Absolute Certainty

by Rose Connors

  Luke always dozes off on the couch for a little while around midday, just after the tutor leaves. He still tires easily. Every day during that time I sit perfectly still in the overstuffed chair and watch him while he sleeps. I know he is changed forever. He has come face-to-face with evil, an event that will necessarily alter his view of the world.

  I will tell Luke, when he is ready to talk about it, that he shouldn’t give up on the world. It’s still a worthwhile place. He is still here.

  CHAPTER 60

  On Sundays, Luke and I take the Thunderbird to People’s Cemetery to put fresh flowers on Jake Junior’s grave. Daisies or buttercups when we can find them; wild beach roses when we can’t. The arrangements we see in florists’ shops are too formal, too old. Luke says Jake Junior would laugh at them.

  We know, of course, that Jake Junior isn’t in that grave. He would never rest there. He would never be at peace so far from his beloved waters of the Atlantic Ocean. Luke says he feels Jake Junior’s presence on the beaches of the Monomoy Wildlife Refuge, the very place his own life was spared.

  We walk to the refuge every day, usually at dusk. Danny Boy always comes along; he doesn’t let Luke out of his sight these days. The three of us sit on the sand at the water’s edge and watch the light drain from the sky. Most days, we don’t head back to our Windmill Lane cottage until it is dark.

  Some days Luke tortures himself with questions about Jake Junior’s final moments. Did he realize his assailant was Jeff, someone he knew and liked? Did any words pass between them? Luke is struggling to answer those same questions himself. He just can’t remember. And that, I believe, is a blessing.

  When darkness falls, we head back to the cottage, Danny Boy leading the way. Some nights, we don’t speak at all during our walk. But other nights, Luke asks question after question about the days he cannot remember, the hole in his recent life. Those questions are the easy ones; I’m happy to answer them.

  I told Luke how bewildered Danny Boy was while Luke was in the hospital. How he slept in Luke’s room every night and looked for him every time the kitchen door opened. How he hung his head and whimpered each time he realized it wasn’t Luke coming through the door.

  I told Luke about the high school basketball team coming to the intensive care unit during the first days of his hospitalization, even though they knew Luke was unconscious, even though they were allowed to visit with him just once an hour, two at a time, five minutes a pair. The team is practicing now, and Luke and I have gone to the gym a few times to watch. Their hearts are not in it. Their hearts—so young—are heavy.

  I told Luke how much Justin missed him and talked to him while he was unconscious. How Justin insisted that Luke’s team shirt— number four—be reserved for Luke’s return. How Jake Junior’s shirt was retired, also at Justin’s insistence, and will eventually be hung on the gymnasium wall along with an action photograph of him and a bronze plaque dedicated to his memory.

  Some nights Luke asks questions that aren’t so easy. Why did Jeff Skinner do what he did? Why didn’t he get help after the first one? After the second? How did he live with himself when he was rational, knowing what he had done when he wasn’t? How could he have come to Jake Junior’s visitation; how could he have sat through Jake Junior’s funeral? How did he manage to testify at Manuel Rodriguez’s trial? How did he justify—in his own mind—sending others to prison for crimes he committed?

  I have nothing to offer in response to these questions. I am always honest with Luke about that. There is simply nothing I can tell him.

  There are three things, though, that I tell Luke every night, just before we leave the refuge. “Luke,” I tell him, “I’ll always help you. And I’ll always love you. And those two things will always be true.”

  Every night he says it back.

  A BOUT THE A UTHOR

  Rose Connors grew up in Philadelphia, graduated from Mount St. Mary’s College, and in 1984 received her law degree from Duke University. A trial attorney for eighteen years, she is admitted to practice in both Washington State and Massachusetts and is a member of the Massachusetts Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers. She lives in the Cape Cod town of Chatham with her husband, Admiralty attorney David Farrell, and their two sons.