by Mia Sheridan
Jonah ran a hand over his rough and ridged face, his finger tracing a particularly nasty upraised scar that ran from his damaged eye, down the curve of his cheekbone, outlining the shape of that bone.
Maybe she could learn to accept him. Myrtle and Cecil had. Yeah so, Myrtle was half blind without her glasses and Cecil had been a pig farmer for the first part of his life, so he was used to looking in the eye of less than attractive creatures. But neither one batted an eyelash at the sight of him anymore.
Did he even dare entertain the thought?
His finger moved over his bottom lip, the melted side she’d felt with her tongue. It hadn’t seemed to disgust her then. She’d even tried to do it again, but he’d distracted her from it. But of course, feeling something with the tip of your tongue and seeing the full scope of the injury front and center in the glaring daylight would be a completely different experience.
Jonah remembered the journalist who had followed Myrtle and him the day he was released from the hospital. Jonah’s bandage had come loose because of the mad dash to the car away from the yelling, spitting crowd and as part of his face was revealed—the red, raw meatiness of his wound exposed—the journalist had looked shocked at first, his expression morphing into horror as he’d stumbled back. Disgusted. And Jonah had been glad for the reaction at the time because the sight of his disfigured face had gotten rid of the guy. Or at least that’s what he’d told himself.
The music ended and the ensuing silence felt sad.
Lonely.
Normal.
He didn’t want it to end. But it would have to, wouldn’t it? He felt himself changing, emerging, only there wouldn’t be a caterpillar to butterfly transformation for him—he’d forevermore look like the back end of an insect. That was not going to change.
He thought back to the week before when he’d roamed the darkness with Clara, when he’d tasted her, felt her pressed against him. God, he longed to taste her again. Not just her lips, but her throat, her shoulders, the warm sweet place between her thighs.
He’d only spoken to her on the phone since that magical evening. She’d been busy with rehearsals, and he’d been out almost every night, patrolling with the angels for an hour here or there.
It had given him that purposeful feeling that he now coveted. Plus, he’d felt somewhat responsible for Eddy. The kid was obviously still struggling. But the guy kept showing up, just like Jonah, and he thought that was a positive sign.
He saw him walking with Augustus, talking, laughing a few times. He knew that feeling, what it felt like to connect to another person after having felt disconnected for so long, to finally have an understanding ear. And watching them, he’d felt relief that he’d made the right call that day he’d received Eddy’s wish—his silent cry for help—and reached out to Augustus rather than the police.
He’d heard Augustus say something to Eddy the week before about seeking forgiveness from those he’d wronged being part of his healing process, and later, it’d started Jonah thinking. He needed to apologize. He had no misconception that his apology would be accepted. Hell, he didn’t believe it should be. But he needed to make one. He needed to. Not to everyone who hated him because of what happened—he didn’t owe those people anything, but he did owe an apology to at least one. He had no idea if there was any hope beyond the life he was living now, but if there was, God, if there was even a kernel of possibility, he needed to do this one thing in order to move forward.
And even if there wasn’t, he owed it anyway. In fact, it was long overdue.
Jonah waited until the moon appeared in the star-studded sky, just a slip of pearly yellow against the velvety indigo of night.
When he pulled up to the dilapidated bungalow in the Lower Ninth Ward, his heart was beating harshly in his leather-covered chest.
The roar of the motorcycle’s engine echoed in the silence of the night for a moment before the crickets took up their song again.
Jonah looked down the block. It seemed as though most of the houses on this street were still unoccupied. Ghosts may or may not linger at Windisle, but there was no question that the ghost of Katrina still haunted this devastated area.
Jonah kept his helmet on as he ascended the three rickety steps that led to Lucille Kershaw’s door. Before he could talk himself out of it, he raised his hand and knocked at the screen, the door rattling on its hinges, clearly at risk of coming loose entirely and falling off.
“Who’s there?” he heard called from directly on the other side of the door.
“Uh, I’m looking for Lucille Kershaw, ma’am,” Jonah said unsteadily.
“You found her. Now who the hell are you?”
Jonah paused. He didn’t have another choice than to tell this woman his name, but then she’d tell him to fuck off and he wouldn’t have the chance to deliver the apology he’d rehearsed.
“Jonah Chamberlain, ma’am,” he said on one exhaled breath, speaking quickly. “Before you tell me to go—”
The lock disengaged and the door opened a crack. “Jonah Chamberlain? The lawyer?”
Jonah was so surprised that for a moment he didn’t compute the question. “Ah, yes, I was. I was a lawyer. I worked on the case ah—”
“Yeah, I know who you are,” she said, opening the door a tad more. She stared out at him, her expression blank.
He was very aware that he must look threatening in the black motorcycle helmet, the visor closed, and he reached for it, but couldn’t quite force himself to lift it off. “What do you want?”
“I’d like to talk to you if you can spare a few minutes. I won’t take up much of your time.”
She opened the door wider and stepped back, surprising Jonah. “Yeah, I recognize your voice, Jonah Chamberlain. Well, come on in then.”
She turned and Jonah followed her into a small family room where Jeopardy was playing on a box television set.
The room was furnished in mismatching, well-worn pieces, but it was clean, with blankets folded neatly on the back of the ugly brown sofa, and the torn armchair.
Lucille Kershaw took a seat in the recliner, picking up a remote and muting the television while Jonah sat on the edge of the sofa. Lucille looked at him again, and he took in a deep breath, lifting the helmet over his head and placing it on the couch next to him.
He raised his gaze to her slowly, bracing for her reaction. He could feel his pulse racing and laid his sweaty palms on his denim-clad thighs as he made full eye contact. Her expression didn’t change. She continued to stare at him without so much as a muscle twitch.
Jonah watched her back for a moment, understanding dawning.
She’s blind.
For fuck’s sake. He almost laughed out loud. His biggest moment of courage and it fell on blind eyes. Literally.
“Well?” she asked. “If you have something to say, then say it.”
“Mrs. Kershaw, I came to . . . I came to”—his voice broke and he gathered himself, sitting up further and clearing his throat—“to apologize to you. I know what I did can’t be forgiven. I know that. I just had to tell you how sorry I am. And I know I waited far too long to say it. I know that too. I just . . . you have no idea how sorry I am.” Jonah’s voice faded away, trapped in the sorrow, the deep, deep regret that he carried inside and now rose up and filled his throat.
Lucille Kershaw, the woman whose daughter he’d eviscerated on the stand that day, the woman whose child had died because of him, stared, her forehead creasing into a frown. “I never blamed you, young man.”
“What?” The word was a whisper, mostly made of that blockage of exhaled regret. It was raspy and rough, and it scratched Jonah’s throat as though it had been wrapped in sharpened barbs.
Lucille Kershaw shook her head, her gaze fixed on Jonah, her sightless eyes boring into him somehow, some way. “I never blamed you,” she repeated.
She sighed, reclining back in the chair, her hands folded in her lap. “If it’s the way you questioned her on the stand that you’re re
ferring to? Making her cry?”
Jonah bobbed his head, his throat filling again so that he didn’t think he could speak. But he finally forced out a cracked, “Yes. I was wrong.”
“You weren’t wrong. Hell, the Lord knows I railed at that girl enough times myself. Said far, far worse than you did. Called her a junkie and a loser. Told her she was a waste of space. I tried that tough love. Oh, she’d cry and break down, sometimes she’d make promises. Never changed nothin’ in the end though.”
A deep sadness had come into Mrs. Kershaw’s expression as she spoke, and Jonah felt his heart constrict. And yet her lack of blame still caused a buzz of shock to reverberate through his chest. Awe. He didn’t believe he deserved it.
“You’re her mother, though, Mrs. Kershaw,” Jonah said, putting his thoughts to voice. “What I did was not done out of love.”
“Maybe that’s why it would have worked”—she paused, sighing loudly, her shoulders rising and falling—“if that damn psycho hadn’t shot her in the heart.” She shook her head again. “Nah, I know that some do, but me? No, I never blamed you. You didn’t kill her.” Her blind gaze found his face again somehow. “And in any case, from what I hear, you paid your price.”
Jonah reached unconsciously for the side of his face that had sustained the burns, the scarring, his hand lowering before he could run his fingertips along the damage, a gesture of insecurity, of remembrance.
“Yes,” he said, acknowledging her statement. He may or may not have deserved what he got—and that he was even questioning it made him feel confused, overwhelmed—but he had most certainly paid a price. A debt he’d be making good on for the rest of his life whether he wanted to or not.
Mrs. Kershaw nodded solemnly. “I’m sorry about that, young man.” And the thing that pierced Jonah in the gut, the thing that made him bow his head as a tear escaped his eye and ran down the ruined side of his face, was that he could see that she was. This woman, who he’d felt he had wronged so cruelly, had offered him grace and sympathy for his pain.
He didn’t know how to feel, what to think. It seemed as if a giant balloon was expanding slowly in his chest.
“Another man, a lawyer like you, came here once too, you know. Offering his condolences. I could tell from his voice it was all a pack of lies though. Oh, he was smooth, said all the right things. But I raised a liar. I know how to spot one.”
“What?” Jonah asked with a breath that released a smidgen of building pressure. “Who was it?”
Mrs. Kershaw shrugged. “I don’t remember his name. I wasn’t in the best place. A contractor I’d finally hired to fix the water damage in the house had taken off with the money. Everything was displaced . . . a blind woman can’t live in chaos.”
She sighed and Jonah looked around again, noting the precise placement of the furniture, the clear walking path around each and every object.
There was still a faint line on the wall where the floodwaters had risen, and a very slight mildew scent hung in the air. The carpet was obviously new and the furniture—it had to be secondhand—was undamaged.
This woman had done what she could, but over a decade later and she still hadn’t completely rebuilt—just like the neighborhood where she resided.
“Anyway, he was real old, I could tell by his voice—old but smooth, that one. Almost”—she paused as if searching for the right word—“oily sounding. He asked for Amanda’s phone under some ridiculous pretense. I told him I didn’t know a thing about her phone or where it was, but I lied.”
Jonah had been stunned by Mrs. Kershaw’s forgiveness, and now surprised by this unexpected and perplexing information.
“Applegate?” he asked. “Was his last name Applegate?” The two original partners he’d worked for, Applegate and Knowles, were both old, but out of the two, Palmer Applegate had the voice of a snake-oil salesman. Pair that with his big, overly white dentures and his bony face and he was downright disturbing.
Not that Jonah had any room to talk. Not now anyway.
Mrs. Kershaw nodded and snapped her fingers. “That’s it. I remember it now. Applegate. I remember the name didn’t seem to fit him.”
No, Jonah agreed. Apples were sweet and fresh. Palmer Applegate was older than dirt and smelled of mothballs and denture paste.
“Why would he want Amanda’s phone after the trial was already over?” Jonah asked. After she’d died?
Mrs. Kershaw shrugged. “Don’t know. It’s not as though I can look through the thing. I don’t even think Amanda knew it was here. She left it when she was by asking for money. She was as high as a kite.” She sighed. “I didn’t have any way to get in touch and let her know I had it, so I put it aside and figured she’d be back at some point.”
Mrs. Kershaw looked blankly off to the side, probably staring into a past that was forming in her mind. “Later, after that Applegate came by, I figured I’d be better off not knowing the things Amanda might have had on her phone anyway. Not much good ever came from the paths Amanda chose to walk. Maybe I couldn’t keep her safe in this life, but I can let her rest in the next one.”
Jonah nodded. “I understand, Mrs. Kershaw. I won’t say anything about that phone.”
Questions about why Palmer Applegate had been interested in it swirled in his mind, but he did his best to squash them. Why after the trial? What had been so important? He’d never know. He was there to offer amends. Only that.
“I want you to have it.”
Jonah pulled his head back in surprise. “What?”
“Because I don’t have anyone else I trust to look through it. And maybe part of letting Amanda rest involves whatever truth might be on that phone. I know you’ll do the right thing with whatever you find.”
“I . . . I don’t know what to say,” Jonah stumbled. And it was the truth. He was overwhelmed. Relieved. Confused. Deeply grateful. Bowled over.
But a tremor of fear sparked through him too. Not only did he feel unworthy to be given the responsibility of looking through Amanda Kershaw’s phone for her mother, but he was afraid of delving back into that case at all. The case that had been his downfall, and had caused the death of so many innocents. And yet, Mrs. Kershaw had unselfishly offered him her forgiveness, her understanding, and now, her trust. How could he possibly say no?
Mrs. Kershaw stood, making her way slowly but surely around the coffee table and down a hallway off of the living room. He heard a door open and what sounded like a piece of furniture moving, some shuffling, and then a minute later she was back, handing him an old flip phone.
Jonah stared at the relic and wasn’t surprised that when he flipped it open, it was expectedly dead. “Do you have the charger?”
“No. You’ll have to get one of those yourself.”
Jonah nodded, wondering if they even made chargers for flip phones anymore. “I will, Mrs. Kershaw.” Jonah put the phone in his jacket pocket and stood.
“I’ll let you know what I find.” He paused, gathering himself. “I can’t thank you enough, for taking the time to talk to me. For . . . for your kindness. I would do anything if I could bring her back. If I could go back in time . . .”
Mrs. Kershaw smiled, though it held sadness. “Maybe a better plan is to move forward.” She held out her hand and Jonah took it, grasping it in both of his, squeezing it tightly as he let out a soggy chuckle.
“Yeah,” he said. “Yeah.”
Her smile grew. “Good. I’m going to have you let yourself out. I’ve already missed half of Jeopardy.”
Jonah gave her another chuckle and picked up his helmet from where he’d left it on the couch. Mrs. Kershaw sat back in her recliner and unmuted the TV so that Alex Trebek’s voice filled the room, posing a question about ancient Rome.
Jonah took one last look around the dilapidated room. This woman had been wiped out in so many ways and yet she’d rebuilt, kept a heart open enough to offer forgiveness to a guilty man, and was still putting one foot in front of the other day after day. Admiration overwhel
med him so completely that he almost stumbled as he turned and headed for the door.
“Marcus Brutus,” he heard her say to the TV right before he pressed the flimsy inner lock, stepped out of the house, and closed the door behind him.
For a moment he stood on the stoop, his helmet hanging at his side. He turned his face to the sky, closing his eyes and letting a handful of different stars look upon his brokenness for the first time in eight years.
After a moment, he brought his head down, pulling his helmet on and walking to his motorcycle. As he drove toward Windisle, his lips were shaped in a smile.
**********
Lucille Kershaw pulled back the curtains, exposing the room to the morning sun. Not that she could see it. But she hadn’t always been blind. It was only habit that kept her pulling open the drapes day after day, she supposed. Or maybe, doing the things she’d always done to greet the sunrise, gave her a smidgen of hope that each new dawn offered promise if you did your part, whether you could see it or not. Sort of like faith.
Just as the coffee machine let out three long beeps, letting her know it had finished brewing, she heard a knock at her front door. Well, if this doesn’t beat all. She hadn’t had a visitor in three years, and now she was going to have two in the span of twenty-four hours?
“Who is it?”
“My name is Neal McMurray, ma’am. I’m a contractor here to look your place over.”
“You must have the wrong house. I didn’t call a contractor.” She might have if she could afford one, or if she trusted any of them after what that shyster had done to her so many years before. She still remembered that man’s deception with a stabbing pain that made her cringe. After the devastation of Katrina, after all her community had lost, it had felt like the worst kind of betrayal.
“No, ma’am. Jonah Chamberlain sent me. He said you’d know his name.”
Lucille paused for a brief second before cracking the door open. The cool air met her nose. She smelled rain. It would be pouring in the next hour or so. Storms still brought a tremor of fear even after all this time. How could they not? “Why’d he send you? I can’t afford a contractor.”