“Will do.”
“I’m so sorry, Patrick.”
“Me, too.” Conversation was draining. I was ready to wrap it up.
“Tracy loved you a lot.”
The engine roared to life. Hopefully she’d catch the signal. I couldn’t go there. Not now. She stepped back and dabbed the corner of her eye.
Within a few minutes I was northbound on I-75. It didn’t take long to blaze right past Hartfield International Airport. My flight was a couple hours out, but driving seemed easier. The humming engine numbed my senses, and the radio scanned through stations. Coffee sat untouched in the cup holder. Potholes jolted something around in the cardboard box. Each time my tires dipped, a low-pitched rattle penetrated the silence. I kept my eyes between the lines and turned up the white noise. The pedal eased toward the floor board.
The four hour and fifty-two minute drive back to BNA’s overnight parking took me four hours flat.
TWENTY
Patrick
I’d spent the last few hours watching the colors of the receding sun melt down my wall and regretting all the things I’d done. I retraced my decisions, made so many years ago, and wondered if Gracie would be lying beside me had I done something different. Had I fought and not given into fear.
The cardboard box of Gracie’s belongings sat on my dresser.
One part of me wanted to throw the box off our third story balcony, but it drew me in. Despite my best efforts to ignore the box, I was soon standing over it, pulling open the flaps. A note sat on the top of all the treasures.
Patrick,
I’m writing this while you sleep on my floor. I’m so sorry for all that has happened. I wish there was a way I could’ve told you sooner. You deserved to know years ago, but I didn’t know what to do or how to reach you. She never even told me your last name. Tracy was a beautiful person—inside and out. She didn’t see that about herself, but I know you did. You wouldn’t be on my floor right now if you didn’t.
I know what grief feels like. You’ll want to blame yourself. But Tracy used the drugs because they helped her escape her shame. You aren’t to blame.
Finances were a little tight when we found her. I had her cremated. I hope that’s okay with you. I put her urn in the box. If I know anything about Tracy, it’s that she’d want to be laid to rest in your place. You’ll know what to do.
Much love and many prayers for you,
Mama Shaye
The paper shook in my hands. My eyes burned but no tears came. I was all cried out. Sure enough, there in the box was a dark wooden urn. Mama Shaye had tucked Gracie’s old t-shirt around it to keep it upright. My breath escaped on a moan, the finality hitting me square in the chest.
Gracie’s ashes.
How could this be happening?
I picked up the urn. It was beautiful. Natural darkened spots on the wood gave it a wild look, much like Gracie herself. It was filed down and glossed. Shaye even had it engraved. I turned the urn in my hands to read the etched words.
“Tracy Moore.”
The air left my lungs. TracyMoore? She took on my last name? An unplanned yell tore up from my gut, and I swiped the box with such force it hit the opposite wall, papers scattering around the room. The hacky-sack rolled under the bed. I held the urn to my face to read the words one more time. They swam in my flooding vision.
Tracy Moore.
I’d have given anything to make that her real last name.
If the weekend hadn’t broken me, “Tracy Moore” did. I sunk to the floor, clutching the urn to my chest. Grief had numbed me. I’d lost feeling in my extremities, and my breathing had slowed. Was I still breathing at all? I wasn’t sure.
I wished more than anything to die. The one thing that had held me steady was gone. I’d always managed to navigate through the pain in my life substance-free. Prison didn’t leave me too many options in that regard. But now, looking down the lonely path ahead, I could see how Jack Daniels and pharmaceuticals might be pretty good friends.
Jeff’s pills had been burning a hole in my wallet for the last three weeks. Guilt and dread ate me alive every time I pulled out my cash to pay for something. On more than one occasion, I found myself fisting those pills over an open toilet, willing myself to flush them down. Painfully aware of their potential power in my weakest moments.
Sitting in my cell at Riverbend, something within me had known I’d be grieving Gracie again one day. The foreshadowing was torture, but the reality was worse.
