“From where?” He did not answer. “Jarrod.” I kept my voice even. I had practiced it in the shower. “I’m going to tell you some things. Then I’m going to go inside.”
He nodded without lifting his head.
“You took your father’s medal out of the frame,” I said. “The one he earned in the desert when he was thirty-one. You took the tags he wore the whole war.
You sold them to a man in Radcliff for three hundred dollars while your father lay in a hospital bed unable to say your name.”
“I know.” “I drove to four pawn shops to find them. I cried in the truck at two of them.” “I know. Nora, I know.”
I held up my hand. “I’m not asking for sorry,” I said. “Not today.” He stopped.
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“I’m not going to the sheriff,” I said. “I want you to understand that I could. I have the ticket date from Clyde’s book. I have a photograph.
A deputy would have your name in an hour. I am not going to do it, because your father would not want it and because I do not believe a cell is what you need.”
I saw his shoulders loosen a little, and that was the part I did not like. So I kept going. His head came up. “Nora.”
“And you are not going to see your father.” That one landed. I watched it go all the way through him.
“He is a man who just said my name for the first time in four days. Every time the door opens, he looks for you.” My voice almost broke on that and I held it.
“I told him you had to work. I lied to him, Jarrod. I will not lie to him again. If you walk into that room the way you look right now, I will have to explain it, and I won’t.”
“That’s my dad,” he whispered. “I know it is. That’s why.” He wiped his face with the back of his wrist.
“When you are sober,” I said, “when you have been clean for thirty days and someone who is not you can say so, you can visit him. I will walk you in myself. Not before. I’m not saying it to punish you.”
“Then why?” “Because he cannot afford you right now. And neither can I.” He asked me how I knew about the pills.
I told him I had found the bottles in the spare room closet in September. Seven of them, with five different names on the labels.
I told him I had not said anything because Vernon would not have been able to bear it, and because I had hoped it would pass.
“That was my mistake,” I said. “Not telling you I knew.” He sat down on the bottom step. Right there in the gravel and the dust. He put his face in his hands.
“It started with my back,” he said. “You know that. And then it just, I couldn’t stop. I’d get through a day, and by dinner I’d be sick. I did the math in my head, like, I can quit Monday.