Page 146 of College Town

Lawson turns back to him, wary, and finds that Noah’s holding out a plain manilla envelope.

“What is it?”

Noah gives it a jostle. “Take a look for yourself.”

Slowly, he takes it. Even more slowly, he opens the flap, and peers inside.

It’s a photo. No, it’s a photocopy of a sheet of photos. At first he thinks it’s a yearbook page, but then he realizes that all the little squares are photos of men and women in police blues, with their caps and badges, set against navy backdrops and standing American flags. It’s a graduating class of police recruits, and it’s in alphabetical order.

He finds Noah, first. Officer Noah J. Katz. He’s in his early twenties, his face rounder, his smile wider.

And beside him, there’s Officer Thomas R. Katz. It’s a Tommy that Lawson never had the pleasure of seeing: more mature than the seventeen-year-old who staggered out of his car for the last time, but still achingly young. His hair neatly gelled, and his eyes dark and pleased, his smile narrow, uncertain, all buttoned up in his uniform. He looks like a kid going as a cop for Halloween, and like a police-themed strip-o-gram all at once. Beautiful, and determined, already grim at such a tender age, without any lines on his face.

Lawson means to ask a question, but all that crosses his lips is a low, pained noise.

Noah says, “Our dad really was killed by the Giacolettis. He didn’t know that Frank was a cop – that he was undercover. Our real name is Katz. Cattaneo is an alias Frank made up when he first went under. He was already trying to bring Gino down, and after Dad…well, he had a chance to move up the ladder, and he took it.

“Giacoletti did find us when we came here, but we didn’t go to New York to join the family. We joined the force. We’ve been working this case since we were twenty-five, and we finally got the bastard.”

Lawson looks up at him, reeling.

Noah nods to the envelope. “Keep going.”

Obediently, he dips back in and comes out with a packet of notebook paper clearly torn from a spiral notebook, little tatters hanging off the jagged left side.

Dear Lawson, the top of the first page reads.

He turns to the next, the next.

Dear Lawson.

Law.

Dear Law.

“He wrote for years,” Noah says. “He finally stopped, at some point. He got too busy, but he would tell us – he would tell Frank and me – the whole time, the entire time: he said, ‘I’m going to get Gino. I’m going to avenge Dad and put that fucker out of business. And then I’m going home to Lawson.’”

“…what?”

“He wrote letters like a diary. He told you everything in them. He always said” – Noah’s mouth hitches upward in a crooked smile – “that you’d rather read a story than listen to one, so he wrote everything down, everything he did, so that when he got to come back to Eastman, you could read it, and maybe you’d forgive him for the way he left things. He was always so nervous you’d hate him forever. He was a stupid kid, you both were, and he was scared, and he didn’t handle it right, and so he wroteevery single nightwhat he wanted to say to you when he got the chance.”

“I…I don’t…” Lawson looks from the letters – rustling as his hand shakes – to Tommy, to Noah, and to the letters again. “He…”

“Frank used to tell him to get over it, but I think, eventually, he figured out that Tommy was serious. He loved you the whole time, Lawson,” Noah says, very gently. “He does still. Whatever else he had to say to pull this whole thing off, that was never a lie.”

“I don’t…”

“Just…when he wakes up. At least hear him out, yeah?”

Lawson tries to respond, and his throat closes up, and his eyes fill with tears.

He puts his face down on the edge of the bed so Noah can’t see him fall apart.

A warm, strong hand settles at the back of his neck, and squeezes once. “He’s gonna be okay,” Noah says. “You both are.”

When Lawson finally lifts his head, Noah’s gone.

~*~

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