Anita Blake, Vampire Hunter Colletion_ Books 11-15 - Laurell K. Hamilton [339]
I saw a picture of him on the yearbook staff, bent over a layout table, face very serious. He looked like someone that would run track, thin, muscled, but not much bulk. I wouldn’t have picked him for football, not beefy enough. But who knew if he might have filled out in the summer between junior and senior year. But he never got the chance.
Prom night, he and his senior girlfriend had been crowned king and queen. There was a picture of them in front of a background of fake silver stars and too many sequins. He was beaming into the camera. He’d cut his hair and styled it so it was neat and thick and flattered his face more than the way it had when he ran track. His shoulders were a little broader than in the yearbook or track photos. He looked taller in his white tux. The girl was blond and looked like a thinner, taller version of his mother. The girl looked confident and lovely, with a smile that was more mysterious than Stevie’s had been. Looking at their pictures, it was obvious they didn’t know that in less than six hours they’d be dead.
“Cathy and Stevie had been dating for almost two years. High school sweethearts, just like Steve and me.” She leaned forward as she said it, her lips half parted, her tongue moistened them as if she was having trouble keeping her mouth from drying out.
Her husband kept patting her hand and looked at me out of his fine dark eyes, which were so like his dead son’s. He told me with those eyes, and his so-tired face, that he was sorry. Sorry I had to see this, hear this, be here now.
I wasn’t up to the subtle eye message thing, the best I could do was nod sympathetically and give him more eye contact than I gave her. He gave a small nod where Barbara couldn’t see him. There, we’d had our moment, a very guy moment. I see you, I see you, too. I understand what you mean, I understand what you mean, too. If I’d been a better girl, I’d have said something out loud to be sure.
“He sounds like he was a wonderful person,” I said.
She leaned forward a little more, she had a small photo album in her hands, one of those thick ones that grandmothers carry in their purses. She fumbled it open, and I was staring at pictures of a dark-haired baby, toddler, grade-schooler.
I put my hand over hers, stopped her from turning the pages. “Mrs. Brown, Barbara . . .”
She wouldn’t look at me. Her eyes were getting shinier.
“Mrs. Brown, you don’t need to prove to me that your son was a good kid. I believe you.”
Mr. Brown stood up and tried to help her put the photo album back in her purse. She didn’t want to do it, and he wouldn’t fight her. He stood there, sort of helplessly, with his big hands hanging at his sides.
She leaned into the desk again and turned a page. “Here he is winning the fifth grade science fair.”
I didn’t know how to stop this without being cruel. I leaned back in my chair and stopped looking at the pictures. I made eye contact with Steve, and his eyes had grown shinier, too. If they both started crying I was going to leave. If I could have helped them, I would have, but I couldn’t. And truthfully, I didn’t think Barbara Brown had come to me to produce a zombie.
I looked back down at a picture of Stevie in eighth grade, his first year on the football team. That surprised me, I’d have thought his father would have put him in peewee league. It made me think better of Steve that he’d waited until his son wanted to play.
I covered her hands and the book with my hands. I pressed down enough that she had to finally look up at me. Her eyes were wild, as if tears were the least of our worries. There was something almost violent in that look.
I changed what I’d been going to say, because she wasn’t ready to hear me say, Leave, I can’t help you. “You told me that it happened on prom night,