December Park(167)

High above, traffic growled across the bridge.





Somehow, I’d fallen asleep. When I woke, it was to the stricken voices of men, their large, indistinct forms swiping tungsten lights across the darkness. Strong hands gripped me and lifted me off the body of the Piper. It took me a moment to recall where I was or what had happened.

I had the vague impression of being handed off, round-robin style, from man to man. With my eyes squeezed shut, I smelled each of my handlers distinctly—their colognes, their body odors, their breath. I struggled and fought them around the same time my eyes sprung open and a great aching wail burst from my lungs.

Someone held me in a strong embrace and whispered over and over in my ear—

(i’m sorry angelo i’m sorry)

—to calm down, it’s okay, kid, calm down, you’re okay, you’re okay.

My vision was blurry. I swiped tears from my eyes with shaky hands. There were cops everywhere. One of them held me and kept whispering in my ear. Before me, I recognized the enormous double doors beneath the arcade at the front of the Patapsco Institute—or rather where the doors had been: they had been busted down and lay on the stone floor like twin drawbridges over a moat. I heard the storm raging around us, the rain spilling down from the arcade in torrents.

“Angelo!”

I broke free from the cop’s hold and spun around in the direction of the voice. The slope of the woods that led away from the building was a swirling, black tornado of rain. Thin trees were pressed close to the ground by the force of the wind. More tungsten lights bobbed in the miasma, along with figures that emerged through the trees like ghosts of Civil War soldiers coming through an early morning mist.

“Angelo,” the man said again.

It was my father. He stumbled through the trees, his hair and clothes soaked, his face a cadaverous cut of moonlight. His eyes were two colorless stones. When he saw me, he ran toward me. I wanted to run to him, too, but my legs would not obey.

He grabbed me, pulled me hard against his chest. My face went into the crook of his neck while my fingers dug into his back. I sobbed again, trembling. He squeezed the back of my neck and I said, “Don’t g-g-go in th-there . . .”

“Shhh,” he said, cradling me.

“Don’t g-go in,” I said. It was important to say it. I didn’t think the words even passed through my lips, or if they did, they were gibberish.

“It’s okay, Angelo. Calm down. You’re safe now. You’re safe.”

I pulled away and looked hard at him. His face seemed to tremble and threaten to disperse into nonexistence at any second, as if made of dreams. I opened my mouth and stuttered, “Ch-Ch-Ch—,” but I couldn’t get the name out.

“Doesn’t matter,” he said, his voice calm and his words coming slowly. “It’s okay now. It’s okay.”

But it wasn’t, I knew.

It wasn’t.





I sat with my legs hanging out of the open rear doors of an ambulance, a fire-retardant blanket around my shoulders, and shivered. The ambulance looked out over the promontory and at a sky that flared occasionally with lightning.

Peter stood in the rain beside the ambulance, seemingly unable to take his eyes from me. I couldn’t be sure, but I thought he had seen and understood. It looked like he wanted to say something to me but couldn’t find the words.

Michael and Scott came up behind him, Scott clutching the samurai sword to his chest. Rain danced across Michael’s army helmet and cascaded over the brim of Scott’s Orioles cap.

Briefly, I closed my eyes and willed my thoughts into their heads. But my thoughts were messy and confused beasts, and even if they managed to pierce their brains, they wouldn’t have understood them. I didn’t understand them myself.

My father talked to some cops near the edge of the cliff. When he finally came to me, I said, “Where’s Adrian?”

“Ambulance took him. Hospital.”

We said no more.





Sometime later, when they brought the Piper’s body from the woods, my father dropped to his knees in the mud and hung his head. He sobbed. I watched as his shoulders hitched and the rain drenched his clothes. I watched as the dark, wet curls of his hair hung down over his eyes.

He stayed like that for a long, long time.





Chapter Thirty-Five


Aftermath





The rain had stopped and sunlight was beginning to crack the distant sky by the time my father and I got home. The sedan rolled heavily into the driveway, the chassis groaning. There was a squad car parked at the curb in front of our house. The rack of lights on the roof was dark, and I couldn’t see anyone behind the wheel.

“You sure you’re okay?”

I nodded, staring at my hands in my lap. I had refused to be taken to the hospital. I’d just wanted to go home. “Your gun,” I said, the word gun sticking to the roof of my mouth like peanut butter. “I’m sorry. I took it from your room. It’s . . . it’s b-back th-there in—”

He reached out and pulled me against him. His clothes were wet. I smelled his aftershave and the sweat and fury and confusion and sadness on him. Like a child, I sobbed uncontrollably against his chest while he held me and smoothed back my damp hair.

“Shhh,” he whispered. “It’s okay. Shhh.”