Andrew Gross - Eyes Wide Open

I felt like I was cheating on her, concealing the truth.

I didn’t know if she even believed me, but it didn’t matter. I just needed to hear her voice. “I’m okay,” I told her over and over. “I promise. I am.”

But something must have made her think I wasn’t being entirely truthful. Maybe my shakiness.

“You say Gabby was in the car?” she asked after a protracted pause.

“She’s going to be okay too. Look, everything’s finally all out in the open now anyway. I’ll be back soon.”

“What’s in the open, Jay?” Worry turned to frustration. “This wasn’t an accident, was it?”

I didn’t answer.

“Jay, I don’t even know if I know you anymore. What happened out there? What have you been keeping from me?”

“I’ll tell you soon, Kathy. I promise. I know I’ve been acting crazy to you.” I didn’t know how to explain it now. I felt like a fool hanging up.

I felt a lot of things slipping away right then and didn’t do much to stop it. One of them was Kathy’s trust.

O ne of the sheriff’s cars drove me to the hospital. Inside the ER, Gabby was behind a partition receiving oxygen.

I introduced myself to the attending physician, a red-haired guy named Paulson, and he briefed me on how she was. Smoke inhalation. First-degree burns along her arms and neck. Lucky it was nothing more. Shock.

Charlie was already there. He was basically sobbing, resting his head on the gurney.

I said, “They’re going to keep her overnight, just to be sure.” I put my hand on his shoulder. “They’ve given her something for the shock.”

He nodded, wiping his tears on the sheet. Pretty much all I saw was the back of his long gray hair.

I leaned down and brushed my hand against Gabby’s cheek. “How’re you doing?”

She blinked at me, her eyes a little glazed. “I was really scared, Jay. Really scared. I said my prayers. I thought this was it.”

“You ought to sleep,” I told her. “They’re going to admit you and get you in a room, just for observation.”

“Thank you, Jay.” She reached out and took hold of my hand. Her dull eyes brightened. “Thank you for saving my life.”

I winked, smiling at her. “ No problema, senora. ”

Gabby smiled back, but weakly. She petted her husband’s head. “Charlie, you go home. You have to talk to your brother now. You have to tell him. Everything. Do you understand? Everything you have not told me. Our son, Charlie… our son’s soul will never rest. He has to sleep in peace.”

Charlie nodded, wiping his nose with the back of his hand, and lifted his head.

“You go home with Jay. You tell him. I don’t blame you for anything, my husband. Not one thing.”

Charlie pushed himself up. “I’ll come and get you tomorrow,” he said.

“Good,” she said, her voice a little hazy from the medication. “Now I’ll get some sleep.”

I drove Charlie’s clunky Taurus. We didn’t say a word for most of the trip. He pretty much just sat there staring straight ahead. Something he had bottled up inside him for decades was slowly rising to the surface. We turned off Fourth down the less traveled road that led to the tracks. I knew I didn’t have to say anything-Gabriella already had.

On Division, I slowed before turning into his carport.

“Stop here, Jay,” Charlie told me.

I pulled up on the side of the street.

He was silent a moment, puffing out his cheeks. Worry etched into his eyes. “I can’t live knowing I hurt her.” He turned to me. “She’s all I have left. It’s hard enough to bear to think of Evan…”

Tears streamed down into his beard. He mashed his palms up against his face.

And then it came. Like a flood. Everything I’d been waiting for.

“I had nothing to do with it, Jay-the murders. Nothing.” His eyes were swollen and contrite. “I swear. I was a lost soul back then. You know that. I was crazy. I felt at home there. All I ever wanted was to make music. It’s all I ever did well. I felt I had a chance there

…”

“Why did they want to make your record, Charlie?”

“Because it was Russell’s way.” He avoided my eyes. “It was his crazy way of getting everything out. Russell had his own songs. He felt if he could get a record made, the world had to listen. It was his way of reaching people. His stupid fucking message. The guy was insane, Jay. We were all insane…”

“When did you really leave there, Charlie?”

He pressed his hands on the top of his forehead and pushed, like he was forcing the demons out. “After it all took place. Everything started to get crazy there, Jay. Russell was ratcheting up all this fear. Tightening the screws he had on people. Everyone was freaked out on the fear that the storm troopers were coming to raid the ranch. The drugs didn’t help. They only fed the paranoia. The music was going to die forever. The music was love, Jay. I know you don’t see it that way, but it was. But I was never part of what took place. Not for a second. That was all his people. His inner circle. The ones closest to him.”

“Why would Houvnanian want to hurt you, Charlie?”

He just kept staring straight ahead and put his hands over his face.

I reached across and touched his shoulder. “You’re Chase, aren’t you?”

He didn’t answer. He only turned. A kind of light flickered in his eyes, as if he was relieved to finally hear me. “How did you know about that?”

“You turned them in,” I said. “Russell, Susan, all the rest. To Zorn and Cooley. You led the police to their bloody clothes in the marsh. And then the weapons… They think you betrayed them.”

He didn’t have to say a thing. The answer was etched on his tearstained face. He smiled. As if a lifelong weight was finally lifted from him.

“I’ve hid out for more than thirty years… More than half my life, Jay. Thirty-seven years of telling myself I didn’t matter anymore. Afraid that one day they would find me. Or Gabby or Evan. I was afraid to even let Evan play ball. To let him have a life. To ever leave this shit hole. I knew one day they would find me. Russell promised they would and they did. That’s what Zorn told Evan. That they knew we were here… That’s what my son came and told me.”

He put his arm across his face and started to sob.

I drew him to me. “It’s okay, Charlie.” I knew he felt responsible for Evan. “You couldn’t have known.”

“No.” He turned and looked at me. “It’s not okay, Jay. There’s more…”

His eyes grew sunken and shadowed, like a moon crossing the sun in an eclipse. “You wanted in, Jay, now there’s no turning back. Park the car. There’s something I need to show you inside, little brother. Come on in.”

I parked the Taurus underneath the carport and followed Charlie in.

He went into the living room and knelt beside the chest that contained his old keepsakes. The old pictures of his family back in Miami. His medical diagnoses, kept like grade school report cards. The Billboard Top 40 sheet he had shown me.

He pulled out a thick folder and leafed through dog-eared sheets of music and lyrics until he came upon a manila envelope. He took it out and handed it to me, barely looking me in the eye.

“I got this about a week ago,” he said, shrugging. “A couple of days after Evan died… I can’t remember exactly when. I didn’t know what to do with it, so I hid it. I didn’t even tell Gabby. I was scared. I knew they had found me. I didn’t want to believe they had anything to do with my son.”

The envelope was addressed to Charlie. No return address.

“You have to believe me, Jay, if I knew this could have ever hurt anyone… Evan, Gabby…” Tears glistened in Charlie’s slate-gray eyes. “ You. I would never have kept it to myself…”