Page 97 of Goodbye Days

She turns, as if sensing my stare on her back. “I’ll remember a bunch of stuff later I wish I’d said.”

She waits for me to catch up so we can walk together. Pierce and Melissa are waiting at the trailhead.

“I need to use the ladies’ room before we hit the road again,” Melissa says. She and Jesmyn head for the women’s restroom.

“Might as well too,” Pierce says. He and I head to the men’s restroom. We do our business and we’re washing our hands in the sinks, side by side. He catches my eyes in the mirror. His are dim and gray and sunken in his skull.

“I’m glad we have a second or two alone,” he says. “There’re a couple of things I need to get off my chest.”

Naturally I want to shit myself. Good thing I’m near a toilet. I slowly turn off the water. “Um. Yeah.”

Pierce keeps looking at me in the mirror. He rubs his face. “I need to be frank with you, because I understand this to be a day for no bullshit.”

“Okay.”

“I’m not entirely at peace with your role in my son’s death.”

Hey, that makes two of us. And speaking of dying, that doesn’t sound bad right now. But I channel Dr. Mendez and listen, striving for his unruffledness.

Pierce continues. “By no means am I where Adair’s at. It wouldn’t give me any peace to see you prosecuted and suffer legal consequences. But, Carver. Did you have to text Mars when you did? I study historical cause and effect all day. Do you think it’s easy for me to get past this?”

My blood ticks in my chest, and I feel the something-heavy-sliding-off-a-high-shelf, but still, none of the compulsion to confess I felt with Nana Betsy and Dr. Mendez. Instead, I want to tell him about Billy Scruggs. About Hiro Takasagawa. Ridiculous. But I want to defend myself.

I open my mouth to try to speak.

Pierce holds my gaze in the mirror with his dolorous eyes. “Well?”

“I—I don’t—I’m sorry. I’m sorry.”

“Yeah.”

I start to edge toward the door.

He turns and looks me in the face, drawing so close I can smell his metallic breath—like he’s been sucking on pennies. His melancholy has melted off to a pale-blue fire. “Another thing I want to say. It’s fairly obvious that you and Jesmyn have grown quite close—more than you ever would have if my son hadn’t been killed. And I don’t have any authority to tell either of you what to do. But I would really love it if I never had to see or hear about you getting together with my dead son’s girlfriend. Because you at least deserve to not actively profit from his death.” His voice strains under some emotion I don’t even recognize. Maybe it has no name.

He doesn’t await a response but turns and leaves.

And the heavy thing slides off the shelf. The buried-alive-fallen-through-river-ice sensation seizes me like a giant, pneumatic steel claw. I sway on unsteady legs and grip the sink for purchase.

Air.

Air.

Air.

Breathe.

Breathe.

Breathe.

My legs are too wobbly. My bones and muscles are gelatin. I sink to the muddy (I really hope that’s mud) floor, leaning against a stall. I’m praying nobody comes in and sees me in this state.

Several minutes pass before I hear someone gingerly push open the door a crack.

“Carver?” It’s Jesmyn.

“Yeah?” I call feebly.