“Old photos. Really going for the full melancholy, huh?” Tessa asked, kneeling down and wrapping her arms around the chair and her son, embracing them both in a massive hug.
In the last year, Huck had gotten so big—he had his driver’s license, had already been through his first and second girlfriends, and had even been grounded for drinking White Claws at Chris Weiss’s house—but as Tessa knew all too well, when a parent dies, we all become kids again.
Huck again swiped left, revealing a photo of him and his dad—Vader and Obi-Wan—lightsabers crossed in midfight.
“Luke would’ve been the funnier costume,” Tessa added.
Huck nodded, his head shaky, fighting back both laughter and tears. “Y’know why he picked Obi-Wan?”
“Because you asked him to?”
Huck shook his head. “I asked him to be the Emperor. He liked Obi-Wan because Obi-Wan never loses. In the movies, he’s the only Jedi—the only one—who never gets beaten.”
“Doesn’t Vader beat him?”
“That’s Obi-Wan’s choice. He shuts off his lightsaber to help Luke. Same with Dooku, when he stupidly gives his lightsaber away because . . . don’t ask me to explain the prequels. But Darth Maul, Grievous, Vader, the Vader rematch . . . Obi-Wan rules them all.”
Tessa cocked her head, staring at the digital photo of her dead husband in his fake beard. “That sounds like something your dad would like.”
Huck swiped through a few more photos, stopping on one of Violet dressed as a baby Princess Leia （which was quickly replaced by the Phillies baseball players she’d dressed as nearly every year since）， then a close-up of Mint, his smile so wide, the stickum beard was starting to peel away from his face.
“I remember that beard shedding all over our sofa,” Tessa said.
“You were so mad at him,” Huck replied with a laugh.
Tessa nodded, fighting back tears of sadness and rage that were mixing as one. “C’mon, let’s find you something less depressing,” she said, plucking the iPad from Huck’s hands and sliding it next to the laptop. With a loving push, she edged Huck toward the door. “Take your sister outside. Violet hasn’t been out all day, which means she’ll take it out on us tonight.”
Yet as Huck headed toward the kitchen, he didn’t notice that right behind him, Tessa had tucked Mint’s iPad—and his laptop—under her arm, waiting for a quiet moment when she’d be examining far more than her husband’s old photos.
65
“You have my number. Call me if anything changes,” Roddy said into the phone, “especially if he stops breathing.”
He hung up.
“That was the charge nurse,” Roddy explained from the passenger seat. With his tires still flat, they took Zig’s car instead. “She calls him Puerto Rican Andy, too—says she knows him from the pickups he does when someone dies in the—”
“Just tell me what she said,” Zig interrupted, holding tight to the steering wheel, staring straight ahead as the highway blurred in front of them.
“He’s still in intensive care, but his color’s improving. She said it’s a good sign.”
“Unless of course he stops breathing,” Zig replied.
Roddy blinked twice. “Oh. You’re making a joke about my comment. To help yourself feel better.”
Zig glanced up at the rearview. Nearly two hours ago, they’d left the funeral home, following the narrow two lanes of Route 322 onto I-95. The entire time, Zig had been searching the highway for who else might be following. No doubt, the Reds were still out there. So was whoever hired them. And so was Nola.