#Wattys2015 The Ghost of James Fitzpatrick

Chapter 49

Mary Fitzpatrick sat at a small table in her brightly lit kitchen. She turned seventy five on her last birthday. Her silver hair was cut short, but her curls still showed themselves. Keeping watch out her kitchen window was her son Tom, in a dress shirt and tie as if he had dropped his day to be with his mother.

When Tom spoke with Sarah Netherby last week, she told him she had something that belonged to his mother. He didn't know what that "something" was, and he wanted to be there when she showed up. Sarah told him she lived with her family in the Fitzpatrick's old home on Lilac Street. Perhaps she had found something they had overlooked, something tucked away in the attic, as his wife had suggested. Either way, he and his mother were in no mood for a surprise.

He was eight when his brother died, but he remembered vividly the change in his mother; the change in their lives. Nothing was ever the same after the day they found Jimmy floating in that black water.

He had been pissed at his brother for dying. Falling, jumping, it didn't much matter. He was dead from any angle. Their mother had still been reeling from the death of their dad, and Jimmy just had to go to The Bridge that night.

Tom had never understood the lure of the inanimate structure, or James' attraction to it. Tom had always been unnerved by the rusting mountainous eyesore situated above massive concrete footings that made their way to the bottom of the deep river only to disappear into a blanket of black mud.

Tom  shuddered at the thought. He had never had the river in his blood like his brother did.

He finally saw a blue pickup slow down on the road outside his mother's house to make the turn into her driveway. There was a girl alone in the truck, just about his daughter Megan's age. She had the driver's window down, and her long, blonde hair blew in the sunny winter wind. She wore glasses.

"I think this is her Mom," he said as he headed to the front door.

Sarah pulled up behind the two cars in the driveway and looked down at James' letter in the seat beside her. She ran her fingers over the word "Mom" that James had written on the outside of the envelope and underlined for emphasis. It made her smile. She picked it up and saw a man about her parent's age step out of the front door of the bright, white clapboard house and walk down the steps toward her truck. 

She liked the man immediately.

"Are you Tom?" she asked, but she knew he was. He shared his brother's eyes and his brother's smile and Sarah wanted to burst into tears. She hugged him, and Tom, although surprised, hesitantly hugged her back.

Mary Fitzpatrick watched the embrace curiously from her front door. She could see an envelope in Sarah's hand and was grateful she wasn't hauling a box of memorabilia she had inadvertently overlooked when she and Tom moved. Mary had no desire to look upon such things. Thirty seven years later, she still kept the pain of James' death with her at all times like a wrinkled Kleenex tucked familiarly into her the cuff of her sweater.

Into the front door Mary watched Sarah enter. She was beautiful in jeans and a pale blue knitted sweater, and brought inside with her a gust of cold, fresh air. Sarah hugged the old woman warmly. Mary took Sarah's hand and led her to the living room where she motioned for her to take a seat on the comfortable couch, and Mary Fitzpatrick wasted no time.

"What do you have for us Sarah?" she asked.

Sarah slowly handed the letter to Mary, who reached out to take it with trembling fingers, but stopped.

"Mrs. Fitzpatrick," began Sarah, "I have stopped worrying about how ridiculous I sound, so I will just say this outright. I have a letter for you from your son James. He wanted me to bring it to you."