An hour later, James came
straggling back into the cafe. He looked beat. The rest of the gang
had moved back inside as the early fall breeze was picking up and
causing quite a chill. There was more than just the cool breeze
causing a chill in the air as James walked in the door. The whole
room fell silent. The other customers not part of the band of
friends felt that same shocking freeze of discomfort. James' friends
swarmed around him, hugs were distributed, claps on the back. The
longest hug, most notably, came from Deborah whose heart was breaking
over not only James' loss of his ex-wife, first love, but from the
gruesome way that it had occurred. More than that, the very fact
that a murder had occurred in this small town where nothing really
ever happened, and then again, someone they had known, worked with,
lived with, spent time with, was overwhelmingly too hard to take in
all at once. They sat in silence at the tables in the back of the
cafe, staring down at their mugs full of the morning roast. Matthew
had given James a free cup in his favorite blue mug, on the house.
After awhile, Shaggy looked
up and said, “Anyone up for a walk?”
“I'm down,” Matthew said
slowly looking over at Deborah, then James. “Barbara should be in
to take over soon.”
Deborah touched James' arm
lightly.
“You interested?” was
all she could say. James looked up at her with hooded eyes,
desperately trying to hide away all thoughts and emotions from the
outside world.
“Sure,” he began slowly.
“Yeah. The police are going to want to talk to Barbara, by the
way.”
“Really?” Matthew
wondered.
“Yeah,” James started to
say then hesitated. “Well, she was working the day...it happened.”
They lapsed into silence.
At that moment, Barbara abruptly entered the cafe swinging her purse
with a joyful step to her walk.
“Good morning to all of
you,” she chirped happily to the cafe and to her friends. She had
had a good night before. The guy she had been crushing on for weeks
now had finally got around to calling her. They had talked long into
the night, and although she felt tired from their long nightly
conversation, she was still high on the rush of infatuation. The
faces of her friends' looked up at her, not reciprocating her happy
mood. “Um, what's wrong?”
Matthew studied her for a
long time, searching for the words to explain. But no thoughts came,
he looked down again at his coffee cup, waiting for someone to speak.
The others sitting around him eyed each other, wondering if anyone
else was going to speak so they wouldn't have to do just that.
Finally, James spoke, slowly, methodically, as if giving the blandest
of evening news:
“The police were here
earlier, they found Eve's body...”
“Found Eve's body?”
Barbara interrupted. “What do you mean?”
Eve and Barbara had been
friends before she and James had married. They had lived together as
well.
James looked down at his
coffee shop and sucked in air.
“She was murdered,” he
said at last, fighting back the emotional upsurge that wanted to come
out. Barbara instantly collapsed into a chair.
“What the fuck...you've
got to be kidding,” was all she could say. Then, she fell into
abrupt silence and there was nothing more she could say. She stared
motionless into the space around her friends, not looking at them,
not seeing them.
“So, the walk?” Shaggy
asked again, helplessly. Slowly, the boys and Deborah got up from
the table. Moving to bus their table, Barbara waved them off.
“I've got it,” she
explained. “Gives me something to do, I guess, you all go do what
you need to do.”
Matthew, James, Shaggy,
Thomas, Ray, and Deborah moved outside into the brisk cool November
air pulling their coats and warm caps around them, to block out the
chill. But it was only an outward chill they could protect from, on
the inside, they felt that chilling bite of grief overwhelming them
with each step. They followed Shaggy up the street and into the park
and kept walking deeper, deeper, higher, higher into the hills above.
Climbing up ravines and sliding down riverbanks, they trek kept
their minds off the despair down in the city, for awhile. At the top
of the mountain, overlooking the city, Shaggy stopped them.
“Come here,” he said.
“Gather around.”
He instructed them into a
semi-circle, their arms encircling each others' shoulders, and
together they looked over the entire city.
“Look at us,” Shaggy was
saying. “Really, look at all of us, at least we have each other.”
Deborah felt a warmth to be
included as she looked at all these faces. A sense of kinship and
unity welled up in her, a deep bond of both joy and heartbreak formed
within each of their hearts at that moment. Never before had their
been a moment where they had truly been an us until that moment, atop
the mountaintop, trying to find some healing from the grief dwelling
inside.
James looked around at all
of them, then out at the city, and the well of emotion that was
damned up finally broke. He collapsed amidst the circle and without
thinking Deborah moved to him, breaking from the arms of Matthew.
“James!” she cried and
knelt by his side, taking him in her arms. He sobbed on her
shoulder. The others moved awkwardly closer, patted him on the back,
stood in silence waiting.
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