Page 53 of Goose

He wasn’t. I could tell it was eating him up from the inside out. “He thought the world of all of you guys. You know that, right?”

He picked at his food. “We thought the world of him, too.”

“It gets better as time passes,” I explained. “I know it’s tough. All I had was my father, and when he passed, I was alone. It wasn’t easy, but I got through it. I still think about him today. Every day, actually. I guess the difference is that I smile now when I think of him instead of crying. Crying is required to heal, though.”

“I’m not a crier.”

“Just this once, you should try it,” I said. “It’s part of the healing process.”

He continued to flip the back of his fork through his salad. “According to you. I need time to pass. That’s all.”

“Our eyes are the vessels through which our soul weeps,” I said. “There’s only one way to relieve the pressure building up in your soul, and that’s to shed a few tears.”

He slowly raked his eyes upward until they met mine. “Who said that?”

“Said what?”

He cleared his throat. “Our eyes are the vessels through which our soul weeps?”

“I just made it up.”

His gaze fell to his food. “I like that.”

While he picked through his salad, I ate my food—slowly, for once. Midway through my chicken parmesan, he spoke.

“Ghost went to the cemetery every Sunday following Abby’s death, without fail. He texted me from her gravesite on the day he died, and I didn’t respond. It’s uhhm. It’s been eating me up. I was out in the yard, doing my Sunday cleanup. He probably sat there and waited for me to respond for thirty minutes or so, knowing him. Him waiting on that response caused him to be late. Being late put him in front of that drunk driver. If I would have taken time to respond, things would have been different. Five minutes would have made all the difference in the world. I keep thinking about that. If I would have texted him five minutes before he left, he would have left five minutes earlier.” He looked up. A tear clung to the corner of his right eye. “And, he wouldn’t have died.”

“You can’t take the blame for his death,” I said softly. “Everything happens—”

“Don’t tell me how everything happens for a reason,” he said, his tone harsh. “I don’t believe that horseshit.”

I thought about the day Porter died. The last morning that we had breakfast together.

“Is your real name Gordon?” I asked.

He coughed out a laugh. It almost brought him to tears. “That cocksucker told you my name?”

“No, he didn’t tell me your name. He just said something about Gordon right before he left.”

He sighed. “Yeah. I’m Gordon. Why?”

“He didn’t text you from the cemetery. He texted you from the diner. Your response wouldn’t have made a difference. He would have still been going to the cemetery afterward. His fate wasn’t in your hands, Goose.”

His hands balled into fists. “Bullshit.” He extended his fingers and pressed his flattered hands against the table. “How would you know when he texted me?”

“Because,” I said. “He started to get up and leave, and he said, ‘I’m going to see if Gordon wants to go eat a piece of pie.’ He sent you a text, got up, hugged me, and left. It was ten minutes after nine. I remember, because he looked at his watch and said, ‘Shit, I’m running late to go see Abby.’”

He walked to the kitchen and picked up his phone. After messing with it for a minute, he laid it aside. He took a step in my direction, and then paused. He turned around and braced his hands on the countertop. Then, he began to weep.

I stepped to his side and draped my arm over his shoulder.

“God damn it,” he blubbered. “I miss him, Ally.”

I missed Porter desperately. I had breakfast with him daily and looked forward to our time together. He possessed a level of kindness that not many men did. Each morning that I ate alone was a reminder of his absence.

“I miss him, too,” I said. “But it’s not your fault.”

He nodded. “I can see that, now. I think…I think I wanted it to be. I needed someone to blame.”