CHAPTER ONE
Gabe
“Tis in my memory lock’d,
And you yourself shall keep the key of it.”
-Shakespeare
Before I was diagnosed with an allegedly inoperable brain tumor and nearly died, I had no interest in the obituary page.
I was young and immortal. I was going to live forever, go out in a blaze of glory, and I couldn’t care less how many unlucky people had the misfortune to die on a given week.
After the surgery, I read the Giffney Gazette’s obituary page every Sunday morning, thumbing through the snapshots of lives lost as I linger over my coffee. It was only luck that kept me from gracing these pages. I feel obligated to read every entry, like I owe it to the people less fortunate than myself to read about the children and grandchildren they left behind, and the many adventures they had before they got old and set in their ways and hunkered down to waste the rest of their lives watching television.
But until today, I haven’t known any of the recently deceased personally.
When I read that Charles Edwin Cooney has died at age fifty-four, leaving behind five children, and one grandchild, I can’t say that I’m sad, but I feel the news. It hits me physically, tightening my throat, making my stomach clench around my second cup of coffee.
Chuck is dead, and one more avenue to finding Caitlin is closed forever.
Not like you’ve been looking too hard lately, anyway.
“What’s wrong, dear?” My mother leans across the table, peering into my face, as attuned to my moods now as she has been since the moment I came out of surgery.
I don’t remember my mother being this concerned about my emotional well-being last summer—or any of the twenty years before—but Deborah is clearly trying to make the most of our second chance. She’s determined to be the plugged-in parent she never was when I was growing up, no matter how irritating I find it, or how uncomfortable and strange this forced intimacy is for the both of us.
“I’m fine,” I say, folding my paper in half. “Just read that Charles Cooney died.”
I watch her face as she reacts, but her eyes are cool and unreadable, the way they always are when the Cooney name comes up in conversation. “Well, that’s sad.”
“It is,” I say. “He was in his early fifties.”
“That’s what hard living will do to a person,” my dad offers, not looking up from his own section of the paper, apparently unmoved by the news that my ex-girlfriend’s father is dead.
According to my parents, they didn’t know Caitlin and I were dating last summer. I kept our relationship a secret from them, and they have no clue what happened to her, or why we ended things. They’re very convincing, but I know they’re lying. I remember sitting next to Caitlin at this very table, running my hand up and down the silky soft skin of her thigh, thinking about all the things I wanted to do to her as soon as we were free of my parents.
But Deborah and Aaron don’t know I’m recovering my memories.
Or that I was recovering them.
Since the night I saw Caitlin with the bruises on her throat, I’ve done my best to let sleeping demons lie. I keep my thoughts in the present, and steer clear of places that remind me of Caitlin. I take a sleeping pill before I go to bed, and I fuck Kimmy with a certain degree of reserve, not wanting to lose control and swing too close to the edge of the chasm. I don’t want to glimpse the skeletons I sense are littering the ground on the other side. I’m afraid I’ll learn something about myself that will make the surgery, and all the days I’ve fought to recover, pointless.
If I killed her, I don’t deserve to be alive.
If I killed her, there is only one course of action I can take, and that would certainly be a waste, though I hear a good number of people like me do commit suicide. The post-operative fog, the feelings of alienation, and the sense that you will never be the person you were before—the person everyone in your life wants you to be so badly—is too much for a lot of people. They would rather check out, letting a bullet finish the job the tumor started.
“You won’t go to the funeral will you?” Deborah asks, breaking into my thoughts.
I shake my head. “Why would I?”
Deborah looks flustered, but only for a second. By the time she speaks, her cool has returned. “Of course not. Don’t know what I was thinking.” She smiles. “What about church? Are you joining us this morning? Might lift your spirits.”
“My spirits are fine,” I say, forcing a smile. “And I think I’d rather worship in my own way today. I’ll probably take a ride, and meet you for lunch after.”
My father chuckles. “I wish I could get away with worshiping in my own way.”
“Your brand of worship involves way too much time on a fishing boat,” my mother says, taking another sip of her coffee. “You’re only home two days a week as it is. I’m not going to give up an entire day to the catfish in Lake Anderson.”
“You could go with him,” I suggest, though it’s hard to imagine my perfectly pulled together mother baking in the sun on a fishing boat.
Deborah raises one thin, blond brow. The dubious expression on her face makes me smile. Sometimes I like Deborah, even if she is a manipulative liar. Considering my own, checkered history, I’m not really in any position to judge.
“Sorry, must have been the tumor hole talking.” I stand and circle the table, leaning down to kiss her cheek. “See you at noon.”
“We’re going to Peabody’s on the square,” Deborah says, patting my arm. “The Jamisons are coming, and I’ve only got reservations for six, so don’t bring a guest.”
I clench my jaw, biting back the smartass remark on the tip of my tongue. I know which “guest” Deborah is talking about, but there’s no point in getting into an argument about Kimmy. If Kimmy and I hadn’t run into my mother at the grocery store last week, Deborah never would have met my latest fling.
Kimmy and I are fuck buddies, nothing more. I don’t plan on keeping in touch after I leave for school, and Kimmy doesn’t even know how long she’ll be in town. She has a six-month lease, and a job as a cocktail waitress, but no real ties to Giffney. This is just the place she ended up when her money for bus fare ran out. She has dreams of moving home to Louisiana and opening a fabric store, and I have dreams of going back to the university, picking up where I left off, and pretending this long, strange detour never happened.
Or at least that’s one of the lies I tell myself.
What I really want is something very different.
What I want is for this hole inside of me to be filled up with something. Someone. I want to know Caitlin wasn’t a dream, and that I’m not a monster.
And so, when I hear my parents’ car pull down the driveway on their way to church, I don’t go to the barn to saddle my horse. I head down to the Beamer and drive into town, across the railroad tracks, to the ranch house where Caitlin used to live.