Page 83 of Every Sweet Thing Is Bitter

His truism sparks another request. “Can you make sure they don’t write anything likewifeormotheron the headstone? I want her to be Elissa for once. Even if it’s a fancy rock in a cemetery, she should have something that’s her own.”

“You’ll want something on there. Something more than just her name.” When he sees me racking my brain, he adds,“Sit with it. You don’t have to come up with anything right now.”

“What about a beatitude? ‘Blessed are the poor in spirit: for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.’”

Josiah smiles. “I think that’s perfect.”

CHAPTER

24

August 22nd

9:59PM

ANNESVILLE HASDEVOUREDmy mother. I settle on this as the cause of her death because it’s the only resolution to this saga that brings me any peace.

As I detour through Annesville’s darkened streets, I tell myself this town morphed into a monster—a real, sentient, bloodthirsty beast—in search of easy prey to feed on. Its five dirt roads became veins, its mailboxes became teeth, its condemned houses became eyes. And at the very center, its throbbing red heart, are the liquor stores. It intuited my mother’s plan to escape, and as soon as no one was looking, snapped her between its powerful jaws. It knew no one would come looking for her until it was too late.

When I turn onto Maple Street, the door of the Crawfords’ bungalow is wide open. My stomach freefalls at the sight, and my mind latches onto the image of a blood-soaked crime scene with my friend’s pallid corpse at its center.

I park across the street and run across the clover-covered yard. Constant motion is imperative: if I stop moving, I’ll thinkabout the danger I may be walking into. But when I enter the house, nothing is amiss. No blood, no signs of a struggle, no dead bodies. There’s even a fresh zigzag pattern in the carpet from the vacuum cleaner. What made Connor leave in such a hurry that he—?

No.

No, no, no.

Gil.

It takes four calls for Connor to pick up. We’re both breathless when he finally does. “I can’t talk right now, Providence.”

“I was driving through town and saw your front door wide open. I thought you’d been murdered.”

“I—fuck, no. I’m fine. I was in a rush. It’s my dad. He slipped in the shower and hit his head. It’s bad. I’m walking into the hospital right now. Penny says it’s a concussion, but I wouldn’t trust that nursing home to diagnose someone with a head injury if their brain was halfway out their ears.”

Gil’s brain, already shriveled like flowers in a waterless vase, swells and bruises as we speak. Does he know where he is? Does he understand why his head hurts? I pace from the piano to the kitchen and back again. “Is he at least conscious?”

“Providence, I don’t know anything.”

“I’m sorry. I—I’m—” In my mind, Gil’s brain swells obscenely, pressing against his skull until its blood vessels pop. “I’m just worried about him.”

“I know you are,” he says. “Stay at the house for a few minutes and catch your breath, okay? I’ll call you in the morning.”

He hangs up before I can ask another question. Gil Crawford may have been a surrogate father to me, but he is not my real father, and the only person with the right to rush to his bedside in the dead of night is Connor. I convince myself it isn’t personal. There may be medical decisions to make, tearful goodbyes (God forbid) to exchange. Those moments are not for me; I can only wish they were.

But there is a sense of impending doom I cannot quell—thoughts of Gil in the morgue, thoughts of him in a vegetative state, a machine drawing breath instead of his lungs. I’ve already lost my mother. I can’t lose Gil too. Part of me thinks the universe can’t be so evil that it would make me suffer another paralyzing blow, but another part remembers I am a lightning rod for tragedy.

I won’t leave until Connor returns. I don’t care that it’s unforgivably selfish to claim this pain as my own. If I wake to a voicemail telling me that Gil died in the night, I fear I will never recover.

I turn on the TV and crank the volume on the home shopping network. Perfectly banal, like an anesthetic straight to the brain. The host extols the wonders of a plumping lip gloss as if her lips have not been enhanced with filler. I rot on the couch, fingers between my teeth, and allow my mind to drift until my thoughts converge on the need for a cigarette.

As soon as I step outside, creatures scutter through the grass, the bushes, along the branches of the mighty oak tree buckling the earth with its roots. I use the rusty birdbath as an ashtray. Not my finest moment, but better than setting Connor’s backyard ablaze. I gaze at Gil’s old woodshop in the corner of the yard. I can hear the shrill whine of his circular saw and smell the powdery traces of sawdust, a scent I always found more delightful than I should have.

The door grates as I open it. Everything is in its right place, exactly as I remember it. I imagine Connor standing here, surveying Gil’s favorite hideout, unwilling to part with his father’s favorite things even if he has no use for them. Perhaps he stands here and considers taking up carpentry himself. There is an unfinished chair felled on the ground, missing its fourth leg. I lean it against the wall, beneath his array of carpentry tools.

My cigarette has burned nearly to the filter. I extinguish it beneath my slipper, hoping I remember to dispose of the remainslater, and walk to the shelf where Gil keeps the trinkets he used to whittle, hunks of wood carved into the vague outline of animals. By his own admission, he was more adept at the bigger projects.These hands are ham hocks, he would say,the less detail, the better.They face east toward the rising sun, paired off in predator-prey couplings: the bear eats the deer, the bird eats the snake, the alligator eats the turtle. The only predator without an assigned meal is a wolf at the far end of the shelf. I wonder if Connor would notice if I pocketed it.

As I approach the workbench for better lighting, I trip over something. The wolf skids across the concrete floor and disappears beneath the workbench.

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