Page 113 of Haunted

He crouches down so that he can look at the name. “Hi Elliott! You’d like this place,” he says after a long silence. “There will always be other kids to play with. And seesaws like you like. And slides that don’t burn your legs.” He stops for a long moment. “I love you. I miss you. And I’ll be back to see you soon. Real soon.” He touches the brass and smiles. “And Grandma, I love you, too. Remember when I used to sit at our kitchen table and draw, and you would tell me how to make it better? I’m still doing that. I remember you every time I draw.” He presses on the brass. “Take care of Elliott, okay?”

The breeze lifts his hair faintly. He takes a deep breath. “Mom,” he says, and stops. “Mom, I grew up.” He pauses and fights to catch his breath. “I’m sorry I couldn’t say anything earlier. I was away for a long time. I had a great life. I went all over the world. And now I’m going to be on the radio. Can you believe it?” He pauses and swallows. “For a long time, I was so angry with you, but I’m not anymore. You didn’t intend this. You were just dealt this really shitty hand and didn’t know what else to do to keep your family together. And…I want you to know that I’m going to be alright.” Another hesitation. He puts his head against the wall. “I love you, Mom.”

I let him stay there for a few minutes, until he pulls away and nods at me. I guide him to a bench. He wipes his face. “That was more intense than I thought it would be,” he says.

“You okay?” I ask.

He nods, slowly, and then shakes his head no.

“Maybe now I can sleep again. Maybe the nightmares were trying to tell me this the whole time. I was out on that driveway at exactly the right moment. I was close enough to hear. And she never answered him. I only ever heard his half of it, and my head filled in hers, because at seventeen the other option wasn’t something I could hold.”

I rub his back.

He takes my hand. “But now that I know…I don’t want anything from him.” He pauses and looks at the park. “No. I take that back. I might have half-brothers and -sisters all over town that I’ve never met.”

“Do you want to find them?”

He hesitates and nods. “I want to see if they look like me. If they like the sort of things I do. I want to invite them to barbecues.”

“Then we’ll find them. We’ll take out an ad in the Excelsior if that’s what it takes. You’ve got some money from the survivor’s fund.”

“Your boss’ll be pissed.” He tries to suppress the smile, but fails. “‘SEARCHING FOR THE BASTARD CHILDREN OF REX HARLOW. PLEASE COME FORWARD.’ I can just imagine his face.”

I laugh, and kiss his forehead. “You know that they might not want to be found,” I say. “Maybe they’ve got a dad in place they don’t want to hurt. Maybe they don’t know. It’s a risk.”

Jonny nods. “Maybe they won’t like me because I’m gay.”

“It’s a risk. But I’ll always have your six.”

“I know. You’re a good man.”

We walk for a while without talking. The breeze moves through the empty park. A cloud scuds across the sun briefly, and is gone. A whole life is behind us on that wall, and for a moment we let it just be there, unhurried—the grief and the quiet and the thin October light all sitting together.

I pick out a bench under an oak and put my arm on the back so he can sit next to me.

He sits and looks back at the memorial wall. Then, finally, he looks at me, fully, and smiles.

“What?”

“I love you, Lance Broussard.”

“I love you, too.” I’m unsure of where this is going. I glance at the memorial wall with a sinking feeling in my heart. If this is a goodbye I’m burning this fucking place to the ground.

He takes my hand. “You loved the same way at seventeen that you will when you’re seventy. With your whole body. I was afraid that the Marines would take that away from you and turn you into something else. But they didn’t.”

Well, this is going better than I feared. “That means a lot to me to hear that. I did save your life. Twice. But I’m not counting.”

He narrows his eyes. “Once and I am counting.”

“Agree to disagree.”

He looks like he’s going to argue about it, but then he looks back at the memorial. “I lost everything in that fire,” he says. “My mother, my brother, my grandmother, my home, my name. I’ve spent ten years trying to outrun it, and I’m tired, Lance. I’m so tired of running.” He turns to me. “Life is too short and we have wasted enough of it already. You are, and you have always been, the great love of my life. I could have missed out on a lifetime with you. So when you are 70 and the neighbor’s kids are running all over our lawn, I still want to put my arms around you and tell their parents, ‘Don’t worry, my husband’s more bark than bite.’”

I stare at him. The air in my lungs feels compacted, like it’s been pressurized. “Is this what I think it is?”

He takes a deep breath. “I’m making a mess of it. I’m sorry. You seem like an old-fashioned guy. Right.” He gets down on one knee. “Lance Stephen Broussard, will you—”

“Yes.”