8:00 a.m., Saturday, October 21, 2023
It’s a beautiful, breezy fall morning. The sky is blue, the air is crisp, and the foliage, late this year, is at its peak. Maisie and I walk down the leaf-strewn path to the dock. It’s fitting, I think, that the sound of the river flowing under our feet provides an accompaniment to what we’re about to do.
I pry the lid off the canister of ashes. With the cup I’ve put in there, I scoop up half, hold the cup at arm’s length, and overturn it. The breeze carries most of Corby’s remains into the flowing river, but some of the dust settles onto our jackets and the tops of our shoes. For a few seconds, Maisie and I are wearing Corby. Then a gust sends his dust on its way.
“Hi.”
I turn around to see a lanky young man with a goatee. Who is this? What’s he doing here? And then, oh my God, it hits me. I’d invited him but never called his stepmother back to cancel. I only saw him that one time in the visiting room. He seems taller and more filled out now, more a man than a boy. “Thank you for coming,” I tell him. He gives me a curt nod.
“Who’s he?” Maisie asks me.
It’s Solomon who answers. “Corby was my friend.”
When I hand him the canister, I notice that his hands are shaking. Either he’s nervous or tremors are a side effect of the medications he’s on.But the gains have been worth it, I hear Adrienne say. He removes the cup and puts it down on the dock. Then he pours ashes onto the palm of his hand, takes a deep breath, and blows them into the river.
I reach into my pocket, take out Corby’s stone, and hand it to my daughter. “Maisie’s father once pulled this little stone out of this river,” I explain to Solomon. “There’s nothing distinctive about it that I can see, but when his friend Manny gave it to me, he told me that Corby thought of it as his lucky stone. Whenever he was feeling sad or upset, he would place it on his palm and wrap his hand around it. And like magic, holding it would make him feel better.”
Solomon says Corby lent it to him once. “But I gave it back.”
I tell him Maisie and I discussed whether we should keep the stone or return it to the river. “And we decided that Corby would want us to let it go back home.” Solomon nods in agreement. I ask Maisie whether she’s ready. With a face that’s solemn and purposeful, she says yes and walks to the end of the dock. “Bye-bye, stone,” she says. She leans back, then throws it about six feet into the water, where it makes a soft plunk and sinks.
Walking off the dock toward the parking lot, I ask Solomon whether he needs a ride. He says no, his “Wequonnoc parents” are waiting for him in their car. “Okay,” I tell him. “Thank you so much for coming.” I hold out my hand.
“No problem,” he says, sounding like every other young person these days. But as we shake, I feel those tremors in his jumpy hand.
I wave to the couple who’ve been waiting for him. They wave back. Now it’s on to the last of the unfinished business.
During our final session before Dr. Patel’s trip abroad, she urged me to accept Mrs. Millman’s offer to come to see the mural. Engaged now to Bryan and pregnant with his child, I still haven’t been able to let go of the guilt I feel about the way I treated Corby when he was in prison. “Maybestanding before his mural and saying what you need to say to him will free you to move on,” she said.
So I drive along the John Mason Parkway, then take a deep breath, put on my blinker, and turn into the long driveway that leads to the visitors’ parking lot. It’s been three years since that snowy morning when Vicki, Maisie, and I waited for hours, expecting Corby to walk out a free man. Maisie’s in the back seat on her box, probably watching some YouTube video about dinosaurs. She’s become obsessed with them ever since Corby’s father and his wife, Natalie, took her to Dinosaur State Park. Since Corby’s death, his dad has made a conscientious effort to spend time with his granddaughter. Corby’s relationship with him had been so damaged and difficult, I wasn’t sure about these visits at first. But they’ve been good for Maisie. I wish Corby had lived to see how his father is making amends to him through her.
“Hey, Maisie, does this place look familiar?” I ask her. No response. I raise my voice and ask again. She looks out the window at the imposing brick buildings behind the surrounding fence and shakes her head.
“Oh, wait,” she says. “This is where my first daddy used to live. It’s a prison, right?”
“That’s right.” I hold my breath, worried that she might ask mewhyhe lived here. I’ll tell her when she’s a little older—when she wants to know, but not now. I’m relieved when, instead of asking that, she says, “I came here once with Grandma Vicki to visit him.”
“You remember that, huh?”
“Yeah. I was kind of scared at first.”
“Scared because it’s a prison?”
“No. Scared because he had a really bushy beard. But after a while, Iwasn’tscared. He was nice. He read me a story.”
“And hewroteyou a story, remember?”
“Uh-huh. About the giraffe family. He drew the pictures, too. And I’m in it.”
“That’s right. You’re the girl who lives next door.”
“Tell me again why we’re here,” she says.
“To see the big wall painting your daddy painted when he lived here.”
“The one in that library?”
“That’s right. Your father was friends with Mrs. Millman, the librarian. It was her idea that he should paint the mural because he was such a good artist. She’s going to meet us inside and show us where to go.”
