As the paramedics loaded Billy’s body into the ambulance, one of them spoke to her. “Is your boy one of Dr. Freidrich’s patients?”
She stared at him, at first not comprehending. His voice was pulling her to the present, tugging her back to earth. “Yes. How did you know?”
“My boy Jim had leukemia, too. I’m Ralph Foley.”
Ralph Foley, she thought. Of course. She remembered seeing Jim Foley’s name on the list Dr. Freidrich had given her.
“I know what you must be going through right now,” Foley said. “Me and some of the others have a group that gets together once a week. If you ever need someone to talk to …”
“I’m not a talker,” Cecily said. She climbed into the back of the ambulance and accompanied her boy to the hospital.
Once the formalities were over, Cecily knew she was free to leave. But somehow, she couldn’t make herself do it. Her feet refused to take the first step. To leave the hospital would be to acknowledge that it was all over, that Billy was gone, truly gone, never to return again. She had sworn to herself that she would not let her son die. She had sworn to him that she would not let him die. She had failed them both.
All at once, tears flowed like floodwater. The dam had burst. Everything she had resisted, everything she had been holding back for months, came gushing out.
She was racked with pain, gasping for air with great heaving breaths. Her whole body trembled. She hurriedly found a chair in the waiting room and sat in it before she collapsed. The aching was like an electric current radiating through every part of her body. She was so tired, tired of fighting, tired of losing. Exhausted. And her baby boy was gone.
“Can I be of help?”
She turned and saw a priest, dog collar and all, sitting behind her, his hand outstretched. She did not know him, but she thought he belonged to that Episcopal church on West Elm.
She wiped her face clear. “Not unless you can perform miracles.”
The priest was not offended. “That is not within my power. But I can listen.”
“Talk, talk, talk.” She realized her voice was louder than it needed to be. It sounded shrill, awful, even to her own ears. “Why is everyone so goddamn anxious to talk?” She turned her back on him.
“Listen to me,” the priest said gently. “You’re going through a difficult time. You’ve lost someone you cared about very much. I don’t know who he was, but I know he was important to you. So important that maybe you don’t think you can go on without him.”
“Of course I can go on,” she said, once again wiping her eyes. “Don’t you see? This isn’t about me. It’s about Billy. What happened to him isn’t right. It isn’t fair.
“The world is unfair, at times. We don’t understand what happens, or why.”
“I understand perfectly what happened,” Cecily said, forcing herself to her feet. “But this is what I don’t understand. This is what I have no answer for. How could God let this happen? And why?”
The priest placed his arm around her shoulder, but he did not attempt to answer her question. Cecily thought that was probably wise. There were no answers. Not with him, not with anyone else. No answers. No answers at all.
In the weeks and months that followed Billy’s death, Cecily became obsessed with the question she had raised that night in the hospitaclass="underline" Why had this happened? She had always believed in a rational, logical world. She had studied science before she married, hoping to become a biologist. She had been taught to believe in cause and effect, trial and error. Nothing happened without a reason. Anything could be explained, if one only had the analytical tools to comprehend it. But no matter how she tried, what she read, or whom she talked to, she was unable to uncover a solution to the enigma she most wanted resolved: why her precious boy died.
Until one morning she read a story on the front page of the Blackwood Gazette. And then she knew.
ONE
This Be the Verse You Grave for Me
Chapter 1
“YOU WERE DIGGING AROUND in the man’s trash?”
Ben Kincaid tugged at his collar. “Uhh … yes … but only in the most respectful way.”
Judge Lemke did not appear amused. “In the man’s trash?”
“It was part of my … legal … investigation.”
“The man’s trash?
Ben glanced back at Christina. She just shrugged. No help from that quarter. “I try to be thorough.”
“Thorough? Thorough?” Lemke was becoming mildly apoplectic. “That’s not thorough. That’s … disgusting.”
“The trash had been moved to the street corner for pickup, your honor. I can assure you there was no privacy violation.”
“And you did this for a week?”
Ben’s eyes averted. “Well … two, actually. I wanted to be … um …”
“Thorough. Yes, I know.” Judge Lemke was well into his sixties, but had been gray for the last thirty years, at least. Ben suspected Lemke thought a crest of white gave him an air of distinction, sort of like a halo. And he might be right. He wore wide black glasses that framed his jowly face and also contributed to the overall owlish appearance.
Judge Lemke was a kindly man, as judges went, but in the last decade or so his mind had begun to wander and his memory wasn’t what it once was. Still, he was a judge from the old school. He expected the formalities to be observed and wouldn’t brook any foolishness. Unfortunately, the present case seemed to be nothing but foolishness. “Could we possibly proceed with the examination of this witness, Mr. Kincaid?”
“Yes. Of course, your honor.” The witness at hand was the defendant, Michael Zyzak, who was being sued by Ben’s client, Rodney Coe, for breach of contract.
Coe tugged at Ben’s sleeve. “How’re we doin"?” Coe owned a comic book and collectibles store in town called Starfleet Emporium. He was a baby-faced entrepreneur, barely twenty-one. He was still inexperienced enough with the legal system to assume that those in the right always prevailed—which created a huge problem for Ben, who knew better.
When this case had first come through Ben’s office door, he had leapt upon it with great alacrity. It looked like a rare opportunity to escape the grit and grime of criminal law for the more tony, genteel world of civil disputes. Wrong. At the moment, Ben would’ve given a great deal to be out of here and in the middle of a nice triple homicide.
Ben addressed the witness. “Mr. Zyzak, when did you and Mr. Coe enter into the contract?”
Opposing counsel, one Darrel Snider, rose to his feet. “Objection, your honor. Assumes facts not in evidence.”
Judge Lemke nodded. “Sustained.”
“All right,” Ben said, drawing in his breath. “Let me try again. Mr. Zyzak, did you enter into a sales contract with Mr. Coe?”
“No.” Zyzak, a professional collectibles dealer, was thirtyish and extremely overweight. His face was covered with fuzzy stubble, which Ben took as evidence of either laziness or a total absence of fashion sense. Possibly both. He wore a rumpled, stained T-shirt that read SPOCK FOR PRESIDENT and wore jeans that were several sizes too small. “We never did. There was no meeting of minds.”
Ben resisted the temptation to roll his eyes. Zyzak had obviously been well coached by his lawyer., “Well then, when did you discuss the possibility of entering into a contract?”
“That would be August fifteenth of last year.”
“Fine. And a written sales contract was drawn up, was it not?”
“Sure. Coe had the thing in his back pocket when he showed up. All we needed to do was fill in the dollar amounts and sign.”