The Price of Silence (26 page)

The foreman stands.“Yes,Your Honor.”

“Please answer the court clerk.”

The court clerk, a thin balding man who has been sitting behind a desk to one side of the courtroom, reading his newspaper for most of the trail, now stands up and reads from a sheet of paper.

“To the charge of murder in the second degree, how—”

The juror sitting next to the foreman, a black woman with big drooping eyes, cannot wait. She turns to look at the defendant’s son, Joshua Howells, and lifts her cheeks in a wide, victorious smile.

TWENTY

Emma

JOSH WANTED TO celebrate the Not Guilty verdict with prayer. He tried to convince Tom to come too, but Tom, the unbeliever, said it was a good time for Josh and me to share each other’s company without his presence. I chose Saint Patrick’s, the place of a promise made, a promise that needed to be unmade.

“We don’t have a picture of her, Mom.”We’re sitting in the front pew.“In that message she left,” Josh tugs at his ear, Tom’s gesture when he’s weighing his words, “she said, ‘Don’t erase me, Drummer Boy. Let me stay with you.’

“She had that funny mouth, remember?” Another tug. I skate my hand down his back. “No dip in the middle. And that thick hair and . . . oh, God!” He throws himself back against the pew, his face scrunched with disbelief. “I’m already forgetting what she looked like.”

“Do you remember how she made you feel?”

He nods as a blush blooms over his cheeks.

“That’s what she’d want you to hold on to.”

There are only a few people praying.Tourists walk the aisles, pointing, whispering. Feet scuffle. Camera flashes burst from darkened corners. In front of the side chapels, hundreds of candles flicker orange light.

“You think God’s here?” Josh asks after a long stare at the crucifix above the high altar.

“Here, there, wherever you want God to be if you believe.”

“I’d like to believe. I think I do now, after—” he shrugs.

“I mean, it’s easier. It’s not all up to me.”

“Yes, it’s easier.”

“During the trial I tried praying, coming to church.You used to do that, right? Before Amy died?”

“Yes.”

“Do you think An-ling believed in God?”

I wrap my arm in his.“I don’t know. She believed in the old traditions of her country.That’s a religion of sorts.”

“Why did she lie so much, Mom?”

“She was trying to be someone else and she wanted love from everyone.”

“She lied a lot.”

“Don’t hold it against her, Josh. She couldn’t help herself.

Think of how unhappy she was.”

“No, I’m glad she lied. It means—” Josh lowers his head.

“It means what?”

Josh doesn’t answer. His lips start to move and I keep his arm wrapped around my own as he prays.

When he raises his head I say,“The last time I came here I was pregnant with you. I asked God to take care of you and keep you safe. In exchange I promised I would not allow myself the joy of loving you openly. It was a very stupid thing I did. It’s nothing God would have wanted. I always have loved you, Josh.”

“I know.”

“Please forgive me.”

“Forget it, Mom.That’s old stuff.”

“Please forgive me for everything.”

He nods.“Me too?”

“You were only being young.”

He blushes again.“You should get to know Max’s mom.

All she thinks about is her committees. Max has to do his own laundry.”

That thought makes me smile. “You’d go naked before that happened.”

He leans over and kisses my cheek. “You got it.” I kiss him back and we sit there for a long time, arms linked, letting the grace of the cathedral lull us into a state of peace.

The verdict has not wiped my conscience clean or taken away my sadness over An-ling’s death, but I can’t help also being happy. I’ve been given another chance to make amends. To become the woman I once set out to be. To watch my son grow into a man.

The pew creaks when we finally stand up. I follow Josh down the center aisle. He stops abruptly next to the last pew where a man sits hunched, head buried in his arms.

I recognize Tom’s windbreaker. “Tom?” His shoulders start to shake.

“I’ll wait outside,” Josh says.

I take hold of his hand. “Please stay.”

He walks to the other end of the pew.We slide in, one on each side of Tom. I embrace him. Josh pats his back.

Tom’s sobs grow loud.

His depth of visible emotion is unusual, surprising; it frightens me. “What is it,Tom?” I whisper, kiss his neck.

“God, I’m so sorry,” Tom cries into his arms. “I didn’t mean—”

“Shh, it’s okay.” I think I understand now. “It’s all right, Tom. Amy’s in the past.We’re only going to think of Josh now.” I caress his head with my hand, over and over, in an effort to quiet him.“Our beautiful boy.”

Tom hugs me.His chest trembles against mine.Maybe he is also crying for the marriage we almost destroyed. Our lives as a couple and as individuals are weighted with a great deal of unhappiness, missteps, selfishness, but we can try to fight for pockets of serenity. I am determined to fight, for myself, for Tom, especially for Josh. As a family we must stitch the holes in our lives back together with solid thread. As a family we have to make sure that Josh’s future, our future, has light in it.That is my hope,my goal. If it is not too late.

I rock my husband turned into a child. “It’s over, Sweetie.”

“Come on, Dad.” Josh stands up, tugs at his father’s sleeve. Tom stays hunkered down in my arms.“You said everything was going to be fine.You promised, remember?” Josh sits back down and hugs Tom from behind.“I love you, Dad.”

Tom’s tears take a long time to stop and when they do we sit in silence, each lost in our own hopes and prayers until Josh says,“Come on, guys. Let’s go.”

The sudden sun outside the cathedral is blinding.

Blinking, we turn in the direction of home.

Josh

Grams liked to say that no tree throws a shadow as long as the past, but that’s only if you let it. Mom let Amy’s death get to her all those years and Dad did his crying when no one was looking and I guess An-ling never got over all the bad stuff that happened to her. I’m not going there.

Maybe An-ling made up that last e-mail or maybe Dad did go over to the loft that afternoon. If he did, he probably yelled his head off at her and made her feel terrible, and she killed herself after he left.There are many ways of looking at this thing.

Whatever he did, if anything, he did it for my sake and Mom’s.We’re all he’s ever worried about.

I go to church sometimes now. Mom comes with me. I’m working on Dad.

I’ve told the priest all about us,Amy and An-ling. He says that whatever really happened, what’s important is to feel remorse and to remember the need to forgive, to be forgiven.

I’m trying to do that.

He said that tragedies can divide or unite. In my family we’ve had ones that did both. It’s up to us which way it goes now.

Mom and I light candles to Amy and An-ling whenever we’re in church. I told Dad you don’t have to believe in God to do that. It’s just a way of remembering them.That’s what they’d want. For us never to forget.

Acknowledgments

Many helped me shape this novel: Marie Damon, Ann Darby, Barry Greenspon and the staff of The Drummer’s World, John Grossman, Jane Grossman, Jennifer Gundlach, Judith Keller, Robert Knightly, Dr. Barbara Lane, Maria Nella Masullo, Joan Meisel, Annette and Martin Meyers, Willa Morris, Judy Moskowitz, Geoffrey Picket, Sue Richman, Linda Sicher,Marilyn Wallace and Susan Wallach. I thank them for their expertise, their editorial skills, their patience, and most of all their friendship. I especially thank my editor, Katie Herman, for her keen eye and my publicist, Sarah Reidy, for her unrelenting enthusiasm. If there are mistakes, they are my own.

To Stuart—my gratitude and love.