The Mermaid Collector Read Online Free PDF

it locked.
    Buzz glanced into the car’s backseat, seeing only a duffel bag and a few boxes of books. “If you need anything,” he said, “anything at all, you come right back, okay? Day or night. I promised Frank I’d look out for you.”
    Tom turned on the engine.
    Buzz leaned down. “For what it’s worth, he was sorry as hell for what happened, you know. He never forgave himself.”
    Unmoved, Tom considered Buzz with narrowed eyes, saying only, “Thank you for the keys,” then pulling away.
    TOM HAD ALMOST TOSSED FRANK’S first letter, not intentionally, of course (though he did often wonder later what might have transpired differently if he had). It was justthat there had been so many sympathy cards in the weeks following the accident that Tom had had to pile them in a milk crate at the bottom of the stairs. When Dean had finally come home from the hospital and taken one look at the teeming collection, Tom had whisked the whole cancelled lot into the hall closet.
    It was only timing that had prevented Frank’s letter from landing in that milk crate graveyard. By the time the tidy brown envelope had arrived among their mail, almost four months had passed since that frozen winter night. Even as Tom had opened the envelope, even as he’d unfolded the stiff typed pages and the ten one-hundred-dollar bills had spilled into his lap, so new and crisp he’d nearly cut his thumbs counting them, he’d known it wasn’t any ordinary condolence note.
    His first thought was that it had been a joke, someone’s sick attempt at humor, but that was too unimaginable. Who would joke about being responsible for causing a car to swerve off a snowy road and fleeing the scene, knowing there were people injured—dying—inside? Who in his right mind would find amusement in crafting such a horrible story of culpability—and punctuate it with a thousand dollars in cash?
    The letter promised more monthly offerings of the same amount, but Tom had doubted it. For that reason, he’d put the money away and not so much as touched it for almost a week, too unsure of what to do with it. After all, there was no return address, no name, just an initial,
F
,which might not have even been accurate, and gave no indication of gender. The debate within Tom was dizzying. His first thought had been to burn the bills, to waste them, to give them no purpose whatsoever, and by doing so, he would rob this murderous benefactor of his or her attempt at restitution.
    But then Dean’s pain pills had run dangerously low, and so Tom had untucked that envelope from his sock drawer and pulled out one of the stiff hundred-dollar bills. He’d taken the long way to the pharmacy, thinking that with the extra time he might still have a chance to change his mind, but he hadn’t. Laying down that money had filled him with a clammy feeling that had spread across his skin like a chill. And there had been that suspicious look in the pharmacist’s eyes as he’d rung up the prescription. Had Tom stolen the money? Was it counterfeit? How did an eighteen-year-old who’d previously paid for two months’ worth of meds in dimes and quarters now arrive with a hundred-dollar bill?
    When Tom pocketed the change and left with the package, he knew there would be no going back. Like a junkie who thought he could use once and not get hooked, so Tom would make himself and Dean addicts to this blood money—assuming more money came, which Tom remained certain wouldn’t be the case. Until the following month, almost to the day, a second envelope, a second payment, arrived. And so the schedule began, and with it, the guilt. Dean could never know.
    It would be several more months before their benefactor would identify himself as male, years before he’d sign his first name, which was Frank. And only in the year before his death would Frank resort to sending checks, and with them, the last name and address Tom had been denied for so long.
    But of course, it had never been about