The Last Breath

by Kimberly Belle

  Bo looks up, blinking. Lexi and I shed our coats and sink onto the couch.

  “I’m not stupid. I know what you kids thought of me these past sixteen years, and I know there’s a not-so-small part of you that still thinks it. But nothing puts matters into perspective like dying. I’m not looking for your trust or belief or anything else you can’t give. I’m just grateful you came.”

  I don’t know if it’s the pain meds talking, or if Dad’s really had a change of heart. I look over at Cal for a clue, but his face is stone, his lips thin and tight, and his gaze is lasered onto Lexi.

  She leans back on the couch, crosses her arms and legs and purses her lips. Her silence speaks volumes, but so does the fact that she stays put. Though she’s not ready to apologize for presuming Dad’s hand in Ella Mae’s death for the past sixteen years, she’s no longer certain enough to leave, either. What was it she said to me last night? Reasonable doubt is doubt all the same, and Lexi is still holding on to hers.

  Dad notices, and so does Cal. He stands and points to the back of the house. “Lexi, can I get a quick word with you? Bo and Gia, you, too.”

  Lexi and I exchange a glance, and her expression matches mine. Whatever Cal has to say, it’s going to be neither quick nor pleasant. He marches us into the kitchen, and Fannie grins at us from the sink, where she’s washing dishes. Her smile plummets at Cal’s expression, and she drops the sponge onto the counter and skedaddles out the other door. God bless her, the woman has a particular talent for knowing when to slip away.

  As soon as she’s gone, Cal whirls around to face us, and his anger is directed at me. “What part of don’t go around talking about the affair didn’t you understand?”

  “Don’t look at me. I only told Lexi.”

  And Jake, I think, but that’s beside the point. The point is, Lexi is the blabbermouth and I’m not taking the blame.

  Cal swivels his head to Lexi, and his brow lifts in a silent Well?

  She hikes a casual shoulder. “I don’t see the problem. People would’ve found out sooner or later. There’s not a soul in this town who can keep a secret for more than five minutes. Except maybe Ella Mae, but look where that got her.”

  “How? How would they have found out, if it wasn’t for the two of you barroom busybodies?”

  Lexi grows a good three inches under his condescending tone. “I hardly think being the victim’s stepdaughters qualifies us as barroom busybodies, Cal. We are Dad’s children. We have every right to talk about his case, whether in a barroom or my own living room. What I don’t understand is why you haven’t. From what Gia told me, you’ve not only withheld information from judge and jury, but also from the three of us. We deserve to know what you do, even if you don’t think we’ll like what we hear.”

  “This isn’t about you. It’s never been about you. The only reason I didn’t tell you or anybody else about Ella Mae’s affair was to protect your father.”

  “Sorry, but how is that protecting Dad, when Ella Mae was sleeping with the star witness?”

  Cal loses what has always been a short supply of patience. “Keep your voice down, dammit. Ray doesn’t know who the affair was with. Hell, I didn’t know until Gia told me last week. But now, thanks to the scene you two made last night, the whole dadgum town knows.”

  “Not the whole town,” Bo corrects, ever the realist.

  Cal gives him a look.

  “So now what?” I ask. “We go in there and tell Dad about Dean?”

  “No. No one tells. What do you think that would do to him when he realizes Dean Sullivan stole more than sixteen years of his life?”

  Bo and I bob our heads, but Lexi shakes hers. “Somebody keeping secrets is what got us into this mess in the first place. Dad deserves to know the truth.”

  “In a perfect world I might agree, but this situation is about as far away from perfect as you can get. My baby brother is in there on his deathbed, and I’m not about to tell him something that will push him over the edge any quicker.”

  “I can’t keep this a secret, Cal. It’s not fair to—”

  “You will not mention Dean Sullivan’s name in this house again. Are we clear?” When she doesn’t respond, Cal leans forward, clamping down on his lips so she knows he’s serious. “You broke your daddy’s heart sixteen years ago. Do not, I repeat do NOT, break that dying man’s heart again. Do you hear?”

  After an eternity, Lexi sighs and rolls her eyes. “Fine. Whatever. I don’t agree, but I’ll keep my mouth shut.”

  With Cal satisfied, we file back into the living room, where Fannie has supplied us with homemade lemon pound cake. Outside the window, a procession of cars pulls into view and slows to a stop by the mailbox. One by one, the protesters file out. I flick a watchful glance at Bo and Lexi, worried at how they’ll respond to the hateful cries of death and justice, but the cries don’t come. Outside, silence hangs heavy in the air.

  And then Fannie does a double take out the window. “Well I’ll be. Would you take a gander at that?”

  I crane my neck and follow her gaze to a colorful mound on the front lawn. “What is that?”

  “I do believe it’s flowers.”

  “Flowers?” I pop off the couch and move closer to the window, squinting to get a better look at the pile of red and yellow and pink and green bouquets wrapped in shiny cellophane. A group of creamy cylinders lines the edge of the driveway, their soft lights flickering in the March morning. “And are those candles?”

  “That Rogersville grapevine is powerful stuff,” Lexi says, shaking her head.

  Just then, a silver SUV slows at the edge of the drive. Shawna Kerney slides out of the passenger seat with a bouquet of yellow and white flowers, places them atop the pile, nestles a creamy envelope between the buds and hoists herself back into the car.

  Bo takes off for the door, not bothering with his coat. “Be right back.”

  We watch through the pane as he roots around in the flowers, returning moments later with a handful of papers and a wide grin. He spreads them out across Dad’s lap and legs, and then one by one, reads the messages aloud to the room.

  With the same feverish fervor they concluded him guilty all those years ago, the people of Rogersville have now switched sides. The collective tides have turned. The general consensus now is that the most heinous crime was our father serving time for a murder he didn’t commit, and for that, the people of Rogersville are deeply, truly, fervently sorry. For the assumed guilt, for all the wasted years, for the cancer now eating away at his insides.

  While Bo reads, Fannie and Dad cry, Cal bows his head, Lexi bites her lip and studies her nails, and I wonder how I ever worried about the opinions of the people of Rogersville. Sometime in the past few weeks, my worry has dissolved into apathy, filling up every inch of me. I no longer care what they think.

  Am I the only person in the room who sees the pile of flowers and candles on our front yard for what it is? An awfully hollow place for people to bury their guilt.

  30

  WHETHER IT’S THE town’s renewed faith in Dad’s innocence or Bo and Lexi’s homecoming, something seems to revive Dad. His face clears and his cheeks flush and his lips turn up into a smile and set. His bony shoulders, until now perpetually hunched up to just under his ears, relax and drop, and that bottomless crease between his eyebrows unfolds into a pink line. And there’s no disguising the way his eyes light up, especially when Lexi pulls up a chair at his right elbow.

  He insists we eat lunch—grilled cheese sandwiches and a chunky tomato soup I help Fannie serve up in the kitchen—huddled around his bed. Fannie even hands Dad a bowl, though more for form than function. These days he does more picking at his food than actual eating.

  Once everyone is settled, we dig in. Spoons scrape. Lips slurp. Crusts crunch. The air is thick with the cloying scent of salted tomatoes and bu
ttered bread and words none of us know how to say.

  Dad clears his throat, and everyone looks up from their plates, waiting. The sound is, I suspect, purely practical, since he doesn’t follow it up with words. Or maybe he simply changed his mind. Regardless, he swirls his spoon around in his bowl until one by one, everyone returns to their lunches.

  Everyone but me.

  I look at Bo, who’s shoveling food into his mouth faster than he can chew. I recognize the strategy from his high-school days, when Dad would use dinnertime to interrogate us about sliding grades, missed curfews, a fresh dent in the fender. If Bo’s mouth is full, he doesn’t have to talk. I eye his dwindling food supply and think he’d better slow down, if for no other reason than impending indigestion.

  I glance at Lexi, tugging off the crusts and nibbling at her sandwich’s gooey center. Though she certainly seems subdued, she doesn’t look the slightest bit contrite. Actually, maybe it’s even worse. Maybe she’s trying not to look contrite.

  My veins hum with unreleased frustration. “Fine.”

  Across Dad’s bed, Cal sits up straight and glares. I give him a look that says chill the hell out. I’m not planning to mention Ella Mae and Dean, but with Dad lying here—literally—on his deathbed, now is not the time for eating or mincing words.

  “Fine,” I repeat, dropping my spoon maybe a tad too hard onto my plate. “If no one else is going to do it, how about I begin?”

  Fannie must hear something in my voice, because she pops out of her chair and disappears with her plate into the kitchen.

  I turn to Dad, who clearly doesn’t know what’s coming. The crease between his brows is back, and his shoulders are climbing up his neck again. I smile, softening my expression, my tone, my tactic.

  “Do you remember when Ella Mae bought us that home-waxing kit? The one we warmed up in the microwave?”

  Dad’s shoulders drop a good inch, and he almost smiles. “I came home, and y’all looked like mummies. You were covered in long strips of fabric, and the whole house smelled like tar.”

  I laugh. “I think it was tar, because we couldn’t get it off. Our legs were sticky for months. Anyway, neither of us dared to yank off our own strips, because what none of those packages will tell you is waxing hurts like hell.”

  “Word,” Lexi says around a soft snort.

  “After forever, Ella Mae stuck her foot up on the counter, squeezed her eyes shut and told me to just rip them off. She said fast and clean was the least painful way, and she was right. So that’s what I’m gonna do now. I’m gonna rip off the Band-Aid.”

  Bo swallows his food with an audible gulp. His eyes bulge, then rapid-fire blink. Beside him, Lexi puts down her sandwich and crosses her arms, and her face closes up. Neither of them speak.

  Rip the Band-Aid off.

  I set my plate on the floor and turn back to Dad.

  “All these years, I’ve been waiting for proof you didn’t do this horrible thing everybody said you did. I thought if someone supplied me with even a shred of reasonable doubt, this whole nightmare would be over and you could be my dad again. And then I got it. I got my reasonable doubt, and you know what? Turns out you were always my dad. I was just a shitty daughter.”

  I hear a hiccup, then Bo sucks in a thick breath. He is on the verge of tears, I know, and I don’t dare look at him for fear his tears will instigate mine. Instead, I focus on a fold in Dad’s blanket, how it lifts and falls with each breath.

  “Because sixteen years is a long time to be searching for doubt,” I continue, “when really I should have been more focused on trust. I don’t know why I didn’t trust you. I don’t know why I couldn’t trust you. What I do know is that sometime in the past sixteen years, my suspicions broke me. I am broken because for so long, I thought my own father was capable of murder. And I don’t think I will ever be able to accept how much that must have hurt you.”

  Silence settles over the room, swollen and heavy as a lead blanket. There’s a certain anguish in Dad’s face, a faint twist to his mouth, and he’s frowning. He stares at his hands for a long moment then, finally, clears his throat.

  “You’re here now. That’s all that matters.”

  His answer both disappoints and annoys me—not because I am waiting for absolution, but because I was hoping for more. More acknowledgment of his obvious pain, more blame for my hand in it, more anger and disdain and hostility.

  And speaking of more, why are Bo and Lexi so silent? What good is ripping off this family’s Band-Aid if I’m the only one?

  I lean forward, shake my head. “It’s not all that matters. We thought you were a liar and a murderer. We were actually relieved when you went to prison. And we never, not once, wrote or visited you there, because it was easier to pretend you didn’t exist than to admit to having a father who was a convicted murderer. How can you not hate us?”

  Dad startles at the word hate, as if he’d never once considered it.

  “Of course I don’t hate you. Y’all are my blood, mine and Rosalie’s, and I couldn’t hate you if I tried.” He looks at me, then to Bo and Lexi. “Once you have kids of your own, you’ll understand.”

  Lexi thunks her plate on the tray table beside her, her gaze skittering to the window. “I’ll never understand,” she whispers, and I know she’s not talking about a parent’s unconditional love.

  Dad seems to know, too. He reaches for Lexi’s hand, and she lets him, though she won’t quite meet his eyes.

  “No one says you have to understand why things happened the way they did, or even that you have to accept them. Your mother died, your stepmother was killed, your father was taken away. I think it’s safe to assume you kids have been in your own kind of prison for the past couple decades.”

  I fall back into my chair, my anger fizzled. Dad’s right. We have been in prisons of our own. My stomach twists at the thought of all the years I’ve spent wandering the globe, burying myself in someone else’s drama in order to forget my own. It didn’t help. I didn’t forget. And since Bo and Lexi were reminders of that awful time, it was easier to ignore them, too.

  “I’m so sorry,” I say, this time not to Dad.

  Bo looks up. His gaze goes from me to Lexi, and I can see he has the same regrets. “Me, too. I wish I’d been a better brother.”

  There’s a long silence, one that expands and fills the room until it becomes almost tangible. A strained silence.

  Lexi glances at both of us, defensively, as if by asking forgiveness, we have accused her of something. She opens her mouth, closes it, then shakes her head, just barely, but enough that I understand. She wants to apologize, but she can’t. Something—doubt? her pride?—is holding her back.

  Dad closes his eyes, and he makes that face again. “I forgive you anyway.”

  Lexi stares at her lap. “No you don’t,” she whispers.

  “I do.” His eyes are too dehydrated to well up, but even without tears, he looks like he’s crying. “I forgive you.”

  “But why?”

  “Because I love you kids. Because I’ve missed you. Because I don’t have time for grudges.”

  At the reminder of why we’re here, at Dad’s bedside, my sister begins to cry. Not the silent kind of tears, the ones slipping noiselessly down her cheeks and falling with a muffled splat onto her lap, but the heaving, blubbering, sputtering kind. The kind that convulse her entire body with choked-out sobs and turn her pretty cheeks snotty and splotchy. She doesn’t hold back or try to hide it, either, just screws up her face and howls.

  A jagged pain ripples up my throat, aching with tears I can no longer hold back. For all my sister’s posturing, she’s always been the fragile one. Up until this very moment, she’s just been better at hiding it than the rest of us.

  “It’s not fair,” she wails, loud enough to hurt my ears. “It’s not fucking fair.
”

  Dad shushes her. “I know it’s not, darlin’. Believe me, I know. But now that I’ve got you kids back, I’ll die a happy man.”

  “But I don’t...” A shuddering sob racks her body and steals her breath before she begins again. “I don’t want you to die yet. Not when I just got you back.”

  Lexi’s words are not an apology, but judging by the way they light up Dad’s face, they’re even better. I know for Lexi, they were just as difficult to say. He closes his eyes and opens his arms, and Lexi falls into them, holding on for all she’s worth.

  I take a moment to let it sink in. This is what I’ve been fighting for—this moment—for Lexi and my father and our family. I can’t save Dad, but at least I’ve saved what’s left of us, of me and Bo and Lexi. Especially Lexi. Something inside me unravels, that tight knot around my heart finally comes untied, and an unfamiliar feeling spreads across my chest like warm honey. It takes me a few beats to recognize it for what it is. Happiness. For the first time in what feels like forever, I am more happy than sad.

  Dad smooths down Lexi’s already smooth hair with a palm and smiles, actually smiles at me over the top of her head.

  “Thank you,” he mouths.

  * * *

  Over the course of the next few days, we fall into a comfortable rhythm. After breakfast around Dad’s bed, Bo and Lexi head off to work while Cal commandeers the dining room table, spreading his papers and laptop all over its shiny surface and screaming into his cell phone from one of its chairs all day long. Fannie and I spend the day puttering around the house and caring for Dad, who sleeps more than not nowadays. While he dozes, the two of us watch a mindless string of sitcoms and talk shows and eighties movies, bake enough pastries to fatten up all of Appalachia and chat about pretty much every subject under the sun.

  And somehow, every day, all day long, I end up talking mostly about Jake, counting down the seconds until the house goes dark and quiet and he tiptoes up the porch.

  Upstairs alone in my room, we make love, and then we make plans. What Jake and I jokingly refer to as my Rogersville Test Drive will begin the day after the funeral, when I will call my boss to extend my leave. Jake suggested I ask for another month. I said he needed at least six to get a good price for his place. We compromised on three.