Page 98 of Goodbye Days

“How…you doing in there? You good?”

“Um…” Yeah, I’m great; taking in the ambience. There’s a delightful bouquet in here. Earthy, mossy, with top notes of urinal cake and Pine-Sol. I can hear Melissa saying something to Jesmyn.

“For some reason,” Jesmyn says in a loud, deliberate voice, “these bathrooms reminded me of the first day of school.”

I’m not feeling especially quick, but at least I catch her meaning. “Me too.”

I hear Melissa saying something to Pierce. Perhaps: “He was fine before you two went in there together. Go in there and see what’s wrong.” Pierce responds, maybe: “Oh, come on, Melissa. He’s fine; having some privacy to ponder…stuff.”

I try to stand but slump down again.

“You alone in there?” Jesmyn calls.

“Yeah.”

“Are you…decent?”

“Yeah.”

The door opens and Jesmyn walks in. She gives me an oh-bless-your-poor-heart look and hurries to my side.

I manage a wan laugh. “Dignity, huh? Trying to beat my first-day-of-school record.”

“Well,” she murmurs, “you’ve traded smacking your head on the wall for filthy state park restroom floor.”

I’m glad she doesn’t tell me to breathe. In my growing experience with panic attacks, that’s rarely helpful advice since you’re unexcited about not breathing.

She helps me to my feet and stands at my elbow while I hold the sink, my head bowed. I manage to take a good breath or two. I have a sudden vision of Hiro, soaring above the Earth in his winged car. It’s weirdly soothing. My heartbeat is normalizing, and the splotches of black are dissipating from my field of vision.

“Wow. That sucked.”

“Did this happen to you on Blake’s goodbye day?”

“No.”

“What did he say to you in here? Or do you not want to talk about it?”

“I’d rather not talk about it.”

“You wanna try to head out there?”

“Couple more minutes?”

She nods.

“Know any jokes?” I ask.

“I told my mom this scented candle she bought the other day smells like a handsome grandpa. I thought that was pretty funny.”

I smile. “It is.”

After a couple more minutes, I’m able to walk unassisted. The fresh, damp air smells like the beginning of all life after so long in the restroom. We walk to the car without a word. Pierce won’t look at me. Not that I particularly want him to. Melissa seems to have some sense of what happened if not of the specifics.

The drive home is almost completely silent.

But Pierce and Melissa do tell us they’ve separated and intend to file for divorce. Not much you can say to that, even after Melissa offers the unsolicited reassurance that it had nothing to do with Eli’s death—they’d been discussing it for a while. I find that hard to believe. I heard somewhere that some huge percentage of marriages fall apart after the death of a child.

Not that I stood any chance of redeeming myself in Adair’s eyes, but now I’m finished. First her brother. Then her parents’ marriage. I’m a destroying angel to her. A plague on her life. I’m the proverbial butterfly flapping its wings, but my wings are covered in anthrax.