This Side of Salvation

CHAPTER 15

NOW

"This is a joke, right?” Bailey stares down at the pajamas and nightgown in my parents’ bed.

“If it is, we’re not in on it.” That sense of distance creeps over me again, the one I felt when I first saw these remnants of my mom and dad. Like I’m watching myself on a TV sitcom, one of the smart ones with no laugh track or studio audience to tell you when the jokes are funny.

In Dad’s office, Mara and Kane are sitting on the floor in front of the small bookshelf. A precarious stack of religious texts sits between them.

“Anything yet?” I ask Mara as Bailey and I enter.

“Nope, but we’re only halfway through.” She fans the pages of the book in her lap. “Hopefully there’ll be a note or a map or a picture in one of these. Bailey, can you check his computer? You’re good at that stuff. David, go through the crap in the closet. I think it’s mostly family pictures.”

I open the folding closet door and survey the stacks of boxes. The one with the mementos of John is now among them, no longer on the office floor where I found it months before.

The top box has a “D” written on it in thick black marker. I doubt that a box of my childhood memories will contain anything of use, but I pull it down from the stack and set it on the floor, curious to see what Dad kept of me.

Just like John’s box, mine contains elementary school assignments, drawings, team pictures of every year of baseball, from T-ball on up. I’m surprised to find a folder with articles clipped from last year’s Suburban and Wayne Times, summaries of every Tigers game I played. At the time, I thought Dad had stopped caring.

“I’m not exactly an expert,” Bailey says from her seat at the computer, “but it looks like yesterday he went to a lot of trouble to clean out his in-box and clear his cache.”

“Try his web browser’s bookmarks.” Kane drops another book on his stack. “He might’ve missed it, because they’re in a separate file, not in the cache.”

“Good idea.” Bailey makes a few clicks. “Lots of Bible reference sites. Oh, wow, he’s got a separate bookmark for each topic like, ‘Weather,’ ‘Sports,’ and ‘Food.’”

“Quotes for all occasions,” Mara mutters. “I guess it’s like marking favorite pages in a foreign-language phrase book.”

Bailey breathes a compassionate sigh. “He’s got separate bookmarks for you and David.”

“Great.” I flip faster through a collection of my old team photos. “To him, we’re just another topic of conversation.”

We keep working, quiet but for the shuffle of paper and Mara’s sniffles. Kane gets bored with the books and switches to the file cabinet.

Suddenly Bailey jumps up from the chair and hurries out the door. She returns in a few seconds with my father’s Bible.

“When we were in the bedroom, I noticed he left this on the nightstand with bookmarks in it.” Standing in the middle of the room, she opens the Bible to one of the marked pages. “Jonah. Isn’t that the guy who was eaten by a whale?”

“Ooh!” Kane rattles the handle of the top file drawer.

“If it’s a clue, maybe they went somewhere with whale watching.”

I go over to join Bailey. “That seems too literal.”

“Have you met our father?” Mara says. “He took the Bible literally.”

“He believed in the Bible literally, but he used its words to talk about sports and the weather.” I peer over Bailey’s shoulder at the page the book is opened to. “Ninevah.”

“Maybe that’s where they are.” Mara suggests. “Is there a real town called Ninevah?”

“There’s a real town called everything,” Kane answers. “Especially in Pennsylvania, home of Intercourse and Blue Ball.”

“Don’t forget King of Prussia,” Bailey adds.

He tilts his head. “I guess that is weird. Huh.”

I tap the edge of the Bible. “Ninevah was a city of evil people who turned good after Jonah told them to repent. God promised Jonah he’d destroy Ninevah, but when they got their act together, God changed His mind. Jonah was pissed about that.”

“He wanted to see fire and brimstone?” Bailey arches an eyebrow. “ Ty pical g uy.”

“It’s funny, though. There are tons of Bible passages about the end of the world, but Dad picked one that’s about the world not ending. It’s like he found the most nonapocalyptic passage in the whole Bible.”

Bailey held the place with her finger and turned to the other bookmark. “Jeremiah twenty-nine. What’s that about?”

I skim the footnote to refresh my memory. “Exile in Babylon. God was telling the Israelites to suck it up and make the best of it. In seventy years they’d get to go back to Jerusalem, but for now they should ‘seek the peace of the city’ where he sent them.”

“‘Seek the peace’?” Mara spins in the chair to face us. “That’s what Dad said that day when he wanted to move away from this house. So this definitely boosts our theory that they ran away.”

“To find peace,” I whisper. “But where?”

“A city of peace with whales,” Kane suggests. “San Francisco?”

“Will you stop with the whales?” I tell him. “Besides, Jonah was eaten by a big fish, not a whale. And I don’t think these are clues. I think they’re comfort.”

“In case the Rush didn’t happen,” Mara says. “So the Jeremiah passage was for Dad to remind himself he’d find peace somewhere else. A real place, not heaven.” She looks at me. “I’m not saying heaven’s not real, just that they wouldn’t have to die to be happy. They could go somewhere.”

“A place with big fish,” Kane states emphatically. “And now I’m craving salmon, which reminds me, I gotta get home soon. We have Mother’s Day brunner reservations at two o’clock.”

“What’s ‘brunner’?” Bailey asks him.

“Breakfast, lunch, and dinner, all in one magnificent, gut-busting buffet.” He kneels before the file cabinet and pulls out the lowest drawer. “I’ll just check this one last—oh, shit.”

Bailey crosses the room and peers over his shoulder. “Whoa.” From the expression on her face, I know what’s in there.

“Not again,” I whisper.

“Not again what?” Mara says. “Kane, what’s in the drawer?”

He lifts out a folder, which sags beneath a heavy weight. “I guess we can rule out suicide, because this gun would’ve worked great for that.”

My feet turn cold. I press them together, bare toes overlapping, to fight the sudden numbness.

Mara stands up, dropping the book in her hands. “Don’t touch it!”

“It’s not loaded.” Kane pokes his finger into the grip’s empty chamber. “Plus the safety’s on. It’s not gonna blow up. Trust me.”

She takes a step closer. “Can you tell if it’s been fired?”

“Remember when I said I wasn’t a one-man CSI unit? I have no idea if it’s ever been fired. It looks new, I guess.”

“It is new.” My voice sounds like I’ve swallowed sand, and feels like it too. “He had another one before.”

“What? When?” Mara demands.

“Before. October? November?” The past is blurring. This room . . . the guns . . . John . . . I have to shut my eyes or I’ll puke.

“David, are you okay?” Bailey’s voice comes from close beside me.

“Yeah, I—I have to . . .” I turn away, with no clue how that sentence ends. Numb as they are, my legs propel me down the hall, away from that room and its lethal memories.