yell at Mom,” Celeste scolded him.
“I’m not yelling,” Billy countered. “I just want to know what’s going on. Why is everyone acting so weird?”
“I got a letter from your father,” his mother said quickly.
“A letter?” James repeated. “Why would he send you a letter?”
His mother sighed, and Billy saw that she was trying to keep from crying. Instinctively he rose from the couch and ran to her. “What?” he cried out. “What’s wrong?”
“Billy,” said Mr. Derry. “Please. Sit down.”
Billy ignored him. “Mom?” he asked. “Where’s Dad?”
His mother took his hand and held it, but didn’t look at him. “Your father is gone,” she said, her voice breaking.
“Gone?” James said. “What do you mean, he left?”
Billy felt his mother’s grip on his hand tighten. She began to cry, loudly and haltingly. Billy looked at James and Celeste, who looked back at him with equally puzzled expressions. Not knowing what to do, Billy knelt beside his mother’s chair.
“There’s no easy way to say this,” said Mr. Derry. He seemed to be speaking directly to James, not looking at either Celeste or Billy. “Your father killed himself.”
Celeste gasped, while James said, “What? Killed himself? Why would he do that?”
Billy said nothing. Suddenly, he realized that he was dreaming. He had to be. He was not in his living room, holding his mother’s hand while she sobbed. He wasn’t looking at A.J. Derry, who had just informed him that his father was dead. He was asleep in his own bed, and he was having a nightmare. He just had to wake himself up, and it would all be over.
“He sent me a letter,” Billy heard his mother say. Her voice sounded very far away.
No one said anything else for what seemed a very long time. During the silence Billy tried to make himself wake from the dream. He shook his head, but nothing happened. He closed his eyes, willing himself awake, but when he opened them again he was still kneeling on the floor, still holding his mother’s hand, still waiting for someone to explain to him what was happening.
“Apparently your father had cancer.” Mr. Derry was speaking again. His voice, too, sounded as if it were coming from another room. Billy had to strain to hear him. “We didn’t know. None of us knew. In his letter he says that he didn’t want us—you—to see him suffer.”
“Where’s his body?” asked James. “Have you found it? Maybe it isn’t true. Maybe it’s a…joke…or someone is trying to make us think he’s dead. Have you—”
“We haven’t found his body,” Mr. Derry interrupted. “He doesn’t say where he went. The postmark is from Utica, so he could have gone anywhere. I’ve sent his description and a description of his car out on the wire. Hopefully someone will have seen him.”
“So you don’t know that he’s actually dead,” James said. “He could still be alive.”
A.J. sighed. “Of course we hope so, son,” he said. “Until we find him, we certainly hope that he hasn’t really done this.”
“Maybe he was just thinking about it,” Celeste said. Her voice sounded hopeful, and Billy found himself listening to hers above all the others.
“That’s possible,” said Mr. Derry.
“But you don’t think so,” James said. “I can tell. You think he really is dead, don’t you.”
There was a long pause. Then Mr. Derry said, “I’ve known your father a long time. I’ve never known him to say he was going to do something and then not do it.”
“Yeah,” James countered. “But you’re talking about building a shed, or raising money for a new cruiser, or organizing a Boy Scouts outing. That’s not the same.”
Billy wondered why James was arguing with Mr. Derry. It was rude, and he knew their father wouldn’t stand for it. But his mother said nothing, and Mr. Derry wasn’t getting angry. It was as if James was saying everything they themselves were hoping was true.
“Like I said, I hope that you’re right,” Mr. Derry said. “And all we can do is pray that you are. But right now we have to go by what’s in the letter.”
Celeste began to sniffle. James looked at her, then turned away. His face was stormy, and Billy knew that another argument was coming. He stood up, dropping his mother’s hand.
“No,” Billy heard himself say. “He isn’t dead.” He looked at A.J. Derry, then at his mother. “You’re wrong. You’re wrong!”
He turned and ran from the room. He heard his mother call after him, but he ignored her. He pushed open the screen door in the kitchen and ran outside. The sun blinded him, but he ran anyway, unseeing. He was no longer dreaming. He was awake, and his heart was pounding. He thought he heard the screen door slam again, but he didn’t look behind him.
He ran away from the house, not toward the street but toward the grassy field behind it. In the distance he saw the dilapidated old barn. The grass was long, and it whisked against his legs as he ran, closing behind him so that he was swallowed up by it. He ran until he was halfway to the barn, then fell into the grass on his back. He lay there looking up at the sun, his body cupped in the grass. He hoped no one had followed him, and he listened for the sound of approaching feet. When none came he stretched out his legs and arms, forming a star.
His father wasn’t dead. Billy knew that. But he couldn’t tell them how he knew, or even exactly what he knew. They wouldn’t believe him. But he was sure of it. His father was gone, yes, but he wasn’t dead. He might come back. He would come back. When it was okay, he would come back.
He gathered his arms and legs, curling into a ball. The grass beneath his cheek was scratchy, but he ignored it. In front of him a grasshopper clung to a piece of grass, looking at him with large, black eyes. He watched it with disinterest, listening to the sound the grass made as the wind blew through it. No, none of them would believe him if he told them what he knew. They would say he was making it up.
Still, he wished he could tell his mother. Out of all of them she was the one he wished he could tell, because she was the saddest. But he just couldn’t. Not yet, anyway. Not until he could make them believe him. The problem was, he wasn’t sure he would ever be able to do that.
He lay there for an hour or so, the feelings of frustration growing inside of him. The more he thought, the angrier he became. Finally, as the shadows of twilight began to sweep across the field, he got up. He made his way back toward the house, but halfway there he turned and veered in a slightly different direction. When he emerged from the grass he was behind a house some distance from his own. He walked through the backyard to the street.
It wasn’t dark, and wouldn’t be for another hour or more. But it was dim enough that he knew he wouldn’t be easily seen. And part of him didn’t care if he was seen. It didn’t really matter. It wouldn’t change anything. At least not yet.
He walked, making a handful of turns, until he was on the right street. Now he slowed, his determination fading slightly as he approached his destination. Then he thought of his father, and of his mother crying in her chair, and he moved on.
Finding a rock was easy. He took one from a line of them that edged a bed of pansies and hens-and-chickens. It was a large rock, heavy and smooth in his hand. It would do nicely. As long as he could go through with his plan, it would do.
The house was mostly dark. A light burned in an upstairs window and the porch was illuminated by an electric bug zapper that crackled occasionally as something flew into it, but there was no one outside. Billy smelled smoke, and the scent of meat cooking, but he couldn’t tell if it came from behind the house or from another one.
The car was in the driveway. He walked up to it