by J. L. Wilson
I fixed a drink then wandered through the house, unwilling to sit down but with nothing to do. It was an odd, in-between time, two days since Mom died and three days until the funeral. My cousins from Chicago would drive in on Thursday and my cousins from Minneapolis would arrive on Friday. Tomorrow I had to sort through photographs for the video montage the funeral home was setting up. I also needed to work on the eulogy with the minister and iron out a few more details for the service. I might even drive back to Des Moines to swap out some clothes and pick up my mail there. It was only a two-hour drive, but it would be a nice break from my To Do list.
I sipped Mom’s bourbon and went into her bedroom, surrounded by the small things that I recognized. I opened the closet and checked the gun safe, hidden under the shoe rack. Dad’s Smith & Wesson was still there. He had taught me to shoot when I was a teenager and I still went out to the range now and again using a rental handgun from the range owner.
I meandered back to the living room and sat down, propping my feet up on the overstuffed ottoman and staring out the front window in the living room. Bell was in town. The fact that I pushed to the back of my brain now came into the forefront, demanding attention.
It was hard to believe the press wasn’t following him around. He was rich, with homes in the Florida Keys, France, and somewhere in Asia and apartments here and there, wherever his work took him.
It was amazing to think that the boy I dated in high school and college had become such a public figure. He was my first love and I was the one who broke off our relationship. He dropped out of college and traveled the world, taking odd jobs here and there to get by. It was something he always wanted to do, to flit from place to place and see new places and sample the world. It wasn’t something I wanted to do and that was one of the reasons we broke up.
When Bell and I dated, it seemed like every time you turned around, somebody was creating a new computer or a new computer game. Bell started programming gaming software, developing several role-playing games long before those became popular. That led to hardware design and that led to a job at Apple which then led to his own company which in turn was sold back to Apple for a hefty profit.
Bell promptly started another company that designed cutting-edge interface technology. He sold that and started yet another company, designing game apps and productivity apps for tablets and smart phones. And now, according to Dibs, he was considering retiring. I used some of Bell’s apps daily and I had tried out some the gaming ones. They were clever, easy to use, and engaging. Just like Bell.
The bourbon was warm going down, as warm as the sun shining into the room. It was almost five-thirty. It wouldn’t get dark for several hours yet. There was time enough for me to go to the grave. I hadn’t visited it in years, but somehow Mom’s dying had brought back my youth, making me remember things I successfully pushed to the back of my mind. Things like Bell and Peter and the Lost Boys.
I drained the last of the liquor and set down my glass. I’d go and get it over with. It was a small, niggling thought in the back of my mind, one of those little “I should do that” things that nagged at me. Just do it and be done with it. Don’t think about it. I grabbed my purse and my blue sweater then went out the kitchen door to my Jeep mini-SUV in the driveway.
Kensington Gardens, the town cemetery, occupied several acres on the eastern edge of town with a series of roads going through the four quadrants that made up the area. My family was in the southeast quadrant, but Peter was in the northeast side, on a hill overlooking farm fields below. Not far from his grave the bluff fell away, giving a clear view of the land in the distance. He didn’t have any family around him. His father had left years before and I think his mother was still alive. She moved away after he died and I lost track of what happened to her.
I pulled onto the grassy edge next to the road and walked to the grave. Fresh flowers were in the small vase attached to the side of the stone. Who did that? I wondered. There wasn’t anyone that I knew who would bring flowers to him. But of course, what did I really know about Peter?
I stared down at the gray granite headstone. Just his name and an inscription. No dates to indicate the short length of his life. Nothing to indicate that I was responsible for an eighteen-year-old boy/man taking his own life. Nothing to show that my rejection of him led him to jump out a barn window, which dazed him so badly he stumbled away, jumped in the river, and drowned.
The authorities said it was the alcohol and the drugs. It was one of many graduation parties and Peter drank too much booze, mixing it with pills. He didn’t know what he was doing, they said. They made it sound like a tragic accident, which it was, in a way. They didn’t understand how unbalanced he really was. They dismissed the argument Peter and I had as just a minor incident.
They didn’t know how he wept, how he ran away from me when I told him I didn’t love him and when I forced him away from me. They didn’t seem to care that he threatened to kill himself if I didn’t love him. No one seemed to understand that I pushed him out that window as sure as if I’d shoved him with my hands.
Maybe it was the time lag that kept them from understanding. I was in a car accident the same night and it was a week before the police could talk to me. By then they had tracked Peter from his fall out of the window to the river, where he either threw himself in or fell in. It was weeks before they found his body, washed up thirty miles downstream and identifiable only through dental records.
I was recovering from a broken leg at home. I managed to go to the funeral, with Bell pushing my wheelchair to this sunny and placid hillside. That was in June and I remember how vibrant the landscape seemed with the fields full of green plants and the farmhouse in the distance, with cows and horses in the pasture. It was so bucolic and serene. It was so opposite that ugly, terrible night when he died.
I wiped away tears and looked down once again at the headstone.
Peter Barry.
Flying among the stars now.
“I thought you’d be here.”
I whirled, almost falling over the stone.
It was Bell.
Chapter 2
Years had not changed the face I knew so well from my youth. Oh, there were new lines around his eyes and mouth. And his skin was coarser, not that sweet baby-soft face of his teen years. His dark hair was still long and tousled, falling in soft waves around his square, solid face. It was still sun-streaked although now there was a touch of gray at his temples. His eyes were even more turned down at the corners, making him look sad until he smiled as he always did, with his lips together. Bell never had an open smile except…
Except when we were in bed together. The memory surfaced and vanished like a chill breeze on a warm day.
“Hello, Bell. Dibs said you were in town.” I was trembling, caught like some paralyzed animal afraid to move. I don’t know what I was afraid of, but there it was.
He nodded. “I saw him the other day.” His pale green eyes reflected his sadness. “I was sorry about your mother. She was a special person.”
My grief, newly tucked into my memory, swelled afresh. “Thank you,” I said, my voice clogged with tears.
He opened his arms and it was the most natural thing for me to go to him. I stumbled and he caught me, holding me tightly against him. I rested my head on his chest, his yellow dress shirt smelling faintly of detergent.
“She was more a mom to me than mine was when we were growing up,” he said, his chin resting on my head. Bell was six inches taller than my five-foot-five. That little fact reverberated in my head, mixed up with a bunch of other memories. “I think I spent more time at your house than mine, once I knew your parents wouldn’t kick me out.”
I leaned back to look up at him and he touched my hair. I kept it short now, shaggy and simple to care for. Unlike him, I was mostly gray and had been since my thirties. I gave up coloring it a long time ago. “Dibs reminded me today how you and my father were such soul mates.” I smiled through my tears. “He would
have been proud of you, Bell.”
“He taught me so much.” He ran a finger down the side of my face. “You haven’t changed, Wendy. You look just the same except for your hair.”
I touched his face, too, gently tracing the white scar near his right eye where an errant baseball almost cost him his sight. “You’re the same, too. Except you’re famous now.”
“I’m not famous here. Here I’m just Tommy Bell, the kid everybody bet would be a juvenile delinquent.”
“My parents didn’t feel that way.” I reluctantly eased away from him, but Bell kept me firmly next to him, his arm around my shoulders. “I think it’s because David died so young. I asked Mom about it once and she said it was like she had a big hole in her heart. Having all the kids around helped fill the hole, at least while they were there. She always wanted the house to be full. The more noise, the better.”
“That was such a weird accident,” Bell said. “Falling down while ice skating and hitting his head. We all did that a million times, didn’t we?”
I nodded. “But David got a fractured skull and died.” I would never forget that day. I was only eight years old, but I remembered my older brother David’s friends coming to the house, Peter and Bell among them. The house was suddenly crowded with people but it was so quiet. It was my first experience with death and its finality.
“We were only ten,” Bell said. “Just kids. I’m glad your mother still wanted us around after that. I figured she wouldn’t.”
“I think she knew you all needed someone. She told me once you were like the Lost Boys from Peter Pan. None of you really had a mother.”
Bell smiled, that closed-mouth smile that always made him look sour or sad. “Well, we had mothers, but they weren’t like yours.”
I smiled, too. My mother had been like a character from Father Knows Best or The Donna Reed Show. She baked, cooked, cleaned, and generally made our house a home. Bell and Peter’s mothers, though, weren’t interested in such mundane things. Peter’s mother played golf and had cocktails at the country club but scrimped on everything else to afford it. And Bell’s mother, well, she just had cocktails and a succession of men who visited her from time to time.
Bell shrugged. “I know that I felt an obligation to David to watch out for you and your brothers. I guess Peter felt the same.”
“Who knows what Peter felt?” I asked, trying to keep my voice light.
“Sometimes I don’t think even Peter knew.” Bell looked down at the grave near our feet.
We were both silent for a long moment, lost in our individual memories. Then I asked, “What brings you back to town?”
“You.” He looked down at me. “I wanted to be with you for the funeral.” As always, he was simple, direct, and to the point.
“Thank you.” I leaned against him, his comforting warmth an antidote to the sudden chill that made me shiver. “Where are you staying?”
He laughed softly. “Didn’t you know? I’m a major stakeholder in that new motel they built out by the hospital. I had a suite built there for me.”
The “new” two-story Kensington Arms Motel was built ten years before on the west side of town, just six blocks away from Mom’s house. It was a significant improvement over the old ten-room roadside motel that had served travelers for half a century. “I’m sure it’s not the Ritz or the Savoy,” I said, moving away from him. A suite at the Kensington was probably two cramped rooms with a whirlpool tub in the john.
His eyes narrowed at my jibe. “It’s clean, quiet, and private. That’s all I really need.”
“Not according to the magazine stories I’ve read about you.” I walked past Peter’s grave to the edge of the bluff. An oak tree, probably a hundred years old, towered over me. It was just losing its leaves to new spring growth and the lawn underneath was strewn with brown detritus. “You’re a celebrity, Bell. It seems like you flit from hot spot to hot spot, always with the most beautiful people. You’re the most eligible bachelor in the world.”
He joined me on the bluff. “Don’t believe everything you read.”
I regarded him skeptically. “Oh, you’re not a bachelor? One of those movie stars finally snagged you? I’ve seen pictures of you with some gorgeous women.”
Bell dug his hands into his jeans pockets and scuffed at the leaves with one sneakered toe. “Yeah, well, it makes for good publicity. It doesn’t mean anything. What about you? You were married, weren’t you?”
“Briefly.” I wrinkled my nose at the memory. “I’d rather be single than married to someone who’s perpetually jealous. The way he acted, I was a femme fatale, breaking men’s hearts from here to the stars and back again.”
“To the stars and back again,” Bell repeated softly. “I haven’t heard that for a long time.”
That had been our catch phrase back when we were growing up. I’ll race you to the stars and back again. I caught holy hell to the stars and back again. I looked over my shoulder at the grave, set slightly apart from the others. “It’ll be thirty years in a few weeks. I can’t believe it. I remember it like it was yesterday. Parts of it, at least.”
“You still blame yourself, don’t you?” Bell wasn’t looking at me. He was staring into the distance at the farm and the animals milling around in the pasture.
“I do, but I’m still confused by it all. It’s the only explanation that makes sense. I can’t imagine that Peter would kill himself unless—” I didn’t finish. I didn’t have to. Bell was there that night. He heard it all.
“What do you mean, you’re confused?”
“I had no idea Peter felt that way about me. You and I were a couple and the only reason I went with Peter that night was because you and I had that stupid fight.” I followed Bell’s gaze to the farm, noticing several cars in the drive. The family there must be having a reunion. “Peter didn’t have time to fall in love with me. He and I were always just friends. Why did he decide all of a sudden that he couldn’t live without me?”
Bell nodded. “That never made sense to me, either. Another thing that never made sense was our car accident.”
“What?” This was something that I had never considered. When Peter ran away from me that night, throwing himself out the barn window, I ran after him. Bell was downstairs and after a semi-coherent explanation of what happened, he and I took Bell’s old Impala and went after Peter. The party where this all happened was west of town near the river, on a farm owned by Jamie Lim, the hippie guidance counselor at the school.
Bell and I drove down the farm lane and got as far as the main road when a front tire exploded. Bell couldn’t control it and we caromed into the ditch. We were thrown out because seat belts weren’t common then. Bell suffered a broken arm and multiple contusions. I got a broken leg. When I emerged from a drugged fog at the hospital, Peter was dead, drowned in the river.
“What do you mean the car accident didn’t make sense?” I faced Bell, who still stared at the farm over my right shoulder.
He pulled me to him, his hands on my shoulders so he could look into my face. “I think we need to talk somewhere more private.”
I looked around. “It’s a cemetery. It doesn’t get much more private than this.”
He looked over my shoulder. “There are photographers down there, probably equipped with telephoto lenses. Your picture is going to be in the tabloids tomorrow.”
I turned to see but he kept me in place with his hands. “I thought you had a deal with them,” I protested. “That’s what Dibs said.”
“The deal was they couldn’t come into town.” He nodded toward the farm. “That’s not town. I’m sorry, Wendy. It looks like you’re going to become a celebrity.”
“Well, crapola,” I muttered. “I’m nobody famous. Why do they care about me?”
Bell lowered his head and our lips met in a gentle kiss. “That’s why,” he whispered. “Because you’re the woman in my life.”
“What?” I sputtered, once again trying to pull away from his firm grasp of my sh
oulders. “I am not. I was the woman, once, but I’m not anymore.”
“As far as they’re concerned, you’re my mystery woman.” He put an arm around my shoulders and we started back to Peter’s grave. “Let me handle it. They may come into town now. This is a big story for them.”
“Bell, this is ridiculous.” I let him lead me to my car. A red-brown Ford Explorer was parked behind my smaller Jeep Compass. “There is no story.”
“They’ll find one. Let’s go to your house and drop off your car then go to the hotel. I want to talk about what happened that night. I’ve done some digging and I think maybe things aren’t what they seemed.”
I paused, my hand on my door handle. “What?”
“Let’s talk.” He went to his car, leaving me gaping at him.
I drove to Mom’s house, my brain whirling. The first shocker was that Bell was here, in town. I was surprised how relieved I was that he was here. I was dreading Mom’s funeral because of the endless line of mourners that I knew would attend. She had lived in Kensington all her life and been active in the community, serving on a million different volunteer committees. The refrigerator at the house, stuffed with food that people dropped off, told me how loved she was. Having Bell with me would make everything easier.
How odd that we reconnected like this after so many years. I last saw him about ten years earlier. He was in town and I was visiting my mother. Bell came to the house for supper and it was eerily like old times and yet it wasn’t. Instead of the big rectangular six-person table, we now had a small four-person round table. The ghosts of my father and my brothers seemed to hover around us while we talked and laughed. I can’t count the number of times that dining room was full to overflowing with Lost Boys milling around and eating Mom’s famous homemade pizza.
I pulled into the driveway at the house and parked my car, waiting for Bell to get out of his where he pulled up behind me. Instead he gestured me to him. “Get in,” he said when I neared.