Tribute

men, husbands, lovers, they came and went. But he? Johnnie. He came from me.” Every word she spoke was saturated with grief. “I should have . . . so many things. Can you imagine what it is for a mother to stand over the grave of her child and think, ‘I should have’?”
    “No. I’m sorry.”
    “So many are. They pour out their sorry to me, and it touches nothing. Later, it helps a little. But these first days, first weeks, nothing touches it. I’ll be there.” She gestured to the ground beside the grave. “I know that even now because I’ve arranged it. Me and Johnnie.”
    “And your daughter. My mother.”
    “On the other side of me, if she wants it. But she’s young, and she’ll go her own way. She wants . . . everything. You know that, and I have nothing for her now, not in these first days, first weeks. Nothing to give. But I’ll be there soon enough, in the ground with Johnnie. I don’t know when yet, I don’t know how soon it comes. But I think of making it now. I think of it every day. How can I live when my baby can’t? I think about how. Pills? A razor? Walking into the sea? I can never decide. Grief blurs the mind.”
    “What about love?”
    “It opens, when it’s real. That’s why it can hurt so much. You wonder if I could have stopped this. If I hadn’t let him run wild. People said I did.”
    “I don’t know. Another boy died that night, and the third was paralyzed.”
    “Was that my fault?” Janet demanded as bitterness coated the grief. “Was it Johnnie’s? They all got into the car that night, didn’t they? Drunk, stoned. Any one of them could’ve gotten behind the wheel, and it wouldn’t have changed. Yes, yes, I indulged him, and I thank God for it now. Thank God I gave him all I could in the short time he lived. I would do it all again.” She covered her face with her hands, shoulders shaking. “All again.”
    “I don’t blame you. How can I? I don’t know. Hennessy blames you.”
    “What more does he want ? Blood?” She dropped her hands, threw out her arms. And the tears slid down the pale cheeks. “At least he has his son. I have a name carved into white marble.” She dropped to her knees on the ground.
    “I think he does want blood. I think he wants mine.”
    “He can’t have any more. Tell him that.” Janet lay down beside the grave, ran her hands over it. “There’s been enough blood.”

TWENTY
    C illa told no one. As far as anyone knew, she’d taken the loaner her insurance company arranged to do a supply run.
    She pulled up in front of the Hennessy house, on a shady street in Front Royal. The white van sat in the drive, beside a ramp that ran to the front door of the single-story ranch house.
    Her heart knocked. She didn’t question if it was nerves or anger. It didn’t matter. She’d do what she needed to do, say what she needed to say.
    The door opened before Cilla reached it, and the woman she’d seen the night before came out. Cilla saw her hand tremble on the knob she clutched at her back. “What do you want here?”
    “I want to speak to your husband.”
    “He’s not home.”
    Cilla turned her head to stare deliberately at the van, then looked back into Mrs. Hennessy’s eyes.
    “He took my car into the shop. It needed work. Do you think I’m a liar?”
    “I don’t know you. You don’t know me. I don’t know your husband any more than he knows me.”
    “But you keep sending the police here, to our home. Again this morning,with their questions and suspicions, with your accusations.” Mrs. Hennessy drew in a ragged breath. “I want you to go away. Go away and leave us alone.”
    “I’d be happy to. I’d be thrilled to. You tell me what it’s going to take to make him stop.”
    “Stop what? He’s got nothing to do with your troubles. Don’t we have enough of our own? Don’t we have enough without you pointing your finger at us?”
    She would not back down, Cilla told herself. She would not feel guilty for pushing at this small, frightened woman. “He drives by my home almost every day. And almost every day he parks on the shoulder, sometimes for as long as an hour.”
    Mrs. Hennessy gnawed her lips, twisted her fingers together. “It’s not against the law.”
    “Trespassing is against the law, cracking a man’s skull open is against the law. Breaking in and destroying private property is against the law.”
    “He did none of those things.” The fear remained, but a whip of anger lashed through it.