"Evan didn"t do it, Jay." His eyes showed a sparkle of vindication. "He didn"t jump. She pushed him. He said he wanted to come back down. To be with us. It was just as I said all along, right?" He smiled. "I"m sorry, little brother, for dragging you into all this."
"You didn"t drag me, Charlie." Tears in my eyes, I squeezed his b.l.o.o.d.y hand. "I just wanted to help."
"Help?" He smiled affectionately. "How could you possibly help me?"
"I know."
"I want to touch her, Jay." His hand fell to the floor and reached toward her body. "I need to feel her one more time. Please . . ."
I pulled Gabby"s arm toward him and he was able to press his fingers over her cold palm.
"She"s all I have. She"s the only thing in my life I didn"t manage to destroy. Because she loved me, Jay. And Evan too."
"I know she did, Charlie. I know."
"I hope your boy is okay, Jay. I really do. You know that Evan always liked him . . . He really-"
The sound of the phone ringing pierced the room. Suddenly I remembered I had told Kathy to call here. About Max. My heart picked up.
"I"ll be right back." Holding my side, I went over to the table where the phone was. Nervously I picked it up. I was so scared, I could barely get a sound out of my mouth. "Kath?"
"I have him, Jay!"
"You what?"
"I have him. Maxie"s okay!"
"You do?" My eyes immediately flooded with grateful tears. The words soared through me like the happiest thing I had ever heard, just as they had on my wedding day when Kathy said, "I do," or when the doctor who delivered Max said, "Dr. Erlich, you"ve got a great-looking boy!"
"He"s here. He was just on his way back home. From Chris"s. I don"t know what you thought, honey, but Max"s safe. You want to hear his voice?"
"Yes," I said tearfully. "Yes. Put him on." He"s safe.
"Hey, Dad." I heard my boy"s uncomprehending tone, about as droning and impa.s.sive as if I had just stuck my head in his room and asked if he had a good day. "What"s going on?"
"I don"t know, Max, I just-" I put my hand to my face and the tears started to come unchecked. Some were from absolute joy, at knowing everything was somehow going to be okay, at making it through it all alive. And some were from grief. For Evan and Gabby. How it had cost people I loved their lives.
For Charlie.
"Dad, you okay?"
"Yeah, I"m okay," I said. I caught myself and sniffed against the sobs. "I love you, Max."
"I love you too, Dad," he said, unsure.
"Put Mom back on."
I waited a few seconds, trying to regain my composure.
"Jay?"
"Some things have happened here, Kathy. Bad things. And I want you to be protected. Call the police. I"ll be in touch. I promise. Soon."
Kathy pressed, scared. "What kinds of things, Jay?"
I didn"t know why Dev had said what he did, about my son, if he didn"t have him. Or why he had let me live with just a mark on my hand when everyone else had died.
Or what he meant by You still have work to do, doc. Things yet to find out. The jack of hearts.
I still felt fear.
"I love you, honey," was all I said. "I gotta go. I"ll call you, I promise."
I hung up and went back to see Charlie. "He"s safe!" I said, kneeling back down. "Max is okay . . ."
But Charlie"s eyes were fixed and still, strands of long, graying hair covering his face, a peaceful stare.
Peaceful, maybe for the first time ever. His fingers curled warmly around Gabby"s.
I started to cry.
"Oh, Charlie . . ." I sat down next to him and put my arm around his shoulders. I drew his bearded face gently down to me.
One of the policemen came over. He stood above me and looked at me, as if trying to sort it out. "Your brother?"
"Yeah." I nodded. I stroked his face gently and spread the hair out of his eyes. "And my friend."
PART IV.
Chapter Seventy-Nine.
I spent the next two days in the hospital, regaining my strength. That and undergoing about a dozen interviews with the police.
The bullet Dev had put in my side had gone clean through. Nothing vital damaged, like I"d thought. I had a grade-four concussion from the beating he"d given me and a bone was fractured in my jaw, which had to be wired. My hand required twenty st.i.tches.
Other than that I was okay.
The rest of my time there was taken up with the police. Five people had died, and I was the only one who"d survived. I was deposed by the local detectives maybe a dozen times. Even the FBI.
I was very sad to learn what had happened to Don Sherwood. Over the past week, I had grown to look at him as a friend, and who knows, maybe he felt the same about me. I realized that if I hadn"t drawn him in against his will, he would still be alive. Of course, that would have been true for any of us-even Charlie, if he had gone early on to the police and told them all he knew. I allowed myself to feel some solace in the suspicion that the detective"s transplanted liver wasn"t altogether holding up and that he had, in the end, felt he was doing something right in being part of all this. I truly wished he was there to see how it all ended and to tell me, for the umpteenth time, that I could head home. In my thoughts, though I am not much of a believer in such things, I imagined maybe he"d been rewarded and had joined his wife and son. Maybe they were a part of his last thoughts-if they weren"t spent cursing me. I pictured that might have made him shake his head just a bit and smile.
Kathy flew out that next day, after I finally told her about Charlie and Gabby and everything that had happened. She kept Max safe with her parents, under the watch of a private security agent. When she stepped in the room I was in bed, still a little woozy from all the sedatives.
"Oh, Jay," she uttered sadly, looking at my puffed-up face, all black and blue and swollen. She came up to the bed with tears in her eyes and brushed her hand softly against my face.
"The side hurts more." I tried to smile.
"Don"t," she said. "Don"t say a word. I know." She sat down on the side of the bed.
"I"d take you through it all, but my jaw"s been wired shut."
She didn"t answer. She didn"t even smile. I just saw the tears well lovingly and the sorrow on her face and I reached out my hand to hers and wrapped her fingers in mine.
"I"m sorry," I said.
She took a breath and nodded. "I"m sorry too."
"For what?"
"Because I judged them." She meant Charlie and Gabby. "And because I guess I judged you too. I wasn"t there for you, honey, and it almost cost you your life."
I squeezed her. I tried to say in my look that it didn"t matter. That I was just glad she was there. "I thought they were different, Kath . . . But they weren"t. They were the same. They loved Evan just as we love Max and Sophie. And it killed them, the same as it would kill us if we lost one of them."
"I know." She reached into her purse and took out a small frame. "I didn"t know what to bring, so I just brought this."
In it was a picture of the four of us, on the deck of our place in Amagansett, the kids sitting on the railing of the deck, Maxie"s cap turned backward, Sophie in a Coldplay T-shirt, the sun on their faces.
"I would have brought the Bob Seger CD, but I figured it wasn"t exactly a lucky charm . . ."
I laughed. "Don"t," I said, pointing to my jaw. There were a lot of things that rushed into my heart at that moment, but only one made it to my lips.
"Yes, it was."
Kathy rested her head against my stomach and I stroked her hair.
d.a.m.n lucky.
Thursday, they let me leave. I wanted to hop on a plane as fast as I could-be back in my own house, my own world, with the kids.
But there was one last thing I had to do.
I had Charlie"s and Gabby"s remains cremated at the same mortuary where we had visited Evan only a few days before.
Charlie and I had always been different. Different roots sprung from the same tree. I had had love and support, and I guess I wasn"t bipolar, and things just worked out for me.
Charlie had been contentious from the start, and life didn"t treat him well.
Yet in the end we were the same. And it had been Charlie who saved me. I meant what I said to that cop: I hadn"t just lost my brother; I"d also lost my friend.
I knew exactly what the two of them would have wanted. Seeing their hands joined at the end told me so even more.
It was only a matter of where.
That was my decision.
The morning of our flight home, we drove back out to Morro Bay.
"It"s huge!" Kathy said as we got within sight, driving down to Embarcadero. I saw her eyes widen behind her sungla.s.ses. "And it"s beautiful."
"I know. There"s a legend that when G.o.d created the valley here this was where he stopped to sit. Apparently, there used to be pelicans all around here. And peregrines. The shallow bay was kind of a feeding ground for them. But something"s driven them away."
"What?" Kathy asked.
I shook my head. "I don"t know."
We drove down the inlet and parked near the same spot I had parked with Charlie and Gabby. From the backseat, I took out the three cardboard boxes we had brought. Each contained a few ounces of gray, silty ash.
I pointed. "This way."
We walked out into the shadow of the gigantic mound, past the handful of tourists and fishermen who were gathered there. Past the chain-link fence. Kathy looked at me, unsure. "You sure this is okay?"
I nodded. "Yes."
We made our way onto the tiny, gray cove of beach and the large, jagged rocks. I looked for the narrow path that went up the slope. The sun was shining. The surf was up and occasionally a wave crashed over the outer rocks, sending spray into the breeze.
"You need some help?" Kathy asked, navigating her way across the rocks.
"No, I"m okay." I knew my gait was a bit unsteady. But I also knew where I wanted to go. I looked up and saw the promontory halfway up the cliff and pointed. "Here it is . . ."
We looked at the jigsaw of boulders at the bottom of the rock.
This was where they had found him.
We stood, staring up at the enormous wall, waves spraying spectacularly.
I thought of Charlie and Gabby climbing over the same rocks just a few days ago, and a burning sensation rose up at the back of my eyes.
"It feels like a good place, Jay. It really does." Kathy smiled, seeing my eyes well up. "I think they"d be happy here . . ."
"Okay."
We took out a container the mortuary had provided us and opened each of the cardboard boxes containing Charlie, Gabby, and Evan"s remains. We poured a slow stream at first, then steadier, letting the flow of ashes all merge into one.
My brother, his wife, and their son.
When we were done, we just stood there.
Kathy shrugged. "You ought to say something."
I hadn"t thought about saying anything. So much had happened. All that seemed to come to mind was "Here"s to Charlie and Gabby and Evan. Your lives all took a different path. It wasn"t a straight one, but you all ended up in the same place. The right place. With each other."
"Rest in peace, guys," Kathy said. "At last." She looked at me. The spray from an incoming wave shot over the rocks.