“Do you really think so?”
“Well, nothing will make it better, but sometimes you want to know that the other person sees you and your pain.” This is all I can offer.
“Can you…” Jen starts, but I know what she’s going to ask before she even finishes.
“Yes, I can get it to her.” I tuck the letter carefully into my bag. I check on Tamara once a week. Sometimes she’s up for talking, sometimes it’s just a text back. I will keep checking on her. In time, maybe she’ll be up for lunch or coffee. In time, maybe we can be friends. I think of all the stories I’ve covered and the people I never hear from or speak to again—the man who single-handedly brought his daughter’s rapist to justice, the woman who lost all three of her kids in an apartment fire, the couple who adopted triplets with severe special needs. They touched my lives and vice versa, and then, after a few weeks of interviews and minutes of airtime, they were gone. It’s the nature of the beast. But Tamara is different; this story was different. This story changed everything, including me—especially me.
We sit quietly again, the only sounds Chase’s soft little snuffles.
“Puff?” Jenny whispers so softly I almost don’t hear her.
“Yeah?”
“What about us?”
“Us?”
“Are we going to be okay?”
Instead of answering, I reach for her hand across the table—the pearl bracelet glistens in the sunlight through the window—and when my hand is in hers, I squeeze hard. Twice for yes.
Epilogue
Tamara digs in the drawer, patting around among all the extra batteries and rubber bands and a faded pack of fossilized Trident, until she finds it—the battered envelope with the letter inside.
She hadn’t even wanted to touch it when the journalist Riley Wilson had pushed the paper across the table slowly at the little café, like she wasn’t sure she was doing the right thing. It was exactly four months and three days after her son died （she was and is still counting the days）， and Riley reached out to see if she could take her for coffee, to see if she was okay, which was sweet. Since then, through the summer, they still meet up sometimes, for coffees, once for a drink, a fledging but distant friendship, like people who sing in the same choir or have kids on the same football team, even though their connection is much stranger. She has nothing in common really with the reporter, but she appreciates that Riley checks on her and asks her questions about Justin when everyone else is too scared to talk about him. It was Riley she ended up telling things to—like how Justin’s toothbrush is still in a cup on the sink. Its bristles are frayed and worn, and every morning she thinks about how it’s time to throw this one out and buy him a new one. Or how she lives in fear that Justin’s fish will die and she won’t know what to do with herself when that happens.
When she talks about Justin it’s like he’s still alive, like she can imagine he’s just sleeping over at his grandma’s for a couple of nights. Which is still, even after all this time, a common phenomenon. The forgetting. Like she’ll wonder what Justin was doing right now, studying for a chem test or playing Madden at Ty’s house. One time, she even drove all the way to school to pick him up before she remembered: Justin wasn’t at school, or at a friend’s. Justin was nowhere. But he was still everywhere too—his gap-toothed smile on that mural on Diamond Street. Just last week, she saw someone wearing a T-shirt at Kroger with her son’s face on it, a vivid photograph on black cotton, and she reached out and touched this stranger’s chest before he violently batted her hand away. “What the hell, back off, lady!” The man didn’t know this was her son—she was only reaching for her son.
She pulls the letter from the drawer now with shaking hands. When Riley had given it to her she couldn’t read it right away. Part of her didn’t care what this man had to say to her. It wouldn’t change anything. The only thing that gave her even an ounce of satisfaction at all was thinking of Travis Cameron sitting in a jail cell for ten years, Cameron, who wasn’t sorry at all—who didn’t even look at her when she bawled through her victim impact statement, who claimed over and over that he was just “doing his job.” Sometimes she indulges in long daydreams about what his life is like in prison and they give her a rush of pleasure, and then she feels a little guilty for that. But not too much.
It was Wes who read the letter first and then told her, “It’s worth reading, Sis.” And she did and she felt nothing. Just like she’d told Kevin Murphy’s wife, who had the nerve to look so broken when she saw her in the courtroom bathroom that time: she didn’t want apologies. But she kept the letter, tucked away in this drawer, and she rereads it now because today another boy was murdered—a nineteen-year-old, with a head full of twists and knobby arms that reminded her of Justin’s. This teen was shot in the back twelve times in West Baltimore for allegedly breaking into a car. The fervor and outrage is familiar, a well-oiled machine by now. She’s part of the inner circle, a club no one wants to be a member of, the moms bonded by grief. Her phone blew up this morning with dozens of texts and calls, she’ll get out her Mothers of the Movement hat, drive to Baltimore, go to the marches. All of the steps of this heartbreaking and seemingly endless ritual. In a few minutes, she’ll call the boy’s mom and they will just sit on the phone, not having to say a word. Their silence will form a communion stronger than words. After all, what can words do?
She drops the letter, grips the kitchen counter, grits her teeth and waits for the despair to pass. It comes in waves, moments like these, a sense of hopelessness so strong it steals her breath. The sense that no one will understand and nothing will ever change. That white folks will just go about their lives and pity Black folks, and wonder why they can’t get ahead, get a break, just behave already, listen to the police. Those white folks will send their children off to school and know they’re safe. They’ll do all the things white folks have done for years and somehow be able to tune out the cries: Good Lord, please, is it so hard to stop killing our children? Can you stop justifying their murders?
It’s the one thing she appreciates about this letter. He doesn’t try to justify himself. Some things can’t be justified. Still, the letter won’t bring peace or closure. Nothing will. But on a good day, when the sun is shining and when her memories of her son are the strongest, when she feels him in the room with her, on those days, she lets herself believe that maybe, just maybe, there’s a world in which another mother won’t have to go through this pain. She lets herself believe that people will do the right thing, that things will change. She lets herself believe that Justin didn’t die for nothing. And then she’ll grab his still-unwashed pillow and hold it to her face and feel as close to hopeful as possible.
Today, though, as another mother grieves, is not one of those days.
Acknowledgments
It truly takes a village to make a book. We’re so thankful for ours. It might be a little unorthodox for us to start off by thanking each other, but we’re just going to do it. Writing this book together has deepened our friendship and our professional relationship in so many ways. It wasn’t always easy—nothing worthwhile ever is—but our goal was always to create something that neither of us could have done alone, and it’s gratifying to believe we achieved that. Having a partner makes the process of writing, usually such a solitary endeavor, so much less lonely. Thanks for teaching me how to make an em-dash, Jo, and being patient when I forgot over and over… thankfully you made me a mug to remind me. And, Christine, thank you for getting so dressed up for all of our Google Hangouts. I’ll never forget your bathrobe.