The Bodyguard (92)

“Just terrorize her into ending the relationship,” I offered.

“Exactly,” Wilbur said. “But it didn’t work. And now I’m a mess. I can’t sleep. I can’t eat. I’m so alone all the time. And I just … can’t take it anymore.”

Then, just as I was trying to figure out how to make it to Wilbur before Wilbur shot Jack, Wilbur said, “So that’s The Destroyer’s punishment. He has to watch me die.”

At that, Wilbur lifted his arm and brought the muzzle of the gun to his own head.

He wasn’t here to kill Jack. Or me.

He was here to kill himself.

I had some experience with hostage negotiations, but this was not, suddenly, a hostage situation anymore. Not like I’d been expecting, anyway. I didn’t have a manual, or a playbook, or any idea what would work.

I just had to go on instinct.

“Wilbur,” I said. “I need you to put down the gun.”

Wilbur shifted his gaze from me to Jack to see if he agreed. Jack nodded and said, “She’s right.”

I took a step closer. “I know you feel alone right now, Wilbur,” I said. “But you’re not alone. Jack and I are with you. We want you to be okay.”

I kept going, thinking my best shot was to say something true, and so I grabbed for the first thing I thought of—even though it had nothing to do with his story.

Though later I’d wonder if maybe it did.

“On my eighth birthday,” I said then, “my mother’s boyfriend beat her up so badly, I thought she was dead. I hid in a closet all night.”

Wilbur looked at me.

“It was a bad night. It was the worst night of my life. As it was happening, it felt like it would never end. But it did end. And now it’s a distant memory. Do you see what I’m saying?”

Wilbur shook his head.

“Terrible things happen. But we can get through them, Wilbur. And more than that … we can be better on the other side.”

Wilbur considered that.

Then he used the muzzle of the pistol to scratch an itch on his head.

I kept pushing. “You can’t control the world—or other people. You can’t make them love you, either. They will or they won’t, and that’s the truth. But what you can do is decide who you want to be in the face of it all. Do you want to be a person who helps—or hurts? Do you want to be a person who burns with anger—or shines with compassion? Do you want to be hopeful or hopeless? Give up or keep going? Live or die?”

Then Wilbur said something that pierced all the adrenaline of the moment and kind of broke my heart. “I just want my Lacey back,” Wilbur said.

“I know,” I said. “That could happen. That could still happen. But it can’t happen if you’re not here.”

Wilbur frowned, like he hadn’t thought of that.

“Your life is important, Wilbur,” I said. “The world needs more painted birdhouses.”

“But who am I making them for without her?”

“Make them for the birds! Make them for all the people who’ll be delighted to see them. Make them for yourself.”

There were tears on Wilbur’s face. And then he said something I still think about to this day. He said, in a voice that sounded genuinely weary, “I just hate myself so much for not being loved.”

Oof.

I absolutely got it.

I made my voice soft. “You can’t make people love you. But you can give the love you long for out to the world. You can be the love you wish you had. That’s the way to be okay. Because giving love to other people is a way of giving it to yourself.”

Wilbur chewed his lip as he thought about that.

“That’s all we can do,” I said. “All we can do is put away our anger, and our blame, and our guns”—see what I did there?—“and try to make things better instead of worse. That’s the only answer there is.”

Wilbur wiped at his tears with the back of his gun-holding hand.

I took a step closer. “Give yourself some time—and give me the gun.”

Wilbur lowered the gun and looked down at it in his hand.

“You can change your life,” I said then. “You can make good things happen. You can fill up your yard with painted birdhouses. Hundreds of them. Thousands.” My voice felt a little shaky. But I kept going: “I’d really, really love to see that. How magical would that be?”

Wilbur didn’t look away. He knew I was telling the truth. He felt how much I meant it.

“Come down and give me the gun, okay?” I said.

Wilbur looked down then, peering over his feet. Then, with surrender, he stepped back toward us, down off the ledge. As he landed, his injured leg crumpled under him, and he collapsed.

In that second, Jack and I both tackled him—Jack, still bound, throwing his whole body down to keep Wilbur pinned, and me going for the gun—though Wilbur had gone limp at that point and didn’t need much restraining.

As I landed, the wine opener in my bra flew out and went skittering across the rooftop.

I twisted Wilbur’s arm behind him and wrested the gun out of his grip, and then I looked up to see Jack staring at the corkscrew. “What, exactly, were you planning to do with that?”

But I just said, “You don’t want to know.”