•••
In the car, on the way home, his mother was quiet. It wasn’t until they pulled into the driveway of the house she shared with her new husband, a retired police officer named Tony Lucrezi, that she said, “He wants to get to know you. He’s sorry for everything.”
“What’s everything?” Andy felt furious, and he welcomed the feeling that pushed aside the sorrow. It felt good, he thought, to be angry at someone other than himself. “Which part is he ashamed of? The drugs, or the being an accessory to murder, or the part about lying to me for my entire life?”
Lori looked into her lap. “I’m not saying that the way he handled it was right, but we did it for the best reasons.”
Andy just stared at her, not trying to disguise his skepticism or his disgust, and, instead of meeting his anger with her own, Lori continued to talk, her eyes on her lap as she stumbled through an explanation.
“Your father and DeVaughn were friends. They grew up together; they played sports together; they were high school basketball stars, the big men on campus.” She smiled a little, remembering.
“So how’d they get from there to jail?” Andy asked.
Lori shut her eyes. “Once high school was over, and I was pregnant, there were a lot of temptations in the neighborhood. A lot of ways to make easy, quick money. Your dad wanted a house for us. He thought if he could just do one big thing, just one time, we’d move to Haddonfield, near my parents, and he’d learn a trade. He was doing okay in the army. They were training him to be a mechanic. He figured he’d stay a few years, learn how to do it, and when he got out he’d get a job. But he came home on a furlough, and DeVaughn had this idea, this great idea about how they were going to each get ten thousand dollars . . .”
“By robbing a friend,” Andy supplied.
Lori shook her head. “It was stupid. They thought it was a Robin Hood thing, stealing from the rich, giving to the poor. Which was the three of us.” She looked at him, her eyes wide and beseeching, an unfamiliar pleading tone in her voice. “They never meant to hurt David. They weren’t like that. They just thought they’d roll up, stick the gun out the window, and he’d give them the money, and that would be the end of it.”
“You’re kidding.”
“Andy, they were teenagers. They weren’t criminal masterminds.”
Andy shook his head. He was trying to make sense of it, to put it all together, his father and DeVaughn Sills, who’d driven the car, who’d used the gun.
“Mr. Sills lied to me,” he said slowly. “He said he didn’t know my father that well. And he sure never told me that my dad was alive.”
“He didn’t know your father that well. He only knew him as DeVaughn’s friend. And he wanted to tell you. He thought that even having a father in jail was better than no father at all. He only kept quiet because Andy and I—your father and I—had asked him to. He was always looking out for us,” Lori said. “He felt responsible. He thought that if he’d been a better father to DeVaughn none of it would have happened. It was stupid,” said Lori, her voice catching. “It was stupid and awful, and it ruined so many lives, but, Andy, it’s over. It’s in the past. It was a long time ago, and you’ve got a chance to get to know your father now.” She touched his hand. Her voice was gentle. Maybe her new marriage had softened her. Maybe it was just time. “If you can find it in your heart. But he’ll understand if you can’t.”
“I’ll think about it,” Andy said . . . and he had, for months, considering each piece of the story, the new facts, trying to understand why they’d done what they’d done, and how their choices had shaped his own life. He had been so lonely as a kid. No friends, because his mother had wanted his strongest—his only—connection to be to her. When he was being charitable, he thought that she’d lied because she’d wanted to keep him safe, away from the influences and the kinds of people who had caused his father to make such bad choices. When he was angry, he thought that she’d kept him so close because other people in the neighborhood had to have known the truth . . . and that she hadn’t noticed, or hadn’t cared, about the way he was always on the outside; how he’d never really had friends.
A dozen times he sat behind the wheel of his car or climbed the steps to the El with a token in his hand. But he never turned the key, never boarded the train. He wished he could have done it all differently. Maybe he would never have agreed to the doping. Maybe he’d never have met Maisie. Maybe he could have had the life he’d imagined with Rachel, a quiet, happy Act Two, with his medal on the mantel of some cozy little home, kids playing in the yard, Lori visiting, and his father, too. Rachel would have known how to navigate the situation; she’d have made arrangements and made jokes and helped him figure out how to talk to a ghost that was now flesh and blood. But now he’d have to figure it out alone.