No Hiding in Boise Read online

  “Yeah,” he says. And, because he’s sweet to me even when he’s annoyed, he adds, “Have a good day at school.”

  THE COFFEE SHOP is downtown, on Main Street. It used to be called something else, a woman’s name I can’t remember. Antoine’s? Annabelle’s? Something like that. Ever since I saw the new name—Bean There, Done That—I’ve been meaning to come in. It’s a cute place. They have a small, fenced patio out front with a few tables. Inside, there are a handful of tables, a couple couches, a few chairs that look like they belong in front of a fireplace in an old mansion. A chalkboard listing all their drinks hangs from the ceiling. I order a tea and peruse the selection of baked goods in a case by the register before deciding on a carrot cake muffin.

  I’m ten minutes early, on purpose. I want time to find a table in a corner, a seat against a wall. Just as I’m starting to scan my options, tea and muffin in hand, I hear, “Tessa?”

  I look in the direction of the voice to see that Joyce has also come early. I should have guessed.

  I didn’t even see her when I walked in. She’s sitting at a small, round table next to the floor-to-ceiling windows that look out onto Main Street. This table does not feel safe to me.

  “Oh, hi,” I say, giving an awkward wave.

  “Is this table okay?” she asks, as if sensing my unease.

  I see a more suitable table in the back. “Actually, do you mind if we sit over there?”

  “Of course not,” she says, standing hurriedly, apologizing when her purse brushes my arm as she maneuvers her way between the tables.

  I take the seat against the wall, take a deep breath. You’re okay, you’re okay, I tell myself—my new mantra.

  “I was thinking about getting that muffin,” she says. Her hands are wrapped around a cup of tea, the string from the bag hanging over the side, steam escaping through the tiny hole in the lid.

  I look at the muffin like I don’t know where it came from. It was stupid to order it; I have no appetite.

  “And you’re a tea person too,” she says.

  I’m not actually. Before the shooting, I drank coffee every day. The morning after, I made a cup out of habit and was jittery and panicky the entire day. Maybe it had nothing to do with the coffee, but I’ve still abstained since.

  “I’m a recent tea person,” I say.

  She nods. I wonder how many minutes we are going to spend talking about tea.

  “I like coffee too, but only first thing in the morning,” she says.

  I give her a small smile, a smile that says I’m slightly bored. She seems to get the hint because she sits back in her chair and says, “So, how are you doing?”

  Sometimes, people ask this question as a formality only, expecting a hurried, “Good, fine” in response. But, occasionally, people ask it with weighted meaning, with true inquiry. This is one of those times.

  “Okay,” I say. “It’s still hard to go out in public.”

  It feels good to admit this simple truth, even if it’s to someone who is a virtual stranger. This must be what therapy is like.

  “I can only imagine,” she says.

  She takes a sip from her tea, winces a bit, like it’s still too hot.

  “It must have been terrifying,” she says, her eyes begging me to tell her about it, to explain the terror.

  “It was,” I say.

  “Do you mind if I ask what happened?” she says.

  I came to this coffee shop with the hope of finding out more about Jed Ketcher; now I realize that she came with the same objective.

  I tell her the bits and pieces I remember, the bits and pieces that come to me in nightmares whenever I dare to fall asleep. I tell her about being behind the bar, about the shots, about how I thought they were fireworks. I tell her about everything being dark, about the confusion, about people screaming. I tell her about Cale. I tell her about the storage closet, about the zip-up black hoodie, about the SWAT team. My rescue is the happy ending, I suppose. But a part of me still feels trapped in that storage closet.

  I only realize I’ve been telling my story to the tabletop when I finally look up and see tears in Joyce’s eyes.

  “I am so sorry this happened to you,” she says.

  “It’s not your fault.”

  I mean this, even though I know who her son is—or was. I’m sure she feels at fault. I’m sure that’s why there are tears.

  She uses a brown paper napkin to dab at her eyes.

  “Did you lose someone in the shooting?” I say carefully, tentatively.

  She crumples the napkin and puts it in her purse, then looks at me.

  “I did,” she says. Then: “My son.”

  I don’t want to ask his name, don’t want to force her to reveal who he was, so I just say, “I’m so sorry.”

  Her tears come again. She reaches into her purse, uncrumples the napkin, and uses it again to dab her eyes. I get the feeling nobody has said these words to her—“I’m so sorry.” Nobody has acknowledged the loss of her son as a valid loss. Nobody has considered her sadness.

  “It still doesn’t feel real,” she says.

  “I know.”

  She must feel as I do—as if the shooting was part of some strange dream. I feel as if I’m still waiting to wake up, to turn to Ryan and say, “You won’t believe the nightmare I had.”

  “The service is on Thursday, so I suppose it will feel more real then.”

  According to the message boards, the funerals for the victims start on Friday. I hadn’t even thought about the funeral for Jed. Nobody on the message boards has mentioned his funeral. To most people, he was a monster, undeserving of ceremony.

  “I hope you have supportive family, friends,” I say.

  She shrugs. “I have Gary.”

  She says it as if I know who Gary is. She stares off behind me.

  “I haven’t even told my mom,” I say, in an attempt to jolt her out of this moment of grief. It works. Her eyes shift back to me.

  “Why not?” she asks.

  “I don’t know,” I say. “Normally, I tell her everything. We had a little bit of a falling out—nothing major though. I guess maybe I think telling her will make it real. Which is stupid. I know it’s real. I just … I don’t know.”

  “I understand,” she says. “I haven’t reached out to many people either.”

  “My mom will freak out,” I say. “She’s going to cry, and it’s going to make me cry. I feel like I’m keeping it together pretty well … or I’m faking it or something. But if she knows what happened and jumps in her car to see me, I’ll lose it.”

  She nods. “Where does she live?”

  “In Oregon. Bend. That’s where I’m from.”

  It’s just a five-hour drive. I could call my mom right now and she’d be here before dinner.

  “She must miss you.”

  “I don’t know. She has this boyfriend now. Rob. It’s … different.”

  “It was always just the two of you?” she asks.

  I nod. “My father took off when I was a baby.”

  “My son’s father died when he was young. After that it was just the two of us too,” she says.

  Jed Ketcher was without a father. Maybe this explains something; maybe it doesn’t at all.

  “I’m sure she misses you.”

  It takes me a second to realize she’s referring to my mom.

  “Yeah, I know,” I say. “I’ll tell her soon.”

  “Tell her when you’re ready. She’ll want to know. She’ll want to support you.”

  These words make her cry again. The brown napkin is nearly shredded to bits, useless.

  “Have you been in touch with anyone else who was there that night?” I ask.

  She shakes her head. “Just you.”

  “I’m glad we met,” I say. “I’m glad I hyperventilated and you were there.”

  She manages a little laugh.

  “It is nice to talk to someone who understands.”

  I muster up the courage to
ask the question that’s been sitting on my tongue since she mentioned the funeral on Thursday.

  “Would it be okay if I came?” I say.

  She looks at me, quizzically.

  “To the funeral, I mean.”

  Her eyes go wide. I may have gone too far.

  “It’s going to be small, private—”

  “I’m sorry,” I interrupt. “I shouldn’t have—”

  “You can come,” she says. “If you’d like.”

  “You don’t have to say that. I’ve overstepped my bounds. It’s the chatty bartender in me,” I say, though I was never that chatty of a bartender.

  “No,” she says. “You can come.”

  She must know that if I come, I will find out his name. I will find out who he was. I want this to happen, of course. She needs to know I know who he was before I can ask her questions about him—how he thought, what he felt, why he did what he did.

  “You’re sure?”

  She doesn’t seem sure, but she says, “I am.”

  “Okay,” I say.

  “I can text you the details. I don’t even know them yet. Gary is organizing it.”

  Again with Gary. Whoever he is, at least she has him.

  She takes another sip of her tea and doesn’t wince this time. This always happens with coffee dates—the coffee or tea is finally an appropriate temperature for drinking by the time the conversation has come to its natural conclusion.

  Joyce pushes her chair from the table and stands. I do the same.

  “Thank you,” she says, “for meeting me.”

  “I’m the one who should be thanking you,” I say. “It was my crazy idea.”

  “It was a good one.”

  We walk out together. To any bystanders, we would appear to be friends, or mother and daughter. If they only knew.

  We turn to face each other when we’re outside. For a second, I think Joyce Ketcher is going to hug me. She doesn’t though. She just sticks out her hand, as if we are concluding a business meeting. I take it, squeeze it instead of shake it.

  “Until next time,” she says.

  JOYCE

  “IT’S SADISTIC,” GARY says when I tell him about meeting Tessa.

  “Sadistic?”

  “Yes. You’re just bringing more pain on yourself,” he says.

  “You mean ‘masochistic’?”

  He looks thoroughly annoyed with me. “Whatever. It’s wrong is what it is.”

  “It’s wrong to want to talk to people hurt by my son? It’s wrong to want to make some amends?”

  “They aren’t your amends to make. They’re Jed’s.”

  “Well, Jed isn’t here.”

  We are in the garage. Gary was tinkering with something at his workbench when I came home. He stopped tinkering when I told him about meeting Tessa.

  “Look, you can do what you want,” he says. He stands from his stool, noticeably flustered. “It’s your life.”

  The words sting. I suppose a part of me had thought— stupidly—that he’d begun to see this as “our life.”

  “I don’t understand why you’re so upset,” I say.

  He marches inside the house. I follow. He paces from one end of the kitchen to the other, hands on his hips.

  “I’m upset because I care about you, okay? And what you’re doing—talking to this woman—it’s just going to make things worse.”

  “I felt better after talking to her.”

  He just shakes his head. “You know you’re going to have to tell her who he is at some point.”

  I haven’t told him yet that I’ve invited her to the service. Or, rather, she invited herself and I didn’t object.

  “I know I have to tell her. I will.”

  He raises his eyebrows. “And you think she’s going to still be your friend, or whatever she is, when she finds out who he is?”

  This confirms my suspicion—Gary thinks my son is someone I should be ashamed of, someone I will have to apologize for and condemn for the rest of my life.

  “You’re an asshole,” I say.

  With that, I retreat to my bedroom. I can feel him follow me, can sense him standing in the doorway of the bedroom as I sort through a pile of clothes for no reason except to have something to do with my hands.

  “I don’t want to overstay my welcome,” I tell him. “I’ll go back home today.”

  “You don’t have to do that,” he says.

  I turn, face him. “I think I do.”

  “It doesn’t make any sense,” he says. I feel a rush of relief that he wants me to stay. Then he adds, “Stay until after the funeral, at least.”

  So he wants me to stay until Thursday. He feels it’s his duty, clearly, to make sure I don’t lose it after burying my son. I am Gary’s obligation.

  “I’ll leave today,” I say.

  He rolls his eyes. “Whatever you want, Joyce.”

  I hate when he uses my name like this, as if we are not two people who know each other well enough to bypass our given names, as if our association with each other has a formality to it.

  I resume sorting through my clothes, deciding that I’m folding for the sake of packing. Yes, I am packing. I am going home.

  IT’S ONLY WHEN I’ve finished packing my things that I realize my exit from Gary’s house cannot be as dramatic as I desire. I need him to give me a ride. My car is still at my house. He’s back in the garage, tinkering. I approach him, trying to look proud instead of sheepish.

  “I’m ready,” I say, my chin held high, like the Queen of England making a proclamation.

  He looks at me over the top of his glasses.

  “Ready for what?”

  “To go,” I say. “Home.”

  He doesn’t seem to remember yet that he is my ride.

  “Okay then,” he says, turning back to his workbench.

  I’m going to have to just admit that I need him. “My car is at my house.”

  He understands now. He sets down whatever he’s working on—from my perspective, he always seems to be fiddling with the same piece of wood and an assortment of screws—and hops off his stool.

  “I’ll get my keys.”

  THE DRIVE BACK to my house is silent. I’m too busy trying to appear undaunted by the tension that I don’t prepare myself for what it will be like to be in my driveway again. Once we are there, I can’t catch my breath. I feel what Tessa must feel all the time.

  The car is in park, but I stay seated, feeling as if a boulder is on my lap, pinning me down.

  “Okay then,” Gary says, as if he’s just dropping me off after one of our weekend dates.

  Gary’s always been kind of dense about reading me, understanding my feelings—a stereotypical man, I guess. It’s only when I started dating again—a few years after Ed died—that I understood the grievances of my girlfriends lamenting their clueless husbands. Ed was incredibly sensitive and attentive to me, but also strong, breadwinning, and committed to the traditional male role—a unicorn of a man. I was lucky to have him as long as I did, but he made it impossible for me to ever be truly satisfied with someone else.

  I open the car door but remain seated.

  “Thanks for the ride,” I say.

  I can feel him looking at me. “You sure you’re okay?”

  The sensitivity of the question surprises me.

  I look at him. “Nope, but I have to go home sometime.”

  He sighs. “You don’t have to—”

  “I do,” I say.

  For once, I’m the one whose ego is getting in the way.

  “I’ll give you a call later,” he says.

  It’s that ego that enables me to get out of his car. I don’t look back at him when I get to the front door, but I hear him drive away.

  THE HOUSE IS eerily quiet. The first thing I do is turn on all the lights and the TV. The sound, the chatter of a rerun of The Office, tricks me into thinking I’m not alone. Jed used to love The Office. He wasn’t much for comedies, in general, but he laughed at that
show. He said it was the only show on TV that “exposed the absurdity of the American dream.” Or something. I didn’t really understand what he was getting at—still don’t, frankly; I was just happy something made him laugh.

  I wonder if they have burned his body yet. They probably have. I will myself not to think about it. They will give me the urn at the service, and I will place it on the nightstand, next to Ed’s. How strange—to have these remains of the human beings I’ve loved most.

  I decide I need a task, something to keep me busy. The service is in two days, and I want it to be special, even if it’s just me there. I assume Gary will still come; he isn’t the grudge-holding type, and he always does the “right” thing. Most funerals have photos—enlarged, mounted on easels. I want that for Jed. I go to the linen closet in the hallway, where I’ve always kept our photo albums (I’ve never seen the need for that many linens). I stand atop a kitchen chair to retrieve the albums on the top shelf. These are the old ones, the ones from my wedding, the ones from Jed’s baby and toddler years. On the middle shelf are albums with the rest of Jed’s childhood. I stopped keeping albums of photos when he was a teenager. That’s when he took over, creating albums of his own, the ones in his closet.

  I carry five albums in my arms, precariously, to Jed’s room. I let them topple over onto his bed. I take his high school albums from his closet, add them to my pile. This will be my task— going through photos of my son, choosing a handful of favorites. That’s what people do when they say goodbye—they attempt to distill a lifetime down to a handful of favorites.

  I open the first album, the one that begins with a photo of me in a hospital bed with Jed, the one that has his hospital band tucked into a slot meant for a picture. My throat constricts, feels suddenly like it’s the size of a drinking straw. I close the album and chastise myself for thinking I could do this. I’m suddenly exhausted—by the task, by everything. I push the albums to the side of the bed and lie next to them, spooning them as if they are him. I used to sleep with him like this, after Ed died, when we both needed a warm body at night.

  I stroke one of the albums, as if it is his back, making clockwise circles. I did this when he was a baby, when I was putting him to sleep at night. All the books said I should leave his room before he fell asleep, so he would learn how to “self-soothe.” He would scream and scream though, so I’d come back. Maybe I shouldn’t have. Maybe he never learned to manage his emotions because of me.