I gulp.
Sometimes, love does fail. I’ve certainly proven that. I’ve failed everyone. I failed my mother. I failed my father when I repressed the memories and couldn’t tell anyone what the killer looked like. And I’ve certainly failed Mila. I know I’ve ripped her heart out and I doubt I can ever put it back together again.
I close my eyes to soothe the stinging in them.
I nap in the airport until our plane takes off, then I nap on the plane. I think about trying to call Mila, but decide that I’d better not. Our conversation isn’t one for the phone. I’ll need to see her, face-to-face. In the meantime, I have something important to do.
When we touch down in Hartford, we check into a hotel. Our dinner in the posh hotel restaurant is fairly silent.
I watch my father swirling his scotch absently in his glass for a long time before I finally speak up.
“It wasn’t your fault, either, dad.”
He looks up at me.
“No? Pax, we joked about that guy. The f**king mailman. I thought he was a joke. But he took my life away. Or he might as well have. Some joke. I guess he got the last laugh.”
The bitter agony on my father’s face is apparent and as pissed as I am at him, I can’t help but feel terrible for him at the same time. I can’t imagine what he must feel like.
“Dad,” I attempt again. But he interrupts.
“Pax, you don’t understand. You can’t imagine how many times over the years I’ve wondered…what if I had left work early that day? What if I’d not stopped for gas? What if I’d hit one less red light? If any of those things had happened, maybe I could have stopped it. The constant not-knowing was terrible. But now, to find out that the f**king mailman took her life…my guilt is ten thousand times worse than it ever was. Because if I’d taken him seriously- if I’d recognized him for the perverted f**k that he was, your mother would be alive today. That’s an unarguable fact.”
I gulp down the rest of my water before I answer.
“Dad, mom must not have realized how f**ked up he was, either. You said you both joked about it. That means that he hid it pretty well. You can’t feel guilty for someone else’s mental illness. There’s no way that you could have known.”
I can tell my father doesn’t believe me, though and we finish our meal in silence. To be honest, I think we both are happy to be alone with our thoughts.
After a fairly sleepless night, we go the police station first thing in the morning. The detective is more than happy to hear from us.
“This case has haunted me for years,” he admits to me, his mouth tight. “I’d never seen anything like it. I’ve never forgotten it, or the sight of your little face. Your eyes were so big and sad. You’d seen the unimaginable. I’m glad to see you’ve grown up so well.”
So well. Huh. That’s debatable.
He takes my official statement and assures us that they will be pursuing a warrant to collect DNA evidence from our old mailman as soon as they can get a name from Post Office records. I feel a feeling of intense satisfaction as we walk down the steps of the station and out into the brisk, fresh air.
Justice might finally be served. My mom might finally be vindicated. It’s only taken seventeen years.
“Where is she buried?” I ask my father as we climb into the car. He looks at me.
“Let’s stop and get some flowers, and I’ll show you.”
So we do exactly that. We stop and get two dozen roses apiece and we drive to a beautiful, silent cemetery. It is lined with trees and the ice hangs on the branches, sparkling in the winter sun. It’s serene. I decide that if you must be buried, it might as well be here in this tranquil place.
As we walk among the graves, I feel as though I’ve been here before and I know that I have. I have fleeting glimpses of her funeral, of the casket being lowered into the ground. I remember the intense feeling of sadness that I had felt watching it.
I swallow hard.
Ahead of us, I see a statue of an angel and I recognize it. It is lying across a slab, weeping into its hands and I know that it sits next to my mother’s grave. I remember it.
“Your grandfather had the statue brought in,” my father says, nodding toward it.
“It seems fitting,” I answer. And it does.
My mother’s headstone sits next to the angel, made from white marble. It’s gleaming and bright. I turn to my dad. “Someone’s been taking care of it.”
He nods. “Of course. I pay someone.”
Of course.
I stare down.
Susanna Alexander Tate
Beloved wife and mother
She walked in beauty,
She sleeps in peace.
The cold wind blows gently against my face and once again, a knot forms in my throat. I am flooded with guilt that I haven’t been here to visit her in years. I kneel to place my flowers by her name and for the first time in as long as I can remember; I feel a tear streaking my cheek. I wipe it away.
“Do you think she is? At peace?”
My father looks at me.
“Son, you were your mother’s peace. You brought her so much peace and joy from the very first time she held you, that she knew she had to name you Pax. Your mother loved you more than anything in the world. She would have gladly given her life a hundred times over to keep you safe. Whatever you do, just live a good life for her. She had so many hopes for you. But when it boils down to it, all she would want is for you to be happy.”
The tears flow freely now and my father wraps his arms around me. And just like that, two grown men stand embracing in front of a lonely headstone.
It is a few minutes before he pulls away and I see that he is crying too.
“I love you, too, Pax. I hope you know that.”
I nod, too choked up to speak. I feel as though someone has twisted my guts in their hands and shoved them back down my throat into all the wrong places. Everything hurts. But for the first time, the pain is okay. The pain feels normal, like it’s the kind I should feel. It doesn’t feel like the shameful pain that I felt as a kid, back when I couldn’t save my mom.
The old void in my heart is gone. It has been replaced with a quiet sort of acceptance. My life is what it is. My mom died a violent death and I watched it happen. I’ve got to get past it and move forward. It’s what she would want me to do.