aged?”

  “Yes, that.”

  “Face it, love. We’re getting older every day.” Then, wanting to change the subject, Beth asked, “Say, how’s Lara?”

  “Good.” Catherine sighed. “Too good, actually. She’s supposed to be taking it easy, but she’s… not. She’s already applying for jobs. Says she doesn’t want to mooch off me.”

  “Well, after what she almost did, I’m sure she’s feeling guilty, too.”

  “I get that. But she’s my daughter.”

  Beth folded her menu, having decided. “Well you’re both lucky to have each other. If anything, she got her crazy from you.”

  “I wouldn’t say that…”

  “So have you heard anything about…” Beth looked around suspiciously. “You know… him…”

  “I don’t know.” Catherine quickly decided on something from the menu as well, not wishing to waste any more time. She probably wouldn’t eat much no matter what she got. She folded it up and set it with Beth’s. “I have no idea. I wish I could see him.”

  “It’s probably for the best you don’t.”

  “Why do you say that?”

  “What good would it do? Just let him get on with his life. I’m sure he’s having a hell of a time after, you know… being M-I-A for two weeks.”

  “That’s exactly it. I want to know he’s doing all right. I want to know I didn’t mess him up even worse than he was. What about his job? What if he can’t pay his rent now, because of me? What if…”

  “You could check on him, then. If it’ll make you feel better.”

  “I think it might.”

  “All right, then do it. And… you know I’ll help you, if you need it.”

  However, as their food was brought out, and Catherine picked at hers absentmindedly, talking to Beth about other, less significant things, she couldn’t stop thinking about him. She didn’t think paying him a visit was the right answer. He likely wanted nothing to do with her at this point. But she had to do something. She needed to reach out.

  If for nothing else, she thought, at least just to tell him how she felt.

  ✽ ✽ ✽

  “Write him a letter.”

  Lara rushed by Catherine into the hall, headed for the bathroom.

  “A letter?”

  Lara shut the door, getting ready to take a shower. Through the door she said, “Makes it easier on him. You can say what you need to say, and he won’t have to respond if he doesn’t want to.”

  As the shower started running, Catherine headed downstairs where she sat on the front sofa. There she pondered. It wasn’t a bad idea, she thought. A letter. It was easy. No confrontation…

  She sat there for a while, thinking. And as she did, she looked distractedly to the piano, to the photograph on top. She smiled. Once an old source of torment, but not anymore. She held that photograph as often as ever, studied it like a test, memorizing its every detail so that she’d never forget. She knew it was important sometimes to let things go, but that didn’t mean forgetting, did it? And even then, it couldn’t hurt to hold on a little, either. Sometimes it was all you could do, wasn’t it? Was that unhealthy, she wondered? Does accepting something mean you have to let it go?

  The shower shut off overhead, breaking the spell.

  It was amazing, Catherine thought, how quickly Lara had recovered. Even more amazing, was how eager she was to start putting her life back together. Her daughter was resilient and Catherine admired her for it, knowing she could take little credit. She thought she wouldn’t mind having her there with her always, though it was a silly wish. Lara was an adult, she reminded herself, and it was likely that lure of independence which quickened her healing in the first place. But she was also her daughter, and that would never change.

  No, those things would never change.

  Inspired, Catherine searched for the nearest pen and paper.

  ✽ ✽ ✽

  There’s no easy way to start this letter…

  Lewis sat on his bed, a torn envelope on the floor between his feet. He held the letter, hands quivering. At first when he’d spotted the envelope—slipped under his door sometime during the night—he’d feared it was another of the ones he was accustomed, delivered to him personally this time. But it wasn’t one of those. It wasn’t from his mother at all. The envelope had no return address, or even his. All that was written on it was his name.

  He read it with increasing anxiety. Repeatedly he was forced to reread lines, having skimmed over them too quickly, thoughts scattered in other directions even as his eyes moved over the words. He turned the single page over, reading onto the back. She’d been watching him. Keeping an eye on him. Was that necessary? He felt a blush of anger at reading it, a pang of fright. Was there not an unspoken agreement to leave each other alone now, he thought? Couldn’t anyone just leave him alone?

  I want you to know I forgive you. And I hope you’ll forgive me.

  His head drooped. He was shaking all over. He felt hot in his clothes. He straightened, held the letter up so as not to wet it further under his tears. He trembled so badly, clutched the letter so tightly, his fingers were on the verge of tearing it to pieces. He set it on his lap for a moment. Then he set it aside. He stood from his bed, paced the room, searching for some calm. He picked the letter up again and, standing, shaking, through shimmery eyes, read toward its end.

  Lastly, I know we are strangers and it’s not my place to say…

  He had trouble breathing. His throat felt swollen, like an apple was lodged there, and he couldn’t swallow, couldn’t choke it up or down. It was more than he deserved. More than he could ever ask from anyone. He was nothing, and deserved nothing, and so to read her words, written from a place so sincere in its delivery, so selfless in its message, it was all he could do not to weep.

  He collapsed onto his bed. Like a child, he curled up, pulled the pillow toward himself and buried his face, salty and hot.

  There was still more. Not much, but some, and he didn’t know if he could finish it. Not right away. He’d read it all again later, more than likely. But not now. He couldn’t. He had to stop the shaking first.

  He’d finish it the following morning, after waking from a deep and restful sleep. He would read it without a single tear in his eye, because at first he would tell himself he didn’t believe it. He wanted to, wanted her words to be true, but for now he couldn’t permit it. It was far too contrary to what he felt so deeply. He was only punishing himself, and even he knew that, but it was a difficult habit to break.

  Fortunately, over the course of the next several days, the letter refused to leave his mind, demanded that he read it again and again, until finally one day he would believe its every word.

  Epilogue

  He rolled the car up to the curb and parked. He pulled the keys from the ignition. He sat there, sweaty hands gripping the wheel. The sun—he still couldn’t help noticing it with a renewed appreciation each time he stepped outside—hung low in the sky, shined brightly across the hood of his car through the windshield with its evening summer rays. He looked away to shield his eyes, across the street toward the place he’d driven nine hours to get to.

  The house hadn’t changed. It was the same as he’d seen it in the curse, which had only been a replica of what he remembered a few years before that. It was a dirty white—in need of a fresh coat of paint. The shutters were black on all the windows. It was narrow and tall, two-story with an attic. There was a garage behind the house, detached, accessible down the driveway. A windchime hung from a corner of the front porch awning, but the air was so still in the summer heat it wasn’t getting any use. The lawn was somewhere between green and yellow, cut far too short. There was a child’s bike on its side on the lawn, and Lewis worried for a
second someone else must live there now, someone with young children. But no, he thought. This was the house. It was his childhood house. It was still his mother’s house.

  The letter sat folded on the passenger seat. He grabbed it and stuffed it into his pocket. The reason he was here. It was the reason he thought it might be possible. If she could forgive him, he thought…

  He exited the car and stood in the street, watched in both directions. There were people in their yards, middle-aged, who regarded him behind their sunglasses and under their visors, regarded him with increasing interest as he crossed the street toward the house they probably hadn’t seen visitors for in a long time. Or maybe he was wrong about that. He didn’t know, really. It was safe to assume. Maybe they even recognized him, but probably not. He thought he remembered them vaguely, but neighbors came and went so quickly in those suburbs it was hard to tell.

  He stepped over the sidewalk and made his way toward the house. He shrank as he approached, felt eyes on him through every window. However, as he climbed the porch, stepped over a pair of sneakers stained green from lawn clippings, and stopped at the front door, he wondered if anyone might be home at all. It was deathly quiet. The windows were cracked but there wasn’t a sound from inside, not a television or the radio or a vacuum or anything he might expect.

  He waited by the door maybe three minutes before he saved up the courage to ring the bell. It was a simple two-tone chime. Then he waited another twenty seconds. It was the longest twenty seconds he thought he’d ever waited. Footsteps traveled down the stairs deeper in the house, their creaky scamper traveling to him through the open windows. They arrived on the other side of the door. The lock unbolted. Lewis held his breath. The door opened.

  I can’t… I can’t…

  She recognized him at once. Her expression was that of someone who thought something impossible, like he’d been dead and she only now discovered otherwise. He crumbled on the inside. Then, once she could believe it, she lit up brighter than the sun, eyes smiling with her mouth, and stepped out onto the porch toward him—he’d left a comfortable distance between himself and the front door. She prepared to throw her arms around him but restrained herself. She put her hands on his shoulders instead, appreciating him from arm’s length. He crumbled a little more.

  “Oh my god!” she said. She smiled so broadly all her teeth showed. “I can’t believe it’s you! Just showing up out of nowhere!”

  She laughed and it was hard to look at her knowing how he must look, struggling not to appear so frightened and ashamed. She must have seen it regardless. Gradually the smile faltered, shifted toward concern.

  “Is everything all right?”

  He didn’t know what to say, though he wanted to say something. But as he tried he felt his emotions getting the better of him. It was easier to stay silent. He shrugged. His mouth quivered.

  She couldn’t take her hands away from his shoulders, his arms. She looked him from head to toe, her eyes lingering on his face, into his eyes, investigating, and he tried not to see her. He’d spent hours, days, preparing for this, and when he finally felt numb to the anxiety, that’s when he got in his car and drove. But here, in the thick of it, he felt entirely unprepared. He could have expected to feel overwhelmed, but he didn’t expect this.

  “You stopped responding to my letters so suddenly,” she said, her voice low, eyes still stitching him together from his hands to his dirty sneakers, to the wrinkled shirt he wore, to the dark circles under his eyes. “You replied a couple times and then nothing. I never had your number, I never… I wanted to come and check on you myself, but…”

  “I’m sorry,” he said. Just two words and he was already losing his voice to the knot in his throat. She gripped him tighter by the biceps, cocked her head in an effort to line their eyes up with one another.

  “You shouldn’t be sorry.” She rubbed his arms affectionately. He only shrugged again. “I should have come to you.”

  He gulped it down. “No. You shouldn’t have.”

  “I worried something bad had happened. Then I just assumed… after how things were before you moved out, maybe you needed some time alone. So I just kept writing. I hoped my letters would be some comfort to you, if you were alone, or if you were feeling—”

  He started to speak and in an instant his feelings betrayed him. His words were mush. Unable to restrain herself any longer, she pulled him close, held him tight against herself. She stood on her toes in order to put her chin over his shoulder. She caressed the back of his head to comfort him.

  “It’s all right. It’s okay.”

  He wished they could have exchanged more pleasantries before it came to this, spent some time catching up, forming the thinnest semblance of a bond they had lost in the last few years. How could she be sympathetic to him, after he left her all alone for so long? How could she not have grown cold to the very idea of him? Surely, if he told the truth, she would not recognize him. She would refuse to recognize him. He was barely her son anymore as it was. Then again, he thought, maybe their bond hadn’t dissolved at all. Not for her, at least. She had always been waiting for him…

  “Something bad did happen,” he said.

  Ugly, uninhibited, he bawled. It felt both relieving and shameful to cry, but the relief was so strong it didn’t matter who heard them under the shade of the front porch.

  “What happened?” she asked. “Tell me. It’s okay.”

  The tone of her voice. It was that tone, the nurturing need to understand. He had craved it for so long without knowing it, without any idea it would solve all his confusion. When he heard it he melted into it. He succumbed to it. He could tell her anything, he thought. Nothing could push her away. She didn’t care what, only that she could be there…

  She asked a handful of other times that he tell her, even when he knew she couldn’t have the slightest idea. As he readied himself to spill everything, to share the weights on his back with her, the fear began to mount. It was spreading quick. If he didn’t speak soon it would overcome him. If he spoke too soon he might destroy everything.

  “Don’t be afraid. You can tell me anything.”

  In the dark, they could stand like they were for an eternity with nowhere to go, with nothing to say, and time would stand still for them with no purpose. He could hide there forever.

  But they weren’t in the dark anymore. Or they didn’t have to be.

  “I did something awful.” His hitched breaths sent him bouncing. “I’m scared, mom. I’m fucking scared.”

  In preparing himself for what he considered the inevitable, he accepted defeat. The rest left his lips. His body grew slack in her arms.

  As would always be the case, she only held him that much tighter.

  ✽ ✽ ✽

  ✽ ✽ ✽

  ✽ ✽ ✽

  A LETTER FOR YOU

  Dear brave, adventurous reader,

  I must say thank you. It’s thanks to you that newbies like me are allowed a paddle in this violent, everchanging sea—otherwise known as the publishing world. Thank you for giving my novel a chance. I hope you enjoyed the ride. Everything I write is with the utmost love and sincerity, so to be granted your consideration and curiosity means more than you can know. You’re truly the best.

  If you have a moment, let me know your thoughts by leaving an honest review. It’s a simple gesture that means the world to us indie guys and gals, and helps other curious readers such as yourself find books like mine.

  Thanks again! There’s more horror to come!

  Visit www.abemoss.com to sign up for announcements on new releases, or to message me personally via the “Message The Author” page. I’d love to hear from you! Let’s talk horror!

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