“This isn’t about that thing from last year, is it?”
“Come on, Grace.”
“Will you come over?”
“I’m not sure that’s a good idea.”
“We’ll be alone.”
“Grace,” he said. “Grace Grace Grace.”
“I didn’t mean it that way.”
“Okay,” he said.
She drove quickly, she wanted to take a shower before he got there. Maybe she did mean it that way. Except they couldn’t—it would be a dirty thing now. She felt herself tear up and blinked her eyes to clear them. Come on, nothing is fair. Don’t get in a wreck. Eyes on the prize.
Twenty minutes later she was home, but no Billy. She undressed and tried to coax the shower into the position where it wasn’t scalding and wasn’t cold. Two years working at a hardware store, but Billy hadn’t learned, or hadn’t cared, to fix the faucet. Don’t be mad at him now, she thought. But she was. She couldn’t help it. Father’s son, she thought. Your old mistakes setting up shop. Always knew it would be this way.
She soaped and rinsed quickly with no special attention. She appreciated her life, all the little things. Went out of her way to help others. That was all you were supposed to do—God was supposed to look after the rest. It had all seemed like it would work, Billy had been so close to leaving, so close to being away at college, a new life it would be hard to screw up too badly, but he had chosen to stay. Maybe that meant he had never been close at all. But still it had never made sense to her, he had loved the game, had a chance to keep playing it. Because he wouldn’t have been the star, she thought. Because he knew he wouldn’t be the big fish. It had to be more complicated than that. Football had given him a direction, something she’d never seen in him, it had made him question and push himself, but as soon as high school ended he was content to return to the way things had been since he was a child. Satisfied with things, satisfied with being taken care of. The same at twenty as he’d been at thirteen. Maybe she had always known.
Even as a toddler he’d been too brave, she could tell the difference between him and the other kids, by the time he was eleven or twelve she was sure of it, she’d come around the side of the house just in time to see him on his bike, barreling full speed down the hill in their yard, going faster and faster heading for the berm by the stream. At first she thought he was out of control but it quickly became clear he was doing it on purpose—the speed carried him up and over the berm and then high into the air over the stream, impossibly high, he let go of the bike midair and she closed her eyes. When she opened them, Billy was on his feet on the opposite side of the water, taking note of his torn shirt, collecting his bike and carefully straightening the handlebars. He crossed back over the stream, carrying the bike now, looking pleased with himself. Please God, she remembered thinking. Please God, look after my son. Meanwhile, Virgil didn’t even want to take Billy’s bike away. He wanted Billy to like him.
Now she managed to change into a skirt and put her hair up and get a little makeup on. A deep breath and she looked herself over carefully, deciding that with the fading light she looked more like herself. Had she really thought for a second about George Steiner? She took a deep breath. There was no point in giving up yet. Not on her son, anyway.
When Harris pulled up next to the house she watched him, the way he jumped down from the tall truck, he was over fifty but he moved like a much younger man, the sight of him was comforting.
She went out to the porch.
“Hi,” she said.
She was hoping he might come up and kiss her but he made no move to. He stood at the bottom of the steps. He seemed preoccupied.
“I was hoping to save you some worry,” he said, “getting Billy before the DA got to him.”
“And…”
“It’s not good news, Grace, though something tells me you already know it.”
“He came home the other night hurt pretty bad.”
He shook his head. “The other guy got it a lot worse.”
“The homeless man.” She knew it didn’t matter if the man was homeless or not, but somehow it felt like it might.
He nodded, looked beyond the trailer at something far in the distance.
“I’ve always tried to protect him. You know that.”
“Well you can tell them I did it. They can take me instead.”
“Grace. Poor Grace.” He seemed to want to come up the stairs, but didn’t.
She crossed her arms, she could feel herself choking up. “I’m serious,” she said.
He finally came up onto the porch; unsure how to comfort her, he stood there. After a short time he opened his arms to hug her but she pushed him in the chest, suddenly she was very angry at him, his awkwardness, she didn’t know why but she was.
“I’ve always done what I can,” he repeated.
“What about Isaac English? He was there with Billy.”
“He’s not a suspect and it’s better for now if the DA doesn’t know about him. I’m going over tomorrow to talk to him.”
“Is Billy being charged?”
“They don’t have his name yet, but they will.”
She felt herself fading away from him, like she was receding inside herself, like she was a stranger looking out through her own eyes.
“Like I said—”
“This isn’t about you,” she told him.
“Alright, Grace.”
It felt like a pressure building up, she knew she shouldn’t say anything but she had to let it out: “Putting in a word with the judge, your fishing buddy, isn’t exactly bending over backwards—”
Suddenly he was angry as well. “It was a lot more than a goddamn word. He could have gone up for six, eight years for what he did to that other boy.”
“That boy had a goddamn bayonet, Bud. Off an M16.”
“That boy was on his knees, Grace.”
She glared at him, still didn’t know if she was angry or just wanted to seem angry, but he was done with her. He brushed past her and went down the steps and back to his pickup.
“Wait,” she called after him. “I’m sorry.”
He shook his head and got into the truck.
She ran down after him as he closed the door.
“I’m sorry, Bud. I’ve been going crazy about this all day.”
He seemed not to hear her. After a few seconds he said, “It confuses me sometimes, why I do things for you.”
“I’m sorry.”
“You really have no idea.”
“I’m sorry,” she said. “I don’t mean to be hard to deal with.”
“You know six or seven years ago, right after you and Virgil broke up the umpteenth time, I caught him blowing through a stoplight with Billy in the passenger seat and two big spools of copper wire in the bed that he’d stolen off a job site. Not even under a tarp or anything, just sitting out in the open, four- hundred- pound spools of wire. This is back when they were putting in that industrial park up in Monessen.” He shook his head. “Didn’t even bother to put a goddamn tarp over it. So you can imagine what kind of position that put me in.”
“Bud,” she said quietly.
“I’ll bet Virgil never told you about that, did he? And of course in hindsight, it might have turned out better for Billy if I’d locked his daddy up right in front of him.”
“I know I made a mistake.”
“That was when I started making phone calls to try to find you something somewhere else.” He looked at
