Letters to Nowhere(79)

“What do you need to know?” Tony asked. “Besides the obvious, I don’t see how it could help to have details.”

“You know how sometimes when someone says, ‘I need to talk to you privately,’ and then you can’t talk for like an hour and for that whole hour, ideas are building in your head and all of your theories end up so much worse than the real thing?”

Tony just stared at me for a long time, then nodded slowly. “Okay, I see what you mean.”

“In my head, there’re body parts everywhere and it’s like this bloody gruesome horror movie.”

“You were at the funeral, right?” he asked. “Didn’t you see them in the casket?”

I squeezed my eyes shut, hating every mental picture that went along with my answer. Hating those stupid urns resting on the mantel in my dusty, lonely house. “They were cremated.”

Tony scooted closer, eyeing me carefully. “And you really, truly believe that getting the details would fix the nightmares?”

“It’s not just the nightmares.” I told him about my experience on the beam in Houston and the little girl I screamed at the other day and all the near–panic attacks.

“Don’t think I haven’t figured out why you’re spilling all this to me.” He exhaled heavily, shaking his head.

I wasn’t sure if he was onto the fact that I knew his secret or…

“You want my help again,” he stated.

Okay, not the being gay thing.

“There must be a police file or something, right?”

“I’m sure there’s a file, but I’m just not sure I can get my hands on it,” he said. Then I watched him cover his face and groan into his hands. “Now I’m gonna have to try, because if you fall and break your neck on the beam it’ll be on my shoulders.”

I held my breath, trying not to get my hopes up or act too excited. “That would be so helpful.”

“One condition.” He waved a hand to get me to stop blabbering. “Stay here and watch TV with me.”

“Deal.”

I turned on my side and pulled the blanket from the back of the couch over me. I couldn’t believe that I might actually be able to fill in those missing puzzle pieces. Tony had come through for me once already, maybe he’d do it again.





CHAPTER NINETEEN





April 14

Mom and Dad,




Why did you want to be cremated? I’m not fond of the idea of bodies being under the ground and trapped in coffins, but how do I know you were whole before they burned you to ashes? How do I know any of that? And do you have any idea what it’s like to imagine someone setting your parents on fire? Every time I think about it my heart feels like it’s shattering to pieces.




Please answer.




Love, Karen



***

“Where do you put your parents?” Jackie asked.

Where do I put them? Like where’s the urn? “Uh…what do you mean?”

“Whenever people lose someone,” Jackie explained, “mentally, they have to put them somewhere. You have to sort them into a category. It’s human nature. Without doing that, you can’t actually move on. And I don’t mean get through the grieving, you wouldn’t be able to function.”

“You mean like heaven?”

“Exactly.”

I shook my head. “I don’t know. I tried the heaven thing, but it didn’t stick. I couldn’t talk myself into it.”

She searched my face as if the answer was going to be written on my forehead. “You have to have put them somewhere. You are coping. I can see that with my own eyes.”

“I write letters,” I admitted for the first time ever out loud. “To them, to my grandma, to you sometimes. I don’t always write it on paper, but if I can then I do. Sometimes I’m just drafting it in my head.”

I was afraid she’d give me the crazy person look, but she didn’t. “Do you have any of these letters? Can you share them?”

My hands shook as I retrieved my notebook from my bag and flipped to an earlier page. I glanced over it before setting it in front of her. She read the first page and closed the notebook right after she was done.

“Well, that was easy to answer.”

“Okay?” I asked.

“Think about it, Karen, you haven’t been inside your home in months, not farther than the garage, anyway. You write them letters…”

My heart pounded and I looked up at her, my eyes wide. “I haven’t put them anywhere. I’ve put myself somewhere.”

“Yes.” She handed me my notebook. “But I think part of you knows the truth, you just need to take some time and figure out where you’re going to put them.”

“Like forever?” I had a million questions to ask her and so many swirling emotions, but my phone distracted me. I shouldn’t have looked at it right then, but it only took a tiny glance to see a text from Tony.

Meet me at my house in an hour.

Oh. My. God.

He found something. He found the file.

My foot tapped the entire last ten minutes of my session with Jackie, and I had no idea what she said or what I said. But somehow she looked satisfied with our progress right before I bolted out the door.