‘He’s gentle,’ Blair said. ‘He’s sweet. So special.’ These words were not aimed at Proctor. They were a good-bye to her afflicted son. ‘In his own way, he sparkles.’
‘As much sparkle as mud,’ Proctor said ruefully, as though he possessed the emotional capacity to be saddened by Shep’s condition. ‘But I promise you this – when I’ve achieved what I know I surely will achieve one day, when I stand in the company of Nobel laureates and dine with kings, I won’t forget your damaged boy. My work will make it possible to transform him from a toad into an intellectual titan.’
‘You pompous ass,’ Blair O’Conner said bitterly. ‘You’re no scientist. You’re a monster. Science shines light into darkness. But you are the darkness. Monster. You do your work by the light of the moon.’
Almost as though watching from a distance, Dylan saw himself raise one arm, saw himself hold up one hand as if to stop not just the bullet but also the merciless march of time.
The crack! of the shot was louder than he had expected it to be, as loud as Heaven splitting open to bring forth judgment on the Day.
35
Perhaps he imagined that he felt the bullet passing through him, but when he turned in horror toward his beloved mother, he could have described in intimate detail the shape, texture, weight, and heat of the round that killed her. And he felt bullet-punched, pierced, not when the slug hissed through him, but when he saw her falling, and saw her face clenched in shock, in pain.
Dylan knelt before her, desperate with the need to hold her, to comfort his mother in her last seconds of life, but here in her time, he had less substance than a ghost of a ghost.
From where she lay, she gazed directly through Dylan toward ten-year-old Shep. Fifteen feet away, the boy stood slump-shouldered, his head half bowed. Though he didn’t approach his mother, he met her gaze with a rare directness.
By the look of him, this younger Shep either didn’t understand fully what he had just seen or understood too well and was in shock. He stood motionless. He said nothing, nor did he cry.
Over near Blair’s favorite armchair, Jilly embraced the older Shepherd, who did not shrink from the hug as usually he would have done. She kept him turned away from the sight of his mother, but she regarded Dylan with an anguish and a sympathy that proved she had ceased to be a stranger and had become, in less than twenty-four hours, part of their family.
Staring through Dylan at young Shep, their mother said, ‘It’s okay, sweetheart. You’re not alone. Never alone. Dylan will always take care of you.’
In the story of her life, Death placed his comma, and she was gone.
‘I love you,’ Dylan said to her, the doubly dead, speaking across the river of the past ten years and across that other river that has an even more distant shore than the banks of time.
Although he’d been shaken to his deepest foundations by bearing witness to her death, he had been equally shaken by her final words: You’re not alone. Never alone. Dylan will always take care of you.
He was deeply moved to hear her express such confidence in his character as a brother and as a man.
Yet he trembled when he thought of the nights he had lain awake, emotionally exhausted from a difficult day with Shepherd, stewing in self-pity. Discouragement – at worst, despondency – had been as close as he’d ever gotten to despair; but in those darker moments, he’d argued with himself that Shep would be better off in what the masters of euphemism called ‘a loving, professional-care environment.’
He knew there would have been no shame in finding a first-rate facility for Shep, and knew also that his commitment to his brother came at a cost to his own happiness that psychologists would declare indicative of an emotional disorder. In truth he regretted this life of service at some point every day, and he supposed that in his old age he might feel bitterly that he had wasted too many years.