Triptych

She snorted a laugh. “Yeah. So happy that he changed his will.”

John clenched his jaw. He didn’t know what he was supposed to say.

“Mama made me promise not to throw those out,” Joyce told him, waving her hand toward the closet. “I wanted to. I wanted to dump them all out in the yard and have a big bonfire. I almost did.” She gave a humorless bark of a laugh, as if she was still surprised she hadn’t torched everything. “I should have. I should have at least put them in a storage place or buried them somewhere.” She let out a heavy sigh. “But I didn’t.”

“Why?”

“Because it’s her. All of those files, all of those stupid notebooks. Did you know she never went anywhere without one?” Joyce added wryly, “Of course you didn’t. She never took them inside when she visited you, but she worked on them, thought about them, the whole way down and the whole way back. Sometimes she’d call me in the middle of the night and ask me to look into some obscure law she found, something she thought might wrangle a new trial for you.” Joyce looked back at the filing cabinets, the notebooks. “It’s like they’re tiny little pieces of her heart, her soul, and if I throw them out now, then I’m throwing her out, too.”

John smoothed his hand along the cover of the notebook. His mother had given her life to him, dedicated her every waking moment to getting him out of Coastal.

All because of Michael Ormewood.

Michael might as well have killed Emily after he finished with Mary Alice. He should have reached into Joyce’s chest and squeezed the life out of her heart. Oh, God, John wanted to kill him. He wanted to beat him senseless, then wrap his hands around Michael’s neck and watch the other man’s eyes as he realized he was going to die. John would loosen his hands, taking him to the edge then bringing him back just to watch the fear, the absolute fucking terror, as Michael realized he was completely helpless. Then, John would just leave him. He’d leave him alone in the middle of nowhere and let him die all by himself.

“John?” Joyce said. She had always been intuitive, always known when something was bothering him.

He opened the notebook again, skimmed his mother’s writing. “What’s this?” he asked. “Bradycardia. What does that mean?”

Joyce walked over to the closet and opened one of the file drawers. “When they arrested you,” she said, “you were too weak to stand on your own.”

“Yeah.” He had been terrified.

“They took you to the hospital. Mom kept insisting something was wrong with you.” She searched through the files. “She made them do an EKG, an EEG, bloodwork, MRI.”

John had a vague recollection of this. “Why?”

“Because she knew that something was wrong.” Joyce finally found what she was looking for. “Here.”

He took the medical report, carefully reading the words while Joyce waited. The numbers on the tests made no sense to him, but John had worked at the prison infirmary. He knew the section to look for. He read aloud from the handwritten doctor’s notes under the box labeled “conclusions.”

“ ‘Resting heart rate below sixty, ataxic breathing and general physical condition indicate drug toxicity.” “ He looked back at Joyce. ”I took drugs, Joyce. I never said I didn’t.“

“No.” She shook her head. “Read the rest.”

John read to himself this time. The doctor had indicated that John’s symptoms were not consistent with an overdose of cocaine and heroin. He suspected another drug was involved. Further blood tests were inconclusive, but testing was recommended on the powdered substance found at the scene.

The powdered substance. Michael had given him the baggie. John had never done heroin in his life. He had assumed good old Woody was trying to do him a favor, when in fact he had been trying to knock him out. Not just knock him out. Maybe there had been something else in that bag besides cocaine and heroin. John knew from prison talk that the labs could only find what they were specifically looking for. Michael could have spiked the speedball with something even more potent, something that would finish the job in case the volatile mixture didn’t.

“What?” Joyce asked.

John’s surprise must have registered on his face. He had been focusing on Mary Alice all this time. Had Michael meant to kill John, too? Had he thought to make it easier for himself to do whatever he wanted with Mary Alice and leave the blame at the foot of John’s grave?

Two days after Mary Alice’s body had been found, Michael and his mother had come by to visit. John was laid up in his room, feeling like shit, hiding behind a story he told to his mother about having a bad cold when in fact he could barely breathe every time he thought about Mary Alice’s body lying beside him in her bed.

Michael had been the same as always, at least as far as John could recall. His cousin had stayed with him in his room, talking about- what?-John couldn’t remember now. Something stupid, he was sure. John had fallen asleep. Was it then that Michael had planted the knife in his closet? Was it then that Michael had formed his plan? Or had somebody else worked it out from the begi

“Joh

He closed the folder. “What do you remember about Aunt Lydia?”

“She was your lawyer.” Joyce added, “She quit criminal law and went over to corporate after what happened to you. She said she lost her stomach for it. She never forgave herself for not being able to help you.”

“I’ll bet.”

Joyce was obviously taken aback by the hatred in his tone. “I’m serious, John. She came to see Mom at the hospital.”

“When was this?”

“I guess it was the day before Mom passed away. They had just put the tube down her throat so she could breathe.” Joyce paused, collecting herself. “She was in a lot of pain. They had her on a morphine drip. I’m not even sure she knew Kathy and I were there, let alone Lydia.”

“What did Lydia say to her?”

“I have no idea. We left them alone.” She added, “She looked really bad. Aunt Lydia, I mean. She hadn’t seen Mom in years but she couldn’t stop crying. I never thought they were close, but maybe during the trial… I don’t know. I was so upset back then that I wasn’t paying much attention to anybody.”

“You didn’t hear anything?”

“No,” Joyce said. “Well, just at the end. I came back too soon, I guess. Lydia was holding Mom’s hand. We’d told her the doctors said she didn’t have long, maybe a day at the most.” Joyce paused, probably thinking back on the scene. “Mom’s eyes were closed-I don’t even think she was aware that Lydia was there.” She tilted her head. “But Lydia was sobbing. Really sobbing, John, like her heart was broken. She was shaking, and she kept saying, ”I’m so sorry, Emily. I’m so sorry‘ “ Joyce concluded, ”She never forgave herself. She never got over losing your case.“

Right, John thought. Aunt Lydia was probably plenty over it now. Nothing like unburdening your sins to someone who wouldn’t live to tell them.

He asked, “How was Mom after she left?”

“Still out of it,” Joyce answered. “She slept all of the time. It was hard for her to keep her eyes open.”

“Did she say anything?”

“She couldn’t, John. She had the tube down her throat.”

John nodded. It was all making sense now. The first thing Aunt Lydia had done as his lawyer was sit John down and make him tell her everything about that night, everything that had happened. John had been terrified. He had told her the absolute truth, fuck whatever code of honor you were supposed to have about ratting out other kids. He told her about Michael tossing him the bag of what John thought was coke, about walking Mary Alice home and climbing through the window into her bedroom. He told her about the kiss, the way his brain had exploded like a rocket had gone off in his head. He told her about waking up the next morning lying in a pool of Mary Alice’s blood.