Wing Jones(39)

“I can’t stop loving him either,” I say softly. I know my love is a different kind of love, just like Aaron’s love is different, and my mom’s, and I don’t want Monica to think I’m trying to take away from her pain. But even though we love him differently, I think the hurt is the same.

There’s a light cough from behind us and then Aaron crouches down beside her. “You guys doin’ OK?”

I wait for Monica to reply, and when she nods slowly, I know that we are.

“I got us some more apples,” says Aaron, gesturing behind him at the basket. It’s filled to the brim.

“From the tops?” I can’t see Monica’s expression in the fading light but can hear her smile.

“From the tops. We need some extra-special apples today.”

On the drive back home, Monica and I both sit in the backseat, her in the middle, right next to me, and she falls asleep on my shoulder. Occasionally, Aaron catches my eye in the rearview mirror, and I smile at him. We don’t talk, because we don’t want to wake Monica. Instead, we sit quietly and breathe in air that tastes like apples.





CHAPTER 23


Monica and Aaron take some of the apples home but leave most of them in our kitchen for Granny Dee. She goes through them one by one, smelling them, inspecting them, separating them out.

And then she starts to bake apple pies. She bakes and bakes and bakes, and every time I come into the kitchen she’s in there, slicing apples or rolling out pie crust or putting in the filling until our whole house smells like the inside of an apple pie.

She won’t let us eat any, though. She bakes six pies and says that she’ll make us our own pie but these are special pies, special pies for special people.

I don’t know what she’s talking about.

Then, after the last pie has been baked, she takes off her apron, wraps the pies in tinfoil, and puts a bow on each one. “I need you to drive me somewhere,” she says.

“I don’t have my license,” I say. “I only have my permit, you know that. I’m not supposed to drive without another licensed driver. Can’t Mom drive you?”

She shakes her head. “It can’t be your mama. It’ll be too hard for her. And I’m a licensed driver.”

“Are not. You haven’t had your license for years!”

“Well, no one needs to know that. Now help me carry some of these pies to the car.”

She doesn’t tell me where we’re going, she just directs. I don’t know how she knows where she’s going. We don’t go far, only about fifteen minutes from our house, but it’s far enough that the houses start to look a lot bigger, a lot nicer.

“Number thirty-two,” Granny Dee says, and the pie she’s holding is trembling a little. “Least I can do, the very least,” she mumbles to herself.

“What?”

“Number thirty-two!” she snaps, and I manage to park in front of the big brick house.

We sit in silence, Granny Dee staring at the house, her eyes welling up.

“What are we doing?” I whisper, because it feels like we’re sneaking around.

Granny Dee turns to me, eyes magnified behind her spectacles. “Listen to me. Here is what you are gonna do. You are gonna take these pies up to the door, ring the doorbell, and run back down here as fast as you can and get in the car and get out of here before anyone sees you. You got that?”

“You want me to ding-dong-ditch this house?”

“I want you to leave them apple pies! I’m too old to get up there and back down here without them seeing me. Now scoot!” She thrusts a stack of pies in my hands and I look up at the house again. And I see the name on the mailbox.

Bell.

This is the family of the woman Marcus killed. Sophie Bell. Granny Dee wants to bring them apple pies. Like how people brought us casseroles and cookies when my daddy, her son, died. And that food we got, it was made with love, and I know she made these apple pies with love, but the food didn’t make it better. And we sure as hell didn’t get any pies from the family of the drug dealer who killed my daddy.

I don’t think Granny Dee would have wanted that. So I don’t know why she thinks dropping off anonymous apple pies is a good idea. Even I know this is a horrible idea. Because an apple pie won’t make up for what Marcus did.

“Granny…” I say slowly, “we can’t do this.”

She starts to cry. “I’ve got to do something. We’ve got to do something. They’ve got to know we’re good people. We’re good people, Wing. It was an accident. Marcus is a good boy. His daddy was a good man.”

I reach over and hold her hand. “I know, Granny.”

“I keep thinking about them. I keep thinking how the grief is never gonna go away. Because it doesn’t. No parent should have to bury their child. I’ve got to do something.”

“We can’t do anything,” I say, because I’m starting to realize that there’s nothing we can do to fix what Marcus did.

She looks down at the apple pie in her lap. “I just thought … it might help.”

“An apple pie isn’t gonna bring their daughter back,” I say, squeezing her hand.

She nods. “What are we gonna do with all these pies?”

We end up taking them to the hospital and leaving them at the nurses’ station. As a thank-you for taking such good care of Marcus.