Joe gave her a questioning look. “What am I missing?”
“Nothing,” she said, feigning ignorance and innocence. “Craig’s been working on something. Let’s let him work on it.”
“Craig? What is it? What’s he doing?”
“Don’t worry about that right now,” she said, shaking her head and waving away the topic. “You’ve got other things to think about, Joe.” With that, she paused for a long moment, then reached for an envelope in her briefcase. “I received something from the pastor who worked with Lois in California.”
The cream-colored business envelope was addressed to Aideen Bradigan, Esq. In the upper left-hand corner was a cross logo beside the return address: Tahoe Park Grace Lutheran Church, Sacramento, CA. Joe’s hands trembled as he removed the contents. There were two letters, one neatly typed on church stationery in the same cream color as the envelope and one that was handwritten on ruled paper, the kind schoolkids used.
The letter from Pastor Suzanne Nelson to Aideen Bradigan, Esq., was clipped and brief—not particularly warm. She wrote a few kind things about Lois and made it clear that she and the other women at the church would miss her dearly and were devastated to hear of her loss. The letter went on to say that the substance of her interaction with Lois—the things Lois felt, spoke of, and sought counseling for—was confidential and privileged and therefore could not be discussed with anyone. However, there was a handwritten letter she was in possession of from Lois to her son Joseph. The letter had started off as an assignment of sorts, a writing project for Lois to work on as part of other therapeutic work, the details of which could not be shared. The pastor was satisfied, however, that the message was now enough of an independent writing for it to be offered to Joe. “I am gratified to hear of your client’s apparent exoneration in this matter,” the letter concluded, “and I trust you will direct this final message to him and him alone.” It was signed “Yours in Christ.”
Joe unfolded the next page and beheld his mother’s large, loopy cursive. This was the only time he could remember seeing it outside of the few bits and pieces that Aideen had shown him from the crime scene materials. It was undated.
Joey:
I write this to you in hopes of finding you again in New York when I have the strength and the will to leave here. I am happy in this lovely, simple place after so many years of misery and wretchedness, most of which I caused to myself. I must come home, though. If I dare try to forgive myself, then first I must attempt the impossible. I must find you, my darling boy. I must pray that you’ll allow me to explain myself to you and Robbie, and I think I will need you to reach Robbie, as I believe I scarred him even more than I did you. And there is another brother, Charles, whom your father and I abandoned, even before I abandoned the two of you.
The tears on this page, if you can see their marks, may be the only evidence of sincerity that I can offer you. I feel guilt like a fire in my bones, and it has all but consumed me. I wish I could tell you the darkness that overcame me that night the lights went out. I say this because they went out in me too. There is no excuse. There is no apology I can offer for the madness and the call of death that I answered and that led me away from you, along the dark blocks lined with people like ghosts that I just kept following and following until it was morning, and then I was on a bus and I was hoping that you had found Mike and that you would be okay.
You would not be okay, though, not really. I know that you and Robbie found the strength and courage to go on without me and find your uncle in that blackness. I know that Mike gave everything he had to make your lives as whole as possible before he died too, another thing I chose not to be there for. I know the gifts God gave me—in you, Charles, and Robbie—and I know how I not only squandered them but also rejected them and spit on them. On you. On our lives together and what was left of them.
I lost my nerve when the lights went out, Joey. And then I lost my mind.
I deserve nothing, but I am praying that the pastor is right and that being a child of God means I can seek redemption in this life as well as the next. I want nothing for myself, Joe. Please understand that. Every debasement of my body and soul over the years is one I deserved. Pastor Suzanne and I disagree on this, but it’s how I feel, and I don’t lie anymore. But maybe if I can see you and talk to you, maybe I can win your assistance in finding Charles and perhaps the same with Robbie and perhaps . . . I just don’t know. There is no wholeness, I know that. There will be no family life for us. Maybe there can be life for us, though. Something brief and beautiful that you can hold. Maybe.