Outside, the snow we’d been expecting had begun. It fell in a white cloud, heavy and dense, making the world seem quieter. A storm like this came once or twice in a season, gathering inch by inch as the hours passed, making you wonder if it would ever stop. I got in my cruiser and drove, and other than the occasional plow trying to keep up with the snowfall, I had the highway to myself. I struggled to stay in the lane and not slide off into a ditch, and I had to squint to see.
There’s something about the enveloping whiteness of a blizzard that makes you hallucinate. I had the strangest visions out there, of snowy owls, of bodies in the road, of my mother floating in the sky like an angel. I felt the beginnings of a deep depression, as if the emptiness of the blizzard had begun to mirror the emptiness in my soul. I’d felt that way only once before, a hollowness that had dogged me for weeks. There were days during that stretch when I didn’t get out of bed all day. I remember it had felt like I held a gun in my hand, and one by one, my brain was shooting down the things that mattered to me. I had never experienced a scarier time than that. I realized my only two choices were to die or start living again. I chose life, and after surviving that summer of discontent, I found the will to go on. That same depression had never come back to me, not like that, but I could feel it out there again. I could see it in the snow cloud, coming for me.
Ninety minutes later, I crossed the county line and made it to the hospital where they’d taken Will. He was unconscious. His face was barely recognizable, his black-and-blue eyes swollen shut, his head bandaged, one arm in a cast. This happy, handsome teenager, a boy I’d known since he was a baby, had been sitting next to me in my house the previous night. A day later, here he was, clinging to life. I sat by the bed and took his hand, and all I could do was tell him in a low voice how sorry I was.
“Who did it?”
I looked up and saw Norm standing by the curtain that divided the room. He had a cup of hospital coffee in his hand, and he looked as if he’d aged a decade in a few hours.
“What?”
“Who did it?” he asked me. “Who told everyone about Will? I know it wasn’t you, Rebecca.”
“Of course not.”
“Then who?” He sat down in the chair next to me. “Ajax?”
“Let it go, and focus on Will,” I said.
Norm shook his head, as if letting go was an impossible thing. He stared at his son, with his face frozen into a mask of helplessness and hatred. “My whole life has been about the law, you know? How to get things done within the system. And now the system is worthless. Ajax put a target on my son’s chest, and there’s nothing I can do about it. There’s no law. There’s nothing. I just want to kill the son of a bitch.”
“You shouldn’t say things like that,” I murmured.
Norm’s face twitched. As he sipped his coffee, he began to cry silently. I’d never seen him cry before.
“What do the doctors say?” I asked.
“He has a broken arm, broken nose, broken jaw, and fractured skull. They’re afraid of swelling in the brain. We won’t know more until he wakes up.”
“He’ll pull through,” I said, fervently hoping that was true. “He’s strong. He’ll be fine.”
Norm didn’t answer.
“Where’s Kathy?” I asked, because I assumed his wife was here, too.
“They had to give her a sedative. She’s in another room.”
“I am so sorry, Norm. This is all my fault.”
“There’s nothing you could have done.”
“Will came to see me last night. I–I wasn’t alone. Ajax was with me. Will was so upset, and he wanted to talk about Jay. I should have stopped him. I shouldn’t have let him tell me anything until it was just the two of us. I knew what he was going to say, and I should have known what the consequences would be.”
Norm stared at me. “You knew what he was going to say?”
“I guessed.”
“How?”
“I don’t know. I just had a feeling. I can’t even tell you where it came from.”
Norm shook his head. “He was my son, and I didn’t know. I didn’t have a clue. Neither did Kathy. The only way I even found out today was when I saw what they’d written on his locker. That word. I thought, they made a mistake. They nearly killed my son over a mistake. It never even occurred to me that it was true. When I saw Jay, he admitted it to me, and I couldn’t believe it.”
“You saw Jay?” I asked.
Norm nodded. “He came to the hospital. He was devastated. Just gutted. The way he looked at Will, the only way I can explain it is that he’s in love with him. And do you know what’s crazy? I don’t even know what the hell that means. I really don’t even understand it.”
I wanted to ask where Jay was, but Norm kept talking.
“You said Will came to see you last night?” he asked me. “He told you about him and Jay?”
“Yes.”
“And yet he couldn’t tell me. I’m his father, and he couldn’t tell me.”
“He only told me because he was trying to protect Jay. He knew the sheriff was planning to arrest Jay for Gordon’s murder.”
“But why wouldn’t he tell me?” Norm asked with a sad anguish. “What did he think I would say? Did he think we’d disown him? Kick him out?”
“What would you have done?”
Norm took a long time to answer. “Honestly? I don’t know. I like to think I’m open-minded, but I have no idea what I would have said. Maybe he sensed that. You know, the last couple of years, Will has been strange with us. Distant. Not sharing with us the way he did when he was a boy. He and I were always so close, but he’s been pulling away from me for a while now. I figured it was just the teenage years. I never dreamed he was struggling with something like this.”
“It couldn’t have been easy for him.”
“No.” Norm looked at me. “Gordon Brink knew, didn’t he? That’s why he was trying to keep Will and Jay apart.”
“Yes. That’s what Will told me. Brink caught them together.”
“I suppose you think this gives Jay another motive to kill his father.”
“I’m sure the sheriff will think that, but according to Will, Jay has an alibi. They were together that Sunday night.”
“That’s not going to satisfy Jerry. We both know that.”
“No, probably not. I doubt Will can prove that they were in your trailer together. The sheriff is going to say Will is simply covering for Jay, and people around here will be inclined to believe it.”
“Because who wants to take the word of a queer, right?”
“I’m not saying it’s fair.”
“Will wouldn’t lie,” Norm snapped. “If he says they were together, they were.”
“I know that. But regardless, I need to find Jay.”
“So you can arrest him?”
“That’s up to Darrell and Jerry. Frankly, being in a cell might be the safest place for him right now. You’ve seen what the kids did to Will. If they catch up with Jay, it’s likely to be even worse. I don’t want to see anything happen to him. Do you know where he is?”
“I’m his lawyer,” Norm said. “I can’t say anything about that. And don’t try to tell me he’d be safe locked up in a cell, Rebecca. I know the men you work with. I wouldn’t trust what they’d do to him. Besides, even if I wanted to negotiate a way for Jay to turn himself in, I can’t leave the hospital. I need to stay here with Will.”
“Norm, he’s in danger on his own.”
“What do you want me to do, Rebecca?”