Page 71 of To Save Him

And how could I discover his secrets?

 

* * *

 

A SEMI-DARK DUSTY garage with little to no circulation is probably the last place you’d want to be in late June, but that’s where I was, little beads of perspiration causing my hair to cling to my forehead and the side of my face as I began rifling through the box full of memories.

Hadn’t we just put this out here?

Yes, we had, but I’d put all these belongings of Gabriel’s away to preserve and also to help me heal.  I’d had no idea just a while ago that I’d be going through them again so soon…

Going through them, this time with the intent of finding secrets.  Finding truth.

I was falling hard for Brandon, which was probably part of the reason why my alarm bells were clanging.  After having Mel stomp on the remains of my heart with cleated shoes, I’d vowed to never open myself up for hurt like that again…and yet here I was making myself vulnerable once more.  Something inside urged me to wake up and pay attention—and that was when I started to question Brandon’s quick—and seemingly easy—transformation.

I picked up Gabriel’s yearbooks, and they felt heavy, not just because my heart ached upon seeing them, not just because the life I’d hoped for him had gone unfulfilled.  They were big books.  I’d never looked through them like my kids had, because they didn’t have the meaning for me that they did for them.  I remembered glancing at the signatures in one of Gabriel’s shortly after he’d left for boot camp.  I’d been missing him and decided to look at pictures of him with his friends to cheer me up.  But all it took was reading one suggestive note from a girl I’d never met inside the back cover to make me realize that his yearbook was full of personal things…and I’d closed it, deciding to never look inside my kids’ yearbooks again.

I didn’t have that qualm today…but I didn’t have the heart to read words from his friends.  Gabriel had been the student that almost everyone else liked—he just had that kind of personality and tendency to not judge others—and it would crush my heart to read the words his friends had shared over his four years in high school.

I set the yearbooks on the shelf and continued looking through the box.  After a while—and poking at an as yet unhealed wound—I gave up and replaced the boxes.  The only things I could find having to do with Gabriel’s life after school were some papers that were queries about the Marines and his initial sign up.

I realized that I had to look throughmythings—the letters Gabriel had sent me while away from home, pictures, and that sort of thing.

Emails.

Shit.  This was going to be hard.  I didn’t know that I could do it.

Ihadto.  Before I allowed myself to fall completely for the man who claimed to be my deceased son’s friend, I needed to learn as much as I could about his past.  I had to do this—my very soul could be depending upon it.

I went to the kitchen first and poured a glass of cool iced tea.  I let my body cool off a bit before gritting my teeth and walking toward my office.  My computer was already on from my writing session earlier, but I stood in front of my desk and simply stared for a few moments, wondering if I could handle the emotional mudslide caused by reading emails from my dead son.

I took a long, slow, deep breath and then swallowed before pulling out the chair and sitting down.  The dread in the pit of my gut was stronger than if I were to be sitting in the dentist’s waiting room, working up to a root canal.  It reminded me of how I’d felt when I sat at the long table in the courthouse where Mel and I went through mediation, figuring out how to split everything as we began divorce proceedings.  I felt close to throwing up, a sourness brewing in my stomach.  The only way to combat it was to just do what I had to do and get it over with as soon as possible.

I opened up my Kimberly Grace email account, the one where Gabriel had written me the most, because he knew I checked it every day, at least once a day but usually twice.  I did a search to clear away all the other emails sitting in my inbox…and there they were.  Words written from my oldest son to me.  The last one was over two years old.  I stared at it for a long while, trying to decide if I had what it took.

Another deep breath.  It didn’t matter.  I had to do it.  If Brandon was really who he said he was, he likely meant no harm to me or my family…but if not, I had no idea what to even suspect.  Who could he be and what would be his motive?  If he wasn’t the person I believed he was, there could be no good reason I could think of for his ruse.

Click.

I tried to be logical, tried to keep my emotions out of it, but that notion was next to impossible as I opened up the last email message my oldest son had ever sent me.

 

Mom,

 

How are you?  This past week has been harder than most, but I’m doing okay.  They definitely remind us here that what doesn’t kill us makes us stronger.  So many days, I feel tested to my limit, but I excel every time.  I think you’d be proud of me.

 

Think?  Of course, I was proud of my son.  I know in my response I’d told him exactly that, but I would never know if he’d been able to read my reply before his demise.

The first tear fell.

I took a deep breath and forged ahead.

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