Page 70 of Heart of the Sun

“You always did catch on quick. And that might be one of those special skills that Hosea mentioned coming in handy now.”

“Maybe. But even so, I regret it all. But back then…in some ways it felt like howling at the moon, screaming about the injustice I felt by pretending nothing mattered.” I shook my head. “But that was all such selfish shit. The world didn’t owe me anything. I just wish I’d learned that sooner.

“Anyway,” I went on, unexpectedly wanting to get the rest of this out, now that I’d started. In some ways, it felt like I was laying down a great weight, unloading it word by word. “I swear to you, I was growing out of it. All that, it hadn’t helped, and I felt guilty about it. I knew it wasn’t right and I just couldn’t justify it anymore. And any thrill it had originally provided was gone.”

“It wasn’t you.”

“No, it wasn’t. I still didn’t know who the hell I should be, but that wasn’t it. I’d picked up this course catalog from a local community college. First, I just tossed it on the coffee table, then I started leafing through it, then bringing it places. I think I was gathering the courage to turn down another road, but it felt so risky,you know?” I was silent for a few moments. This was the hard part, but it was also the heaviest to bear. “And then…this one night, this kid named Abel who was part of the crowd I hung with but was a few years younger than me showed up at my door and asked if I could borrow my uncle’s car to drive him to get some beer. I could see he’d already had a few and he probably didn’t need more. His girlfriend was pregnant, and he was nervous about the responsibility, and honestly, he should have been. He was only eighteen and he’d been raised in the system, didn’t know a thing about being a father and didn’t even have a GED. But he was a nice kid. Troubled, quiet, but still a good person. You know you meet some of these kids who’ve grown up in shitty situations, and with some of them, the light has just died. You can see it. You can feel it. It’s hard to explain. But not Abel…he still cared. He would have been okay. I think he would have gotten it together… I know he would have.” I pictured him standing there on my uncle’s front porch, hands in his pockets, asking me for a ride to a nearby convenience store where they didn’t give a shit about ID. It wasthatmoment. That was the one where I could have changed everything. Prevented everything.

But I hadn’t.

“I drove him to the store. What I didn’t know was that Abel didn’t have any money for beer or anything else. What he did have was a loaded gun. And a kid coming any day.”

“Oh God. He robbed the store.”

“He tried. But the clerk had a gun too and he was a lot faster. I don’t think Abel had any plans to shoot him or anyone else. He’d never been violent before. He was just scared and desperate and had chugged some beers for liquid courage. He thought he could get a couple hundred bucks from that register and give it to his girlfriend, so she didn’t look at him like he was a worthless piece of shit.” I shook my head. “Meanwhile, I was out in the car looking through that stupid catalog when I heard the shots.Abel came staggering out, his hand on his chest… The blood. God, so much blood. The clerk was at the door, yelling and waving his gun around and I didn’t know what the fuck had just happened. All I knew was that Abel needed a hospital. I threw him in the car, and I drove like a bat out of hell, all the while Abel is just gurgling and making these awful sounds.”

“Tuck. It wasn’t your fault.”

“I was there. I drove him to the store, and I drove him to the hospital even if he was dead by the time we arrived.”

Emily grimaced, shutting her eyes briefly. “You were convicted for…what? Being the getaway car?”

“Accessory to armed robbery.”

“But you didn’t even know.”

“No one was going to believe that. After all the shit I’d already done? Even if I’d been a minor for some of it, and the rest was mostly petty crime. And I wasn’t even sure I believed it either, Em. I saw the way Abel looked when he came to my door that night. He neededhelp.And maybe Abel thought he needed a ride or money or whatever, but what he really needed was for someone to lean on. Someone to tell him things were going to be okay. And he came tome.I could have been that person, Emily. Instead of driving a desperate, drunk kid to the store to buy more beer, I could have invited him inside and given him some encouragement. But I was involved in my own stupid-ass plans, and I didn’t want to be bothered.” I’d done to Abel something pretty damn similar to what my father had done to me. I’d disregarded his pain because it’d been inconvenient. And yeah, I wasn’t the kid’s father, but he didn’t have one of those and I could have at least tried to steer him in a better direction, even if it meant not getting drunker that night instead of facing his fears. “I could have followed my gut andtalkedto him.”

“Oh, Tuck. All thosecould haveswill do is torture you.”

“Good. Don’t I deserve that?”

“I don’t think so. But regardless of my opinion, you did your time. You paid the price that wasn’t even yours to pay.”

“There is no adequate price for that, Em. Not one set by a judge anyway. Abel’s kid is six years old now, and he doesn’t have a dad either. I’ll regret what I didn’t do that day forever.”That moment. The one where I failed.“And rightly so. I might have been the one to prevent his death, and I didn’t.”

“So you took the blame, notforhim, because you couldn’t do that, butwithhim. You gave his girlfriend and son someone else to focus their anger on instead of only him.”

Her voicing that idea hit home even if I’d never exactly put it into words for myself. But yes, it’d brought me some kind of relief to know I could dosomething, no matter how small, in the aftermath of my mistake. But before I could comment, a voice came through what sounded like a bullhorn, announcing that the generator and lights were going to be shut off in twenty minutes. “I guess that’s a not-so-subtle hint to go to bed.”

I smiled. “I think you’re right.”

She studied me for a minute. “Thank you for telling me what happened.”

Our gazes held. And even though it had been hard to put the night Abel died to words for the first time, and difficult to dredge up all those emotions, I also felt unexpectedly glad that I’d not only told the story but told it to Emily. “Thank you for listening.”

She placed her palm over my knuckles and laced our fingers together. And even when we parted a few minutes later, I swore I could still feel her hand in mine.

chapterthirty

Emily

Day Seven

In the morning, Charlie was gone. I wasn’t exactly surprised, and maybe I was even a little relieved that I’d no longer have to travel with someone I’d lost all respect for. But Iwasa little worried for him. There was no future for us as a couple or anything more, and I was fully aware of all his shortcomings—to put it mildly—but Charlie was no match for the state of society right now.

He’d made his choice, however. And perhaps whatever happened to him was well deserved. Hosea told me he’d seen him leaving that morning with the young woman who apparently had access to a usable vehicle—and the desire to head west with a stranded movie star.

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