Late One Night

4

Della, nor anyone else for that matter, had any way of knowing that a few weeks before the fire, Shooter had forced himself to go through more of his wife’s things, a task he’d been doing a little at a time since she died back in the spring. All that was left were a few boxes still in her closet, just a few cardboard boxes that held who knew what and then it’d all be over, nothing more to do but take care of Captain. And that was turning into a full-time job and then some.

Shooter sat on the floor outside the closet and opened the first of the three boxes that he’d eyed throughout the summer and autumn and into December, putting off the moment when he’d open them, trying to make his chore last as long as he could, dreading the time when it’d be done and the ache of Merlene’s absence would settle around him with a completeness he feared would bring him to his knees.

The box was full of photographs, some of them as old as Merlene’s girlhood. Little girl with her hair in braids and a calico cat squirming in her arms. Teenage girl in her high school graduation gown, a pair of white pumps on her feet. Pictures of her and Shooter when they were young and just starting out. Merlene was such a tiny thing next to his bulk.

In one picture, she stood in their kitchen archway, turned sideways so the swell of her stomach showed. She was pregnant with Captain, and looking at that picture Shooter felt his throat close, overcome as he was with what it’d felt like to be that young couple expecting their first baby, thrilled and in love. Then he’d come, Wesley, and Shooter hadn’t known what to do with him, had been afraid to hold him, had little by little slipped away from him and Merlene, and now here he was, the one left to do right by their son.

The second box had mementos in it: Captain’s storybooks from when he was a kid, drawings he’d done, cards he’d made for Merlene on Mother’s Day. Some of Merlene’s favorite books were there, too, like The Diary of Anne Frank. Shooter leafed through its pages, and to his surprise a snapshot fell out. A shot of Ronnie sitting inside Shooter’s house, sitting backwards astraddle a ladder back chair, his hands folded on the top slat, his chin resting on top of them, his eyes closed.

At ease.

The words popped into Shooter’s head. It was plain that Ronnie was content to be where he was. At peace. It came to Shooter, then, that Merlene had taken that picture — he couldn’t remember ever having seen it — and had kept it back so she could look at it any time she chose.

“He’s trouble,” she said about Ronnie once. Shooter had never forgotten it. “But he’s got a sweetness about him. Sweet like a little boy.”

Shooter scoffed at that. Ronnie was just mean and tricky enough to do some damage if the punching and gouging got going. He had a tattoo on the back of his neck, BAD MOON. Shooter knew enough of his history — orphaned young and farmed out to one foster home after another — to make him believe it was true; he’d been born under a bad moon on the rise.

Now, looking at that picture, Shooter wondered for a moment whether Merlene had been more smitten with Ronnie than Shooter had ever known. Something about that photo nestled there with all those family pictures — when in the world would Merlene have taken it, sometime when she and Ronnie were alone in the house? — pricked at Shooter and led him to imagine things he’d be ashamed to admit.

Just his mind running away with him, he thought. Just nonsense. Nothing more than that. Merlene had thought the world of him. She’d never have done anything to be ashamed of, and particularly not with the likes of Ronnie.

Then Shooter opened a blue stationery box. He remembered buying it for Merlene one year for Christmas. Oh, how she loved that stationery, each sheet embossed with her monogram. “Now, that’s fancy,” she said when she opened it, and she held up a single sheet and traced her finger over the M, and the R, and the E. Merlene Elizabeth Rowe. “My, my, my,” she said. “It’s fit for a queen.”

A few sheets still remained, three to be exact. Shooter plucked them from the box and held them to his nose. He swore he could still smell a faint scent of Merlene’s perfume, White Shoulders, but then he thought it was just his imagination. When he went to put the sheets back in the box, he noticed a piece of gray cardboard, cut to fit, snugged into the corners. He ran his finger over it and felt the outline of something in the shape of a rectangle. He pried at the corner of the cardboard with his fingernail and finally got it so he could pull it free.

Underneath that piece of cardboard was an envelope, nothing written on the outside of it, no stamp or postmark, just a plain white envelope. Inside was a greeting card with two blue flowers on the cover. Forget-me-nots, Shooter knew, because it was Merlene’s favorite flower.

Apparently someone else had known that, too.

Shooter opened the card and read the printed verse:

Just wanted to let you know

That I am thinking about you!

Below it, Ronnie had written a personal message:

M., we both know Captain is a gift,

a forget-me-not of the angels, like you always say.

Some people just can’t see that. Shame on them.

Don’t let Shooter get you down—♥, R

That exclamation point, that heart. The fact that she’d saved the card and secreted it away. That snapshot. What was Shooter to make of all that except that in her heart of hearts she’d wished for a different sort of husband, had harbored a crush on Ronnie, had told him things meant to stay inside their house.

Shooter tore the card in half and then tore it again. He kept tearing at it, realizing, finally, that he was making grunting, animal sounds, keening cries coming from a place deep inside him where he felt betrayed.

It was then, though he wouldn’t be aware of it until later, that he began to build an idea — it would come into focus a little at a time — that he would find a way to hurt Ronnie, a way to make him wish he’d never given Merlene that card, never said those things, never opened the door to this rage in Shooter, a rage he wasn’t sure he could stop, even though he was afraid of where it might take him.