Page 119 of Requiem

“Okay, so, when I got to the house, Jeremy was at the bottom of the stairs. And he was dead.”

“And …?” I coax, trying not to be irritated by this long, drawn out complication, whatever the fuck it is.

“And he wasn’t dead when he hit the bottom of the stairs.”

“So, what? You think he bled out or something?”

“I think he would have survived the fall. I think he did survive the fall, but Trudy … helped him along. To the other side … if you know what I mean.”

I don’t. I just stare at him, perplexed, so he continues.

“She wanted to make sure Jeremy was good and dead before she called the police. She wanted to make sure there was no way he was going to get put back together by the doctors like some fucking Humpty Dumpty.”

I hear Julia’s hoarse whisper in my head.

“He was begging her to help him.”

The light bulb in my head finally goes on.

“Wait, wait, wait, you think that his own mother just let him die?”

He looks down at the floor again.

“Holy shit. You think … you think Trudy killed him?” I whisper, incredulously.

He leans in even closer to me and drops his voice.

“Let’s just say, the baseball bat you had in your garage? It’s now a pile of ashes in a drumfire that I lit on the other side of town. After I scrubbed it down with steel wool and pickled it in bleach, that is...”

I can only stare at him.

“She didn’t tell me what she did,” he continues, “and I didn’t ask. But there it was on the floor when I got there. All bloody. I got rid of it for her.”

“Jesus …” I murmur to myself. “So … what does that mean?”

He shrugs.

“I don’t think it means anything for you guys. My best guess is that Trudy had some unfinished business with Jeremy and she settled it tonight.”

I think about that for a second. Even Jeremy’s own mother knew that he had to die, or there would never be peace for any of us. Just as Julia sacrificed herself for her son, Trudy Corrigan sacrificed her son for the rest of us. Given the same set of circumstances, I don’t know that I would have – that I could have done either of those things.

What an extraordinary pair of women.