White Space Season 2

with Bruce Heller, the murderer, than they did with his victims. How many people still held Roger Heller’s actions against the entire family? And how many people, of the three hundred plus watching the casket dip down into the open dirt, were there to say good riddance more than goodbye?
    Milo searched the crowd with his eyes, hating every person, one by one.
    Hypocrites. Assholes, all of them.
    He reserved the most hate for old Milo — for allowing himself to feel the same rage for Alex in the aftermath of what his father had done. Even if it hadn’t lasted, Milo had hated Alex, no different from many of the assholes at his service.
    He felt most awful for not eulogizing his best friend when given not one but two chances. He was a writer, for fuck’s sake, he should have been able to say something . He had four pages of notes scribbled for the occasion, detailing how much he loved, yes loved, his best friend. How much the Hellers, even Roger, had made him feel like a member of their family. Part of a happy family — not the cold, dysfunctional thing that passed for family at his house.
    The Hellers deserved so much more than this.
    Milo thought of Aubrey, now a ward of the state. She had to be confused, scared, not knowing what happened to her mommy, daddy, and brother. Or worse, unable to forget seeing her flesh and blood butchered before her eyes. The poor girl wasn’t even a year old and had already lost her entire family to slaughter.
    Can her life ever be normal?
    The thought was too much. Though Milo clenched his fists and curled his toes to keep it from happening, tears still slid from both eyes and down his cheeks.
    Katie, who he couldn’t even look at without risk of losing 100 percent of his shit, must have noticed.
    She pulled him into the hug that he needed.
    Milo shuddered inside Katie’s embrace. “I should’ve said something,” he cried into her hair.
    “It’s OK,” she said, patting him softly on the back. “Alex knew you how you felt. He always did.”
    Milo nodded, unable to choke another word through his mouth. Even if he could, what was left to say? Everything was shit. The whole entire fucking goddamn piss-soaked world.
    As Katie held Milo, his eyes caught sight of Jon Conway and his entourage, Cassidy Hughes, twin sister of Sarah Hughes, whom Milo had as a teacher the year before, and the big giant black dude with the weird robotic foot sticking out from the bottom of his black suit, who looked like he was waiting for life inside the panels of a graphic novel.
    “What the hell is he doing here?” Milo muttered.
    He hadn’t noticed the Conway bunch at the church service, but then again, the room was so crowded, with too many people crammed into the pews, it would have been easy to miss him even if he had been there.
    “Who?” Katie said.
    “Jon Conway. What the fuck is he doing at Alex’s memorial? He didn’t know Alex, or his mom. Unless there was something I didn’t know.” Milo turned to Katie. “Did Alex ever say anything? Do you know if Conway knew his mom or something?”
    “I don’t know,” Katie shrugged. “Maybe a long time ago or something. Alex never said anything, but Hamilton’s not that big. Everyone sorta knows everyone here, right?”
    “Maybe,” he said. “Just seems weird.”
    Milo fished inside his coat pocket and grabbed his cell. He promised Don he would get pictures of the service, and he suddenly felt like he had to get one of Jon. If Milo knew anyone who could tell him the real reason Jon Conway might be at his best friend’s funeral, it was definitely the man who seemed congested with conspiracy.
    Don had taught Milo to be suspicious of everything. “Gather as much information as you can,” he instructed in one of the many documents from the flash drive Don had given Milo a few weeks before. “Take pics and video, record conversations whenever possible. Go to common places: parks, stores, the library. Watch people. Be discreet but observant. Never stop drawing connections. Look for patterns until you train yourself to see them whenever you open your eyes. The hidden rarely wishes to remain buried, and often reveals itself to those willing to pay close attention.”
    Much, if not most of the stuff Don had given to Milo, seemed a bit out there , tin-foil hat shit for sure — the musings of a man whose family had gone missing, and who was desperate for a way to explain it, even if answers existed only through the thick haze of