Afterlife - Douglas Clegg [18]
Mel sat next to Matt on his temporary bed, while Julie began singing “Lullaby and Goodnight,” to Livy, who clung to her as she fell asleep.
“It’s nice of you to do this,” she whispered to Matt before kissing him goodnight, which he shrugged away as if he were too old for kisses on the forehead.
“I want to keep her safe,” Matt said.
Julie glanced around his sleeping bag. “You usually sleep with your camera.”
“Not tonight, Julie. I don’t feel like making a movie out of this,” he said. He covered himself up to his neck in the sleeping bag and then rested his head on the pillow. “You won’t let me go back to my mother, will you?”
Julie felt a lump in her throat. “Of course not. We’re family,” she said. “You and me and Livy. Don’t even think it. Remember when all those papers got signed? You’re stuck with me, bucko.”
5
When the kids were asleep, she went to the linen closet, and drew a footstool out so she could reach the very top shelf. She drew a metal box down. It clanked when she moved it. She took it into her room, and set it on the dresser. She found the small key to the lock. She opened the box. Wrapped in a thin cloth, the gun. She knew nothing about guns. She knew this was some special type of revolver that Hut had to get a license for. She hadn’t wanted to know about it. She had pretended that the bad people never showed up at your door in the suburbs.
Then, she went to find the clip to put in it. She didn’t think she’d use it. She didn’t think she’d ever need to. But she wanted to feel as if it was there for her, if anything ever threatened her children.
6
Before Julie went to bed, she looked up the phone number in an old Day Runner that she’d kept since their wedding day. She punched in the number on her cell phone. California. The area code had changed. She had to tap the number in again, this time with another area code.
At first no one picked up. Then, a man’s voice. “Yes?”
“Mr. Hutchinson. This is Julie.”
He said nothing in response.
“I’m sorry,” she said. She could not help her tears.
“It’s all right, it’s all right,” Hut’s father said. His voice had a slightly Midwestern inflection. She imagined a husky man of seventy-one with salt-and-pepper hair. “We heard from the authorities. How are you doing?”
She didn’t want to lie. She wiped at her eyes with her free hand. “I don’t know.”
“How’s Matty and Livy?”
“Sad. Quiet. I can’t imagine what they’re thinking.”
“The shock has just hit us both in the gut,” he said. “I’m glad you called. We needed to get in touch. At some point. Even if it would be against his wishes.”
“I know.”
“Joanne’s sleeping. She’s been sleeping since we heard.”
“We can talk another time. Would that be all right?”
“Of course,” he said. “And Julie, it’s good to hear from you. Even under these circumstances. We want to try and keep up now, if possible. Would that be all right?”
Julie tried to erase the words her husband had used over the years about his parents, about how horrible they’d been to him, about how they could not come to the wedding, about how they had treated him like a piece of trash since the moment they’d adopted him, about horrible verbal and mental abuse at their hands, about how he had to use college scholarships to escape them, and get beyond their cold darkness.
It didn’t seem to matter anymore. She wanted to know them. She wanted to know more about Hut.
“Of course,” she said. “I want my daughter to know her grandparents. And Matt.”
“Thank you,” the man said. “He never thought of us as his parents. Not really. But we loved him, despite everything. We really loved our son.”
It struck her as normal for him to say that, even though Hut had all but convinced her that his father was a monster and his mother was an overly passive contributor to his