“Yeah?”
“What do you survive on?”
He laughs a little. “Indica,” he says. “Edibles. I can’t stand smoke.”
“You know what I mean, Matt. How do you make it through each day without wanting to . . . well, do what I did on the video. Or worse?”
He inhales sharply, then lets it out. “You remember Gerard Krakowski?”
“I don’t think so.”
“I didn’t, either, but he was in the news ten years ago. Wingnut vigilante in Texas. He killed a black kid. The kid was an honors student and a varsity baseball player, but Krakowski and his lawyers claimed he thought the kid’s varsity jacket was gang colors and he was behaving suspiciously. If the neighborhood had security cameras back then, we’d have seen he wasn’t doing anything suspicious, unless you count walking through that asshole’s neighborhood.”
“Right.”
“The kid was unarmed. Krakowski shot him in the back. Killed him instantly, but he got acquitted. Never spent a day in jail.”
“Terrible.”
“I know,” he says. “But . . . I guess you didn’t see the news a couple of days ago. . . .”
“I hardly ever read the news.”
“Me neither, but this popped up on my home page. Krakowski was cleaning his gun, and it went off and killed him. He shot himself, Cammy. If that isn’t karma . . .”
“You believe in karma?”
“Maybe.”
“You think that someday Lisette Blanchard will lose her son just like we lost our daughter.”
“Payton Ruley’s mom had to wait ten years for it, but it happened.”
I exhale hard, a strange feeling coming over me. It’s jealousy. I’m jealous of Matt. “You honestly have that kind of faith.”
“You asked me what gets me through each day.” He says it very quietly. “I just told you.”
It isn’t until I hang up with him and I’m downstairs in the kitchen, pouring myself a glass of wine, that I think about that name. Payton Ruley.
On the kitchen table, my laptop is still open to the Vassar professor’s website. I close that screen and click onto Facebook and head straight for the Niobe group.
I scroll down past three or four new posts, then my own from last night, down further and further until I find the one I’m looking for—one of the much earlier posts I’d read when I first found the group. My son was wearing his varsity jacket. He was carrying his gym bag. He cut through that neighborhood coming home from a game. . . .
The date on it is June 3—more than six months ago. I stare at the poster’s name for what feels like a full minute: Rachel Ruley.
“Karma,” I whisper. I google Gerard Krakowski, read up on the details of his death. Then I start to compose a private message.
Camille Gardener: Hi, Rachel, I am a fellow member of the Niobe Group and recognized your son’s name in the news. I know we’re not official Facebook friends and I imagine you’re getting barraged by private messages from reporters, but I hope this finds its way to you anyway. I really wanted to reach out and say that, as un-PC as this may sound, I’m glad Krakowski is dead. Personally, I hate it when people tell me I should forgive my daughter’s murderer, that forgiving him and his parents will stop the flow of hate in my veins and give me some closure. There is no closure for me. I will never stop hating him. And I hope I’m not presumptuous in thinking we might feel the same. We were robbed of our children. How can we be asked to stop hating those responsible???
That said, it gave me a lot of satisfaction to see the man who murdered your son get exactly what he deserves. EXACTLY. Before I joined the group, I had stopped telling people what I really want for my daughter’s murderer, because it seemed like whenever I did, people would respond with, “Two wrongs don’t make a right.” What they don’t seem to understand is that his death wouldn’t be a wrong. It would be karma, if you believe in that crap. I don’t. I prefer to call it justice.