Page 70 of The Midnight Hour
“That’s not it at all,” my son tells me as he turns around. “I wasn’t freaked out because you killed that guy…I was mad because I should have been the one to do it.”
TWENTY-SIX
Okay, that wasnotwhat I’d expected him to say. At all. So clearly I did get a lot of things wrong.
“Why…” I lick my lips as my mind spins. “Why do you think you should have been the one to do it, Sam?”
He huffs impatiently, the impatient twist of his shoulders acting as a dismissal. “Because I haven’t done anything,” he bursts out. “Because I’ve been acting like a stupid baby since this whole thing started. Dad treated me like one, and I let him.” His face crumples and then, like a child, he starts to cry.
I stretch out my arms for a hug, but he spins away before I can reach him.
“Don’t,” he snarls. “For the love of—Mom,don’t.”
Slowly I drop my arms. Sam wipes his cheeks.
“What do you think you should have done?” I ask quietly.
“Anything,” Sam replies savagely. “Anything. I just let Dad do it all, basically. He treated me like this little kid who needed protecting from everything. Who couldn’t handle the truth, and that’s because I couldn’t.” He draws a shuddering breath and then continues doggedly, “I mean, at first, I know I was acting stupid, like it was all a—a video game or something.Iknowhow stupid that sounds, but I just…I don’t know, it all seemed kind of…exciting, in a weird way. I can’t really explain it, but it was kind of…cool.” He flinches, even before I’ve said anything. “I know how that sounds, I know, I know?—”
“Sam,” I interject gently. “It’s okay.” I can completely appreciate how unreal everything seemed back then, especially at the beginning. I’m hardly about to begrudge my son having more or less the same reaction I did—the incredulity, the suspended sense of surreality, like it wasn’t really happening, or at least, it wasn’t really happening to me.
“But then…Iwantedto do stuff,” he continues, his voice rising. “To help. I offered to go out and look for food, or a car, when we needed one. But Dad always said my job was to look after Granny. She was…well.” He grimaces, and I can imagine. My mother had an immense strength of spirit, but at the end she was frail, vulnerable, and suffering from dementia. It was a miracle that Daniel managed to bring her back.
“I know, though,” Sam continues, “that that wasn’t it, at least not all of it. He was just trying to protect me from the radiation. And I never really argued about it. I just let him…because the truth is…” Sam blows out a breath, his shoulder slumping. “The truth is, I was scared.” He gives me a guilty look, the kind of frightened glance he might have given me at six years old, when he’d done something naughty. “I didn’t want to risk getting burned or zapped or whatever. I wanted to stay safe, so I let him do it all and I pretended it was his idea.”
“And Dad wanted you to stay safe, too,” I return quietly. I hesitate, trying to feel my way through the words, to say what Sam needs to hear. “I can understand why you feel guilty, Sam, but, please believe me, you don’t need to. Dad certainly wouldn’t want you to, and especially now. Keeping you safe was his absolutely number one priority?—”
“But it’s not like I was six,” Sam burst out. “Mom, I waseighteen. I should have dealt with it. I should have…manned up.”
“But Sam,” I protest, “you have your whole life ahead of you?—”
“And Dad doesn’t.” Sam’s expression and voice both turn bleak, and I fall silent, the reality of Daniel’s condition reverberating through the emptiness inside me. “How am I supposed to live with that?” he asks, like he needs to know the answer, as if I could possibly have it. I don’t know it for myself, never mind my children.
But Sam’s situation is different from mine; it is, I realize, the same dilemma Mattie has been facing, with Kerry. How do you accept that someone willingly gave their life to you—in Kerry’s case, the matter of a single second; in my husband’s, month after treacherous month? Both were incredibly courageous and noble sacrifices…but they can be hard to accept.
“I don’t know,” I admit. I think of my trite words to Mattie—make it count—and yet they’re true. Aren’t they? Surely they need to be. “Just with gratitude, Sam, and not with anger or guilt. Dad would have never wanted that.”
“He did something bad,” Sam confesses in a low voice. “Something he wouldn’t tell me about. In Albany, he found a car. He came back with it and he was…crying.” He sounds like he still can’t believe it. “He was trying not to show it, but…” He trails off, shaking his head. “I don’t know what, but I knew it was something. Something had happened. Or he had done something to get it. I don’t know.”
My stomach cramps with anxiety but I keep my voice steady. “Whatever Dad did, he did it willingly, for you. It was a choice he made.”
Sam gives me a level look. “Like you killing that guy?”
I do my best not to flinch. “I thought I was protecting everyone,” I admit quietly, a sorrowful agreement. “It’s been hard—really hard—to accept that maybe…maybe I wasn’t. That maybeI made a mistake, and that guy was just trying to be nice.” Even after all this, it’s hard to admit. To accept…and yet I know I need to.
Sam cocks his head. “While holding a gun.”
“Well, we were all holding guns.” I swallow and force myself to tell him, “I thought you’ve been distant from me these last few months because you were so…so sickened by what I’d done. Killing someone in cold blood, without even considering they might be okay.”
Sam is silent for a long moment. “It wasn’t that,” he finally says. “I mean, that was part of it, maybe, at first. Like, when I found that Bible verse and photo and stuff…well, it would have been easier all around if those guys were bad news, right? But I didn’t blame you, Mom, or Dad. Not for that, for any of it…I was just…I wasashamed.” His face crumples and he gulps several times, staring down at the ground. This time, he can’t meet my eye, but I know it’s not because of me. “Like, that whole time,” he continues in a choked voice, “I was just hidingin the backseat.”
“Oh, Sam.” I step forward and this time he lets me hug him. He clings to me, or maybe I cling to him, and neither of us speaks. Part of me wonders why we couldn’t have had this conversation earlier, made these strides sooner, while another part acknowledges the stark truth that it simply wouldn’t have been possible. Daniel’s condition, his inevitable death…that’s what has forced these painful truths out at last. It’s a blessing amid the grief and tragedy, and one I’m grateful for, but…
Though the fig tree does not bud and there are no grapes on the vines, though the olive crop fails and the fields produce no food, though there are no sheep in the pen and no cattle in the stalls, yet I will rejoice…
The verse ripples through my mind, quiet yet insistent; Iknow I’ll never forget the words. This time though, instead of the usual churning sense of guilt, they leave a surprising and unexpected peace in their wake, a feeling that is not as elusive as it once was. Everything feels so hard, and it’s going to get so much harder…
And yet.
