Guilty (4 page)

I don't tell him that things are different at my school. We have tests on Fridays. We have a couple scheduled for today. But I don't care about them. I'm too tired to care about anything.

My dad heads for the front door.

“Where are you going, Dad?”

“To the club. To check on things. I'll be back in a couple of hours.” He pauses. “The funeral director called this morning. The police are going to release the body tomorrow. We're going to have the funeral on Monday. The funeral home is sending someone over to help pick out some clothes. If she gets here before I do, help her out, okay? I put all of Tracie's favorite dresses on the bed.”

I stare at him.

“You don't have to go inside, Finn,” my dad says. There's an edge of impatience in his voice, and it makes me feel ashamed. “Just show her where the room is. You think you can do that?”

I nod. “I'm sorry, Dad. It's just—”

He sighs and waves his hand to silence me.

“It's okay, son,” he says. “I understand. But do just this one thing for me, okay?”

Eight

LILA

W
hen I told Aunt Jenny that I was going to stay here until the lease was up in seven weeks, it seemed like a good idea. It felt like I was doing the right thing.

Two days after he dies, I'm not so sure anymore.

First, it's harder than I could have imagined to read the newspaper and listen to the news and hear his name. It's even harder when they mention—they always do—that he was out of prison for less than seventy-two hours when, as they put it, he “killed again.” But the worst is to hear so-called commentators use my father as an example of how the justice system is broken. Let a killer out of prison, they say, and only a fool would be surprised that he runs true to his colors and murders someone else. Some of them say that anyone who kills should be locked up for life. The same people say that a person who kills twice is an argument for reinstating capital punishment. Turn the other cheek once, and you're a good person. Turn it twice, and you're an idiot. Better to deal with the problem once and for all.

Second, I hate to admit it, but I miss Aunt Jenny. She's never been anything but disapproving of my father, but she has always been loving to me. She raised me as if I were her own child. She pestered me about my homework. She encouraged me to join sports teams, to try out for school plays, to sing in the choir at church, to volunteer at the local seniors' center, to be, as she put it, a member of the community. To be good. And she listened. Okay, so there were some things—things about my father—that I learned never to discuss with her. But if there was anything else on my mind, she stopped what she was doing and she gave me her full attention. She never told me what to do. Instead, she always asked me what I thought was the right thing. And I always figured things out. But she isn't here with me now. And even if she were, I don't think I'd talk to her about my father. I would be too afraid of what she might say. And, depending on the words that came out of her mouth, I'd be afraid that I would hate her. Then I would be alone forever.

Finally, there's the question of the funeral.

It's Saturday afternoon. I've just come back from buying some groceries—a few apples, a container of yogurt, a can of tuna, a box of macaroni and cheese, some milk, a loaf of bread, some frozen peas and—I can't stop myself—a newspaper. I've put the food away, and I have the newspaper spread out on the kitchen table. I'm paging through it, scanning for any news about my father.

There's nothing.

But my eye catches sight of a familiar name.
Newsome
. On the obituary page.

It's a death notice for Tracie Newsome, “beloved wife of Robert Newsome, loving stepmother to Finn Newsome.” There's a picture of her. She's pretty.
Was
pretty. The little article doesn't say she was shot to death. Instead, it says she died “suddenly and tragically in the prime of life.” It mentions her passion for her friends, her love of an afternoon or evening on the town, her support for charitable causes.

Someone knocks at the door.

It's the woman detective. Detective Sanders.

“I was on my way home,” she says. “So I thought I'd drop by instead.”

Instead of what? I wonder.

“They've released the body,” she says. “Your father, I mean. They want to know where to send him.”

I stare at her. Where to send him? What is she talking about?

She looks at me like she's studying for a test.

“Can I come in for a minute, Lila?” she asks.

I step aside to let her pass. She closes the door gently behind her.

Now that she's inside, I feel I have to offer her something—tea or coffee. But she shakes her head.

“I'm fine,” she says. She glances around our—my—bare apartment. “They want to know what funeral home to send the body to,” she says in a soft voice. “Have you given any thought to the arrangements?”

I shake my head and feel like an idiot. I have no idea what I thought was going to happen, but, no, I haven't given any thought to the arrangements.

“Lila,” she says, “I'm sorry to have to ask this, and I don't mean any offense by it, but do you have any money to pay for a funeral? Did your father have an insurance policy or anything like that?”

“I don't think so,” I tell her. Knowing my father, I doubt it.

She pulls a small folded paper from her jacket pocket and holds it out to me. It's a brochure.

“The city has a program,” she says. “It pays funeral costs when next of kin can't afford to.”

I take the brochure from her, but I don't look at it. Something is wrong with my eyes all of a sudden. They won't focus. I can't read the words.

“I can call them if you want,” Detective Sanders says. “Would that be okay?”

I nod.

“Okay.” She smiles at me. It makes her look like a regular person instead of a cop. “Okay. I'll get in touch with them first thing in the morning. I'll tell them how to contact you.” She glances around again. “How are you holding up? Is everything okay?”

I nod again.

“I can put you in touch with victims' services,” she says. “In case you need anything or want to talk to someone.”

“I'm fine,” I say. As fine as anyone can be whose father just killed someone and then was killed himself.

She pulls something else from her pocket. It's a business card. She writes something on it before she gives it to me.

“It's the phone number for victims' services,” she says. “Just in case you need some help with something. My number is on there too. Okay?”

“Okay.”

After she leaves, I put the brochure and the business card on the kitchen table. I sit down. I look at the newspaper again. It's still open to the death notice for Tracie Newsome. I read it one more time.

Nine

FINN

J
ohn calls me. So does Geordie. They both say they're sorry about Tracie. They're both smart enough and know me well enough not to call her my mom. They ask how my dad is holding up. They ask me if I want company or if I want to go out and do something. I tell them no on both counts, even though the real answer is yes. I'd love to get out and away from here. But I feel like the right thing to do is to stay home with my dad.

Matthew Goodis, who manages Dad's club, drops by on Saturday afternoon. When I answer the door, he says, “Sorry about what happened, Finn. Is your dad home?” He looks over my shoulder as if he expects to see my dad standing there.

“He's upstairs,” I say. “Come in. I'll get him for you.”

He steps inside. I go to get my dad. He's in his bedroom, sitting on the bed, holding a silver-framed picture of Tracie and him on their wedding day. He isn't crying or anything. He's just staring at it.

“Matthew is here,” I tell him.

He stares at the picture for a few seconds longer before setting it on his bedside table and standing up. He looks tired, but he follows me downstairs. Matthew says he's sorry to be a bother but that there are some things about the club that need to be straightened out.

“That's okay,” my dad says. He and Matthew go into my dad's home office at the back of the house. They're there for a long time, and neither of them is smiling when they come out. Well, why would they be? My dad is all broken up about Tracie, and Matthew knows it.

“At least that's one less thing to worry about,” Matthew says before he leaves the house. “But I sure wish none of this has happened”

“So do I,” my dad says.

“What was he talking about?” I ask my dad after Matthew is gone.

“Huh?” my dad says.

“What's one less thing to worry about?”

“Business,” he says. “There's an act we've been trying to book. We got it.”

My dad goes back upstairs. He doesn't come down for supper. He spends the next day fussing over the funeral arrangements. I hear him call the funeral director at least five or six times.

Before I know it, it's Monday.

The funeral service is held in the funeral home because neither my dad nor Tracie went to church, not even to get married.

The place is packed, which surprises me at first. Then I think, just because I never liked Tracie, that doesn't mean she didn't have friends. She had plenty of them, women she called her
girl
friends, even though they're all pushing forty. They're all there in little black dresses. They're all like Tracie—perfect hair, perfect makeup and expensive clothes that they hope make them look younger than they really are, and lots of jewelry given to them by their rich husbands. All of Tracie's close friends started out like Tracie. They were all secretaries or flight attendants or cocktail waitresses at fancy bars and clubs, all on the hunt for men with money. They stick together because, unlike my mom, they never quite fit into the social circle they most wanted to be part of—the really rich women who grew up in big houses and went to private schools and Ivy League universities, and who look down on people like Tracie. They look down on my dad too.

Besides Tracie's friends, I see a bunch of people who work at the club and who probably think it's good for their careers to show sympathy for the boss in his time of grief. I see some of Dad's best customers too. Also some neighbors. And my friends—a whole bunch of them. Some are there because they're my buddies, like John and Geordie. Some are there because it means they get to skip school. But they're nice about it. They come up to me after the service while I'm waiting for the funeral home people to put the casket in the hearse so we can all drive to the cemetery. They tell me how sorry they are and how horrible it must be to lose two people like that, first my mother and then my stepmother. Some of my teachers are there too. They shake my hand and tell me they've been thinking of me. They shake my dad's hand and express their sympathy.

All my friends except John and Geordie go back to school after the service. A lot of the people from the club leave too. The rest of us pile into cars to drive to the cemetery. We have a police escort to make sure that all the cars stay together, even when we come to intersections. I ride in the front car with my dad. But as soon as we get to the cemetery, I hang back and wait for John and Geordie. I stick with them when the minister says some more words over the coffin and when the coffin is lowered into the ground. I stay with them until my father breaks down sobbing. Then I go to him and put an arm on his shoulder. I feel like his dad rather than the other way around as I pull him gently away from the grave and tell him that everything is going to be okay.

That's when I look up and see her standing in the distance. She isn't part of the funeral, but she's there anyway—the girl from the police station, the one whose father died. The one I talked to and thought about afterward. Mostly what I thought about was that I must have sounded like some kind of psycho:
I saw two people die.
They were shot.
Like that made me special or something.

I wonder what she's doing here and how she even knew there was a funeral. Then I remember that the cops called my father by name. She must have heard about it on the news or read about it in the newspaper. And here she is. But why?

“Finn? Hey, Finn, where are you going?” John calls to me.

I tell him I'll be right back. At least, I think I do.

Ten

LILA

D
on't do it, I told myself when I woke up this morning. Don't do what you've been thinking about all night. Don't go.

But here I am. It's like there's a rope attached to me and someone is pulling it, reeling me in, like a fish on a line. Every step of the way, I tell myself it's a bad idea. But that invisible rope keeps tugging me until I find myself standing in the middle of a cemetery in the middle of town. The place is so massive that at first I can't see anything but trees that must have been growing since even before my father was born. It's so big that after I finally find the right place, all I can hear is the murmur of the man who is standing in front of the open hole in the ground, reading from a small book, and the trill of a bird overhead somewhere in one of the trees. There are no traffic sounds. No city sounds.