He’d heard Augustus say something to Eddy the week before about seeking forgiveness from those he’d wronged being part of his healing process, and later, it’d started Jonah thinking. He needed to apologize. He had no misconception that his apology would be accepted. Hell, he didn’t believe it should be. But he needed to make one. He needed to. Not to everyone who hated him because of what happened—he didn’t owe those people anything, but he did owe an apology to at least one. He had no idea if there was any hope beyond the life he was living now, but if there was, God, if there was even a kernel of possibility, he needed to do this one thing in order to move forward.
And even if there wasn’t, he owed it anyway. In fact, it was long overdue.
Jonah waited until the moon appeared in the star-studded sky, just a slip of pearly yellow against the velvety indigo of night.
When he pulled up to the dilapidated bungalow in the Lower Ninth Ward, his heart was beating harshly in his leather-covered chest.
The roar of the motorcycle’s engine echoed in the silence of the night for a moment before the crickets took up their song again.
Jonah looked down the block. It seemed as though most of the houses on this street were still unoccupied. Ghosts may or may not linger at Windisle, but there was no question that the ghost of Katrina still haunted this devastated area.
Jonah kept his helmet on as he ascended the three rickety steps that led to Lucille Kershaw’s door. Before he could talk himself out of it, he raised his hand and knocked at the screen, the door rattling on its hinges, clearly at risk of coming loose entirely and falling off.
“Who’s there?” he heard called from directly on the other side of the door.
“Uh, I’m looking for Lucille Kershaw, ma’am,” Jonah said unsteadily.
“You found her. Now who the hell are you?”
Jonah paused. He didn’t have another choice than to tell this woman his name, but then she’d tell him to fuck off and he wouldn’t have the chance to deliver the apology he’d rehearsed.
“Jonah Chamberlain, ma’am,” he said on one exhaled breath, speaking quickly. “Before you tell me to go—”
The lock disengaged and the door opened a crack. “Jonah Chamberlain? The lawyer?”
Jonah was so surprised that for a moment he didn’t compute the question. “Ah, yes, I was. I was a lawyer. I worked on the case ah—”
“Yeah, I know who you are,” she said, opening the door a tad more. She stared out at him, her expression blank.
He was very aware that he must look threatening in the black motorcycle helmet, the visor closed, and he reached for it, but couldn’t quite force himself to lift it off. “What do you want?”
“I’d like to talk to you if you can spare a few minutes. I won’t take up much of your time.”
She opened the door wider and stepped back, surprising Jonah. “Yeah, I recognize your voice, Jonah Chamberlain. Well, come on in then.”
She turned and Jonah followed her into a small family room where Jeopardy was playing on a box television set.
The room was furnished in mismatching, well-worn pieces, but it was clean, with blankets folded neatly on the back of the ugly brown sofa, and the torn armchair.
Lucille Kershaw took a seat in the recliner, picking up a remote and muting the television while Jonah sat on the edge of the sofa. Lucille looked at him again, and he took in a deep breath, lifting the helmet over his head and placing it on the couch next to him.
He raised his gaze to her slowly, bracing for her reaction. He could feel his pulse racing and laid his sweaty palms on his denim-clad thighs as he made full eye contact. Her expression didn’t change. She continued to stare at him without so much as a muscle twitch.
Jonah watched her back for a moment, understanding dawning.
She’s blind.
For fuck’s sake. He almost laughed out loud. His biggest moment of courage and it fell on blind eyes. Literally.
“Well?” she asked. “If you have something to say, then say it.”
“Mrs. Kershaw, I came to . . . I came to”—his voice broke and he gathered himself, sitting up further and clearing his throat—“to apologize to you. I know what I did can’t be forgiven. I know that. I just had to tell you how sorry I am. And I know I waited far too long to say it. I know that too. I just . . . you have no idea how sorry I am.” Jonah’s voice faded away, trapped in the sorrow, the deep, deep regret that he carried inside and now rose up and filled his throat.
Lucille Kershaw, the woman whose daughter he’d eviscerated on the stand that day, the woman whose child had died because of him, stared, her forehead creasing into a frown. “I never blamed you, young man.”
“What?” The word was a whisper, mostly made of that blockage of exhaled regret. It was raspy and rough, and it scratched Jonah’s throat as though it had been wrapped in sharpened barbs.
Lucille Kershaw shook her head, her gaze fixed on Jonah, her sightless eyes boring into him somehow, some way. “I never blamed you,” she repeated.
She sighed, reclining back in the chair, her hands folded in her lap. “If it’s the way you questioned her on the stand that you’re referring to? Making her cry?”
Jonah bobbed his head, his throat filling again so that he didn’t think he could speak. But he finally forced out a cracked, “Yes. I was wrong.”
“You weren’t wrong. Hell, the Lord knows I railed at that girl enough times myself. Said far, far worse than you did. Called her a junkie and a loser. Told her she was a waste of space. I tried that tough love. Oh, she’d cry and break down, sometimes she’d make promises. Never changed nothin’ in the end though.”
A deep sadness had come into Mrs. Kershaw’s expression as she spoke, and Jonah felt his heart constrict. And yet her lack of blame still caused a buzz of shock to reverberate through his chest. Awe. He didn’t believe he deserved it.
“You’re her mother, though, Mrs. Kershaw,” Jonah said, putting his thoughts to voice. “What I did was not done out of love.”
“Maybe that’s why it would have worked”—she paused, sighing loudly, her shoulders rising and falling—“if that damn psycho hadn’t shot her in the heart.” She shook her head again. “Nah, I know that some do, but me? No, I never blamed you. You didn’t kill her.” Her blind gaze found his face again somehow. “And in any case, from what I hear, you paid your price.”
Jonah reached unconsciously for the side of his face that had sustained the burns, the scarring, his hand lowering before he could run his fingertips along the damage, a gesture of insecurity, of remembrance.
“Yes,” he said, acknowledging her statement. He may or may not have deserved what he got—and that he was even questioning it made him feel confused, overwhelmed—but he had most certainly paid a price. A debt he’d be making good on for the rest of his life whether he wanted to or not.
Mrs. Kershaw nodded solemnly. “I’m sorry about that, young man.” And the thing that pierced Jonah in the gut, the thing that made him bow his head as a tear escaped his eye and ran down the ruined side of his face, was that he could see that she was. This woman, who he’d felt he had wronged so cruelly, had offered him grace and sympathy for his pain.
He didn’t know how to feel, what to think. It seemed as if a giant balloon was expanding slowly in his chest.
“Another man, a lawyer like you, came here once too, you know. Offering his condolences. I could tell from his voice it was all a pack of lies though. Oh, he was smooth, said all the right things. But I raised a liar. I know how to spot one.”
“What?” Jonah asked with a breath that released a smidgen of building pressure. “Who was it?”
Mrs. Kershaw shrugged. “I don’t remember his name. I wasn’t in the best place. A contractor I’d finally hired to fix the water damage in the house had taken off with the money. Everything was displaced . . . a blind woman can’t live in chaos.”
She sighed and Jonah looked around again, noting the precise placement of the furniture, the clear walking path around each and every object.
There was still a faint line on the wall where the floodwaters had risen, and a very slight mildew scent hung in the air. The carpet was obviously new and the furniture—it had to be secondhand—was undamaged.