When I Close My Eyes

by Elizabeth Musser

  Paige said it real sweet, like she believed what she was saying, when she’d told me before that she didn’t. But I could tell Miz Bourdillon did.

  I felt sweaty and almost light-headed, because I knew what I needed to say next. But how would she answer? “Well, can you forgive me, Miz Bourdillon? I’m sorry for what I did to you. I wish I could take it back, but I can’t and I’m so sorry. You said God could forgive me, but I’m wondering if you can too. After the awful thing I did to you, can you forgive me?”

  She took her time, lifting her head a little so as she was looking me in the eyes. Hers were real soft and sad. She started talking, real slow-like, slurring her words. But I understood her. Maybe she’d practiced it a hundred times before I got there. “I for . . . give . . . you . . . Hen-ry.”

  She said it so sincerely that I knew she didn’t remember nothing about hiring me. Had no idea of it. And watching her struggle to communicate, to move her hands, to hold her head up, I felt washed over with pity. But I forgave her too, just like I’d planned to do. I didn’t say it out loud, of course, but inside, in what Libby calls my heart, I forgave her.

  She looked out the big ole window for a long time. Maybe she was studying the clouds—they were all fluffy and soft looking. But her eyes were shining, and I saw a single tear roll down her cheek. She moved her hands like she wanted to brush it away, but I don’t think she could. She shifted a little in the wheelchair and looked at me. Then she nodded to Paige.

  “Momma wanted me to read this to you, Henry. She thought it might be helpful. This comes from a speech she gave for the launch of this novel.” Paige scrolled down on her phone and began to read, “‘Sometimes it’s quite hard to receive that grace. I know. Believe me, I know. Sometimes you get so low, you feel you’ve messed up so badly that God cannot possibly forgive you.’”

  Miz Bourdillon went back to looking out the window. The clouds were moving by, still all fluffy, but the sky had gotten a little bit darker.

  Paige continued, “‘Sometimes we think of harming ourselves because of how bad we’ve been or how hard our lives have been—like the woman in the book. She can’t forgive herself. And she doesn’t want to go on living.’” Paige hesitated and gave this sad, sad smile. “‘But it’s just that forgiveness has to be accepted, first. It’s God’s grace. Hard to accept it. Horribly hard. But it is offered.’”

  Paige put down her phone and patted her momma’s shoulder real gentle-like, and Miz Bourdillon turned her head a little bit so as she was facing me. Tears were running down her cheeks now, but her eyes was so kind, so gentle, so broken.

  When she looked at me like that, like she was peering into my soul, I knew.

  She was just like me, all messed up and needing a whole lot of care. Jesus would have pity on her, no matter what she’d done. He’d forgive her. And I knew something else. I wasn’t ever gonna tell the police the truth about Miz Bourdillon. Even if I rotted in prison for the rest of my life.

  PAIGE

  At first I was thrilled with the conversation between Momma and Henry. Momma had forgiven him, as amazing as that seemed. She had chosen to forgive, just like she’d done so many times in the past. And Henry had visibly relaxed—I’d seen a type of hope on his face—as he received her forgiveness. Still, I felt a little disappointed that we didn’t get any new information from him, although that had been a bit of a wild shot.

  But soon after he left, Momma became agitated and looked completely worn-out. I worried that it had been a mistake to let Henry visit. We’d recorded the whole thing so that Detective Blaylock and Daddy and I could go over it later, but had the meeting taken too much of a toll on my mother?

  “You okay, Momma?” I gave her a cup of water, which she sipped through a straw. “I’ll call the nurse to get you into bed.”

  She shook her head no, her face pale and her hands tight, gripping the arms of the wheelchair.

  “What is it, Momma?”

  She tried to speak, but nothing came out, and I read immense frustration on her face. I hadn’t seen her so out of sorts since she had first come out of the coma. “Let me get the nurse.”

  She blinked her eyes twice. No. She motioned downward with her hand in pitiful jerks until I knelt before the wheelchair. “What is it, Momma?”

  “File cab-i-net. Rain-bow folder.” She repeated the words over and over in her garbled, confused way.

  But when I asked, “Did you say a rainbow folder, Momma?” she gave me a blank stare, as if I’d spoken to her in Chinese. I had grown used to those blank stares, but I hated them, reminding me of all that bullet had stolen from her.

  I called the nurse then and watched as she lifted Momma out of the wheelchair and into the hospital bed, dragging her like a rag doll. This was normal, but it made my stomach roil. Once she was settled, I kissed Momma and said, “Don’t worry about anything, Momma. You’re doing great.”

  I drove back home, feeling exhausted myself. I had an AP French exam to study for and a paper to write for English. But Momma had been adamant about a rainbow folder, so I thought I’d try to track that down for her first.

  I slipped into The Chalet and went to the filing cabinet. Momma kept most of her work on her laptop, but occasionally she’d print out things and store them in folders in the file drawers. The top one held folders filled with research for her novels, and the middle one contained all her business information—royalty statements, contracts, written correspondence. The bottom one held everything else. In fact, Momma had inserted a bright little file card into the small metal window on the front of that drawer that read Family Stuff. I was pretty sure she was referring to this drawer.

  I shuffled through folders in alphabetical order, marked Books to Read, Bible Studies, Cooking . . . Girls’ Activities, Gardening, Home Improvement . . . Photography, Recipes . . . All these I had seen before. But there was nothing marked Rainbow, nor did I see any folder that was particularly colorful. What did Momma mean?

  And then I remembered. I had seen a folder with a rainbow on it lying on my father’s desk.

  I hurried down to his office, flicked on the light, and stood before his desk. Several neat piles of folders and loose papers sat on it, but the folder with the photo of a rainbow, which I’d seen soon after the shooting, was not there. But it had to be somewhere, and Momma had been so insistent that I find it.

  I shuffled through Daddy’s desk papers again, and then I opened the big drawer on the left side of the desk, which I knew held miscellaneous family things. In the back of the drawer I saw the edges of a colorful folder sticking up, as if my father had tried to put it back in a hurry. I pulled it out. Sure enough, the photo of a real rainbow shining through a waterfall greeted me. I opened the folder and saw that in the upper left-hand corner on the inside of the folder, Momma had placed a sticker on which she’d written If I Should Die.

  I felt chills course through me. How morbid.

  But then I smiled. I remembered learning that bedtime prayer as a young child.

  Now I lay me down to sleep.

  I pray the Lord my soul to keep.

  If I should die before I wake,

  I pray the Lord my soul to take.

  Momma thought the prayer terribly inappropriate for a child and had changed the words to the version that she had found on some cross-stitched tapestry:

  Now I lay me down to sleep.

  I pray the Lord my soul to keep.

  Guard me, Jesus, through the night

  And wake me with the morning light.

  I much preferred this rendering myself.

  I placed the opened folder on my father’s desk, intrigued. Why would Momma have an entire folder dedicated to a children’s prayer she disliked?

  She didn’t.

  When I flipped through the contents, I found three elegant ecru envelopes inside, the kind that went with Momma’s monogrammed stationery. She’d written a name on each envelope: Patrick, Hannah, Paige. The envelopes weren’t sealed; the flaps were just tucked
in. Hands trembling, I opened mine and took out three sheets of stationery filled with Momma’s lovely cursive. And there was something else in the envelope. I reached in and lifted out a gold chain. Hanging from it was Momma’s Huguenot cross.

  I held up the chain, and as the cross rotated slowly, I watched the dove hanging so innocently below it.

  “My little stinker. I tell you what—I’ll give you this cross when you’re old enough to understand the significance of that little dove. It’ll be yours.”

  I blinked and swallowed, set down the cross, and picked up the letter.

  Dearest Paige, my up-and-coming author with the biggest imagination (bigger than my own) and the loveliest soul. Dear daughter, I’m sorry I’m not here to see you soar into the place the Lord has for you. But I want you to remember how very proud I am of you and how I believe in you. Believe in yourself and let your out-of-the-box thinking guide you, but under the care of the Holy Spirit. . . .

  I dropped the pieces of stationery, my heart pounding.

  Momma, why did you write that?

  Had she had a premonition of the shooting? There was no date on the letter. I sank down on the floor and stared at those pages, afraid to pick them up.

  Had Momma been so afraid of this stalker that she had written us letters?

  The thought broke my heart, and I shook it away. Me and my big imagination, right? Right? Right??

  And just as quickly as that thought went away, I was hearing Daddy’s explanation of what Momma had done during The Awful Year. Attempted suicide. Then I was hearing myself reading to Henry Hughes the responses Momma had given at the book launch about forgiveness and grace. “Sometimes we think of harming ourselves because of how bad we’ve been . . . like the character in the book. She can’t forgive herself.”

  Then Detective Blaylock was telling me, “We’ve found a phone number on both Henry’s and your mother’s phones.”

  Sometimes we think of harming ourselves. . . . She can’t forgive herself. . . .

  Oh, Momma. Oh no. Not that.

  CHAPTER

  17

  NOVEMBER

  HENRY

  That evening, after I talked with Miz Bourdillon and Paige, they took me to a private room at the prison to meet with Detective Blaylock. Like always, my lawyer was with me. The detective didn’t say anything about my visit with Miz Bourdillon. He leaned over in his chair, elbows on his knees, and looked me right in the eyes.

  “Henry, we’ve located Nick Lupton, and we’re bringing him in for questioning. Is there anything you want to tell us first?”

  I started sweating real bad. What should I do? What if they couldn’t get enough evidence to put him away? He’d think I’d ratted on him, and then turn on Jase and Libby. And now with Jase out of the hospital and home!

  I was gonna have to tell that detective what I knew about him. My lawyer, Zeke, had begged me to do at least that much. “Any information you provide will give us a much better chance for a plea bargain,” he’d said over and over. It wouldn’t help them track down Miz Bourdillon, because I reckoned Nick didn’t know anything about her. But maybe that detective would dig down and find out more dirt on Nick and that’d land him in jail.

  “Detective, I’ve already told you—if you pick up Nick and then let him go, I swear he’ll kill—”

  He interrupted me. “Henry, we’ve got a policeman with your boy twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week. And we’re watching out for Libby too.”

  I let that sink in. “Well, I hope so. Like I’ve told you, Nick’s just the middleman. He connects the employer with the employee, if I can put it that way.” I fidgeted with the handcuffs. “Don’t know if it always works that way. Told you before, I’ve never done nothing like that before. I did it for my boy.”

  Detective Blaylock was still leaning forward, listening. “Tell me about the instructions you received,” he said.

  “Nick told me it all over the phone.”

  “And what were these instructions?” His dark brown eyes were peering at me, like he was trying to pull something out of my mind.

  “Told me where to find that lady and stuff.”

  He sat up straight and pulled at his beard. “Can you remember anything else at all?”

  “Nothing else.”

  Then the detective surprised me by changing the subject. “Henry, do you have any idea why Mrs. Bourdillon would have a phone number on her phone that is also on yours?”

  I sure did, but I wasn’t gonna say it. “No, sir, I don’t.”

  He squinted his eyes, stood up, and leaned his arms on the table. “Think about it, Henry.”

  But I wasn’t gonna tell. “No, sir. No idea.”

  JOSEPHINE

  Agitated. That was how I felt after Henry Hughes left my room at the rehab facility. No, not just agitated. Tormented. I had probably alarmed poor Paige with my actions, but something had seemed so important to communicate.

  I struggled in my mind to remember.

  ———

  2015 . . . “I need the money now! Now, JoJo! Look at me. They’re threatening me. I promise if you give me the money this time, it’ll be the last time.”

  “I don’t believe you, Kit.”

  “You are so selfish!” Kit let out a string of curse words. “All you care about is your precious Patrick and those girls! Well, I’m family too! Don’t forget it.”

  Josephine closed her eyes and sighed. At almost sixty, Kit acted more like a teenager or a two-year-old throwing a tantrum. “I will not enable you, Kit. This pattern has repeated itself on and on for your whole life. We will not give you any more money. We will not lend it to you either. This is your problem to solve. I won’t have my family sucked into your drama.”

  Kit, furious, eyes blazing, screamed threats and obscenities. “You cannot send me away! You cannot refuse me.”

  “I can and I am.”

  “Fine! But just know that if anything happens to me, it will be all your fault!” Then she added, “And don’t you think your Patrick is squeaky clean, JoJo! He’s no saint! He’s no better than me. No saint at all!”

  Kit stormed out of the room and then the house, slamming the front door, and Josephine heard Patrick running after her.

  ———

  What was I looking for? A folder, yes, a rainbow folder. Looking in my drawer for that stationery, my monogrammed stationery. So pretty. The girls liked that stationery. I would write the notes on this paper.

  But I already wrote the notes! I gave Paige the cross.

  What was I going to write in their letters? Oh yes. Take my life. Take my life and let it be consecrated, Lord, to Thee. Such a beautiful hymn. But someone was twisting the words. Take my life! Take my life!

  Was I saying that or was she?

  She was lifting her ebony arms to the sky and entreating the Almighty to take her life! I remembered now. She would not take her own life, but she begged God to take it. She was tired of living.

  Oh, that poor, poor woman. Life had been so hard.

  Had life been hard for me?

  My head was aching. I saw in my mind’s eye the rainbow folder and the letters to Patrick and the girls and I heard the woman, Angel, screaming it. “Take my life!”

  But Angel was my protagonist. I made her up. Didn’t I? What happened at the end of that story? Did she die? What happened to me?

  I should ask Patrick. But I couldn’t. I had to ask him something else. About something Kit had said.

  “And don’t you think your Patrick is squeaky clean, JoJo! He’s no saint! He’s no better than me. No saint at all!”

  Another lie. Surely it was a lie.

  What did she mean, Patrick? Patrick!

  For all of our marriage, I had never once doubted him. Now I was afraid.

  Had Patrick given up on me? Had he given in to Kit?

  Was our love a lie? No! Of course not. Right?

  I needed to ask Patrick.

  It was too complicated, twisting and turning in my m
ind.

  And if Patrick . . .

  “Take my life!” She said it! Did I say it? Did I pray it, dear Lord?

  The woman in my story sang those words, sang the whole hymn. But then she had used them against herself. She kept saying, “Take my life, take my life!”

  Had I said that too? The pounding in my head grew louder, and the rainbow swirled into a dark cloud and then the thunder was crashing through the windows, the lightning blinding me. Surely not! Not darkness again.

  I sat up straighter in the wheelchair. I tried to cry out. Had I signed my death warrant? Was I remembering it now? Was I the person who had hired Henry Hughes?

  PAIGE

  Daddy had protected Momma the first time, but should I do it now? I had no idea. I paced and cried and all but beat my head against the wall in Daddy’s office. What in the world should I do? I stuck the letters and the Huguenot cross back in the folder for the time being. I could not even bring myself to read the rest of Momma’s letter to me. I felt so confused, but right under that confusion lay a bubbling mass of anger.

  My mother had hired a hit man to kill herself!

  And I knew why.

  She wanted us to think it was perpetrated by someone else. We had discussed the issue of suicide before. My grandmother’s . . . the guilt, the horror for the family. And I distinctly remember Momma saying, “I understand the effects of depression, how off-balance it can make someone, but I cannot imagine doing that to my family.”

  Except she had attempted it during The Awful Year.

  And now, she had imagined something else!

  How dare she?

  She was out of her mind, and I hated her for it.

  Thank goodness Drake was on his way home for the weekend. I texted him, Please come to the house ASAP. Bad news.

  As I waited for him, I closed my eyes and thought back to what I’d told Drake and Hannah that first night we’d been together after the shooting. That Momma seemed normal; that Momma and Daddy were fine.

  But in truth, I had been so preoccupied with my life during those weeks before the shooting that I had no idea how they were doing. I was starting my junior year, preparing for and taking the SAT, playing first-string on the girls’ soccer team, and we had a good chance to win the regionals this year. I wasn’t home. At all. And I certainly hadn’t been taking my job as Momma’s assistant as seriously as I should have. I should have never shown her those two threatening letters. My one responsibility was to protect her, and I’d failed.