A Galway Epiphany

Put up his palm and, fuck me, she high-fived him.

How’d that happen?

When she’d finished, I suggested,

“Sara can give us a description of the man who set the fire.”

I turned to her, said,

“Now take your time, think carefully, and tell anything you can recall of what he looked like.”

Keefer made a sound of disgust, said,

“No need to waste time. Let’s cut to the chase.”

We both looked at him in dismay. I said,

“What are you thinking?”

He produced a shiny iPhone and handled it like it was his go-to accessory. He’d sworn a line through hell would happen before he’d be caught with such an item. I said,

“You hate phones.”

He gave me a look of bafflement, went,

“Me? Dude, you got to have one.”

Many things were annoying about that answer, starting with dude, but I let them slide, waited. He asked, pulling up a photo on his screen,

“This guy?”

Sara physically shrank from the image, nodded her head. He turned the phone to me. There was Benjamin J.

I was impressed, asked,

“How’d you get that?”

He smirked, like I was being deliberately dense, said slowly,

“I put the phone in his face, clicked.”

It was an answer.

Sara was curled up in the chair. I went to her but Keefer caught my arm, said,

“I got this.”

He knelt down and spoke in a low, near whisper to her. For minutes she didn’t respond, then she uncurled, a tiny smile at the corner of her mouth. He said,

“You go get washed up, hon.”

She didn’t dance away but she was for sure much better. I asked,

“What did you tell her?”

He said,

“I told her the truth.”

Fuck.

“Mind sharing that?”

He made a face of Lord grant me patience with this idiot, said,

“I told her we’d kill the fucker.”

  My daughter’s dead clothes.

Or

  My dead daughter’s clothes.

After the death of my daughter, those two sentences bounced, danced, and mired in my mind. I was so consumed with madness, grief, anger that those lines were like a cursed mantra in my head. Round and round they spun in an insane reel. Fueled with Jameson, I was fixated on which was the correct statement.

I’d even gone to church, sought out a priest, and laid that question on him. I scared the shit out of him. He didn’t actually flee but he backed away fast, muttering,

“Perhaps some medical help?”

The day before her death, I had bought her jeans, sweatshirts, the small Converse trainers she loved, and wrapped them with great care. Men can’t fold a parcel for shit but I tried and figured if I put a bow on it, it would be less of a befuddled mess.

That care/less package had lain at the bottom of my wardrobe ever since, untouched, unseen. I told Keefer that the clothes might fit Sara; I couldn’t meet his eyes as I did so.

He asked,

“You sure, buddy? I can go out, get some gear.”

I managed,

“No, it’s fine.”

It wasn’t fine, it would never be fucking fine. Never.