Shame

was. No, he didn’t want to take that chance.
    Another door opened, and two kids came running out. For a moment Feral didn’t recognize them. But then he saw Anna Parker. She was wearing a hat and dark glasses, but to Feral that only made her stand out all the more.
    “After you get the sodas, come right back,” she yelled.
    The children weren’t listening to her. They acted as if they had been cooped up for days. And getting a little taste of freedom, Feral thought, was like letting the genie out of the bottle. Getting it, and the children, back in would be difficult.
    Feral finished tying his shoe. He made a point of not looking at Anna or her children. Mama Bear was clearly on alert, and Feral wanted to appear to be just another anonymous guest.
    He walked toward the parking lot, intent on his thoughts. Queenie must have used one of her aliases to get the room. Feral thought it unlikely that Queenie was staying with the Parker family. While working, she was always the lone wolf. He was betting she was at another hotel.
    Feral weighed the possibilities. This could all work out well—very well.

32

    E LIZABETH WAS ALMOST done sifting through her Parker boxes. She’d winnowed the past, had decided what needed to be studied and what could be put away forever. Intent on her organizing, she had resisted the temptation to do too much looking back, but seeing the framed calligraphy made her pause. It had been Gray’s parting gift to her.
    The lettering was ornate and beautiful. He had learned calligraphy while in prison, had seemed to get immense satisfaction out of transforming his crabbed handwriting into a thing of beauty.
    His gift had surprised her. He had used parchment paper and had obviously taken great pains over the work. The dark ink and the gold filigree had faded very little over the years. He had given her a work of art, but she had hidden it away. Elaborately inscribed were three passages from Whitman’s “The Sleepers”:
    The blind sleep, and the deaf and dumb sleep,
    The prisoner sleeps well in the prison...the runaway son sleeps,
    The murderer that is to be hung next day...
    how does he sleep?
    The earth recedes from me into the night,
    I saw that it was beautiful...and I see that what is not the earth is beautiful.
    I too pass from the night;
    I stay awhile away O night, but I return to you again and love you;
    Why should I be afraid to trust myself to you?
    I am not afraid...I have been well brought forward by you.
    It had given her more pleasure to study the flourishes than the words. Gray had picked Whitman’s poetry to express his mortality, his regrets, his hopes, his gratitude. And perhaps his love. Maybe he’d been unable to say those things himself and had needed proxy words, or perhaps the inked poem was his last and greatest manipulation. They had never quite trusted each other—how could they?—but each had offered the other important pieces of themselves.
    “I have been well brought forward by you.” And so he had been, she thought. The self-proclaimed “exact opposite of a tree,” stunted, twisted, and blighted as he was, had somehow flowered at the end. Most would say she was deluding herself to think that. They would point to his calligraphy and the poem and say they were but Shame’s way of controlling her even in death.
    The vibration of her phone made her shiver. It almost seemed as if Gray were calling her.
    And maybe he was, or the closest thing to him. The display showed Lola’s phone number. But it wasn’t Lola calling this time. It was Caleb.
    “How are you?” she asked.
    “I don’t think I’ve slept. Maybe a little. My mind’s been sort of funny—the fever, you know.” His voice sounded weak and distant. “I’ve been listening to the book.”
    “Oh.” Lola had told Elizabeth how intent Caleb had been on listening to the tape, how even his illness and delirium hadn’t kept him from it.
    “I think given the subject matter you did a good job.”
    It sounded as if it hurt him to admit that. “Thank you.”
    She heard him draw in a deep breath. “I learned a lot, but not enough to shout ‘eureka.’ I’m not exactly sure what I should do next.”
    “I think you should turn yourself in.”
    “A normal person could do that. I can’t.”
    “Why not?”
    “My father. The law wants to bring us both in. Did you see all those articles in the newspaper today? My favorite was the Associated Press article with the headline ‘Bad Seed.’ Did you