3

            Anthony’s younger sister sometimes went with him on his visits to their parents’ gravesites.  Unable to reach her on her cell and not getting an answer on the house’s landline, he dropped by the family home in Decatur.

            In spite of the cryptic message, he had every intention to pay his respects at his parents’ graves.  Nothing mattered more than duty to family.  Yet as he drove, he continuously scanned the rearview mirror, alert for a tail, finding none.  

            Maybe the messenger had decided to leave him be until that evening’s online meeting.        

            The family house was a brick Colonial with red and beige trim, framed by live oaks and sugar maples.  The neighborhood was solidly middle-class, which meant the streets were quiet at two o’clock on a Friday afternoon, excerpt for clusters of loitering teenagers on summer vacation.

            As he pulled into the driveway, he frowned.  Since his last visit a few weeks ago, the grass had grown almost knee-high, and the gardenia bushes along the front needed to be trimmed.  Trash spilled out of the garbage bin beside the garage.  Soggy newspapers cluttered the walkway leading to the door like a trail of breadcrumbs.

            When Mom had died of heart failure five years ago, she’d left the house to him and Danielle.  Long before their mother had passed, though, Danielle had been living there with her son, Reuben, so they simply stayed.  The agreement was that Anthony would pay the basic utilities and annual property tax bills, and his sister would take care of the maintenance. 

            He wasn’t surprised to discover that she was failing to hold up her end of the deal.

            Danielle usually parked her car—a Ford Explorer he had purchased for her last year—in front of the attached garage.  The vehicle was gone, but that didn’t mean anything.  She could have handed the keys to one of her boyfriends, which she often did, in spite of his disapproval.

            He went inside.  He took the Beretta with him, wearing it concealed in his in-the-waistband holster.  Perhaps he was being a little paranoid, but until he knew what was going on he didn’t want to be separated from his piece again.

            The front door was unlocked. 

            “Hey!” he said.  “Anybody here?”

            No answer.  But he heard hip hop music thumping from upstairs.  Reuben was home.          

            Rather than heading immediately to the second floor, he wandered down the carpeted hallway, navigating around the clutter—empty bags from fast food restaurants, old shoes, pieces of junk mail.  The stink of cigarettes hung in the stale air, mingled with the faint scent of marijuana, the ghost of his sister’s countless highs.

            He had to resist the compulsion to tidy up the place.  He hadn’t come there to do house cleaning. 

            A chain of photographs lined the hallway wall.  Baby photos of Anthony and Danielle.  Pictures of Anthony and his dad at Anthony’s Little League baseball games.  A portrait of his dad, somber in a gray suit.  A shot of his mother, a beautiful auburn-haired woman with a gentle smile.  Photographs of the entire family together, everyone grinning.

            All of the photos on the wall had been taken before his dad’s murder, as if the entire family had died with him on the lake. 

            Near the end of the hallway, there was a door on the left.  It was closed, as usual. 

            He opened it, and entered his father’s study. 

            The room had been largely undisturbed since his dad’s death.  Mom had been unable to commit to clearing it out, and neither he nor Danielle had been up to the grim task. 

            It was furnished with an oak desk, a swivel chair, an oak bookcase stuffed with his dad’s beloved history books and sports bios.  An upholstered reading chair and a floor lamp.  A filing cabinet full of ancient, irrelevant documents.  Autographed photos of his father posing with pro athletes crowding the walls, interspersed among framed copies of various sports stories he had written and the numerous award plaques he had won for his journalism.

            Dust covered everything, and fragile spider webs hung from the corners and between pieces of furniture.  Although his mother hadn’t removed any of the items from the room, she had used to clean it regularly, as if keeping it tidy for his dad’s eventual return.  Since her death, no one had touched it. 

            Holding back a sneeze, he sat at the desk.

            A black Underwood typewriter with faded keys occupied the desktop, accompanied by a Mason jar full of dull lead pencils and dried-out ink pens.  Three photographs crowded the edge of the desk:  Mom and Dad together on a Caribbean cruise ship; Danielle and Dad dressed to the nines for a church-sponsored father-daughter dance; Anthony and Dad on a fishing trip, holding up their catches for the camera.

            He picked up the fishing trip photo.  He traced his finger across his father’s face.  

            They said that time healed all wounds, but that was bullshit.  Some wounds, time allowed to fester and spread, until they had consumed body, mind, and soul.  Those wounds had taken down his mother in her prime, sent his sister plummeting down a long, bleak chasm of addiction . . . and him . . . well, he woke up every morning wondering if that would be the day he would finally die of a violent crime.

            As he often did, he imagined that he could speak to his dad through the old picture.

What were you involved in, Dad?  Why did someone want to hurt you?

            He looked around the study again.  Over the years, he had turned the room upside down and inside out, in a fruitless hunt for clues.  Nothing would be gained from another search.  The revelation promised by the messenger, fraudulent as it might be, was the only lead he had, and he wanted it to be genuine with a desire so intense that his heart clutched.

            The wicked watcheth the righteous, and seeketh to slay him.

            He stared at his dad’s eyes, suspended forever in a better time. 

Who had been watching you, Dad? 

            Sometimes, he awoke from nightmares of reliving the morning on the lake, woke convinced that he had his father’s blood on his hands, blood that had drenched his palms when he’d held his dad to his chest and screamed until his vocal cords gave out.  He would stumble into the bathroom and submerge his hands under scalding hot water, though they were clean, but he had to wash the

dream blood away, had to wash away the memory of the wetness, the cloying coppery odor.  Lisa had entered the restroom late one night when he was scrubbing at the ghost blood, her eyes alarmed, and when he’d muttered, “the blood, I have to get the blood off,” she’d come to him, turned off the water, gently dried his hands with a towel, led him back to bed, and held him to her bosom until he drifted back to sleep. 

            He didn’t want any more of those ghost blood dreams.  He didn’t want any more days like today, when he awoke with a grinding headache, as if nursing a bad hangover.

            What he wanted was what he’d always wanted: justice.

            And he vowed that no matter what, one way or another, he was going to get it.  And soon.