The Last Kind Words Read Free

in by a yellow two-story house with a new clapboard roof and a well-mown yard. There was an SUV in the driveway and the garage door was open. Two six- or seven-year-old boys rolled up and down the wet sidewalk wearing sneakers with little wheels built into them.
    I drove to the beach and sat staring at the waves until it was dark. I’d been surrounded by mountains and desert for so long that I’d forgotten how lulling the ocean can be, alive and comforting, aware of your weaknesses and sometimes merciful.
    Five minutes off the parkway I found a restaurant and ate an overpriced but succulent seafood dinner. I’d been living on steak and Tex-Mex spices for so long that it was like an exotic meal from some foreign and romantic land. The lobster and crab legs quieted my stomach and loosened the knot there. I listened in to the families around me, the children laughing and whining, the parents humorous and warm and short-tempered.
    The wind picked up and it started to rain harder again. Streams of saturated moonlight did wild endless shimmies against the glass. I drank a cup of coffee every twenty minutes until the place closed, then I sat out at the beach again until the bluster passed.
    It took me three minutes to get into the screw’s house. I stood in the master bedroom and watched as he and his wife spooned in their sleep. She was lovely, with a tousled mound of hair that glowed a burnished copper in the dark. One lace strap of her lingerie had slipped off her shoulder, and the swell of her breast arched toward me.
    I found his trousers and snatched his wallet. He had a lot of photos of his children. I left the house, drove to the water, and threw his wallet into the whitecaps. I didn’t want his money. I didn’t want to know his name. I didn’t even especially want to hurt him. I was testing myself and finding that I’d both passed and failed.
    I was still a good creeper. The skills remained. My heart rate never sped. I didn’t make a sound.
    I hadn’t broken the law in five years, not so much as running a yellowlight. My chest itched. My scars burned. The one where Collie had stabbed me. The one from my broken rib. And the largest one, made up of Kimmy’s teeth marks from the last time we’d made love. She bit in so deep under my heart that she’d scraped bone.
    I drove home through the storm, thinking of the ghosts I had made.

My old man was waiting for me on the front porch. The rest of the house was dark, and the wet silver lashed the yard with dripping, burning shadows. Gutters pinged and warped wood groaned like angry lovers.
    He had a twelve-pack on ice and had already killed off eight bottles. He wasn’t drunk. He never lost control, not even when he was tugging bone slivers out of his own kid.
    John F. Kennedy sauntered out from his usual position at my father’s feet. JFK was an American Staffordshire terrier, a second cousin to the pit bull. He was nine now and I could see the gray of his muzzle lit up in the moonlight. He recognized me immediately and met me on the top stair, got up on his hind legs, and greeted me with savage kisses. He remained muscular and his breath was just as bad as I remembered. I hugged and patted him until he eased away, returned to his spot, circled and dropped. Besides Collie, JFK was the only member of the family to ever kill a man.
    My father proffered me a bottle. Our hands touched briefly but it was enough. I could still feel the power within him. He barely came up to my chin, but he was wiry and solid. By the yellow porch light I could see that he still had all his hair and it was still mostly black. I had more gray in mine. I had more gray than even the dog.
    I sat beside my father and took my first drink in five years.
    I knew he wouldn’t ask about Collie. We hadn’t discussed the murders when my brother was brought down and we wouldn’t talk about them now. The urge would be there but my old man would keep it in check, the way he kept everything in check.
    He