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“Me, too,” B’Lynn conceded. “But that was a lifetime ago. I don’t know who that girl was anymore. Not me, that’s for sure.”
“I also spoke with a guy Robbie went to school with,” Annie said. “Eli McVay.”
B’Lynn nodded. “I remember Eli. Nice boy. Nice family. How is he?”
“He’s well. He’s a civil engineer for the city of Lafayette.”
“Good for him.”
That had to be one of the ongoing injuries to an addict’s parents, Annie thought: having to hear how well his peers were doing. Sacred Heart graduated crop after crop of kids who went on to be doctors and lawyers, architects and engineers. And every time B’Lynn Fontenot ran into one of those parents of the kids Robbie had gone to school with, she had to hear how well they’d done, because the kids were their one connection and the subject of the kind of small talk people engaged in at the grocery store or the bank or the charity events that were their common social life. And she had to relive over and over the awful, embarrassing truth of her son’s life, whichshe would have to encapsulate in vague answers that didn’t include words likeaddictionandrehabandjail time.
“He was telling me Robbie used to talk about becoming an investigative journalist,” Annie said.
“Oh, yes. Or a documentary filmmaker. Or a sports photographer. After he retired from his stellar career in the NFL, of course,” B’Lynn said. “He loved making little films on his phone. He had so many dreams, so much potential. That’s what children are, you know—dreams and potential.”
“You said he had talked about going back to school. Was that a focus for him? Becoming a reporter or a filmmaker?”
She smiled a sad smile. “He was so bright, so talented, such an incredible spirit. Who knows what he might have done if he’d had the chance.
“Oh, my God.” She closed her eyes as if in pain, and when she opened them again, they were shining with tears she wouldn’t let fall. “I’m talking about him in the past tense. He’s dead, isn’t he?”
“I don’t know,” Annie said, her throat tightening against her own need to cry.
“You’re far too kind for this job, Annie.”
“I’m gonna tell the truth, B’Lynn,” Annie said. “I don’t have a lot of hope for a good outcome here, but until I have proof otherwise, he’s still alive to me, and I’m still gonna try to find him. And if the worst has happened, I’m still gonna fight to get you justice.”
“I wish I believed there was such a thing.”
“If someone has hurt your son, they’ll pay for it.”
B’Lynn shook her head. “That’s retribution, not justice. If we lived in a just world, none of this would ever happen.”
“I wish I had something wise to say,” Annie said. “But I guess I haven’t lived long enough to have wisdom.”
“Honey, I’m old enough to be your mother,” B’Lynn said softly. “And I don’t have anything wise to say, either. Wisdom is something that never arrives until it’s too late.”
“I’m gonna go now,” Annie said, pushing to her feet. If she stayed much longer, she was going to end up in a puddle of tears, crying on the shoulder of the woman she was supposed to be comforting. “But I’d like to come back tomorrow and go through Robbie’s room properly, in case he might have left something else up there that could help us.”
B’Lynn nodded as she rose. “I’ll be here. Where else would I go?”
—
B’Lynn saw Annie Broussard to the door and thanked her again and gave her a hug because she looked like she needed it.Pauvre ’tite bête, her mamere Louisa would have said. Poor little thing, dragged unaware into the unending downward spiral of the Fontenot family. And for what? The ending to this story should have been obvious from a mile away. The only unknown there had ever been was the timing. Anything Annie Broussard could have done would only have postponed the inevitable.
All the time, and all the effort, and all the heartbreak, living and reliving the endless loop of Robbie’s story, like Sisyphus pushing that damn boulder up the hill again and again, and none of it was going to matter at all in the end. He was gone. Just like that. She felt it with a terrible kind of certainty.
Annie didn’t want to say it, bless her heart. She didn’t want it to be true. But for the first time, B’Lynn felt her son’s absence in a way she never had before. She thought about the night she had awakened in his bed, so sure he was in the house, and what he had said when she’d spoken to him:You can’t help me now. I’m so sorry, Mama.
A dream. A hallucination. Wishful thinking. His spirit visiting her from the next dimension, as if she believed in such a thing. It didn’t really matter, did it?
She locked the door and walked slowly through the house, sipping her bourbon and checking doors and windows, wondering why she bothered. What could anyone steal from her that meant more to her than what she’d already lost?
Feeling strangely numb, she went upstairs to Robbie’s room, turned on the lamp on the nightstand, and sat on his bed, looking around at all the memorabilia of the milestones in his younger life, all the hopes and dreams that had never made it out of this room, and never would. No one would ever know what he could have been, the contributions he could have made, if only things had turned out differently.
What a strange feeling, to think that her child was dead but that the world continued to turn as if nothing had happened at all. The sun would come up in the morning like it always did. To think this happened every day to countless people, their grief ignored by most of the world. She wasn’t even special in her pain. The fabric of her life was torn, a hole left where her son used to be.
How many times had she prepared herself for this in the past ten years? She had long ago lost count. Yet somehow, she still wasn’t ready. How many times had she told herself in anger that it might actually be a relief, then felt sick with guilt for thinking it? Now the reality was here, and relief was not the emotion. Not at all.
