“Jeb had told me all about you and that he’d looked you up and knew where you were. He said nothing, back then, about wanting to hurt you or get even or whatever was going on with him. No, he spoke with great fondness about you, at least at first.

  “If it means something, he told me the whole story of when you were kids and how you fooled around and had this whole puppy love thing going on.

  “It made me curious about you. See, I was taken so young, I never had anybody in my life. I never knew what falling in love even meant.

  “And then I watched you come and go with Marc. I could see how comfortable you were with each other. There was an ease in the way you looked at the other, in your casual touches.

  “Now know that I didn’t watch you a lot. I’d come up and stroll around the neighborhood, go down to the lakefront. I saw you guys maybe a total of three times, if that.”

  “Okay, okay. But you’re not answering the question. Why did you pretend to be Jeb?”

  Hunter shut down a little. I could tell he was thinking. “It was the story Jeb told me. The two of you swimming together in the river. The stolen kisses.” Hunter reached down and grasped the amethyst pendant still hanging there. “He gave me this. He said you’d given it to him, to protect him. No one, and he emphasized no one, had ever tried to protect him before, especially not his parents.”

  “Why then, would he give it to you?”

  “Because things were starting to fall apart by that time. I could tell he was jealous that you had someone. Totally irrational, I know. You’d been kids when you last saw each other. But I knew, from his reactions when I’d report on how you were doing and that I’d seen you with Marc, that he saw the love you had for your own husband, thirty-some years later, as a betrayal.

  “I think that’s when he started fantasizing about hurting you—or worse. It was no coincidence that it was also when he started getting more heavily into drugs. He was always into them and booze, always, but things started to take a turn for the worse when some dude introduced him to meth. He got hooked almost instantly. Walker encouraged it too. It made Jeb more ‘pliable,’ he said.” Hunter shook his head, remembering.

  “More than ever, I wanted out. To be free was all I could dream of. When Keith died, setting us both free, I wanted to meet you, to get to you before Jeb could. And in some crazy way, I thought if you believed I was Jeb, you wouldn’t believe the real Jeb when he one day would show up.”

  He eyed me and I could read the terror in his face.

  “I also thought you might come to see me as a person you could love, as you once loved Jeb. He and I looked similar enough that I thought I could pass.” He stretched out a bit, raising his face to the sun for a moment. “Crazy, right?” He made a little circling motion at the side of his head, the international symbol for absolutely nuts.

  “I wanted that puppy love. I wanted you. And I thought I stood a better chance if you thought I was your long-lost love.”

  The words caught me up short. Even though I’d imagined this as the reason for his masquerading as Jeb, I couldn’t quite get my mind around his rationale. I felt confused and lost. These were not the feelings I wanted to bring to this ceremonial farewell.

  “Hunter,” I said after a long pause and him appearing distressed and worried. “I need you to go.”

  “Oh no. I was afraid this would happen.”

  “No, no. Please don’t worry. I don’t mean go forever. But I need to process.” I leaned forward to touch the silver bag containing Marc’s ashes. “And I really need to be alone.”

  “Are you sure?”

  “Oh yes.”

  Awkwardly, Hunter rose to his feet. He appeared hurt, cast out. But I couldn’t help that. At least not right now.

  We didn’t say anything more. I watched him leave the beach without looking back, and knew he was afraid I was casting him out for good.

  But I didn’t know what I wanted. I had too much to think about.

  And Marc needed a proper goodbye, just between the two of us.

  IV

  I stayed on the beach until the sky started to darken and the sun, behind me, set behind the mix of brick and mortar that was the city.

  People had come and gone as I sat there, fingers in the cool sand—a gay couple obviously early on in their relationship, an older woman with frizzy salt and pepper hair and a copy of Douglas Stuart’s Young Mungo open on her lap, a few other people with dogs, taking the opportunity to break the law and let them run free along the shoreline, and an old man with a metal detector and headphones, searching, I guess for change and lost jewelry.

  But just as the sky was getting murky, a kind of grayish lavender in color, I at last had the beach to myself.

  The moment had come.

  I rose, shaky as a newborn foal taking its first step. I removed the plastic bag with the ashes from the Nordstrom shopping bag. It felt both heavy and light at the same time. I’d guess it weighed maybe a little more than a couple of pounds. So, the actual heft of the thing was what felt light. What felt heavy was that this was all that was left of my man.

  Scenes of our life together ran through my mind—the passion at the start, the nesting as we searched for our forever home in our favorite Chicago neighborhood, Rogers Park, the trips to places near and far, like Saugatuck, Michigan across the lake, where there was a gay campground called Camp It to far away, a once-in-a-lifetime trip to Rome, Milan, and Florence for Marc’s 40th. My happiest memories were simple, though—picking up Vito from the animal shelter when he was a puppy, nights on the couch with a Giordano’s pizza and a couple of beers on the coffee table before us as we binged something like The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel on Amazon Prime or Ted Lasso on Apple TV, grocery shopping, trips up to Lake Geneva or Door County to take in autumn foliage. Even something as simple as an L train ride downtown to see a play were cemented into my head, memories I’d now treasure even more than I’d ever dreamed.

  I moved with the plastic bag toward the water. I glanced behind me to make sure I was still alone. I wasn’t sure what I was about to do was even legal, so I wanted to take care. I also simply wanted to be alone with Marc.

  I set the bag down on the sand and squatted to open it. I dug into the ashes, grasping as big of a handful as my fingers would allow.

  I neared the water’s edge, just close enough to avoid getting my feet wet. The water had gone still as the wind suddenly disappeared. I heard traffic behind me on Sheridan Road, a snatch of conversation and laughter coming from an open apartment window, and a bit of music, maybe from a car, Adele singing “Hello.”

  “I will never stop missing you. I will never stop loving you. You are a jagged little piece of my heart, just as painful, but also just as life-giving. You run through my veins and my dreams.”

  I thought a bit longer, but the words were enough. If Marc could somehow listen, I hoped he’d understand that he’d been, for many, many years, the most important person in my life. He was my dawn, my dusk, and my midday.

  I flung the handful of ashes outward, over the mirror-like surface of the water, watching it rise just a bit and then tumble into the water, sinking.

  I reached in for another handful and repeated the process. Again. And again, until all that was left was maybe a quarter of a cup. I’d keep half of that for myself. I’d give the other half to Marc’s mom and dad.

  I gathered up my things.

  Darkness had claimed the beach and I needed to get home.

  Chapter 16

  Now—Sam

  I

  It had been a long and exhausting trip.

  Since I sold my Prius last winter when it was more of a hassle in the city than it was worth, I took public transportation everywhere. Most of the time, it was quick and convenient, and I barely missed the car Marc and I once shared. I certainly didn’t miss traffic jams and searching for an hour for street parking.

  This trip—from Rogers Park to the Cook County Jail on the southside—was testing my nerves and my patience. It involved a Red Line and a Green Line L train and a couple of different buses.

  Even though it was April, it was cold. Dirty snow defined the landscape and, above it, a dingy grayish sky filtered the sun begrudgingly, lending a washed-out feeble light to the day. The temperature hovered just above freezing. The wind off of the lake contributed to the wind chill.

  My current bus had no heat, at least not the kind provided by its own works. I suppose I should have been grateful that the bus was crowded with people, which made for a kind of body heat blanket. Never mind the smell!

  I had delayed making this visit for too long. Sure, I had seen Jeb during the trial last year and our eyes had even met a couple of times when he was being led into the courtroom, but I had not had any contact with him since that terrible late summer day when I’d been interrogated for hours and hours and was only freed because Jeb had, in some last-minute drama only he could understand and orchestrate, had come in to the very same police station where I was being questioned and confessed to killing my husband and, really, the love of my life. He may as well have confessed to snuffing out all the happiness and hope I had.

  I hadn’t wanted to talk to him.

  I hadn’t needed to talk to him.

  I wanted, truly, to banish him from my life, my memories, and my nightmares.

  It took me several months to realize that what I wanted was impossible. Short of undergoing some kind of lobotomy, my experiences with Jeb, both as a youth and as a middle-aged man, were now a permanent part of my history, whether I wanted them as part of that record or not.

  Jeb was an unwelcome visitor, though, on an almost daily basis. He appeared in dreams, in memories, and in my confounding desire to know how he could have changed so much over the years from the young man I thought I’d known.

  II

  We faced one another across a table in a room as gray as the wintry sky outside the prison. Jeb was in an orange jumpsuit, dark hair shorn down to his scalp, with multiple crude tattoos peeking out from just about anywhere the orange didn’t cover. His wrists were cuffed and, beneath our scarred table, his ankles were bound by a heavy chain.

  His green eyes were the only thing I was at ease focusing on. It was because they were about the only aspect of him I could recall from those glorious days when I was thirteen years old and madly in love with this boy.

  I had to wonder—had he already been evil when we knew each other back then? Was he only hiding it? Or, more likely, had the trauma of what had been done to him transformed him into a monster?

  I supposed I could ask him, but who knows what kind of answer he’d have for me? Who knows if even he was aware of the why of his own broken psyche?

  He regarded me with a blank expression, staring across the table and the low divider separating us. His expression lacked guile, expectation, recognition, or really much emotion at all. He didn’t say a word, not even hello, so I guessed he was waiting for my cue.

  “Thanks for seeing me. You certainly didn’t have to put me on your visitor list.”

  He nodded, expression remaining neutral. I began to wonder if coming here had been a mistake. What good would it do me?

  “I was curious.” His voice was deep, a rich baritone, and nothing like the breaking adolescent voice I remembered even now. It was the voice of a man I didn’t know.

  I fell silent. Have you ever been in a situation where stringing together a few words became an almost Herculean task? Overwhelmed with pain, regret, and a kind of morbid curiosity, I struggled with how to conduct this conversation.

  What do you really want to know? Ask that.

  So, I did.

  “Why? I came to court every day to try and figure it out, but your lawyer never allowed you to take the stand. And frankly, no one cared much about the why. But I care and maybe it’ll help me with closure if I know.”

  “You want me to help you?” His face went from neutral to a sneer. I felt his view of me was akin to someone looking at a cockroach, and I shrank back in my seat a little. This was a moment I recognized for what it was—if I had any doubt that the Jeb I knew all those years ago in St. Clair was gone for good, then that doubt was now erased.

  “It’s up to you, Jeb.” I felt odd even using his first name, since he was essentially now a stranger to me, although life would forever bind us up in ways that were equal parts horror and joy. “You don’t have to say a word. In fact, I think you can just call a guard over here and go back to your cell. I won’t bother you again.” I looked around me, at the crowded visiting room—families reuniting, lovers longing to touch, people coming to assuage a prisoner’s loneliness out of the kindness of their hearts. No one like us… “Yeah, after murdering my Marc, maybe it’s not too much to ask for a little help in understanding why.”

  He leaned a bit closer. His breath was rancid and his teeth were yellow, one of the front ones chipped. The beautiful promise of his youth had vanished, its only remaining signpost his piercing eyes, the color of sea glass.

  “It was all your fault, you and that cunt mother of yours.”

  I’m nearly fifty years old, yet I can say with certainty this is the first time I’d ever heard anyone call my mother a cunt. If these words were spoken under different circumstances, I might have been shocked, appalled, might have stormed off.

  But now I was simply disappointed that I didn’t see it coming. “How so?” I wondered.

  “Oh, don’t play innocent with me. I know you two were always thick as thieves. You knew and she knew.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “When the pair of you sent me into the woods that night, on the Fourth.”

  I shrugged. “Best I can remember, I told you to go back there to take a piss.”

  “Yeah, yeah, it was all so innocent. Your mama really never told you? How she sold me up the river? Into bondage?” He shook his head, looked around the room. “Walker told me how she took money from him, a thousand bucks I think it was, if she’d lead him to me. And she did! How the hell else would he know exactly where to go? And which boy was prettier?” His smile was nightmarish and would haunt me, I knew, for a long time, probably the rest of my life.

  I wouldn’t need to ask Trudy to deny these accusations. I knew—in my bones, my heart, my gut, my head—that my mother would have never done such a thing. She’d told me herself how Walker had “found” Jeb—she’d invited the man to come with us and filled him in on all the details he’d need. It was all unwitting, in the hopes she could forge a relationship with a new man. But even without that information she naively gave, she wasn’t the kind of soul who’d hand over an innocent boy to a predator to essentially be an abused and brainwashed slave to a very sick and dangerous man.

  Trudy didn’t have it in her. Not back then, not now, not ever. I knew this deep in my bones, my soul. There was no question.

  But I wasn’t about to argue. Jeb was convinced. There was certainty in his words—and undeniable resentment and hatred. He hated me; he hated Mom. Maybe blaming us was the only way he could reconcile what had happened to him and what he’d later done himself.

  I nodded. “So, you found and killed my husband to get even?”

  “That’s right. Walker always told Hunter and me that if you wanna hurt a son-of-a-bitch, you don’t hurt him, you hit where it’ll really sting—hurt the person they love most. I thought about going after Trudy.” He grinned again and I had a feeling I’d never be able to forget that twisted smile so far from anything joyous or friendly. “But Marc was so easy. So willing—a lamb to slaughter. Isn’t that how the saying goes?” He smiled again. “God, he hated you!”

  It wasn’t true. Marc may have grown bored with me, tired of our life together, but I also knew, much the same as I knew the truth about my mother’s culpability in all of this, that Marc never hated me.

  “It was easy to seduce the little twerp,” Jeb continued.

  I’d had enough. Talk to an insane man and what are you going to get? Insanity. I scooted my chair back. This was a bad idea, and it definitely wasn’t helping.

  “What? You’re gonna leave now? Didn’t get the answers you hoped for? I ain’t letting you off the hook so easy, faggot.”

  I stood.

  All these years, I’d love a phantom, a boy I wished for but who, in all likelihood, never existed. Perhaps I’d made the old Jeb up all those years ago, a heady brew of desire, Prince Charming, and balm for my questioning soul all at once.

  I turned away, intending to head out the door, shaking and vulnerable, to head for the nearest bar. But there was something I was prepared to say to Jeb when I planned on coming here and, damn it, I would speak the words.

  So, I turned back.

  I met his gaze and ignored his smirk.

  “You know I loved you once.”

  The enmity left his expression. His ashen skin color whitened even more. His mouth opened. I figured he might have been expecting rage and accusations, professions of hate. Those things he could deal with. But love? Obviously, that truly caught him off guard.

  He looked as though he didn’t know what to say. And that was okay, because I did.

  “And believe it or not, I forgive you. Not because I can let go of what you did to me, but because of what forgiveness does for me now. It allows me to begin to heal from the wound you inflicted on my heart.”

  He was trying not to laugh. I didn’t care. It was all an act, anyway. I’d reached him in a way he hadn’t expected.

  “Try to find the boy you were, if he ever was even real. I’d love to believe he’s still in there somewhere. My Jeb.”

  I didn’t wait for a response, but headed for the exit, clinging fast to the image of two boys swimming in the brownish-green currents of the Ohio River, one mistakenly believing he was the protector of the other.

  But he halted my passage.

  “Wait.”