A knock came at the door.
The grey-suited, thin man at the desk lifted his high-cheekboned face, revealing his cornflower blue eyes.
"Come in," he said, barely audible. His staff was used to listening for his quiet voice and his assistant opened the door. A detective with his gold badge clipped to his suit's breast pocket walked in behind his assistant, carrying a brown paper bag with a green piece of tape holding it shut.
"Adam, I brought it." The detective walked to the desk as Adam stood and extended his hand. The detective put the bag on the desk and shook his hand as the assistant shut the door behind her.
"Thank you, Bill," Adam said simply sitting and gesturing for Bill to sit, too. Bill slid one of the rolling leather chairs from the corner of the room and sat across from Adam. Adam spun slightly in his chair and Bill knew it was so his good ear was pointed toward him. Bill prodded at the bag with a gnarled finger.
"I still don't think this is a good idea. There's a reason that we don't often release these sorts of things back to the family, especially messy ones like this."
"I have to see it for myself," Adam said, almost whispering. "Until then, I really won't believe it."
"I have to see it for myself," he repeated. Bill thought it was almost a mantra.
"You'll want these when you handle it," Bill said and pulled a pair of blue plastic gloves from his interior suit pocket. He tossed them on the desk next to the bag.
"I warned you it's bad. It's one of the worst I've seen." Bill poked at the bag again.
"I can handle it, I've seen worse," Adam said. He thought of Gansey dying, and the vision in the tree. He thought of the look on Blue's face when he'd lost his temper around her. He thought of the demon unmaking Cabeswater piece by piece.
"I'm sorry it had to come down to me threatening a court order to release it to my custody." Adam slid the bag closer and looked at the green tamper-proof tape holding the bag shut.
"Antietam County Sherriff's department. Evidence. Do not open without permission. Case 13987476"
"Not important," Bill waved it off. "I would suggest looking at it at home with Ronan rather than here at the office, especially if you have more clients today."
He stood, and Adam stood, too.
"I've got to return to the office, we've got a domestic abuse case and I want to convince her to file charges." He held out his hand again and Adam shook it.
He handed Bill a card. "If she needs pro bono representation, give her my card and we can look into it."
Bill slid the card into his pocket as he turned and left. "I will."
Adam followed behind and told his assistant to cancel his 3 and 4 o'clock appointments and that he was not to be disturbed unless it was Ronan or Opal. She blinked in surprise then nodded.
"Yes, sir," she said and clicked a calendar open on her computer. He saw her reaching toward her earpiece as he closed the door. He slowly walked back to his desk, his eyes on the bag the entire time like it was a venomous animal. His feet left next to no imprint on the soft carpet as he walked. He finally reached his desk and sat. He stared at the bag for several minutes, just tapping one finger on the chair's armrest.
Finally, he stirred, he pushed his fine hair back from his face and sighed. Then he opened his desk drawer and pulled out a pair of orange handled scissors. He cut the tape on the back, unfolded it and reached in. A cheap white leather (fake leather, he thought) photo album lay inside, wrapped in plastic with another piece of the green tamper-proof tape holding it shut. It was embossed with the word 'Memories' in a generic cursive script.
He snapped the blue gloves onto his hands, struggling a bit as they seemed too small. He took his time, careful not to rip them. Carefully, slowly, he turned it over and saw the yellowing, unpeeled UPC sticker still on the back from Wal-Mart. Nothing about it said it was personal; it was one of many identical photo albums.
He flipped it back onto its back and slit the bag open with the scissors. The photo album slid out with a faint soft thump onto the desk. He flipped the cover open and the first thing he saw was his younger face staring back at him. He smiled in his worn, but immaculate Aglionby uniform, and held a letter up so the photographer could see it. He remembered this photo and wondered how his mother had come across it since it had only been published in the Aglionby school newspaper and not the local Henrietta one.
The caption underneath read:
Our salutatorian, Adam Parrish shows his letter of acceptance and offer of a full scholarship to Duke University. He says he plans to take them up on it and that he will be studying political science with a goal of attending law school afterward.
Over the caption, Adam saw that someone had written "IM" with what looked like pink lipstick. Bill had told him what to expect in the album, but seeing his mother's handwriting, her grade school level block printing, took him by surprise and shoved him back into the trailer park for a moment. He closed his eyes and could see his father's fist coming at his face again while his mother sat back in her recliner with her hands over her mouth, but not interfering.
He opened his eyes and looked back to the photo. Gansey had taken that photo with his cell phone, and if Adam knew that he'd intended to give it to the school newspaper, he would never have let Gansey take it. Not too long afterward, as Adam was getting ready to off to Duke, Gansey came by with Blue and Cheng and said they were getting ready to take off for their trip. He shook Gansey's and Cheng's hands and gave Blue a kiss on the cheek which she returned. It still felt strained sometimes between them, but he no longer roiled inside when he saw her, or more specifically, when he saw her with Gansey standing close by like she'd never leave his side again.
Adam flipped to the next page of the photo album. No photo this time, merely a short article clipped from the local newspaper listing local graduates. Just a few short lines with the byline cut off at the top.
Local boy Adam Parrish graduates Summa Cum Laude from Duke University in three years with a degree in political science, and will be attending Harvard Law in the fall with a full scholarship.
His mother's writing scrawled childlike in lipstick across this article, too. "SORRY"
He turned his head and looked at the framed documents behind his desk. His diplomas from Duke and Harvard and his acceptance letter to Harvard. He looked back at the cheap photo album on the desk and ran his gloved hand over the cheap fake leather and then over the fine leather of his desk's blotter. Two different worlds he thought; hard to believe he rose from that one to this one, but he did it with all his own hard work.
He looked around his office again. He'd come so far, but still came back to Henrietta. He knew he could never leave Ronan and Opal forever, and had come back just like he'd promised, all those years ago. He'd come back on his own terms, and had made of himself what he'd always wanted; success, money, influence, but he also gained those things he didn't understand that he needed at the time; family, love, acceptance. He slid closer the photo with Ronan laughing, chasing Opal through a muddy field at the Barns and ran his finger over each of their faces before returning to the photo album.
He flipped the next page and his eyes first were drawn to the lipstick writing over the photo. "FOR"
It showed Senator Gansey's acceptance speech when she won her seat. She was in the foreground on a cell phone with her opponent. Adam was laughing in the background, shaking hands with Helen while Gansey slapped him on the back. He'd worked under Helen for her mother's campaign and the name he'd made for himself had allowed him to set himself as a consultant. That money had allowed him to hire a team of young, hungry lawyers to do pro bono work for domestic abuse victims. His firm had its choice of interns always and that made him proud as anything.
The caption under the photo was smeared and unreadable and the overleaf page was stained red. He'd been warned what to expect from the next page, and hesitated, his hand hovering over the page.
He finally grabbed the corner of the page delicately between two fingers and his thumb. He imagined that he felt it squelch under his fingers in the gloves, but he knew it was his imagination; the blood had dried long ago. He flipped the page and saw the blood splattered obituary. Just barely legible under the blood and other stains was a pink lipstick "EVERYTHING"
He read the parts of the obituary that weren't obscured by staining.
Robert Parrish passed away last Thursday in Antietam County jail. He is survived by his wife and a son, Adam. Services will be Sunday at Our Lady of...
The rest was covered with blood and spatter. He'd gotten word from Bill, his friend in the sherriff's office about what had really happened. His dad had been pulled over again for a DUI and thrown in the drunk tank. While in there, he'd choked on his own vomit and died before the deputies could resuscitate him. His mother had been left without any way to support herself except Social Security disability, but she still had returned the checks that Adam had sent her unopened.
He flipped the last page and it was a printout of a CT scan. He couldn't read it, but Bill had filled him in. They'd found out that his mother's lungs had been damaged when she'd worked cleaning some of the heavy manufacturing plants that used to be around Henrietta. She'd developed lung cancer and it had metastasized to her brain. Bill guessed that she'd found out that she had only a few months or a year left, even with chemotherapy and radiation. She'd taken out Robert's pistol, sat down on the couch and wrote her note with lipstick on the photo album before shooting herself in the head.
Just visible under the blood was "MOM".
Adam closed the photo album with a shaking hand. Left it upside down on his desk for a moment while the sun slipped behind the tree outside his window. He lifted the photo album, opened his desk drawer and started to put it in. He hesitated with it above the open drawer, then closed the drawer and dropped the photo album in the trash can next to his desk. He scooped the plastic bag and the paper bag into the trash can, then took off the blue gloves and dropped them in, too. He made sure the scissors were put away neatly and that all the shards of the green tape were scooped into his trash can.
He picked up the picture of Ronan and Opal and ran his finger over each of their faces. Then he put his head down on his desk and cried as dusk crept further. He was still there in the full dark when Ronan came to find him.