His mom walked away from the door, and Wood breathed a sigh of relief. He’d be happy to just have his portfolios. His tattoo equipment was old and outdated anyway, and it was going to cost him a small fortune to replace… but his art was irreplaceable. He’d been building his collection since junior high school. He’d won awards for some of them.
“We had no obligation to keep any of your things. It wasn’t our responsibility to protect your possessions after you abandoned them. We lost our church and livelihood… and I guess you did too.”
Wood frowned. “What?”
His mother appeared at the door and opened it just wide enough to set a half-full, black trash bag at his feet. She was wiping tears from her red-rimmed eyes with a baby blue lace handkerchief as she closed herself back inside. Okay, if they’d dumped his art in there, then some of it might be salvageable. Wood scrambled into the bag, then fell to his knees on the hardwood porch at what he saw. The pain flaring in his freezing kneecaps didn’t register as he lifted letter after unopened letter. What the… “What the hell is this?” Wood raised a stack of mail in his hand and saw they were all from him.
“That’s all we have of yours. You can take it with you when you go,” his father said dishearteningly, looming over him like the prison guards did when Wood was at his lowest… “And don’t come back here, Herschel. The devil took our son from us long before he went into that prison.”
Wood ignored them as he frantically dug around in the bag for any sign of one of his portfolios. Please, please be in here. I’ll even take one. Wood felt the tears stinging his cheeks, but he didn’t stop clawing through the letters that held his deepest thoughts as he searched for his artwork. He still had a chance of living his dream and being a tattoo artist on the beach if he could get his credentials together and back to El. He tried not to stare helplessly at the still-sealed envelopes that held words that were torn from his chest and put on paper in hopes they’d one day understand who he really was. Years of pouring his heart out, and they couldn’t be bothered to read a single word.
“Leave, Wood Jr.,” his father said sternly. “Leave now or I’ll call your parole officer. He said if I had any problems out of you to just give him a call.”
Wood slowly got to his feet, feeling the sadness overtake him. “Please tell me you have them. Please, I’m begging you.” Wood swallowed his pride as he groveled. “I need them. I need my portfolios, Dad. Mom, please.”
“Leave. Now.”
“Did you really throw them away?” Wood stood closer to his dad, and he could no longer feel the cold, he was so livid. “That was my life’s work! That was all I had left! You couldn’t toss ’em in the attic or something?”
“Stephanie, get the cordless. Hurry,” his father said quickly, his eyes widening, and Wood realized that he was actually about an inch taller than his dad and a lot bigger.
“I’d never hurt you.” Wood sighed and moved away. He reached down and grabbed his trash. “I’ll leave.”
The last thing he needed was a call to his parole officer. He didn’t turn around and look back even when he heard the heavy door slam shut. Wood walked dazedly to the bus stop to head toward Norfolk. He’d left the most important person for last. Maybe this next stop would actually help. Then he could go home.
Where he’d see Trent.
Chapter Twenty-One
Wood
By the time he made it to the Forest Lawn Cemetery on Granby Street in Norfolk, Wood could barely put one boot in front of the other. It was after seven and the memorial park would be closing soon, so he tried to hasten his steps, but it was difficult to walk toward the fear when everything in his body was telling him to run away from it. To go home and protect what was left of his shattered heart. But he believed talking to her might ease the ache. He surveyed a few tombstones before he came across one of the groundskeepers. After he gave the man the name of the grave he was searching for, he punched it into a tablet, then pointed across the vast lawn on the other side of the mausoleum building.
It took Wood at least fifteen minutes to walk the short distance as he again rehearsed what he wanted to say to her. What he wanted to say to the young twenty-six-year-old wife and mother he’d killed because of a terrible split-second decision. He wouldn’t stay long, just enough to get out what he had to say. From what his lawyer had told him, Rebecca Marie Dulenaka had been an ER triage nurse at Beach General Hospital and was known for her kind heart and gentleness with her patients. So, Wood wanted to believe that she would’ve understood and forgiven him had she survived.