Nineteen Minutes Read online

  *

  Just after three o'clock, Josie rolled over onto her belly, spread her arms wide, and pressed her face into the grass. It looked like she was trying to hold on to the ground, which, she supposed, wasn't all that far from the truth. She breathed in deeply--usually, she smelled nothing but weeds and soil, but every now and then when it had just rained, she got the barest scent of ice and Pert shampoo, as if Matt were still himself just under that surface.

  She gathered the wrapper from her sandwich and her empty water bottle and put them into her backpack, then headed down the winding path to the cemetery gates. There was a car blocking the entrance--only twice this summer had Josie been present when a funeral procession came, and it had made her a little sick to her stomach. She started to walk faster, in the hope that she would be long gone and sitting on her Advance Transit bus before the service began--and then she realized that the car blocking the gates was not a hearse, not even black for that matter. It was the same car that had been parked in their driveway this morning, and Patrick was leaning against it with his arms crossed.

  "What are you doing here?" Josie asked.

  "I could ask you the same thing."

  She shrugged. "It's a free country."

  Josie didn't really have anything against Patrick Ducharme himself. He just made her nervous, on so many counts. She couldn't look at him without thinking of That Day. But now she had to, because he also was her mother's lover (how weird was it to say that?) and in a way, that was even more upsetting. Her mother was on cloud nine, falling in love, while Josie had to sneak off to a graveyard to visit her boyfriend.

  Patrick pushed himself off the car and took a step toward her. "Your mother thinks you're teaching long division right now."

  "Did she tell you to stalk me?" Josie said.

  "I prefer surveillance," Patrick corrected.

  Josie snorted. She didn't want to sound like such a snot, but she couldn't help it. Sarcasm was like a force field; once she turned it off, he might be able to see that she was this close to falling to pieces.

  "Your mother doesn't know I'm here," Patrick said. "I wanted to talk to you."

  "I'm going to miss my bus."

  "Then I'll drive you wherever you want to go," he said, exasperated. "You know, when I'm doing my job, I spend a lot of time wishing I could turn back the clock--get to the rape victim before it happened, stake out the house before the thief comes by. I know what it's like to feel like nothing you do or say is ever going to make things better. And I know what it's like to wake up in the middle of the night replaying one moment over and over so vividly that you might as well be living it again. In fact, I bet you and I replay the same moment."

  Josie swallowed. In all these months, out of all the well-meaning conversations she'd had with doctors and psychiatrists and even other kids from the school, no one had captured, so succinctly, what it felt like to be her. But she couldn't let Patrick know that--couldn't admit to her weakness, even though she had the feeling that he could spot it all the same. "Don't pretend we have anything in common," Josie said.

  "But we do," Patrick replied. "Your mother." He looked Josie in the eye. "I like her. A lot. And I'd like to know that you're okay with that."

  Josie felt her throat closing. She tried to remember Matt saying that he liked her; she wondered if anyone would ever say it again. "My mother's a big girl. She can make her own decisions about who she f--"

  "Don't," Patrick interrupted.

  "Don't what."

  "Don't say something you're going to wish you hadn't."

  Josie stepped back, her eyes glittering. "If you think that buddying up to me is going to win her over, you're wrong. You're better off with flowers and chocolate. She couldn't care less about me."

  "That's not true."

  "You haven't exactly been around long enough to know, have you?"

  "Josie," Patrick said, "she's crazy about you."

  Josie felt herself choke on the truth, even harder to speak than it was to swallow. "But not as crazy as she is about you. She's happy. She's happy and I . . . I know I should be happy for her . . ."

  "But you're here," Patrick said, gesturing at the cemetery. "And you're alone."

  Josie nodded and burst into tears. She turned away, embarrassed, and then felt Patrick fold his arms around her. He didn't say anything, and for that one moment, she even liked him--any word at all, even a well-meaning one, would have taken up the space where her hurt needed to be. He just let her cry until finally it all stopped, and Josie rested for a moment against his shoulder, wondering if this was only the eye of the storm or its endpoint.

  "I'm a bitch," she whispered. "I'm jealous."

  "I think she'd understand."

  Josie drew away from him and wiped her eyes. "Are you going to tell her I come here?"

  "No."

  She glanced up at him, surprised. She would have thought that he'd take her mother's side.

  "You're wrong, you know," Patrick said.

  "About what?"

  "Being alone."

  Josie glanced up the hill. You couldn't see Matt's grave from the gates, but it was still there--just like everything else about That Day. "Ghosts don't count."

  Patrick smiled. "Mothers do."

  *

  What Lewis hated the most was the sound of the metal doors slamming. It hardly mattered that, thirty minutes from now, he'd be able to leave the jail. What was important was that the inmates couldn't. And that one of those inmates was the same boy he'd taught to ride a bike without training wheels; the same boy whose nursery school paperweight was still sitting on Lewis's desk; the same boy he'd watched take his very first breath.

  He knew it would be a shock for Peter to see him--how many months had he told himself that this would be the week he got up the courage to see his son in jail, only to find another errand to run or paper to study? But, as a correctional officer opened up a door and led Peter into the visitation room, Lewis realized that he'd underestimated what a shock it would be for him to see Peter.

  He was bigger. Maybe not taller, but broader--his shoulders filled out his shirt; his arms had thickened with muscle. His skin was translucent, almost blue under this unnatural light. His hands didn't stop moving--they were twitching at his sides and then, when he sat down, on the sides of the chair.

  "Well," Peter said. "What do you know."

  Lewis had rehearsed six or seven speeches, explanations of why he had not been able to bring himself to see his son, but when he saw Peter sitting there, only two words rose to his lips. "I'm sorry."

  Peter's mouth tightened. "For what? Blowing me off for six months?"

  "I was thinking," Lewis admitted, "more like eighteen years."

  Peter sat back in his chair, staring at Lewis. He forced himself to return the stare. Could Peter grant him absolution, even if Lewis still wasn't entirely sure he could return the favor?

  Rubbing a hand down his face, Peter shook his head. Then he started to smile. Lewis felt his bones loosen, his muscles relax. Until this moment, he hadn't really known what to expect from Peter. He could reason with himself all he wanted and assert that an apology would always be accepted; he could remind himself that he was the parent here, the one in charge--but all of that was extremely hard to remember when you were sitting in a visiting room at a jail, with a woman on your left who was trying to play footsie with her lover across that forbidden red line, and a man on your right who was cursing a blue streak.

  The smile on Peter's face hardened, twisted into a sneer. "Fuck you," he spat out. "Fuck you for coming here. You don't give a shit about me. You don't want to tell me you're sorry. You just want to hear yourself say it. You're here for yourself, not me."

  Lewis's head felt as if it were filled with stones. He bent forward, the stalk of his neck unable to bear the weight anymore, until he could rest his forehead in his hands. "I can't do anything, Peter," he whispered. "I can't work, I can't eat. I can't sleep." Then he lifted his face. "The new stude