“Ron?” The sharp edge to my voice makes him jump and I clutch my scarf at my chest.
He looks up at me and runs his hands through his salt and pepper wavy locks with a worried look as he stands and strides down the front hall, meeting me just after the opening to the dark front living room. “Lyn.”
“What’s wrong?” I search his face as he gives me a slight frown. “The door was open,” I say, as if I need more evidence for the reason I’ve been flooded with dread. “Is my mom okay?”
“She’s upstairs resting.” His sad eyes finally stare into mine. “I don’t remember leaving the door open.” He shakes his head and licks his lips. “Now, listen, your mom needs space and I need to tell you something. I’m here for you, okay? But your mom just needs some time.”
“Just tell me—what’s going on?” My voice shakes.
He shoves his hands in his faded jean pockets and leans against the wall. His chest heaves as he steals a glance upstairs before focusing back on me and releasing a deep sigh. “Byron Somers was found dead this morning.”
Byron?
The name of the man who took my father’s life, and still, it took a moment for me to place it. Have I really shoved what happened so deep down inside me that I can’t recognize the name of my father’s killer right away?
“How?” I whisper as a wave of guilt rocks me and my legs wobble.
It feels like a chance I might have had at something is slipping away and I can’t place it.
“One of the other inmates… they think,” his low voice grumbles. “They don’t know who.”
“How did Mom find out? When?” But I already know. This morning.
“We got a call just after you’d left for work this morning. Your mom answered and then handed it to me. She had to sit down.” He rubs at the back of his neck. “She was in shock, I think—still is.”
The man who took my father’s life had his own life taken. Did Byron end his own suffering or was he killed? Was whatever happened to him as violent as what he did to my dad?
The lump in my throat returns and I can’t swallow it down as I remember my father on the kitchen floor with a knife in his chest, his shirt soaked in blood—warm blood.
My vision is blurry from tears and I can’t focus on Ron anymore. I cover my face with my hands and use the darkness to wonder as usual.
Did someone take more mercy on my father’s killer than my father got? Mom would think so. He was supposed to rot in jail for the rest of his miserable life.
“Lyn?” Ron asks.
I drop my purse on the front hall bench and a scratching comes from the back door as I take off my jacket and scarf. “Stevie,” I whisper.
Ron nods and steps away with hesitation, glancing over his shoulder at me before disappearing into the kitchen to let my dog in from the back yard.
I grab the wooden railing and use it to pull my weight up the steps as I climb, creak after creak, up the old steps.
This must have hit her hard, but once it sinks in, maybe we’ll both finally have peace knowing he’s gone for good. He can’t hurt anyone else.
Mom always seemed to relish in the fact that every good thing was taken from Byron the day he was sentenced. His family disowned him, his own brother told the media he was ashamed of him, and Byron’s days of freedom were over.
But there had to be small pleasures in his life—even in prison. I could come to find comfort in the fact that those are gone too now, can’t I? What does this mean for me? For us?
I reach the top step and turn left down the hall toward their bedroom. Darkness lies beyond the open door to their room. I turn right, toward my room, and a cool glow peeks through the door cracks from the bathroom.
How long did it take Byron to die?
From the time Byron broke into our home and stabbed my father, to the moment he was declared dead in the hospital operating room, my dad spent three hours of brutal suffering.
He suffered through the initial attack that no one will ever know the details of, as they were alone. He suffered through that pain and blood loss as his stalker, then went after my mom when she showed up from work early. Dad suffered through the screams of my mom as Byron pinned her against the wall—the moments my own suffering began.
After a long trip home from college to surprise my parents for Thanksgiving that cold October night, I walked through the open door to see a strange man clenching my mom’s wrists, pinning her against the wall, shouting at her.
The shock debilitated me for what seemed like minutes. I couldn’t move. As soon as he noticed me, he stopped. His frightened dark eyes locked with mine before he ran, escaping through the side door. I ran into the kitchen and saw my dad writhing in pain on the floor, his T-shirt soaked in blood, his face shocked to see me as I dropped to my knees at his side.
His face.
I always felt warmth when I looked at my dad’s face, and I never knew it until that night, when for the first time, it represented pain.
From that point on, we all suffered together through the phone call to the police, applying pressure to Dad’s chest, and following the ambulance to the hospital, waiting for news from the surgery to save Dad’s life.
He died on the operating table, and then it was just the two of us suffering, Mom and I. Through the arrangements for Dad’s body, to the trial, facing Byron once again, to the media
