Page 74 of Haunted

“What’s this?” a petite woman with shoulder-length brown hair says, kissing him on the cheek.

“The adoption. Lydia, this is Jonny and Lance.”

“Of course!” she hugs us both. “Cross your fingers for us. They really look hard at people with his medical history, even though it was a long time ago.” Her drawl is gentle and lilting.

“Leukemia,” Henry supplies. “I was nine. So, I can’t have children. It took a lot of things off the table.” He scratches his chin. “It’s funny how things changed after the fires, you know? Before that I hated talking about it. Most people, when they have cancer as adults, they have these really meaningful changes and they come out with this whole new perspective. I was a kid. I just went off peanut butter and jelly completely, and I still won’t eat it.” He laughs. “So, weirdly enough, this catastrophe gave me the perspective on the value of life that cancer couldn’t.”

“I say the same thing about combat,” I tell him. “It’s terrible. But it does reshape you, and you don’t get a say in how you come out the other side.”

“Exactly what happened here. I rose to the occasion, but some people couldn’t. They got angry, or sad, or they moved away.” He glances at Jonny. “A disaster like this impacts a whole community, and it’s like the embers are still kind of flying around in our hearts to this day.” He looks around. “It’s time. I’d better get started. Find some seats and I’ll call the meeting to order.”

We sit in the back. Henry leans into the microphone so much it squeals with feedback. “Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for joining us. Before anything else—I know we all miss Alice deeply, and I want to pay tribute to what she gave this group. None of us would have got through those first terrible years without her.” He waits out the murmur. “So let’s make this a service that honors her as well. It’s been a wild ride, but we do have confirmation that the Lieutenant Governor will be attending this memorial service.”

Gasps, then applause.

Henry beams. “Ten years ago this fire made this society, and it was your work that got the alerts system so much stronger, so that we can look to the future and say, never again.”

More applause. He gestures to tamp it down. “But we also have someone—two someones—even more special to us, joining for the first time since it happened. Mr. Bishop and Mr. Broussard, would you like to say a few words?”

Twenty people turn around and applaud, and we nod back at them, and it goes on slightly longer than any of us can comfortably manage.

“Okay,” he says, standing. “Hi. I’m Jonny Bishop—”

“Come to the podium so we can all hear you,” Henry says. “The mic’s better here.”

Jonny goes to the front. He clears his throat and leans forward hesitantly. “Hello, I’m Jonny Bishop. You probably know me better by my first name, Parker. I’m that guy.” He points back at the picture. “Not my best look.” There’s a small, warm laugh. “I don’t know what to say, honestly. I didn’t prepare anything.”

Henry smiles. “Just tell us what you remember from that day, and how it makes you feel.”

“Oh. I don’t remember much about that day. I used to, but I started letting it go. Except for one moment. It’s an hour before Lance calls me. I’m taking out the trash, and I’m watching everyone else pack up their cars. I remember standing there, with the garbage bag in my hand, thinking, I should tell somebody. I should convince them to go. Just in case. And I didn’t try hard enough. It’s this one shard of a memory that won’t stop, this one moment when I could have saved my family and didn’t.”

I watch his hands grip the sides of the podium. His knuckles are white.

“I wish my mother could see me now. I wish I could tell her about my life and my adventures.” He looks down. “I think—I hope she’d have been proud of me.” He lifts his head. “That’s all I’ve got, really. Lance? I guess it’s your turn.”

I step forward and put my arms around him properly, in front of all of them, and hold on for a second longer than I mean to. Then he moves aside and I lean into the mic. The room is very quiet.

“I’m Lance Broussard.” I look back at the picture. Two dirty, terrified kids on a gymnasium cot. “I didn’t even realize until today that I had any right to be in your group. Please believe me when I say I wish I wasn’t.”

I look at the room. “I used to watch your ceremonies online, from wherever I was posted. I thought they were for people who’d lost their homes. I was looking for one face and I never found it. It never once occurred to me that I was allowed to be one of you.”

A murmur greets me.

“I didn’t lose what you lost. That day, hundreds of lives were broken, and connections were lost that can never be made again. It made people vulnerable, and desperate, and reliant on the charity of strangers.” I pause. “I was lucky. My childhood home is still standing, and my family is still together. But it did cost me.”

I stop. The room leans forward.

Silence. Absolute silence. And something comes up through me that I have been sitting on for ten years and did not know was still there—not grief. I have done grief. This is older and less polite. But it’s also true.

“And I’m angry,” I say. “I want to say: God damn you. For stealing homes. For decimating families. For destroying futures. And God damn you the most for hurting the person I love, and making me watch, helpless, while he suffered.”

Two women are sobbing quietly. A man is shielding his eyes, his shoulders shaking. Henry Drumm has gone white. I don’t think they’ve ever heard that many damnations in this church hall outside of a sermon.

I look at Jonny. He’s standing just behind me, and his face is open. His grief is, for the first time in a decade, not hidden from me. It is something that I understand now that we will share forever.

“God damn you for the choices we had to make in those moments that we’ll be reliving, every day, for the rest of our lives.”

Jonny takes my hand. In the silence, we mourn together.