She stopped talking, and waved her light on a small tombstone below us. Katie froze. The nun stepped back. Her light flashed across the stone. I read the word “Quinn” as did Katie because she sucked in deeply, covered her mouth, and began to moan. Katie fell to her knees; her index finger had a barely perceptible tremble as it traced the dates. He had been ten.
The woman stepped back into the shadows, clicked off her light, and continued, “He died”—she closed her eyes—“alone in his bed. Unable to breathe.”
Katie crumbled. She ripped off her scarf and glasses, clung to the stone. There was a long moment when she did not breathe and made no sound. The woman watched, head bowed, unmoved, and unmoving. Katie rocked back and forth.
When she did breathe, it brought with it a sound I’d only heard once in my life. It was deep, primordial, and laden with pain.
I stood behind her, listening to her soul empty itself. Tears, cries, decades of pain. After several minutes, she retched to the side and vomited. Then again. Then a third time. When empty, she dry-heaved. Katie had no persona for this. No wig. No makeup. No act. Clinging to the marble, her fingers tracing the letters of her son’s name, a lifetime of torment exited her body. And it did so violently.
The woman disappeared behind us.
I knelt, placing my arms around her. Katie’s body was drenched in sweat, torquing in spasm. She collapsed. Breaking. All the king’s horses and all the king’s men could never put her back together again.
After an hour, I lifted Katie to her feet. A spent ragdoll. She clung to me as we descended the steps. Every few minutes, a sound would exit her body. Part moan, part wail, all torment, unsurpassed pain.
I walked her through the columned courtyard and past the school. Candlelight caught my eye. A stained-glass chapel sat in a corner of the courtyard. It was small. Maybe a prayer chapel. The woman who’d let us in was kneeling at the railing. Hands folded. Head bowed. Katie stopped me, took off her watch, her diamond ring, and diamond necklace and piled them all in my hand.
I walked to the chapel and cleared my throat. The woman turned but said nothing. I walked forward and held out my hand. She extended hers. I emptied mine. She stared at it and was about to speak when I turned and left.
We exited through the same door and back into the shadows of the street. Halfway home, Katie fell. I caught her, lifted her, and carried her up the street to the château.
I set her on the bed, wet a hand towel, and wiped her face and mouth. I did that a couple of times, rinsing the rag each time. Finally, I wrapped ice inside the rag and placed it on her forehead. Her head shook and her lips moved but she never spoke. She lay still, staring at some object beyond the window. When the ice had melted, I replaced it, and placed another rag on her head. She touched my hand and whispered, “I want to die now.”
CHAPTER THIRTY
I thought back through the last several weeks. From our meeting on the balcony to the explosion in the gulf and everything since. The blame set in—I was an accessory. I’d rigged her boat, set fire to it, created the illusion. I’d helped kill Katie Quinn. I thought I was helping her. Thought I had some notion of what was best because I’d been there.
I had not.
Sweat soaked the sheets beneath her. She was played out and she could never be me. She couldn’t live the life I lived. The solitude. The constant hiding. The separation and isolation. The time left alone with her past. It’d kill her. Or, it’d kill what little remained. My reason for being in the spotlight had been taken so I retreated to the shadows, while she stepped into the spotlight to escape the pain of the shadows.
She’d already attempted suicide twice. Had the scars to prove it. The third time would be different. She’d leave nothing to chance. No doubt. The night passed. I wondered how she’d try it this time. Rope? Knife? Gun? Pills? Moving train? Or, would she just die in her sleep. Death by broken heart.
The sun came up across her face. A single blue vein throbbed on her temple. I watched her and found myself holding my breath. Four words echoed up and out of the ground. Tell me a story.
Faces I’d not seen in a decade flashed across my mind’s eye. Hope-filled faces. Jody’s face. There was a time when I thought stories helped fix broken people. When nothing was more powerful than a story. When stories were the antidote.
I looked at my hands. Wrinkled. Spotted. Too many hours in the sun.
I looked at my journal. White pages staring back at me.
The truth set in. If I had any chance of saving Katie, I had to tell her my story. It was an exchange.
My secret for hers.
Sweat trickled down her forehead. Her eyes darted left and right and her body twitched. The vein on her temple throbbed. Attempt number three was not a question of if but when.
Steady came to mind, white-robed, pipe in his hand, spittle in the corner of his mouth, lip quivering. His words echoed across the ocean. “I’m offering to cut out your gangrene.” When he’d said it, I’d believed him. I just had no idea that he’d use my own pen to do it.
I stared at my journal. The truth stared back. If this got out, if someone other than Katie read this, if she shared this or passed it along, then life would change.
Unbecoming Katie meant unbecoming me.
CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE
When I woke, she was gone. Tear-stained sheets remained. I searched downstairs but did not find her. Searched the gardens, the ballroom, the entirety of the house but found no Katie. Finally, I climbed the stairs and spiraled myself into the attic. She sat on the floor, staring out a window. Lost somewhere beyond the edge of France. I backed out, spent the day below her in my room, listening to any creak in the floor above me.
I heard none.
The next morning, I took her breakfast. When I spoke, she made no response. She lay on the floor, arms wrapped around her legs, eyes open, lost beyond the window. Dinner followed, then breakfast, then more dinner and more breakfast and two more days with no change.
I sat below her, my knees tucked beneath the desk, writing furiously. Never before had I written so much so fast. Determined to lay myself bare, I cracked open the walls, opened up, and Niagara poured forth. Into the third day, I looked up, my hand cramped, and realized that I’d written the last twenty-seven hours straight.
Two ladies came to clean the house. They didn’t seem bothered by my presence. They also went nowhere near the fourth floor. I suspected they had no idea it existed. They left in the afternoon.
Five days passed from the night at her son’s graveside. I had slept little and written much. Finally, I laid down my pen and let the sleep take me.
Heavy footsteps woke me as did heavy automobile traffic down the hill. I stared toward town. Cars lined the streets. Media trucks were parked near the center of town at the farmers’ market. Each antennae had been telescoped into the air. Noise from a television downstairs caught my ear.
I walked into the kitchen. The TV was on. A French reporter sat at a news desk. A picture of Katie flashed above his right shoulder. Above his left flashed two pictures. One of Steady. The other of Richard Thomas. I couldn’t understand a word the reporter was saying, but as she talked live video of Langeais, which was no doubt being fed from one of the trucks near the center of town, rolled across the screen. The last screen shots were a photograph taken of documents for the Connecticut-based company, Perrault and Partners, and a handwriting comparison of several of Katie’s signatures next to the signature on the Perrault and Partners documents. Thomas might not be much of a writer, but he was turning out to be a heck of an investigator.
It was only a matter of time.
I climbed to the fourth floor and Isabella emerged. Her face, posture, and body language had changed. The walls that had crumbled in the last several days and week had been rebuilt and fortified. The woman before me was the woman I’d met on the patio of Sky Seven, just after she’d launched herself over the railing. Deep black circles surrounded her eyes. She brushed past me and started desce
nding the stairs. “You have five minutes.”
“But, Katie?”
She froze. A finger in the air. Spittle in the corner of her mouth. “Don’t call me by that name. Not any name.”
“Okay, but where’re we going?”
She was terse. Protected. “Not here, and not France.”
Six minutes later, I stepped outside, my backpack over my shoulder, and found Isabella sitting in the car, engine running, one thumb tapping the wheel. I climbed in, and she spun gravel out the drive before I’d closed the door. She exited the town on dirt roads. When we pulled onto the highway outside of town, she had redlined the Mini and was shifting into fifth gear. We weren’t headed to the train station and, according to the signs, not to Paris. I didn’t ask questions and she didn’t offer answers.
Thirty minutes later, she pulled off the highway and wound down dirt roads to a small private airfield. A jet sat waiting. She parked the car, left the keys in it, and began walking to the plane. I followed.
We boarded. She spoke to the pilots. They checked our papers and eight minutes later, we were airborne and climbing. I grabbed two cups of ice, a can of Perrier, poured her a glass, and set it on the table next to her. She backhanded it, sending water, ice, and plastic slamming against my side of the plane. One of the pilots turned around. She spoke without looking. “If I want something, I’ll get it.”
I buckled in. I’d lost her.
We landed in Miami five hours later, during which time she stared out the window and spoke not a word to me. Customs boarded the plane, checked our papers, our luggage, and stamped our passports. We walked across the parking lot and into a parking garage. She pulled an electronic key fob from her purse, pushed one of the buttons, and an alarm sounded. Over my left shoulder, a black Range Rover barked to life, flashing lights and horn honking. She corrected course, and silenced the alarm.
We loaded up and drove in the same shrieking silence in which we’d been living for the last several hours. We drove out of the terminal and onto the highway. A billboard rose up on our left. Her picture emblazoned across it. The sign read: KATIE WE LOVE YOU. LONG LIVE THE QUEEN. She changed lanes, punched the accelerator, and climbed the ramp onto the turnpike. The supercharged engine roared. We passed a hundred and thirty before she eased off. She exited at Tamiami Trail and pulled into the parking lot of a Miccosukee Indian casino. She skidded to a stop but didn’t bother putting the car in park.
The fragrance and feeling of France seemed a lifetime away. She spoke without looking. “Out.”
“Why don’t you come with me?”
Her thumb tapped the wheel.
“You have any idea where you’re going? What you’ll do?”
Still no answer.
“Kati—”
She raised a finger and shook her head once. A single tear welled, broke loose, and trickled down.
I opened the door, stepped out, and pulled the journal from my backpack. I hefted the journal. An offering. I laid it on the seat and slowly removed my hand. She wouldn’t look at me. I held on to the door handle, finally speaking. “This was once me.”
She spun the tires, and the engine whined. The Range Rover became a black speck, then disappeared. I shouldered my backpack and began walking to Chokoloskee. In my mind, I reread the cover letter, wondering if she’d read it:
Dear Katie,
I used to think that a story was something special. That it was the one key that could unlock the broken places in us. What you hold in your hand is the story of a broken writer who attempted to kill himself and failed who meets a broken actress who attempted to kill herself and failed and somewhere in that intersection of cracked hearts and shattered souls, they find that maybe broken is not the end of things, but the beginning. Maybe broken is what happens before you become unbroken. What’s more, maybe our broken pieces don’t fit us. Maybe all of us are standing around with a bag of the stuff that used to be us and we’re wondering what to do with it and until we meet somebody else whose bag is full and heart empty we can’t figure out what to do with our pieces. And standing there, face to face, my bag of me over my shoulder, and your bag of you over your shoulder, we figure out that maybe my pieces are the very pieces needed to mend you and your pieces are the very pieces needed to mend me but until we’ve been broken we don’t have the pieces to mend each other. Maybe in the offering we discover the meaning, and value, of being broken. Maybe checking out and retreating to an island is the most selfish thing the broken can do because somewhere on the planet is another somebody standing around holding a bag of all the jagged, painful pieces of themselves and they can’t get whole without you.
There was a time in my life when I unselfishly offered my gift. Risked everything. Emptied myself. And, when I did, I found that more bubbled up. The well never ran empty. But then, life tore my heart in two and I swore I’d never offer it again. That I’d never risk that.
Maybe love, the real kind, the kind only wished for in whispers and the kind our hearts are hardwired to want, is opening up your bag of you and risking the most painful statement ever uttered between the stretched edges of the universe: “This was once me.”
Maybe that in and of itself is the story.
THE LIFE AND DEATH OF PETER WYETT BY PETER WYETT
I have no memory of my mother. Or father. My records state that my mother was raped by an old boyfriend. The rape produced me. My mother kept me around for about forty-eight hours and dumped me in a trailer where I was found by a homeless guy looking for a roof. After that, I did the foster home dance where I ingested mostly cigarette smoke and fast food. At the age of two, I was found malnourished in a soiled crib so they placed me in a different home—either my fifth or sixth—and circumcised me. For reasons I can’t explain, I developed a stutter about the age of four, but I have no memory of ever not having it. While I was “fostered” and moved around a good bit, and occasionally held by well-meaning and well-intentioned people, I have no memory of being wanted. Or, needed. Because in the end, I wasn’t.
Nobody picked me.
I was a daydreamer. Quiet. Unseen. Stages scared me. Shadows did not. I sat in the back and watched the world out of the corners of my eyes. What I saw and heard entered through my senses then bounced around inside, looking for a place to attach. To settle. To mean. But that was the problem. I didn’t know how—or couldn’t—assign meaning. What something “meant” wasn’t always clear. I’m not sure but I think parents are a big part of this equation. I think they’re supposed to lead us in figuring out how to understand what something means. It’s as if meaning is a baton passed down. It’s like fishing—you can read the maps until you’re blue in the face, but the fine print is what really matters. On the bottom of every fishing chart I’ve ever read, it states: “Local knowledge is necessary to avoid holes and find exact fish locations.” This is why people pay fishing guides to take them fishing. Local knowledge.
As a kid, I didn’t have a guide and little local knowledge of how to make sense of the world. What I did have, I stumbled upon. This made conversations tough. Sarcasm and humor a complete mystery. Multiple choice tests a disaster. I lived in a world without terra firma. Nothing to stand on. To push against. If I asked myself, “What does that mean?” once, then I asked myself a thousand times. Sometimes at night, I’d close my eyes and cover my ears to slow the world. Make the bad man stop.
A growing cloud with no way to rain.
In school, I sat in the back, seldom raising my hand and never raising my voice. But the absence of verbal expression did not mean I was dull to the needs of others. Didn’t mean I couldn’t think and feel. Didn’t absorb. I thought and felt just fine. Absorbed like a sponge. My peripheral vision was twenty-ten. I cried when strangers hurt. Laughed when others smiled.
It’s what entered the heart that muted it.
When nobody wants you, all you have is hope. Hope that somebody might. This thought alone got me out of bed for the first eighteen years of my life. It was the stuff I fe
d on. We all did. We could skip food and water but not hope.
The inability to make sense of my life made childhood a bit rough. ’Course, the stutter didn’t help, either. For the most part I kept my mouth shut and seldom spoke, even when spoken to. But that doesn’t mean I didn’t want to talk. I did.
I developed two habits. Since I had no real home and had no one waiting on me, I went where I knew I’d never be alone. The library. And since I was a kid, I started in the kids’ section. I read everything I could get my hands on. Anything that would take me some place other than where I was. Winnie-the-Pooh, Peter Pan, The Chronicles of Narnia, The Wizard of Oz, The Velveteen Rabbit, Peter Rabbit, Where the Wild Things Are, The Polar Express, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, Little House on the Prairie, The Secret Garden, The Boxcar Children, The Indian in the Cupboard, The Giver, The Wind in the Willows, James and the Giant Peach, Anne of Green Gables, Stuart Little. I even read Heidi and Little Women when nobody was looking. As I got older, I moved up to thicker, longer books with smaller text and fewer to no pictures. Where the Red Fern Grows, The Hobbit, The Call of the Wild, To Kill a Mockingbird, Huckleberry Finn, and Tom Sawyer, then Great Expectations, Les Misérables, The Sacketts, Moby-Dick, The Count of Monte Cristo, The Three Musketeers, Le Morte d’Arthur, Robinson Crusoe.
The library was magical because every time I walked through the door, there were literally thousands of voices ready and willing to have a conversation with me. I walked through the door, stared at all those stacks and bindings, and whispered, “Tell me a story.”
And they did.
I found that I belonged at the library. My dream became to add my voice to the hundreds of thousands I heard around me. Which meant I read even more. Every day I made a new friend.