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She pulled her phone out of the pouch of her hoodie and dialed Robbie’s number, just to listen to his voice message. She wanted to tell him that she loved him, that she forgave him, that she hoped he forgave her. But the mailbox was full, and she couldn’t have left a message even if he had been alive to hear it. And somehow that seemed sadly perfect.
Restless, she turned out the light and left the room. She went back downstairs, grabbed a blanket from the TV room, and went out the kitchen door to sit on the back porch steps. Bundled against the damp chill of the night, she sat looking at the backyard in the dim silver moonlight and the ground-level glow of the landscape lighting. She stared out to the far reaches of the yard, where darkness crept in and stole her vision, hoping against hope to see his shadow there, just out of reach.
How many times had she sat on these steps, watching him play, watching him run, watching him practice passing the football,throwing spiral after spiral through the old tire that still hung from a limb on the oak tree, never once imagining how wrong it could all go, thinking only good things for a bright future? What a pleasant lie, a necessary lie, because the truth, as it had turned out, was just damn near unbearable.
Why did it have to all go so terribly wrong?
At least she had those good memories, she thought. At least she could close her eyes and remember when she had a beautiful boy and joy and hope. She could close her eyes and imagine him there, putting his arms around her, and she could tell him with her heart what a privilege it had been to be his mother.
35
How didpeople’s lives goso wrong? Annie wondered. She stood at the bedroom window, looking out at the moonlight on the bayou. A stupid question. She was a front-row witness to the reasons every single day—the poor decisions; the unrealistic expectations; the addictions to drugs, to alcohol, to drama. The emptiness that needed filling. The anger that demanded release.
She thought of Rayanne Tillis, who had probably never caught a break her entire life, born in a hole of poverty and given a shovel instead of a ladder. She made all the wrong choices because no one had ever helped steer her toward better ones.
She thought of Tulsie Parcelle, the sweet girl who just wanted to be loved, and Izzy Guidry, the wounded child who had finally saidno more.
She thought of B’Lynn Fontenot, who had once upon a time subscribed to the debutante dream of a perfect marriage, only to watch it all crumble around her when the foundation gave way. She thought of Robbie Fontenot, whom she had only met in the memories of the people who had known him. The much-loved golden child who hadthe red carpet cruelly yanked out from under him, then found himself trapped in the endless loop that was the struggle with addiction.
So many broken people. There were so many reasons their lives went wrong, a minefield of reasons. It was a wonder anyone made it from one end of the field to the other intact.
“Come back to bed,chère,” Nick murmured, slipping his arms around her from behind. He pressed his cheek to the top of her head. “You’re not gonna sleep standing up.”
“I’m not gonna sleep,” Annie corrected him, reaching a hand up to touch his face.
“You need to shut off that brain of yours. You’re not gonna save the world tonight.”
“Or tomorrow or the next day,” she said. “That’s the problem, isn’t it? There’s too many sad stories, and I can’t rewrite the ending to any of them.”
“That’s not entirely true,” he said. “Don’t think you don’t make a difference, ’Toinette. You can’t bring back the dead, but you do what you can for the living. That will go further than you know.”
“I guess I have to hang on to that. We can only do what we can do.”
“C’est vrai. Come now. We’ve got another hour before the sun comes up. Come close your eyes at least.”
His phone vibrated on the nightstand as they turned back toward the bed.
“Looks like your day is starting now,” Annie said.
He picked up the phone. “Fourcade.”
Annie watched his face as he took in the information.
“I’m on my way,” he said, and ended the call. He met her eyes. “Dozer Cormier is on the move.”
36
How hadhis life goneso wrong?
Dozer hadn’t had a decent night’s sleep since Halloween. Truth to tell, for longer than that. Way longer than that. The fatigue and the anxiety were weighing heavy on him. The alcohol that was supposed to numb the feelings only made him feel worse. People claimed they drank to forget. It never did that for him. It never had. That didn’t stop him trying, but what was it people said? Doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results was nothing but stupidity. Something like that.
He didn’t think he was a bad guy. People who didn’t know him were scared of him because of how he looked, because of his size and the fact that he was bald and ugly. Some people thought that somehow meant he didn’t have feelings, like he was an animal or Frankenstein’s monster or something. They treated him like he was less than human, like he couldn’t understand what they thought of him or didn’t realize how they used him. It made him sad. It made him angry. Anger made him dangerous, and when he was dangerous, people got scared of him, and that cycle went ’round and ’round.
He didn’t have many real friends. Mr. Bichon was kind to him,tried to offer him advice. Tommy Crawford treated him decent enough. And there was Marc.
They’d been friends since their first day of football practice in seventh grade. Marc had singled him out and struck up a friendship. Dozer couldn’t say he hadn’t wondered why or hadn’t suspected why—Marc was a quarterback, and Dozer was, by far, the biggest guy with the job of protecting him—but he had set all that aside in favor of feeling grateful to have a friend at all.
He wasn’t so dumb as to think Marc considered him an equal. He was aware of the role he played in Marc’s little dramas, but he had always reckoned Marc was as close to a real friend as he’d ever had or ever would, and Dozer was loyal as the day was long. Loyal to a fault. That, he could see now, was a problem.
