I got out of bed.
My cell rang again, this time Michael calling from the firehouse. “Dixie, I just heard about the Winnick boy.”
I collapsed right where I stood, crumpling to the floor and sobbing into the phone. “Oh Michael, that sweet, gentle boy! His beautiful face!”
“I know, Dixie. I know.”
“It’s not fair!”
“No, it’s not.”
Huddled on the floor, I clutched the phone to my chest and cried so hard it seemed I was stripping out the lining of my throat. I cried for the horror of what had happened to Phillip, for what had happened to Todd and Christy, and for every other senseless tragedy that destroys the light of the shining young. I don’t know how long I cried, but when I was able to hear again, I lifted the phone to my ear and Michael was still there, still holding me from his end of the line.
I said, “I’m okay.”
“If you need me, I can take a sick day and be with you.”
“No, I’m fine, really.”
“Call me in a couple of hours, okay?”
I wiped my wet face and nodded at the phone. “I will, but don’t worry. I really am okay. Or at least as okay as anybody would be after…you know.”
“Yeah. I’m not worried, but call me anyway.”
I got up and washed my face. What I’d told Michael had been true. Anybody would be disturbed by watching a boy shoot himself in the head, and the fact that I wasn’t any more upset than the average neurotic was encouraging.
Ghost trotted after me and patted at my ankles. I knelt to stroke his silvery fur, and he nosed his head into my hand and arched his back, insistent as a needy baby. I went to the Bronco and got my grooming kit out and took Ghost to the lanai. Pulling my slicker brush through his hair until his coat was smooth and shiny calmed us both down.
As I brushed him, I looked toward the Winnicks’ house. I could see a back window that was probably in Phillip’s room. He had been outside that window when he saw a woman get into a car in Marilee’s driveway. I had been sure that was the reason he had been beaten up, but I had been wrong. Phillip had been beaten because Carl Winnick had hired somebody to scare him straight, to punish him for being gay, to destroy his burgeoning self-esteem…who knew what Winnick’s sick reasons were?
I don’t often use the word evil. It smacks too much of wild-eyed fanatics eager to control the world by imposing their skewed ideas of right and wrong. But when I thought about the kind of mind that would hire a thug to beat up his own son because the kid was gay, the only word that came to mind was evil. Carl Winnick was truly an evil man, and the fact that he presented himself to the world as the voice of morality made him all the worse.
When Ghost was combed and feeling sleek again, I left my grooming supplies on the lanai table and carried Ghost through the slider before I pulled it closed. I’ve learned not to try to coax any cat through a door, because they will always get halfway in and decide to contemplate the secrets of life while you stand there like an idiot telling them to please get a move on. Instead, I carry them over the threshold like brides.
It took two hands to securely lock the slider, so I put Ghost back on the floor before I locked it. Then with Ghost trotting by my side, I went back in the kitchen and made a cup of tea. I drank it sitting at the snack bar while I imagined what was happening to Phillip at the trauma center. Doctors would be fighting for his life. There might be surgery, blood transfusions, ventilators, and all the other modern techniques that exist to preserve life. But no matter how many devices I could envision working for him, I couldn’t escape the reality of what a bullet does when it explodes inside a skull.
I washed Ghost’s food bowl and my teacup while Ghost twined in and out between my ankles, arching his back and rubbing against me with his tail held high. I was touched. Cats have tiny scent glands on their faces and at the roots of their tails. When they rub against you, it’s their way of mixing their scent with yours. You can’t get any closer to a living being than sharing odors, and Ghost was telling me that he and I were now bonded as one. He was signing on as my closest friend, my confidant, and my protector.
Even domestic cats can be vicious, and Ghost was also letting me know that if he and I went hunting together in the wild, he would pounce on a rodent, stick his dagger-like eyeteeth in it, and sever its spine for me. He would shred its flesh into bite-size chunks and share them with me. Since we weren’t in the wild, he would have to content himself with bringing me the occasional unlucky lizard caught on the lanai. All that bonding behavior made it even more imperative that I find a new owner for Ghost before he became too attached to me. He had already lost one person he loved, I didn’t want him to lose another one.
I left our dishes draining on the counter and went back to the pantry and looked at the safe again. It didn’t seem so important anymore, but I had to get my mind off what was happening to Phillip. I fingered the keyhole again. It was small, so the key would be small, too, and easily concealed. Just the thought of looking in all the possible places Marilee could have hidden it was mind-numbing. Guessing the numbers for the code would be a lot easier.
I got the numbers I’d copied from Marilee’s ruined tax return and went back to the safe to demonstrate my savvy knowledge of how people use their birth dates or Social Security numbers or house numbers for codes they commit to memory. Easy for them to remember, but also easy for a burglar to figure out. Not that I was a burglar. I was more of a protector.
Ghost watched intently while I tried the first six digits of Marilee’s Social Security number. I tried the last six digits. I tried them both backward. I tried her birth date, first by month and year, then by day, month, and year. I tried them backward, too. I tried her house address and her zip code and various parts of her phone number. Nothing worked.
I closed the wooden door over the safe, replaced the cat food on the shelf, and crawled back in bed. Ghost joined me, staying politely down by my feet but close enough to warm me. Immediately, visions of Phillip shooting himself swam before my eyes. I hadn’t seen Phillip’s injury before Deputy Morgan pulled me aside, but I had seen the gun and I knew what an exploding bullet does.
In the trauma center at St. Pete, doctors were working to save Phillip’s life. But if they succeeded, would he be Phillip or a pitiful shell without a mind? Without consciousness of his surroundings, without the ability to think or create, without the ability to live with any degree of joy? To me, such a life was not a life, but a breathing death.
I hadn’t been on speaking terms with God since Todd and Christy were killed, but now I had a little talk with him. Or her, as the case may be. I said, I’m still mad at you for taking Todd and Christy, but maybe you did that because they were hurt so badly that they wouldn’t have been them if they’d lived. They would have hated that, so I guess you did the right thing. Now Phillip has been hurt, and he would hate having to live not as himself. He would hate not being able to play the piano, not being able to have fun, not being able to love and be loved. So I just want you to know that if you decide to take Phillip, I’ll understand. I won’t like it, but I’ll understand. Not that you need me to okay what you do. But if he can have a good life in spite of what happened, then I ask you to help the doctors save him. That’s all. Amen.
It probably wasn’t much of a prayer by most people’s standards, but it was the best I could do and it made me feel better.
I slept for a little while, and when I woke, I was ready to take care of the cats and dogs on my schedule. Ghost was sunning himself on a window ledge when I left, and he blinked a couple of I love you’s when I said goodbye. We were making progress.