I'm the Only One Going in Blind novel · Chapter 2 of 24

Chapter 2: Alder Street

Lacey says the email was her kindness and shows a threat text from Dustin timed two minutes after Dean left; Dean demands every box be opened Sunday, and at midnight Dustin opens his door two inches and whispers, 'Don't draw again.'

I drove home alone and sat in the kitchen on Alder Street with the lights off.

Lacey came in at six, still wearing the ivory dress under her coat.

She had her shoes in her hand and her braid half out.

She was crying before she shut the door.

"Dean, thank God. I've been trying to call you for two hours."

"My phone was in the truck."

"Dustin fell apart the second you left." She dropped her shoes by the radiator. "He sat on the curb outside the conservatory and shook. Your mom had to give him a pill."

"What pill?"

"One of the little ones from the doctor. For nerves."

"Where is he now?"

"In the car with your dad. They're taking him home." She wiped her face with the heel of her hand. "I told them I'd talk to you first."

I stood up.

I was angry, and for the first time in nine weeks I didn't want to make it smaller for her.

"There's an email, Lacey."

"What email?"

"The one Simone has. It says I booked the session. It says I asked for Dustin to be the groom and that I'd hold the light."

She stopped crying.

It lasted about as long as a blink, and then she took a breath and her face went soft again.

"Babe, I did that for you. You said you couldn't deal with the phone calls. I sent it from your laptop so you wouldn't have to think about it."

"I said that?"

"In the car, the week of the first draw. You said, 'Just handle it.'"

I had said that.

I remembered saying it, in the parking lot of the pharmacy, with her hand on my knee.

I had not said it about a wedding portrait.

"You put my name on it," I said.

"I put your name on it because you're my boyfriend, and it's your family, and I was trying to take the load off you." She stepped in and put her hands flat on my chest. "I love you. Dustin loves you. Everybody's just trying to get through this."

"Show me the message he sent you."

"Dean."

"You said he sent you one. Show me."

She hesitated, and then she took her phone out of her coat pocket and opened a thread labelled Dustin.

The last message was from 3:52 that afternoon.

It said: "If he walks out I can't do it anymore. I'll do it tonight."

I read it twice.

I had walked out of the conservatory at ten to four.

Two minutes later Dustin had been under the arch with his eyes shut and Lacey's hand on his tie, and I had not seen him touch a phone.

"He sent this from the restroom," Lacey said, watching me. "He was shaking so hard he dropped the phone in the sink."

"He was standing right next to you."

"He went in after you left."

"I walked out and I didn't see him go anywhere."

"You weren't looking at him, Dean. You never look at him."

That landed, and it was supposed to.

I stepped back from her hands.

"On Sunday," I said, "before anybody draws, every box on that tray gets opened. All five. At the table."

"That ruins the game."

"Then the game's over."

She studied my face.

Whatever she saw in it, she smiled.

"Whatever you need, babe," she said. "Whatever keeps the peace."

I slept on the couch under the blanket she kept folded on the armrest.

She did not come out to ask me to move.

At twelve minutes past midnight my phone rang on the floor next to my head.

It was my father.

He doesn't call after nine.

"Come over," he said. His voice was thick. "Your brother's locked himself in his room. He won't open for me or your mother. He wrote on the door."

"Wrote what?"

"Come and see for yourself."

I drove across Lorain with the heater on high and my hands cold on the wheel.

My parents' porch light was on.

My mother was on the stairs in her robe with a rosary she hadn't touched in years wrapped around her fingers.

She looked at me and said, "You did this."

My father said, "Not now, love."

I went up.

Dustin's door was shut.

Someone had written on the wood in black marker, in tall thin capitals: NO MORE.

It was Dustin's handwriting, the same capitals he used on repair tags.

I knocked once.

"Dustin. It's Dean."

Nothing.

"Dustin, I'm not going to make you talk. I just need to see you're breathing."

The lock turned.

The door opened two inches, and I saw one of his eyes and the edge of his thin face.

He had been awake for a long time.

"Don't draw again," he whispered.

Then he shut the door.

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