All Is Not Forgotten(81)

Sean cried out into the night. I have wondered if Bob Sullivan heard his cry, if it alarmed him at all. That’s one question we will never have answered.

I opened my eyes. I grabbed the gun and I ran back to my car. I drove home to my family. I couldn’t do it. Just like I couldn’t lead Valancia to his death. Don’t you see, Doc? I didn’t do it. He wasn’t following me into some suicide mission. I was following him. I was following him!

Tom pulled back onto the road. He had made his decision. He did not stop again. I imagine Sean passed right by him.

I thought I would at least go there and confront him, make him confess. I could at least do that. It was a compromise. That’s what I told myself. I got to the showroom. The lights were on in the back office. I left the bat in the car. I did not trust myself. Maybe I’m an idiot. Maybe I didn’t have it in me. And maybe I didn’t want to find out. I unlocked the door and went inside. I had the words in my head that I would say, and I was mumbling them to myself as I walked into the showroom. That’s when I heard the sound. It was a man crying.

I stepped around the corner, the same way I had done that night Bob was with Lila. Only what I saw on this night … good Lord.

The car that had sped past Tom belonged to the father of the girl Bob Sullivan had been with the night Jenny Kramer was raped. Lila from the showroom. Her father played golf with Bob. That was the man Tom found crying on the showroom floor, next to the bloodied body of Bob Sullivan.

He had a crowbar in his hand. Bob was lying on the hood of the silver XK, blood pouring from his skull. “My baby girl!” the man cried. I ran to Bob, pulled him to the floor, felt for a pulse. It was weak but it was there. Still, the wound to his head—I could see brain matter oozing out. I was in such a state of shock, I can’t even describe it. It was surreal. I managed to get my phone and call 911. I told them where we were, that a man had been struck. That he was dead.

“Tom,” I said. “Why did you tell them that if he had a pulse?”

I’m not proud of this. Or maybe I am. I still don’t know. But I did not do a thing to save Bob Sullivan. I laid him on the ground and I let him bleed to death. I sat beside this man, this father. He kept saying over and over how Bob had raped his little girl, and I had no idea who he was at the time. The alibi had not come out. But those words, it was like this man was me, the other me who wanted to kill Bob Sullivan. Who wanted justice. I put my arms around this man and I held him, rocking him back and forth as he cried in despair. I can’t explain it but to say that he was crying my tears. And that I was feeling his justice.

And there it is. That is the collision. Wasn’t it something? But that is not the end of the story.





Chapter Thirty-four

I have no remorse over the role I played in the death of Bob Sullivan. It was coming, you see? He had a liking for other people’s wives and daughters. There were more of them on the tapes. They were all disclosed, eventually, in the trial of the murderer, the distraught father who took a crowbar to poor Bob’s head. Even the tapes with Charlotte.

The content was sealed by agreement. No one had any interest in destroying Fairview, which is what would have happened. This is a small town. I have said this before, but it is worth saying again here. No one wanted to have to make choices about their marriages, their friends, their kids’ teacher at the school, their daughter, their mother. There was not enough space in this town for the kind of anger that would have been generated. So, only the dates and ages of the women were submitted into evidence. The tapes were eventually returned to Fran Sullivan, who, I imagine, keeps them in a nice safe place in her new home down in Miami. Of course, she could not stay in Fairview. She still had to raise her boys. The dealerships were sold (two of them to Tom Kramer), and the Sullivan family started over someplace far away.

Charlotte did eventually tell Tom about her affair. She told him the day after he let the man die.

I couldn’t let him wallow in that guilt. It was still so raw, the image of his wound, his brain matter spilling out, all the blood. And that man just crying on the floor. Tom was shaken by what he almost did and horrified by what he actually did do. I was the one who drove him to it, to put the bat in his car and drive to the showroom. I had to make it right.

Charlotte didn’t say it, but I could tell Tom’s courage and, in the end, his ability to contain his rage had caused her to see him in a new light. She saw him as a man of strength. A man who could protect his family, not just whine about it to others the way he had been doing all year. And yet he was also flawed, wasn’t he? Yes, Bob probably would have died anyway, but Tom did nothing to save the man. He was not perfect. And this gave Charlotte the permission to finally let go of good Charlotte the way she had done with bad Charlotte.

As for Tom, seeing Charlotte’s flaws allowed him to finally feel deserving of her, of his family, and of his life.

Things don’t always happen this easily. But most couples don’t have these kinds of life-altering events to shake them up. Inertia, stagnation, routines—it is hard to change in the face of these powerful forces.

Bob Sullivan’s death had changed them both.

I was mad, of course. Furious. Hurt. Devastated. I walked around with this pit in my stomach that just sucked up everything inside me. I couldn’t look at her for days. I made her tell me the details, where they would meet, how often, for how long. I made her tell me about the day she found Jenny. She apologized just once. She told me about her childhood. She was so calm about it, not pleading for forgiveness, but just wanting me to understand. She said you had helped her to understand herself, how she needed to have her two selves, the good and the bad, because of the shame she carried with her. She cried when she told me about her stepfather, about the first time it happened. I listened, and when she was done telling me, she just got up and left me alone in the room. She didn’t say anything else about any of it for two weeks.