Page 20 of Love Always

I hold her gaze one more time. “He’s not. Believe me. I was just at the wrong place at the wrong time.”

Devon, the powerhouse, shivers. “Don’t say that. For some weird reason that always reminds me of Mom and Dad.”

Devon’s instincts are supernatural. The drunk driver who struck our parents’ car in a head-on collision walked away from the accident. He then mounted a smear campaign, claiming because the left headlight on our car was burned out, he couldn’t gage where their car was on the road. There were no witnesses either. In his closing argument, his attorney claimed my parents were just “…in the wrong place at the wrong time.”

The real reason I can’t tell Devon it was Kevin Barr who grabbed me this afternoon is not because he’s trying to claim Cory for himself. It’s because of who his father is. Though Raymond Barr still practices law, as a judge in family court, and is clearly Kevin’s ace card if he makes a play for Cory, none of this is the reason I choose to remain mute.

Oliver Raymond Barr was behind the wheel that night. He was the one who turned my parents’ death into an indictment of their irresponsibly around car maintenance and a burned-out headlight, making it their fault and not his. The fact he was the one with a .13 blood alcohol level hardly made it into the court records.

Chapter Six

Mateus

It’s weird lying in a little twin bed knowing this used to be Laurel’s room. The bird’s eye maple dresser next to the bed has horse stickers plastered down one side. My family raised and trained horses. The Russos took care of their medical needs. Finn had handed me a key and as I made my way through the clinic and ascended the staircase I felt suddenly alone. Really alone.

Tossing my duffel on the bed I had to compartmentalize. Every time I tell my story, every time I show someone my leg, I get like this. It’s the searing moment of intimacy and understanding and coping and then it’s over. Like a moment of blinding truth and then everyday humdrum. It is a cycle I’m used to.

Claire had left a frosty six-pack of beers on the kitchen table and a note: Help yourself to anything you want: Mi Casa Su Casa. I don’t know if she wrote that because I’m Latin and she’s trying to make me feel at home, if she writes that for everyone, and does it really matter either way?

Fuck, I’m tired. The pity-pot often materializes when I’m short on sleep. Fuck the pity pot.

I crack open a beer, shove the rest in the fridge. It tastes great. There are fun notes on the freezer door: Call DEVON re food dips, order Millie’s mini horse file to flat teeth, Call account re: XMAS TREES!, Ziggy Bottoms pills. There are pictures of Cory in a lobster pot down on the beach, buck naked, gripping himself, laughing, the wind in his hair. Then there’s a tiny ceramic hand-print with a magnet holding most of the notes, a pad of paper and a pencil holder with two teeny library pencils. The wonder of magnets.

I am in no mood to start a fire in the woodstove and it’s not that cold. But as I peruse bookshelves, I see photo albums. There are a few family photos in the hallway, mostly of the girls, sports team shots of Devon, and one with them all together when Travis was just a toddler. None seem to be of the parents.

I sit down on the sofa and turn on a second light, but it takes a second beer to do its job. I pull out one album from the middle of the row.

Looking at family photos is a voyeuristic pleasure of mine. My family disowned me about the time I joined the SEALs. It had nothing to do with the SEALs, it had to do with my sister’s death. We shared an apartment for a while and I had no idea she was an addict and when I found out, there was little I could do. When she OD’d, I couldn’t save her and she died. My parents blamed me. I blamed me.

That’s when I signed up and they haven’t spoken to me since. She would have been twenty-three this week.

This is why I grab a second beer. Opening up photos of someone else’s family is fascinating, but bittersweet. Fascinating because as a profiler, I gravitate toward the unstaged photos, the depictions of action, everyday life and interactions. Bittersweet because I no longer fit in with my family. Any family.

I spend a couple of hours poring over the album. Both their parents are in very few of the photographs paired together. There’s often the mom or the dad separately or with the kids. It’s easy to pick out Claire, she’s the only blonde one. And Travis when he came along, a little black boy with curling hair, flashing teeth and large, coy eyes, he’s easy to spot.

There are many shots of Chloe in the kitchen helping her mother. Maggie Russo never looked harried or impatient in any of the photographs. She was slender, and in the summer wore an assortment of flare-collar shirts tied with neat little bows at the waist. There’s another of Chloe, in winter holding up impossibly long frozen icicles in mittened hands, the other four children huddle around her as she told some wild story. There was a shot of Devon hoisting herself up the porch railing with a rope like a mini rock climber at about the age of five. Another of her on the roof helping her father fix a window. Tony Russo was inside, leaning out trying to coax his daughter off the porch roof. I’ve learned from Bryce that Devon, ex-smokejumper and current firefighter, is a bit of a daredevil. Then more shots of Claire helping her father inside the clinic, and out: holding twin baby goats still wet, another of her tying off an umbilical cord of a baby calf, while her dad stands in the background washing up. And then shots of little Travis, a plastic stethoscope around his neck echoing the metal one he probably wears now in vet school.

Despite myself, I search for pictures of Laurel. And she’s always in the mix of things, moving from shots in the clinic, to holding a very large lop-eared bunny, standing at the kitchen sink with Maggie Russo, dyeing Easter eggs, with her little brother, who is nearly as big as she is, on her hip. Out at the beach with a huge collection of seashells in a bright blue bucket. Another of her screaming, her hands up, caught in the frame of the camera and frozen on paper, running pell-mell across the beach, pure joy in her face. Another of her asleep at the kitchen table, her face covered in chocolate frosting. And then a gawky one at maybe fifth grade, all hands and feet and knobby knees between argyle knee socks and the hem of a short plaid skirt. Her hair is in braids and there’s clearly orthodontia involved. Her lips are pressed into the closed-mouth smile so many kids and teens feel forced to do resulting in a kind of smirk that does not represent the insecurity they feel. She was, she is, adorable.

It makes me sad, looking at the photographs. This small but powerful family torn apart by tragedy. And yet resilient. That’s what is fascinating. And honest, I think, swirling down the last of my beer.

I did not see in a single photograph capturing a play for power, dominance, or misdirection. Someone pretending to be happy when they weren’t, or someone feigning affection. That part made me happy. I wanted a third beer. I wanted to taste the coldness on the back of my throat and to swallow and just sit in the dark for a while. I had to get up in the morning early and debrief with Finn and Bryce. I also told the two men I’d help with the prep work.

Instead, I lay in the twin bed and open the window a crack, just to hear the sound of the sea. I ran in the foothills just above Santa Barbara when I was younger and could glimpse the sea from two vantage points. In summer, I could ride my bike six miles to the ocean to body surf. On stormy days, if I listened hard, I could hear the high curling swells of the Pacific Ocean crashing on shore against rock and sand. If I really needed to hear the sea, I’d put a shell to my ear.

Here the sound of waves is effortless and constant. I’m glad I’m here, this is where I should be, I tell myself, realizing I better keep telling myself that.

΅

Saturday turns out to be the perfect day for an outdoor party. In the high 60s, with low humidity, no fog, and low tide for kids to go play in the sand, find crabs, shells, and dig for clams, there is plenty to do. High, thready, white clouds, just enough to offer some scale between the endless sky and sea, paints a quintessential Maine picture.

Finn decides a lobster pit is in order. I grab a shovel, ignore Bryce’s stare, and follow the two of them down the road to the causeway and then to a flat stretch of beach. The tide is on its way out, which means we’ll have a good six or seven hours before it starts to roll back in.

Bryce and I dig the pit about three feet deep and four feet in diameter, while Finn hefts three large wheelbarrows full of firewood. I work by leaving a ramp so I can get in and out. At the end, Bryce shovels it away and hops out of the pit. It takes some coaxing but after about an hour the flames have burned the logs to large, glowing hot coals. Bryce trots back to The Inn and I watch as he says something to Chloe, who is out in the herb garden. She rises and waves to me and Finn and then ducks inside. As he walks back to us, Chloe and Claire emerge from the back door off the kitchen, joining us on the beach with four buckets filled with lobsters.

There’s got to be about forty of them and I think I know where they’re headed. “I’m out of my comfort zone, man. You’re just going to throw them all on the fire? That’s harsh.”

Claire frowns. “Let’s not talk about it, shall we?”