Harlan Coben - Gone for Good

I did not know how much of this was a lie. But I decided to lie right back. "I'll help," I said.

"Good," he said. "I'll make sure the charges against you are dropped right away."

I did not say thank you.

"We'll drive you back if you'd like."

I wanted to refuse, but I did not want to raise any warning flags. He wanted to deceive, well, I could try that too. So I said that would be fine. When I rose, he said, "I understand that Sheila's funeral is coming up."

"Yes."

"Now that there are no charges against you, you're free to travel."

I said nothing.

"Are you going to attend?" he asked.

This time I told the truth. "I don't know."

I couldn't stay at home waiting for I-don't-know-what, so in the morning, I went to work. It was a funny thing. I expected to be fairly worthless, but that wasn't the case at all. Entering Covenant House I can only compare the experience to an athlete strapping on his "game face" when he enters the arena. These kids, I reminded myself, deserve nothing less than my best. Cliche, sure, but I convinced myself and faded contentedly into my work.

Sure, people came up to me and offered their condolences. And yes, Sheila's spirit was everywhere. There were few spots in this dwelling that did not hold a memory of her. But I was able to play through it. This is not to say I forgot about it or no longer wanted to pursue where my brother was or who killed Sheila or the fate of her daughter, Carly. That was all still there. But today there was not much I could do. I had called Katy's hospital room, but the blockade was still in place. Squares had a detective agency running Sheila's Donna White pseudonym through the airline computers and thus far, they had not gotten a hit. So I waited.

I volunteered to work the outreach van that night. Squares joined me I had already filled him in on everything and together we disappeared into the dark. The children of the street were lit up in the blue of the night. Their faces were flat, no lines, sleek. You see an adult vagrant, a bag lady, a man with a shopping cart, someone lying in a box, someone begging for change with a diner paper coffee cup, and you know that they are homeless. But the thing about adolescents, about the fifteen- and sixteen-year-olds who run away from abuse, who embrace addiction or prostitution or insanity, is that they blend in better. With adolescents you cannot tell if they are homeless or just wandering.

Despite what you hear, it is not that easy to ignore the plight of the adult homeless. It is too in-your-face. You may divert your eyes and keep walking and remind yourself that if you gave in, if you tossed them a dollar or some quarters, they'd just buy booze or drugs or whatever rationale sails your boat, but what you did, the fact that you just hurried by a human being in need, still registers, still causes a pang. Our kids, however, are truly invisible. They are seamlessly sewn into the night. You can neglect and there are no aftereflects.

Music blared, something with a heavy Latin beat. Squares handed me a stack of phone cards to hand out. We hit a dive on Avenue A known for its heroin and started our familiar rap. We talked and cajoled and listened. I saw the gaunt eyes. I saw the way they scratched away at the imaginary bugs under their skin. I saw the needle marks and the sunken veins.

At four in the morning, Squares and I were back in the van. We had not spoken to each other much in the last few hours. He looked out the window. The children were still out there. More seemed to come out as though the bricks bled them.

"We should go to the funeral," Squares said.

I did not trust my voice.

"You ever see her out here?" he asked. "Her face when she worked with these kids?"

I had. And I knew what he meant.

"You don't fake that, Will."

"I wish I could believe that," I said.

"How did Sheila make you feel?"

"Like I was the luckiest man in the world," I said.

He nodded. "You don't fake that either," he said.

"So how do you explain it all?"

"I don't." Squares shifted into drive and pulled into the street. "But we're doing so much with our heads. Maybe we just need to remember the heart too."

I frowned. "That sounds good, Squares, but I'm not sure it makes any sense."

"How about this then: We go to pay our respects to the Sheila we knew."

"Even if that was just a lie?"

"Even if. But maybe we also go to learn. To understand what happened here."

"Weren't you the one who said we might not like what we find?"

"Hey, that's right." Squares wriggled his eyebrows. "Damn, I'm good."

I smiled.

"We owe it to her, Will. To her memory."

He had a point. It came back to closure. I needed answers. Maybe someone at the funeral could supply some and maybe the funeral in and of itself, the act of burying my faux beloved, would help the healing process. I couldn't imagine it, but I was willing to give anything a shot.

"And there's still Carly to consider." Squares pointed out the window. "Saving kids. That's what we're all about, isn't it?"

I turned to him. "Yeah," I said. And then: "And speaking of children."

I waited. I could not see his eyes he often, like the old Corey Hart song, wore his sunglasses at night but his grip on the steering wheel tightened.

"Squares?"

His tone was clipped. "We're talking about you and Sheila here."

"That's the past. Whatever we learn, it won't change that."

"Let's concentrate on one thing at a time, okay?"

"Not okay," I said. "This friendship thing. It's sup posed to be a two-way street."

He shook his head. He started the van and drove. We fell into silence. I kept my eyes on his pockmarked, unshaven face. The tattoo seemed to darken. He was biting his lower lip.

After some time he said, "I never told Wanda."

"About having a child?"

"A son," Squares said softly.

"Where is he now?"

He took one hand off the wheel and scratched at something on his face. The hand, I noticed, had a quake to it. "He was six feet under before he was four years old."

I closed my eyes.

"His name was Michael. I wanted nothing to do with him. I only saw him twice. I left him alone with his mother, a seventeen-year-old drug addict you wouldn't trust to watch a dog. When he was three years old, she got stoned and drove straight into a semi. Killed them both. I still don't know if it was suicide or not."

"I'm so sorry," I said weakly.

"Michael would be twenty-one now."

I fumbled for something to say. Nothing was working, but I tried anyway. "That was a long time ago," I said. "You were just a kid."

"Don't try to rationalize, Will."

"I'm not. I just mean" I had no idea how to put it "if I had a child, I'd ask you to be the godfather. I'd make you the guardian if anything happened to me. I wouldn't do that out of friendship or loyalty. I'd do that to be selfish. For the sake of my kid."

He kept driving. "There are some things you can never forgive."

"You didn't kill him, Squares."

"Sure, right, I'm totally blameless."

We hit a red light. He flipped on the radio. Talk station. One of those radio infomercials selling a miracle diet drug. He snapped it off. He leaned forward and rested his forearms on the top of the steering wheel.

"I see the kids out here. I try to rescue them. I keep thinking that if I save enough, I don't know, maybe it will change things for Michael. Maybe I can somehow save him." The sunglasses came off. His voice grew harder. "But what I know is what I've always known is that no matter what I do, I'm not worth saving."

I shook my head. I tried to think of something comforting or enlightening or at least distracting, but nothing broke through the filter. Every line I came up with sounded hackneyed and canned. Like most tragedies, it explained so much and yet told you nothing about the man.