Gun Lake (44 page)

I keep trying to find a way to say I’m sorry, to make up for what I did to you and to your mother. But nothing I can say or do will ever take it away. A record on paper is one thing. A record on your soul is another
.

I just want you to know that I was sorry to the very end and that I did what I could to make amends, to make everything a little better.

It’ll never be enough
.

SHE BOUGHT JARED three hot dogs with the works and an order of onion rings. She decided on getting herself a charbroiled chicken sandwich. Portiilo’s might be fast food, but at least she could try to eat something halfway decent. They found a table near a corner with few people around.

“So are you guys still going?” she asked.

Jared nodded, half a dog in his grinding mouth.

“Should be fun.”

Jared repeated the motion, taking a sip and talking with his mouth still half-full. “At least reporters won’t be around.”

“Can I come with you?” she said, joking, of course.

But the joke carried weight she didn’t want. Not here. Not now.

“Just think. In a few weeks, this will all be over.”

“Yeah,” Jared said. “But hopefully people won’t remember the name. ‘Oh, you’re
that
Jared Meier, the kid who was on Oprah.’”

“You’ll be popular.”

Jared only scoffed and started on his second hot dog.

“I haven’t had a chance yet—with these last few weeks—everything—”

“It’s okay,” Jared said.

“No, I need to say this.”

He nodded. She looked into those eyes of his, so innocent and undaunted, yet still weighed down by the troubles of sixteen years.

“I wanted you to know something. Back there, at the lake—when everything was happening. I was doing my best to try to make you mad. Doing my best to try to—I don’t know—I guess just force you to stop and think. But the only thing I forced was your bad attitude. And the only reason you kept it was because it was reflecting my own.”

Jared didn’t say anything, but his gaze didn’t move off hers.

“But in the middle of it all—you know, I’ve said this before, but I haven’t said it to you.”

She felt the tears and wiped her eyes.

“You were the one with the cool head. You ended up taking care of me. In the end … in the end you showed you weren’t the boy I was making you out to be.”

Michelle took a breath.

“Jared, I know—I guess all along I’ve been under the notion that you were still my little boy. My oldest, the kid who should know better and not make his mother worry. Little did I know that my little boy had grown into a man.”

Jared had stopped eating and now looked down at the table, a bit awkward at the sudden emotion at the table.

“Jare—look at me. I’m not going to see you for a while. And you know—we’ve been through enough talk about the school. I just want you to know how much I love you. And that I’ll always be here for you. Regardless of the mistakes you’re going to make. And I know you—you’re going to make them.”

“Thanks,” Jared said with sarcasm.

She wiped her eyes again. “If I’m wrong, then don’t crown me mother of the year. But you’re going off, and you’re going to do what you’re going to do. I thought that if I came down hard on you, I could scare you. Or at least knock some sense in you. But somehow I think I got the sense knocked into me.”

“A lot of people did,” Jared said.

Michelle looked at him, trying to figure out exactly what he
meant. He worked on his hot dog as though they might be talking about the new carpet cleaner she had bought for their house.

“I want you to remember something,” she said. “When you’re gone.”

“Uh-huh,” he mumbled with a full mouth. “Your father and I will always be here for you. Not just your father, either. Both of us. We’re here.”

And…

There were so many words she could say.

Jared nodded, and she saw a connection in his eyes. He was no longer distant, no longer uninterested, no longer hostile.

It was a reflection.

She prayed she’d keep that attitude. And that God would continue to give her some insight, some measure of hope, and some bit of guidance when it came to Jared, Lance, and Ashley.

“Mom?”

“Yes?”

“I’m not going to go do something stupid.”

She smiled and said nothing more. She believed Jared’s sincerity. She thought of Evan and knew that sincerity could only go so far.

But God’s grace could go even farther.

She’d already come a long way. And the journey was far from being finished.

“YOU LOOK BETTER than new.”

The dark hair glided to one side as the woman beamed and approached him. They met in the grass along the lakefront. He greeted her with a similar smile.

“Mr. Banks.”

He chuckled. “No one
ever
calls me Mr. Banks. Please. It’s Ossie. Or Oz.”

“You’re back.”

He nodded. “I hope I’m catching you at a decent time.”

“Just got off my shift.”

“How long have you been back at work?” Ossie asked Norah.

“A couple of weeks.”

“Doing okay?”

“Surprisingly, yes. I am. I was better off getting grazed by a bullet than I would have been having an arm or a leg busted.”

“The Lord looked after you, sister,” Ossie told her.

“Well, somebody did, anyway.”

“So you can spare a few moments for an old-timer?”

“Of course. You hungry? We could go over to the grill.”

“No. I’m good. I was thinking—could we just talk for a few minutes? I really appreciate you agreeing to meet me.”

“Of course. There’s a bench over there—we can watch the sun set.”

Her stride was surprisingly energetic, and Ossie found himself amazed that the bullet had merely torn her side. He still remembered trying to find a pulse and getting nothing. He had been sure she was dead. So had Kurt and the others.

Ossie hadn’t been the only one given another chance at life.

Thank you, Jesus
.

A few moments later, the two sat alongside the lake on a wooden bench. Norah told Ossie what the past month had been like. The whirlwind since everything happened with Kurt and Sean, her time in the hospital, her ex-boyfriend’s attempts to contact her and get her to come home.

“You know,” Norah told him, “the amazing thing is that you go through something like that—something awful. You get shot. You make it through. And then you realize you’re a lot stronger than you thought you were.”

“I think you’re a pretty strong woman,” Ossie said.

“With a habit of attracting bad men.”

Ossie nodded, then studied her to see what was behind her comment.

“Have you heard from him?”

She nodded. “He’s written several times.”

“Have you written back?”

“No. Not yet.”

“That’s understandable.”

“It’s not that I blame him for anything. I don’t. I just—I don’t know exactly what to tell him. I can’t even get used to calling him Kurt.”

“I just came from seeing him.”

“You did?”

Ossie nodded. “Took a long drive all the way down to Georgia, down to Stagworth. You know, I spent twenty-seven years there.”

“I didn’t know that.”

“You would’ve if you read the papers. They got enough on the ol’ Stagworth Five to write a mess of books. Make movies. And then they got sidebars about people like me. The old black guy who helped save the day. That’s the only reason why I wasn’t put back in some prison.”

“You’re not like those others.”

“Oh, I wouldn’t say that,” Ossie said.

“So you saw Kurt?”

“Yes.”

Norah looked as though she was going to say something, but then held back and gave a forced smile.

“He wanted me to bring you something, wanted to make sure it wasn’t lost. And I promised him I’d come.”

She stared at Ossie for a minute, unsure how to respond.

“He cares very much for you, Norah. And he wanted you to know—you helped him. Even though all that stuff happened—he knows the reality of the situation. But you made him feel like a real person. An ordinary man. That meant a lot to him. I know from experience—it’s hard.”

“I think he is a good person. At least, the part I saw.”

“He was just lost. Lost like all of us are. In need of something we don’t know how to get.”

She looked confused. Ossie didn’t want to push it. That wasn’t why he was here. He was here because of a promise made to an incarcerated man. One thing that Ossie did—he kept promises. In the end, that had helped him. There had been some talk of “aiding and abetting,” but mostly Ossie had come off as a hero. He’d been held at gunpoint and held hostage, in a sense. And in the end, he had helped save the life of this young woman next to him. And perhaps helped a man take the right turn at a crossroads and go down the right way.

“Here you go,” Ossie said, giving her an envelope with a note attached to it.

“What’s this?”

“Kurt wanted you to read the letter inside the envelope first.”

She looked at Ossie, then at the envelope, then nodded.

While she read, Ossie looked out over the unruffled, serene water of Gun Lake. The late afternoon sun was gentle on his clean-shaven face.

“It’s pretty around here, isn’t it?”

“Very.”

“Are you thinking about staying here?”

“I’ve got a nice apartment and I’m starting to make some friends,” Norah said. “I think—well, yeah, I’m going to stay here.”

“Sounds like a good plan to me.”

“And what about you?”

“Oh, I’m still being pestered by the cops and the FBI on everything. They’re considering a criminal investigation against me—gotta do it, I guess. All I can do is be honest about everything. But I’ve got lawyers coming out of the woodwork trying to represent me if I need it. So that’s good.”

“I’m sorry you have to go through all that,” Norah said. “But I’m glad you did what you did.”

“I can’t say I’m glad I shot a man. But I’m glad you’re alive.”

They spoke for another half an hour, two strangers bound by the paths of men no longer there. Ossie tried to not dwell too much on what had happened, on the deaths and the shooting. Norah was a strong woman, but she surely had her share of demons and doubts and didn’t need him to add to them. He only
hoped and prayed that God could use all of this in her life. He didn’t know where she stood and what she put her faith in. But perhaps Kurt’s words would speak to her about that.

Perhaps.

As daylight began to fade, Ossie stood up and thanked Norah for her time.

“Where are you going?” she asked.

“I gotta go back to my place in Chicago. It’s not much, but it’s something. And I’m hoping my boss will give me a break and let me have my old job back. He knows I had a good excuse for being out.”

Ossie laughed and bid Norah farewell. “If you need something, don’t ever hesitate to call. I’m not far away.”

KURT KNEW THIS PLACE and knew it well.

In a cell all by himself, he could hear the familiar noises and shufflings and shouts. Dim light leaked through the bars, and he found himself looking at the ceiling and wondering if the past couple months really, truly happened.

Didn’t I just escape from here?

Kurt found himself wanting to tell Norah about it, to describe what was going on with him. Maybe he would write her tomorrow. He’d been doing a lot of that lately.

Writing was a poor substitute for seeing someone in person. But that was okay. For now—maybe always—it was the only way he could talk to Norah. And that was fine. He was at peace with that.

But late at night, with most of the lights off, surrounded by the same cold walls he had tried so hard to leave behind, Kurt imagined being able to see her face-to-face, to tell her in person what he had written in his last letter. He pictured being there
with her, perhaps there at night under a blanket of stars, on a dock where he could only see the shadows of her face.

A face that in another life he might have touched, lips he might have kissed.

He pictured sitting on the dock and telling her the words he had written in the letter and given to Ossie along with the first letter he had written to Ben.

“Norah,” he would start out. Then he might reach for her hand.

“I’ve started realizing that no matter how many times I apologize, how many times I say I’m sorry to the people I’ve hurt, it will never make up for what I’ve put them through. And you’re one of those people, and I know my apology isn’t enough. But I want you to know that I
am
sorry, and that I’m grateful to you. And—this sounds crazy—but I cherish every second I was around you. Feeling like a human being again. Feeling like someone special.

“I am pretty sure that if it hadn’t been for you, I wouldn’t be here right now. I don’t mean here in Stagworth. I mean here on this earth—alive. I was so far gone when I met you, so full of guilt and shame and despair. And I think that God brought you along my path to show me that there was a reason to live. Even when I thought you were gone—after you were shot—I realized you’d helped me find a reason to live. A reason to hope. You made it seem worth trying.”

He wanted to face her, to look into those dark eyes. Would he always be able close his eyes and see her face so clearly?

“I know you didn’t do this on purpose. You were just being you. But you still helped me find the courage to do what I had to do. To put my thoughts down on paper. To ask for forgiveness, even though I was sure there was none to be granted. The funny thing was, after doing that, I discovered I was writing them to the wrong person.”

And then, if he were with her, he would hand her the letter. The one he had written during his time at Gun Lake. The letter to Benjamin. He would explain why he had written it. And then he would make his request—the request he had made through Ossie—for her to do something he could not do.

Kurt sighed, leaning back in the darkness on his hard bunk. That letter to Benjamin had been written by another man. A hopeless man. A man without answers and without faith of any kind.