Gun Lake (32 page)

“Are—are you okay?”

Jared came to her side, and she shook her head and looked out to the pasture. A car passed and slowed down for a moment to see what was happening, then continued past.

“Mom?”

“What?” she screamed back at Jared.

“What—are you okay?”

“No, I’m not okay. I haven’t been okay for a long time.”

“What—why?”

“Why? Why?”

Everything in her wanted to reach out and shake the fries and Big Mac out of this stupid, thoughtless, jerk of a teenager, this arrogant selfish kid whom she adored and loved and whom she just wanted to hold and hug.

“I can’t even have a decent, normal conversation with you anymore, and it’s making me sick.”

“What? What are you talking about?”

“You haven’t said a word to me the last couple of days.”

“Yes, I have.”

“ ‘Give me some more ketchup’ isn’t having a conversation.”

“What do you want me to say?”

She shook her head, her eyes still watery, her mouth foul and bitter. “What do I want? What do you think I want, Jare? I didn’t bring you out here so I could have this nice, relaxing vacation away from home. Away from your father and your brother and sister. This isn’t about what I wanted. Don’t you get it?”

“What do you want me to say?”

“What? What?” Michelle knew she was screaming out loud now. She knew she needed to control herself, control her emotions.

They had already spilled out and over onto the side of the road just a few minutes ago. She couldn’t keep things bottled in the way she had been trying to, because eventually they exploded like a geyser, like a volcano erupting.

“I’m sorry,” Jared said, looking at her with a frightened look on his face.

“For what? Tell me what you’re sorry for.”

“I don’t know.”

“Is it because I’m sick? Sick with worry? Because I’m crying? Is that the only reason you’re sorry? ’Cause you wanna know something? I’m not going to always be around to cry in front of you.”

“No—I know—I mean, I just—”

She shook her head. “You are just like your uncle Evan was. You know that? Just like him. And that scares me, Jare. It scares the life out of me.”

“Why? I thought you loved Uncle Evan.”

So this is how it would happen. On the side of the road, with the foul, stinging aftertaste of vomit in her mouth. The open sky stretching out for an eternity, clear enough for God to get a picture-perfect view of the whole thing. Next to a pasture, farmland, in the middle of nowhere. A hot day with a hint of wind and the car still going and her shaking and already sweating. This is how it was going to be.

“Your uncle died in a bar.”

“What?”

“Uncle Evan. When he was thirty-two and I was thirty-five. That would make you five. Remember going to his funeral?”

Jared nodded, his brown hair falling into his eyes and being brushed away with his hand.

“Evan was like you, Jared. He was a good guy. Likable. He always had friends. He had more friends than anyone else I knew. He was Mr. Popular. He tried college, figured it wasn’t for him. Too much work. He’d rather goof off. He didn’t know what he wanted to do—except, of course, get drunk on weekends. Go to bars. Hang out. That was Evan. He ‘hung out’ his entire life. He didn’t do bad things. He occasionally had a girlfriend, and he’d try to get his act together. I don’t know if he was an alcoholic. Probably was, or at least getting there. But he wasn’t a
bad
guy. On the contrary, he was good. Even went to church.”

“You told me he died in an accident. With his motorcycle.”

Michelle shook her head. “No he didn’t.”

“So you guys lied to me?”

“We didn’t lie to you.”

“You told me he got into an accident.”

“It
was
an accident. The guy who killed him—he never meant to kill him. But it was during a fight at a bar over something stupid. Evan could be a hothead, especially when he drank—”

“So what happened?” Jared asked, an edge in his voice.

“He got into an argument with the wrong guys. A guy in a car decided to teach him a lesson. The guy was drunk. He wanted to hit Evan with his car. But he—he didn’t stop—”

“He ran over him? Is that what you’re trying to say?”

“Evan had beaten this guy up. Pretty badly. The whole thing—it was awful. It was at some bar, some little dive of a place in Missouri.”

“So was it really was an accident?”

“The guy got charged with a felony. It was a long, drawn-out mess. Plea bargains and calling Evan’s character into play. The fact that Evan had been kicked out of the bar and had instigated things didn’t help.”

“Why didn’t you tell me all this before?”

“I didn’t know how to. Even now—it was a long story, Jare. A messy story. Your uncle was a good guy. To tell a little kid that he got killed outside a bar in a fight—”

“But he did.”

She looked at Jared and saw anger building and thought that this was a mistake. She should have waited—or not told him anything.

What are you talking about? Don’t start caving in now
.

“My point is, Evan never meant to get himself killed. Don’t you see what I’m saying?”

“Yeah, sure I do.”

“Everybody loved him. And he enjoyed life. And he never meant to make mistakes. It’s just—he ended up living a certain way, and in the end—well, in the end—”

“So in the end he got pancaked by some drunken, angry idiot. That’s really inspiring, Mom.”

Michelle studied Jared for a minute.

“Jare—”

“You should have told me.”

“But you were too little—”

“Not when I was a little kid. Later. When I was older. Let me in on the little family secret everyone knew but me.”

“We didn’t know how to.”

“You didn’t know
how
to? You can tell me a thousand ways to live my life and you couldn’t tell me the truth about my uncle. Oh, that’s great.”

“Listen—”

But he had turned and was walking away from her. Again.

“I’m afraid you’re going to end up like him,” she said to Jared’s back.

He shook his head and clenched his jaw and got back into the car.

There was more she needed to tell him. More about Uncle Evan. But she couldn’t. Not now.

She felt like apologizing. But she also felt anger.

She stared at him sitting in the car. He wasn’t sulking. But he just sat there, not looking at her, defiant in his resentment, accurate in his disrespect.

Michelle got back into the car and drove them back to the cottage in complete and utter silence.

After being home for half an hour, with the door to Jared’s room closed—on this gorgeous sunny day when most normal families were gathering in pontoon boats and drifting on floats and having barbecues and being
families
—Michelle decided she needed to get out. She changed into some shorts and pulled on her walking shoes and went outside.

One thing she had to admit. All of this drama with Jared was certainly good for her weight. Upchucking your McDonald’s lunch worked for starters. And being too stressed to eat much helped—and all this exercise because she couldn’t think of anything else to do. Her legs hadn’t looked this good in years.

She walked alongside the main road at a steady pace. Questions raced through her mind. Should they go home? Was this a lost cause? Would having the rest of the family up here help—and when could they come?

She thought of Lance and Ashley. Her intense, high-octane daughter. Her gentle, easygoing younger son. Were they doing all right? Were they feeling abandoned while she spent all this pitiful, worthless time with Jared?

She had never felt so weak, so useless and ineffectual, in her life.

When I am weak, then I am strong
.

The thought came to her out of the blue. It was a Bible verse, wasn’t it? She figured it must have come from Saint Paul. He wrote most of the New Testament, after all.

I wonder what Paul would say if he had a disrespectful sixteen-year-old son
, she thought. But maybe that’s why Paul could write all those wise things. Because he
didn’t
have a sixteen-year-old son.

Everybody had parental advice—even Saint Paul. Everybody had advice. She could walk into a bookstore and see the onslaught of self-help and parenting books—all chock-full of practical wisdom. It was enough to make her want to hurl again.

I don’t need a stranger telling me how to raise my child. I just need a little help
.

She was angry. Partly at Jared. Partly even at Ted, for not being there with her. But mostly at God. She knew he could look into her heart and see the growing mass of bitterness and resentment. And a part of her felt like it was warranted.

But even more than angry, she was tired. Bone-weary tired.

She had tried her best. Being a friend. Not being too preachy. Trying to live by example. Trying to be tough yet loving. She’d tried everything.

So stop trying
.

She exhaled and knew she didn’t want to stop trying, that there was still too much to do. Jared would be going off to school soon, and he would end up having to—

You can’t do this on your own
.

Michelle knew that. But nobody else seemed to be doing anything. Even God. All of her prayers—every single one—seemed to go unheard.

“Can you hear me now?” she said, thinking of a cell-phone commercial that drove her crazy.

She waited, sighed, walked on. But the longer she walked, the more she began to feel that God
was
listening to her. Waiting. Wanting her to speak to him. And soon, she found herself calling on his name again.

“Lord, help something make an impact on Jared,” she prayed out loud. “I can’t keep doing this. Nothing I do is going to matter.”

Gravel crunched underneath her tennis shoes. She felt her tears coming on and knew she was scared, scared stiff. Just like she had been when she discovered for the first time she was going to be a parent. Ted was better prepared than she was. How could she ever admit this? Oh, but God saw her heart. He saw what an unfit mother she had truly turned out to be. He knew that she hadn’t done everything she could, hadn’t said everything, hadn’t instilled the proper virtues and values.

“Please forgive me for trying too hard. For all the mistakes I made. I just—you know I just don’t want him to end up like Evan, Lord. Please God, protect Jare. You know how much I love him.”

Then you have to let him go
.

But I can’t, she thought as she continued walking down the street, her heart so heavy and her mind full of questions. He was just a kid, just a child. Letting him go felt like giving up.

She had reached the row of mailboxes where she usually turned around. Here the road pulled close to the lake, and she could look out over the glassy surface. It reminded her of the Twenty-third Psalm—”He leadeth me beside the still waters.”

But she was by the still waters, and she only felt heavy and sad. She sighed and started back to the cabin. Bits and fragments of the psalm they had read that morning in church echoed in her head.

… waited patiently for the Lord…

… he heard my cry …

… set my feet on a rock …

Be pleased, O Lord, to save me;

… come quickly to help me…

“And Jared,” Michelle added to these thoughts this inward prayer. “Help him too. Please.”

Because she knew she couldn’t save him or help him. Not anymore.

She was almost back to the cottage now, feeling a little better. Feeling
heard
, at least. A little less alone. A little more hopeful. She didn’t expect that her prayers would be instantly answered. She had hung around churches long enough to know that sometimes they were answered in ways you didn’t expect and that sometimes you didn’t get what you asked for. But today, for the first time in years, she felt a sense that God was listening and could truly hear her heartfelt pleas.

Which is why, upon arriving back at the cottage, she felt like she had been slapped in the face.

Jared had taken the Jeep. Only God knew where he had taken it to.

She stood in disbelief. She wasn’t sure who was doing the slapping.

Jared. Or God.

THERE WAS A TIME in Paul’s life, so long ago, when he had felt like things were going to be good. You get to a point and you look at your home and your wife and your child and you realize that this is it, this is what you’ve waited for, this is what you’ve always wanted, and it’s finally come. And that should have happened for Paul. But he’d been young and stupid. Especially stupid. And yeah, there’d been some demons from his past. But the real problem was that he’d lived like choices didn’t have consequences. He’d gotten away with a lot and tried to get away with more, and it hadn’t worked out.

His first and only wife, Lori, had been wonderful. He still
missed her, and not only her but the guy who’d fallen in love with her, the guy who’d married her. They had enjoyed a short and happy life together. Oh, it hadn’t been perfect, but nothing was perfect in this world. And he’d been the one to throw it all away.

Now, so many years later, the past had come back to haunt him.

Paul wondered if he had been watched this day, if Sean had been watching him. He had gone out to get a morning paper and hadn’t seen anything strange. He had gone to the Lakeside Grill for breakfast and wondered if he should keep driving, but he knew he couldn’t. He knew that people’s lives were probably in jeopardy and would be as long as the Stagworth Five was in the area. He needed to do something, even if he couldn’t bring himself to contact the police. The only thing he could think of to do was stay put.

So he did.

What do you do when something you once loved comes back to you—and bites?

He kept thinking of a dog he’d found as a kid—a full-grown bullmastiff he’d named Bow. He’d been living with his parents in Texas, out in the country; they had already owned a couple of dogs. Bow had been a good dog for a while, but he’d ended up going crazy. Paul’s father had said maybe he had rabies or something like that, but whatever it was, the dog had just snapped. Paul had gone to feed him one morning, and Bow had almost bitten his hand off trying to get to the food. Paul had jumped back, and the dog’s teeth had only grazed him, but then Bow had kept on snarling and growling and lunging on his chain, as if he’d completely forgotten that Paul was the same guy who always fed him.