Pam Adams called them at seven o'clock, and they were still sitting in the living room. And by then, Jim had had enough gin to slur his words. Alice Peterson answered the phone, and burst into tears the minute she heard Pam's voice.

“Oh my God, Alice, I'm so sorry,” Pam was crying too. She had brought Becky home from the hospital by then, and mercifully, they had sedated her when a plastic surgeon sewed up her face. He had said there would be no scar, not visibly at least, but she was still crying uncontrollably about their taking Johnny away. She refused to believe that he was dead. “I feel so terrible for all of you … what can I do for you?” She remembered what it had been like for her when Mike had been killed. It was unthinkable, unbearable, a shock and grief too great to bear, and somehow she imagined it had to be even worse for them now, with a son. “Can I come over and help with the kids?”

“I don't know,” Alice said, sounding confused. It was impossible to absorb what had just happened to them, and she still had to tell the other children that Johnny was dead. It was unthinkable. She couldn't even imagine saying the words.

“Let me come over. I can be there in a few minutes,” Pam said insistently. She knew how important it was at a time like this, to be surrounded by friends. And there would be so much to decide and to do. They would have to get him to a funeral home, select a casket and a room, pick out his clothes, tell the kids, write an obituary, arrange for visiting hours at the funeral home, and work out all the details for the funeral at their church, buy a plot in a cemetery and arrange for burial, all the while trying to deal with their own sense of shock and grief. Pam knew better than anyone how unbearable it was, and she wanted to do anything she could to help. And she was worried about Becky too. This was going to be intolerably hard for her. An impossible grief to bear at any age.

Pam appeared at their front door twenty minutes later, and sat with her arms around Alice for a while, while Jim went to dress. Pam put a pot of coffee on, and an hour later, as the two women sat in the kitchen, crying and blowing their noses, Charlotte wandered downstairs in shorts and tank top, with tousled hair.

“Hi, Mom,” she said sleepily. She looked at both women, crying, and holding each other's hands, and it was easy to see that something terrible had happened, as fear crossed Charlotte's face like an express train. “What's wrong?”

Her mother looked at her with agony in her eyes, and without saying a word, she walked across the kitchen and put her arms around her.

“Mom, what is it? What happened?” It was an instant in her life when she knew with absolute certainty that everything she knew and loved and counted on was about to change.

“It's Johnny … he had an accident… he was killed leaving the prom,” her mother said, choking on the words, and Charlotte let out a long, agonized sound, a wail of pain, as she heard the words.

“No … no … Mom … noo … please. … ” They clung to each other and sobbed, as Pam cried quietly, watching them, wanting to be there for them, but not wanting to intrude. And a few minutes later, Jim walked in, he had sobered up again, and all Alice could see was the devastation on his face. They all sat and cried together for a long time, and finally Alice went up to Bobby's room. He was awake and lying in bed, as he did sometimes, but she had a feeling that today he had sensed something was wrong, and he was hiding from it. Even his silence was not enough to shield him from the horror of this.

“I have something very sad to tell you,” his mother said, pulling him into her arms to hold him, as she sat on his bed. “Johnny has gone away … to be in Heaven, with God…. He loved you very much, sweetheart,” she said, sobbing as she held the child, and she could feel him shudder and then stiffen in her arms, but he said not a word. And when she pulled away to look at him, she could see that he was crying, soundlessly, agonized, as broken as the rest of them. The brother he had adored had been taken from them. He understood it perfectly, and he never stopped crying as Alice helped him dress. They went back downstairs hand in hand, and the rest of the day was a blur of pain.

Pam stayed with Bobby and Charlotte, while Jim and Alice went to the coroner's, and Alice gave a wail of grief as she saw her son, and held him in her arms. Jim had to pull her away from him finally. And they went to the funeral home to make arrangements after that. It was after lunchtime by the time they came home. Pam had quietly made lunch for all of them. Charlotte was sitting silently in the backyard, and Bobby was upstairs in his room.

It was on the news that afternoon, and people started calling and dropping by and bringing food. Becky came over to visit them. She looked terrible. Her face was white, and her bandage seemed huge. She couldn't stop sobbing the whole time she was there, and finally, Pam took her home. Becky kept saying how sorry she was, and how she couldn't live without him, which only mirrored the others' pain.

The next day was worse somehow, because with each passing hour, it became more real. They went to the funeral home that night, and the next day the room they had chosen for him there was filled with friends, and relatives, and other kids. His graduation had been that day, and they had talked about him. There had been a moment of silence for him, and everyone in the auditorium had cried for all of them.

The funeral was on Tuesday, and Alice had never been in so much pain in her life. Afterward, she couldn't even remember it. All she could remember were the flowers, the sound of singing in the distance somewhere, and looking at her shoes. She had clutched Bobby's hand the entire time, and Charlotte had cried uncontrollably. Jim had sat there crying and looking glazed. The high school principal spoke at the funeral for Johnny, as did his best friend. And the minister gave a beautiful eulogy about the remarkable boy he was, how bright, how kind, how wonderful, and how loved. But even the words were not enough to dim the pain. Nothing could soothe the agony they all felt. Nothing could change the fact that Johnny was dead.

And after they left him at the cemetery, it felt like the end of the world to them, when the Petersons got home. There was nothing to comfort them in any of it, nothing to cling to, or to negotiate or bargain with. He had been taken from them in the blink of an eye. Too fast, too soon, too hard, too sad. Too overwhelming, and too agonizing to bear. And yet, whether they felt equal to it or not, it had to be borne. They had to live through it, and go on without him. There was no other choice.

Charlotte cried herself to sleep that night. And Bobby lay silent and alone in his room. He had cried all day too, but he was exhausted and fell asleep finally. And Alice and Jim sat downstairs, staring into space, thinking of their lost son, grappling with it, wrestling with the impossible concept that he was gone and would never return. It was truly unthinkable. Unbearable. Neither of them wanted to go up to bed, they were too afraid of their own thoughts and dreams. They just sat there all night. And finally at three o'clock, Alice went to bed. Jim stayed downstairs and drank all night, and in the morning she found him passed out on the couch, with an empty bottle of gin lying on the floor. It was the beginning of a ghastly time for all of them, and Alice couldn't imagine a time when life would seem normal to them again. Normal was Johnny coming home at night after work, going off to college in the fall, being valedictorian of his class, and playing on the football team; kissing him and hugging him, being able to look up at him and smile, or laugh with him, hold his hand, or touch his hair. There was nothing even remotely normal about his being gone. And as each day wore on, Alice grew more certain that their lives would never be normal again.





Chapter 3


Johnny had been gone for a month on the Fourth of July. Alice had had the photographs developed from the night of the prom. And when she did, the pictures of him smiling in his tux nearly broke her heart. She had had three of them framed and put them in Charlotte's and Bobby's rooms, and her own. Sometimes she thought seeing the photograph of him made things worse. He looked so handsome, and so young, and so alive.

The Fourth was a grim day for the Petersons that year. The barbecue they gave every year was a thing of the past. Seeing their friends would only have reminded them of the funeral, and it didn't seem appropriate to celebrate anything. There was nothing to celebrate or enjoy, nothing to smile about. Their house had been deadly quiet for the past month. They all looked exhausted and drained, and sick. And they were. Just surviving each day was like climbing Everest, and when they met at the dinner table every night, it was shocking to each of them to see how bad the others looked.

Alice had lost fourteen pounds and had dark circles under her eyes. And she admitted to Pam Adams, when she called every day, that she literally no longer slept at night. She fell asleep around six in the morning every day, and was awake again an hour later, by seven or eight. Sometimes she fell asleep in a chair. And Jim lay on the couch, drinking all night until he passed out. Charlotte cried constantly, as they all did. She didn't want to leave the house, and had missed the entire month's baseball games. Bobby hadn't been this withdrawn since he nearly drowned. They were all in extreme pain.

And Becky was no better, Pam said. She wouldn't get out of bed for the first week, and when she finally went back to work, she was so upset they sent her home. She had finally managed to work part-time the week before, she seemed to cry constantly, seldom ate, and said that she wished she had died with him. The rest of the Adams children were sad for her, and worried about her, and they missed Johnny. He had been their friend too.

“You've got to get some sleep,” Pam said to Alice practically. “You will eventually. The same thing happened to me when I lost Mike. But you don't want to get sick before you start sleeping again. What about sleeping pills?” She had taken them for a while, but she didn't like the hangover she had all day, so she had finally just toughed it out, which was what Alice said she wanted to do.

“Will I always feel like this?” Alice asked, feeling panicked again. It was hard to imagine spending the rest of one's life in that much pain.

“I think it's different with a child. And you never forget. But it changes eventually. You learn to live with it. Like a limp.” She hadn't gotten over Mike yet, and it had been two years. But she managed to get up every day now, and laugh sometimes, and take care of her kids. She didn't tell Alice that there was no longer any real joy in her life. Her friends were still telling her that there would be again one day. “It won't be this bad forever. Alice, it's only been a month. How are the kids?”

“Charlie started playing baseball again yesterday, but she left halfway through. The coach has been really great about it. He says she can do whatever she wants, play, sit it out, just watch if she wants. He lost a sister at her age, and he says he knows what it's like.”

“What about Bobby?”

“He seems completely shut down. He just lies on his bed all day. He won't even come downstairs to eat. I have to carry him. Jim thinks I shouldn't baby him, but,” she broke down in sobs again as she tried to explain it to her friend, they were closer now than they'd ever been, and Alice had come to rely on talking to her every day, “in a way, Bobby and Charlotte are all I have left. Jim is never here, and when he is … well… you know how he is … he just anesthetizes himself so he doesn't have to feel anything. He doesn't even want to talk about him. He thinks I should clean out his room and give everything away. I just can't do that yet. Maybe I never will. I go in and sit in there sometimes. It's as though, if I sit there long enough, and wait for him, he'll come home. I haven't even changed his sheets. That must sound crazy to you,” Alice said apologetically, but Pam knew it only too well.

“I kept Mike's clothes for over a year, and I still have some of his favorite things.”

“I just wasn't prepared for this,” Alice said miserably. “Maybe I never will be. It never occurred to me that he could die, that something like this could happen to us. This happens to other people. I never thought it would happen to me … or to any of us….” It was almost exactly the way Pam herself had felt when her husband died unexpectedly. But losing a boy like Johnny at seventeen was even more of a travesty. Becky had even said that herself. Johnny had left a lot of broken hearts behind, but it wasn't his fault. Some people had told Alice that she'd be angry at him one day, for leaving them, but she couldn't imagine it. His death had certainly not been his fault. And no matter how shattered they were by it, by no stretch of the imagination could she blame her son.