by Sean Platt
Minister Avery gestured again toward the Hughes girls.
Cassidy managed to keep her torrent inside, but Vivian, never one to shy away from theatrics, erupted into a fountain of tears while Emma bawled between them. Seeing their grief, particularly the young girl’s, cut deep into Jon’s heart. He sniffed back some tears as the pastor went on about how we can’t know God’s will, but should find comfort that He has welcomed Sarah to the Kingdom of Heaven.
Though Jon would normally roll his eyes at such a thought, he found an odd sense of comfort in the old man’s words.
Pastor Avery then invited mourners to approach the front of the church one by one to give their farewells. Jon sat silently, heart racing, as Sarah’s co-workers, friends, and family spoke of her in loving memory. Hearing their words made Jon sad that he’d missed out on so much of Sarah’s life. It also made him wonder who would speak at his funeral. He had few people he could call friends. And the closest thing he’d ever had to love was now in a casket.
He wondered if he should step forward to give a few words. Given their history, he feared that to not say anything would be an insult. At the same time, he didn’t want this to become about him. If he went up to speak, someone in the audience might shoot video on their iPhone and it would be on YouTube or TMZ within the hour. That was the last thing Sarah’s family needed. The last thing any of the mourning families needed.
Jon stayed put, though he wasn’t sure if his gesture was kindness or cowardice. When it came right to it, he couldn’t bear to go anywhere near the urn holding Sarah’s remains. It was all he could do to look at the silver jar from the back of the church, where it was merely a shape.
* *
The memorial ended, and Jon did his best to blend in with the herd, which was nearly impossible with the dozens of eyes pretending not to stare. He shuffled behind the mourners, slowly drifting toward the hors d'oeuvres, waiting for the crowd to finish consoling Cassidy, as his heart filled, then broke with every fleeting glimpse of the small girl trembling by her side.
Emma looked lost, waiting for a mother that would never return.
Jon ate his cold cucumber sandwich and sipped the cheap coffee, hating his family for not donating something better, and watching the Hughes family from the corner of his eye.
Cassidy was bookended between Russ Haskell and Mitch Kilborn, two jocks he’d gone to school with. Time had been less kind to them, each of them looking at least a decade older than they were, especially with the premature silver flocking the tips of Mitch’s bangs and sideburns.
Emma had ducked from under Cassidy’s arm, then slipped away from her aunt and grandmother. She made a beeline for the dessert table and was stuffing an assortment of cookies into her purse, starting at the far side of the dessert table and gradually making her way to the right, focusing only on the smaller cookies, apparently going with quantity over quality.
Emma looked almost exactly the same as her mother at age nine. Another ghost which tore at Jon’s heart.
She looked so sad, and almost angelic in her innocence. He laughed as Emma stuffed cookies into her tiny purple purse, and thought of the way he often couldn’t help but shove matchbooks, mints, or toothpicks into his pocket, whenever he was leaving a restaurant, whether he’d ever use them or not. Jon wondered where the girl’s father was, or if she even knew who her father was.
Sarah had gotten pregnant after she broke up with Jon, the result of a fling she had to supposedly “get over him.”
It had been almost 10 years ago when he’d made the biggest mistake of his life. He was on the set of his first movie, when he got drunk and slept with a model. It was the first time he’d ever been unfaithful to Sarah, who had, to that point, been the only girl he’d even gone out with. He confessed what he did. At first, he thought they’d get past it. She said she’d forgiven him. Then a week later, she called him, while he was back on the set, and said she couldn’t do this anymore. She couldn’t stop thinking of his betrayal. It was over.
He tried to make things right, but she refused to take his calls, refused to see him, and even ignored emails and letters he sent to her via verified mail. About five weeks after they broke up, Cassidy called Jon and said to stop calling Sarah, that he was making her miserable.
And that was that. He went on with his life. And she went on with hers, apparently getting knocked up along the way.
He’d heard from an old friend about Sarah getting pregnant, and had heard rumors about different men who might be the father, including a waiter, a visitor to the island during tourist season, and even another teacher. Whoever it was didn’t stick around, and left her high and dry.
Jon had considered reaching out to offer help if Sarah needed it. But by then, it had been so long, and she seemed to be getting along fine on her own with help from her sister and mother. Jon didn’t want to cause her any more stress by popping back into her life.
Now, as he watched Emma, he felt his heart break. The child had no mother or father. She was an orphan, all alone in the world, save for a drunk grandma and a pill-popping aunt.
When Emma was just a few feet away, Jon couldn’t take it any longer. He took one long, final sip of his coffee, set it on the large tray with the rest of the empties, then went to the edge of the dessert table, picked up the largest, fattest cookie he could find, and kneeled next to Emma.
“I think you’re missing out on these,” he said, holding up a slightly larger cookie. “They look just big enough to be truly delicious.”
The girl looked up at him, then narrowed her eyes as she studied the cookie. She shook her head. “Nope, that one has peanut butter in it. I don’t like peanut butter. Especially in my cookies.”
Jon looked at the cookie, noting the telltale ridges of peanut butter rippling across the surface, then back at Emma. “Hmmm, you know, I think you’re right. I didn’t even notice.” He wrinkled his nose and shook his head. “I don’t like peanut butter, either.”
Still kneeling, Jon gestured toward the table. “Which of these would you suggest?”
Emma smiled, tiny but there, then pulled a wee cookie from her little purse and handed it to Jon.
Jon took the tiny white cookie, about the size of a quarter and the color of the island’s sand under a summer sun, freckled in white. “What is it?” he asked.
“It’s called a Hamilton Island Biscuit. Mrs. Rasmussen makes them, but only on New Year’s, the first day of summer, and on special occasions. It was Mommy’s favorite cookie.”
Jon smiled and blinked, his eyes getting wet. “Oh, wow. I remember these,” he said, turning the cookie over in his hand. Then, mostly to himself, he added, “How old is Mrs. Rasmussen now? She was like seventy when I was a kid.”
“I don’t know,” Emma shook her head. “I asked her one time if she was 100 and she laughed and said no, but she didn’t tell me how old she was.”
Emma looked closer at Jon, as if seeing him for the first time. “Did you live on the island when you were little?”
“I did.”
Emma glanced at her shuffling feet, then back up at Jon. “Did you know my mom?”
Jon nodded. “I did.”
“Do you think I look just like her?”
Of course Jon did, but the oddness of the question put a crack in what little voice he had to answer. “Yes . . . yes, you do.”
“That’s what everybody says, but I think we look different.”
Jon said, “That’s only because you didn’t know her when she was your age.” He smiled. “But your mom and I were great friends when we were your young, and I do think you look just like her.”
“Maybe,” she said, and made a face, a sideways sort of smile, which sent a chill through Jon. It was the exact same kind of face he made, a face he used to make Sarah laugh.
As Jon looked into her eyes, a growing realization crept over him. Yes, she looked a lot like her mother as a child, but she also looked like someone else. . . him.
He began to pick
through the dates in his mind, trying to figure out if it were possible that he was actually Emma’s father. Had Sarah lied to him? And then another horrible realization.
Is that why she broke up with me?
Jon felt as if someone had pulled the world out from under him.
“What’s your name?” the girl asked, looking at him sideways.
“Jon,” he said, barely finding the word.
She reached out to shake his hand.
“I’m Emma, it’s nice to meet you,” she said, smiling her best despite her sadness.
He shook her hand, so tiny and frail in his, and felt a growing certainty that his suspicions were right.
And then Vivian appeared from nowhere, with her arm suddenly around her granddaughter. “We’ve got to go,” she said, turning to Emma. “Please tell Mr. Conway to have a nice day.”
Emma’s eyes went wide, then she turned to Jon. “Wait, are you the guy in the movies?”
He laughed, still kneeling. “Yes.”
“Oh my God! You knew my mom?”
Vivian sliced the exchange to nothing, shot Jon a sour look, then led Emma past the dessert table, and to the bright light outside. Jon stood boiling, his hands twitching.
He turned to leave, then crashed into Cassidy, standing behind him.
“Sorry about my mom,” she said. “You know, old wounds and all.”
Jon shook his head. “I understand. He held her eyes. I’m sorry about Sarah, Cassidy.” He held his arms open and Cassidy accepted, allowing him to pull her into an embrace. She cried softly against his chest for a minute, then pulled away.
“Thanks for coming,” she said. “I didn’t know if you would.”
He shook his head. “I wouldn’t have missed it.”
After an awkward silence, Cassidy said, “Thank you. She would have wanted you here.”
Jon swallowed, trying to work up the courage to ask the question on his mind.
Cassidy looked back where her mother and niece went to, and said, “I should probably get going.”
“Okay,” he said, saying goodbye with an awkward hug.
He felt as if he were hugging a ghost.
* * * *
CHAPTER 4 — Milo Anderson Part 2
Wednesday
September 6
1:17 p.m.
Milo sat in his bedroom, hating everything on the other side of the door.
His dad was gone, like always. Beatrice, or “other mother,” as Milo called her, sometimes to her face and always when she wasn’t around, was left in charge of the house.
Milo’s dad worked as an analyst for Conway Industries. While most people who worked for the company lived on the island, or on the mainland, Milo’s dad was out of the state more often than not. Milo figured his dad was good at his job given the money he made. Beatrice was good at hers, too, though her job was much easier since her main duties apparently were to spend his money and be a bitch.
According to Beatrice, Milo just didn’t appreciate her or see things from her perspective. She said that as far as hard jobs went, being a stepmother was right up there with being an air-traffic controller. Milo thought that was bullshit, particularly since he was 17 and practically an adult. He wasn’t sure what she did on any given day that could be deemed a parental responsibility, save for the occasional dinner she made.
He’d given her plenty of chances, but she’d blown every one, starting with the day his dad announced they were getting married. She stood beside him, smiling like she was standing in an open vault, and said, “You can call me Mom!”
Thanks Beatrice, you evil bitch.
She wasn’t his mother, and never would be.
It was hard enough that his mom vanished without a trace when Milo was 12. Even harder when everyone thought she was one of many victims to jump from Tanner’s Pass, and her father had her declared dead.
Perhaps his father could replace her, but that didn’t mean Milo had to accept Beatrice.
He hated how she always tried to insert herself into his life and get her to call her “mom.” The worst was when she started her sentences with, “Your father and I always . . .” as though she had to constantly prove their union by broadcasting the great times they were having when Milo wasn’t around, making it all too easy to imagine doing everything from spending money Milo’s father actually had to work for, to doing things in the bedroom Milo didn’t even want to think about.
Milo still remembered the minute he went from merely wishing she wasn’t in his life to actually hating her. He had been caught getting drunk with Manny, and the next day had come home to a “family meeting.”
He sat on one couch while his “parents” sat on the other. Beatrice said, “Did your mother bring you up to do that?” while his dad sat beside her, either wondering the same thing or acting like too much of a coward to say otherwise.
Milo had hated her ever since. His mother wasn’t an alcoholic. And she wasn’t a drug addict, despite the rumors. She was clinically depressed and on several medications, any of which might explain her disappearance.
Beatrice called from the other side of the door. “Milo, honey, I’m making lasagna. Would you like it with sausage or without?”
Milo ignored her, like he had for the last hour she’d been trying to get his attention and draw him from his room. He almost felt bad since she seemed uncharacteristically genuine, at a time when he expected to see her at her worst.
Beatrice didn’t like it when things didn’t go according to plan, especially when her plans included leaving the island for yet another weekend getaway. She and his father were scheduled for a weekend at The Fairmont Sonoma Mission Inn & Spa in California Wine Country. They were booked and ready to leave Friday afternoon as soon as his dad came home early from work. But they had to cancel everything when they heard about the shooting at school.
The quiet house had heard maybe 500 words the entire weekend. His dad, the only one who even tried to make conversation, had to fly to New York for another conference on Tuesday.
Beatrice’s plastic personality made it pretty easy to see through her shallow attempts to mimic emotions. She could give a shit about Milo, and was probably marking red X’s on a calendar somewhere, waiting for him to graduate and leave the house.
She’d been trying to get him to go to Jessica’s funeral service all weekend, but Milo didn’t want to talk about it. Now she was trying to lure him out of his room with lasagna, which he loved. Hers was admittedly good, and Milo could smell the scent traveling up the stairs and into his bedroom.
Milo was tempted to leave the room, just long enough to get some lasagna, when his cell phone rang. He hoped it wasn’t Alex again. He’d been ignoring Alex’s messages, not even bothering to listen to them. He couldn’t hear Alex’s voice right now. It was too soon, the horror still raw. How could he possibly remain friends with the son of the man who murdered his friends and classmates?
It was bad enough that he saw Jessica’s dying eyes every time he went to sleep.
He grabbed the phone off his nightstand and saw that it wasn’t Alex. It was Jesus, Manny’s older brother, who’d come back from Stanford University in California to be with his family. They’d talked briefly Saturday when he learned that Manny was in a coma.
“Hey Milosauraus,” Jesus said, “How’s it hanging over at Casa la Anderson? Other Mom still being a bitch?”
Milo felt a slight flush of shame as the scent of lasagna bled beneath the door. “Nah, she’s being alright, for the moment anyway. How’s Manny.”
“Wish I knew,” Jesus said. “The doctors aren’t saying shit. He’s still in a coma. Might make it, might not. Changes every hour. Dad’s stopped asking, Mom can’t keep from crying. We’re taking turns hanging out at the hospital, just in case he wakes. Right now is my shift.”
“I’m sorry, man,” Milo said.
Jesus sighed, “Yeah.”
There was a long, awkward silence. Milo wasn’t sure what to say, but Jesus didn’t s
eem like he was in a hurry to hang up. After a while, Milo gathered enough courage to say what he had wanted to say on Saturday. “Hey, Jesus, can you call me as soon Manny wakes up?”
“Of course, man.”
“I mean immediately, I want to be there as soon as I can see him.” After a pause, Milo added, “Before other people start talking to him.”
An edge of concern crept into Jesus’s throat. “What’s going on? What aren’t you saying?”
“It’s probably nothing,” Milo said. “But I can’t stop wondering something. Right before Mr. Heller blew his brains out, he knelt down next to Manny. He looked like he was sorry he shot him. Like he didn’t know what he was doing, or perhaps hadn’t meant to hit Manny, I’m not sure. But the weird thing was that he said something to Manny.”
“Said something? What did he say?”
“I dunno, that’s what I want to ask him.”
“You and me both,” Jesus said. “You and me both.”
* * * *
CHAPTER 5 — Jon Conway Part 2
Wednesday
September 6
6:50 p.m.
The sky was unseasonably clear for a summer on Hamilton Island, with not a single cloud in sight. In fact, the only thing spoiling the bruised orange pre-twilight sky was a pair of long white contrails, stretching from the other side of the tree-lined hills on the west side of the island to the snow-capped Mount Rainier on the eastern horizon.
Jon drove his rented Avalon past the Chamber of Commerce and the Visitors’ Bureau buildings, past the outer limits of the tourist trap downtown, then finally along the freedom of the winding coast to Greenwood, where the rich people lived, then up into Cedar Park, where the houses got larger, acres went to triple digits, and money poured like rain in Washington.