This Side of Heaven

  Carl Joseph was waiting.

  TEN

  Annie was eating breakfast with Nate on the back porch, watching a pair of deer maneuver through a grove of pine trees when the phone rang. Lindsay, she figured, telling her exactly where they were supposed to meet for the football game and how excited Ben was that everyone was coming. Lindsay called often—at least once a day—so she smiled at Nate, excused herself from the patio table, and went inside.

  Some people talk about having a premonition, how in the minutes or hours or days before a car accident or a drowning or before getting that certain report from a grim-faced doctor, there was a nudging, a small, slight certainty that something very bad was about to happen. Later, no matter how long the road of years or how many summers separated that event from current-day living, the premonition would remain. “I had a feeling,” people would say as they looked back. “I just knew.”

  That wasn’t the case for Annie.

  As she walked into the house she noted that the sky was spilling rays of blue sunshine between the trees and the house smelled like the fresh, hot cinnamon rolls she’d just taken from the oven. Her only thought about the coming day was that God must have been happy with her for Him to allow a Saturday in early fall to feel this perfect. Her whole family was going to be together. A football game, a church service filling up nearly an entire pew, and dinner at Lindsay’s. This would be the sort of day, she told herself, they would look back on years from now and relive over and over.

  A smile was already on her lips as she answered the phone. “Hello?”

  “Mrs. Warren?” The voice wasn’t familiar. “Yes?” A slight frustration buzzed at her. She glanced back out at the porch, at Nate eating by himself. The deer had moved on, and she had missed them. For a sales call.

  “Mrs. Warren, this is Sergeant Daniel White with the Police Department.”

  He hesitated, and in that single hesitation, Annie felt her world turn upside down. Because why—why would a police officer call her at home on a Saturday morning? And at the same time, his tone of voice told her the answer. She braced herself against the kitchen counter.

  “Ma’am, do you have a son named Joshua David Warren?”

  “Yes.” Get on with it, she wanted to yell. Tell me why you’re calling. “Is something wrong?”

  “Please come to his apartment as quickly as you can, ma’am. There’s been a problem.”

  “There’s been a problem?” Adrenaline screamed into her veins and her heart responded by trying to burst from her chest. “A problem?”

  “We’ll be here waiting for you, Mrs. Warren. Please hurry.”

  She hung up the phone and her feet somehow took her back through the house toward the porch. She hadn’t said good-bye to the officer, or thank you, or any of the usual polite things. She hoped the police officer wouldn’t think her rude, or assign the impolite behavior to her husband where it might hurt his reelection bid. She allowed the crazy, irrational thoughts because they held back the avalanche waiting to crash in around her.

  “Nate.” Her tone was flat. She stood in the doorway gripping the frame. “We have to go.”

  Immediate concern lowered his eyebrows. He pushed back from the table, his eyes locked on hers, still chewing his cinnamon roll. “Annie . . . you’re white as a sheet.” He came to her, put his hand on her shoulder. “What is it?”

  The police officer wouldn’t blame Nate. Not when he had the chance to meet them in person and see for himself that she wasn’t rude or ungrateful or impolite. Not really. “The officer said to hurry.” She turned and walked back into the house, grabbed her keys from the drawer near the refrigerator, and held them out to Nate.

  “Annie . . . talk to me.” He was following her, his face still frozen in alarm. “What officer? Who was on the phone?”

  She blinked and her strange trance cracked just enough to let her say, “Something’s wrong with Josh.” The adrenaline kicked into another gear and she dropped the keys. Before they hit the floor she was in Nate’s arms. “Dear God, no.” Her words were wrapped in panic. “Not Josh . . . not my son.”

  Nate allowed the embrace for only a second or two, then he took firm hold of her arms. “A police officer called about Josh? Is that it?”

  “Yes.” Annie couldn’t allow the first few rocks to tumble down the hillside of her heart, couldn’t let her mind go where the events of the last minute wanted to take her. She locked eyes with her husband and implored him with her eyes. “He’s fine. He has to be fine.”

  Nate grabbed the keys from the floor and took her hand. “I’ll drive.”

  “Thank you.” There. She’d remembered her manners. “We need to pray.”

  “I am. I won’t stop.” But he did three times along the ten-minute drive to ask the same question each time. “The officer didn’t say what was wrong?”

  “No.” She took her eyes off the road only for a second or so each time. “Just keep praying.” But each time she let her tongue hand out that answer, a voice in her soul shouted at her that maybe it was too late to pray. All of existence as she knew it was about to change, because this was how other people’s lives changed. A phone call or a knock at the door, the mile marker of a life that would forever more be divided into two parts. Before that single moment and after it.

  Her prayer was a cry for help and she silently uttered it with every few breaths. Lord, be with Josh. . . . Comfort him and give him peace. Whatever’s happened to him, don’t leave his side, please, God. . . . I can’t do this without You.

  Daughter, I am with you always. . . .

  The answer anchored itself within her and allowed her to draw her next breath. Lord, be with Josh. . . . Comfort him and give him peace. Whatever’s happened . . .

  Not until Josh’s apartment parking lot came into view did Annie know for certain the gravity of the situation. An ambulance was parked at an angle not far from Josh’s front door, and next to it a fire truck and two police cars. People stood in small groups and Annie wanted to yell at them. Don’t just stand there. Do something. . . . Help my son.

  “Please, God. . . .” Nate spoke the words out loud as he slammed the car into park. This time there was no confusion or question mark in his voice because the answer was obvious. The emergency vehicles told them what the officer had not.

  They climbed out of the car and then suddenly Annie had the most desperate feeling to be with her son, with her youngest. Her baby. She began to run toward his front door and she kept running, even when she tripped over the sprinkler head. A police officer appeared in the entryway, and he stopped and waited for her. But why wasn’t he in a hurry? Why wasn’t he helping her son?

  She picked up her pace and behind her she could hear Nate running, too. Josh was in trouble, but they were there, so everything would be okay. Please, God, let it be okay. Josh had been through enough without this, but if she could reach him and take him in her arms and cradle him close the way she’d done when he was little, then he would be okay, because her love was that strong. Strong enough to change this trouble around.

  “Excuse me.” She motioned with her hand for the officer to step aside, but he moved right into her path. “I need to see my son!” Her voice was so filled with terror, she didn’t recognize it.

  “Ma’am, I’m Officer White.”

  “Thank you for calling.” Her mouth was dry. “We need to see him.”

  Nate was a step ahead of her now, talking at the same time. “Is he inside?” He was breathing fast, and he barely glanced at the officer. “What happened to him?”

  “Sir, I need you to stop.” The officer held out both hands, partially blocking the doorway. “Please. . . . You can’t go inside.”

  Annie opened her mouth to say something or scream or cry, but she felt suddenly paralyzed. Nate put his arm around her, and the officer’s words mixed with the sound of a radio coming from one of the emergency vehicles behind her, and the traffic on Elm Street that ran alongside the apartments, and the fast, relentless
beating of her heart. Every noise intensified so it was hard to hear what he was saying. Something about not knowing the cause of death and finding the open bottle of pain medication beside her son’s bed and wondering if Josh ever took more Oxy Contin than the regular dose. And Nate was asking how long Josh had been dead and . . .

  Annie’s knees buckled and she grabbed on to her husband. Her son was dead? Her youngest child was gone and she hadn’t said good-bye? It wasn’t possible. She held her hand straight out, as if maybe she could touch him or reach him somehow. “Josh!” The cry that came from her was like that of a crazy person, a scream that begged God to turn back the clock, to give her a chance to come here and hold him the way she’d wanted to yesterday after his deposition. “Josh, no!” She screamed his name again and Nate pulled her into his arms.

  “Please.” He was shaking as he stared at the officer, his voice shrouded in fear and disbelief. “We need to see him.”

  The policeman hesitated. “You don’t want to go in there.” He looked back into the apartment and then at Annie. “Remember him the way he was.”

  The way he was? This wasn’t happening. She was just talking to him on the phone, telling him he should get some rest and making plans to see him at today’s football game. If she could only go inside and see him, maybe the paramedics hadn’t done a thorough check, maybe he was only sleeping hard, the way he sometimes did when he took an extra pain pill.

  A paramedic came out, stopped at the doorway, and spoke in a low voice to Officer White. “The coroner is on his way.”

  And just like that, the avalanche gave. It caved in around her and buried her, in suffocating layers of pain and grief. “Not Josh, please, God!” The scream wasn’t as loud as before but it was heavy with a fear Annie had never known.

  Nate drew her close again and soothed his hand over her arm. “Shhhh, baby . . . it’s okay. Hold on to me.”

  Annie wasn’t sure how they walked from the front door back ten feet to a spot near the end of the sidewalk, or how long they stood there. But at about the same time, a white van pulled up and two men with a stretcher walked quietly past them. Annie stared at the ground, at a crack in the asphalt near her feet. She wanted to run back to the car and tell Nate to drive as fast and as far from here as possible, so the scene playing out before her wouldn’t be real.

  If she looked down long enough, she could convince herself she wasn’t here in Josh’s parking lot, but at the football game. Standing outside her car, walking to the bleachers, a blanket under one arm, a bag of water bottles on the other. None of this was real. She was at the football game and Ben was warming up on the field, and Lindsay and Josh and Nate were saving her a place in the bleachers. And she was thinking how just yesterday Josh was the one in the uniform, the one waving to them from the forty-yard line, and she and Nate were saying how with Josh’s height and strength, maybe he’d play football in high school and even college. She blinked and she could see all of Josh, each first day of school, each long, endless summer, and every rushed morning trying to make it to the bus on time

  Nate leaned his head against hers and a quiet groan came from some broken place inside him. “Not Josh,” he muttered, and his grip on her grew tighter, more desperate.

  She kept her eyes down, glued to the crack in the asphalt, until she felt something wet on the side of her neck. Don’t look up, she told herself. The stretcher would have to come out eventually. Don’t look up. But she wanted to see whether the tears on her neck were hers, so she lifted her gaze just enough to find Nate’s. His anguished face a twist of sorrow and disbelief, tears streaming down his face. “He’s gone, Annie . . . our boy is gone.”

  Annie shook her head. He wasn’t gone. He was twenty-eight years old. He had his whole life ahead of him. She noticed the crowd of people. A handsome dark-eyed man standing next to a young couple with Down syndrome. A woman with two teenagers huddled close on either side of her. An old woman standing a few feet away by herself, arms crossed in front of her chest, squinting at Josh’s front door.

  Annie wondered if they were her son’s friends, and a realization hit her at once. She didn’t know any of Josh’s neighbors. She wasn’t sure if Josh knew them, for that matter. But since they were here and they cared enough to watch, she thought about introducing herself and thanking them for coming. The way she would if this were one of Nate’s dessert parties.

  But this wasn’t . . . this wasn’t . . .

  She squeezed her eyes shut and pressed her cheek against Nate’s. The police officer’s voice was saying something about clearing the way for the stretcher, and all Annie could think was that someone was hurt. Josh. Yes, that was it. Josh was hurt and he was coming out of the apartment on a stretcher, and the people had to make way because he needed a doctor.

  But for every ounce of effort she put into convincing herself of this, the real details screamed at her from all sides. The sound of wheels against concrete came from his front door and she did what she never should’ve done. She opened her eyes and looked straight at the sound, and that’s when she saw it.

  A memory flashed in her mind, of her and Nate reading the paper one morning a decade ago, and Nate sharing the story of a family hiking Pikes Peak when their teenage son slipped off the path and tumbled to his death. Paramedics were summoned, but they could do nothing to help, and the boy’s parents and sisters were forced to watch while his body was retrieved and carried away.

  “What a horrible thing,” Annie had told Nate. “No mother should have to watch her son’s dead body being taken away. I’m not sure I could bear it.”

  And now she was that mother.

  With the two men from the coroner’s office at either end, the stretcher came into view. The body was covered with a white sheet, and Annie knew without a doubt that the form on the stretcher was Josh. First, the feet nearly hung off the stretcher, the way Josh’s feet could sometimes hang over the edge when he came for a visit and he stretched out on the living room sofa.

  And second, because the sheet was part of a set Annie and Nate had given Josh last Christmas. White with a thin brown stripe near the top.

  “Josh!” Her voice could barely be heard. “God, help him. . . . Please help him.” She gripped Nate’s arm tighter. “He can’t breathe.” She moved to take a step toward him, but Nate held her back.

  “Annie, don’t. . . . We need to call Lindsay.”

  Don’t? She wanted to scream at them to stop, because Josh could hardly get medical help with a sheet over his face. But then someone was crying, and Annie looked over her shoulder. It was the young woman with Down syndrome. She was covering her eyes and sobbing, and her friend had his arm around her and he was saying, “Josh is in heaven now, Daisy. Heaven’s a good place, remember?”

  The reality hit her full force.

  The phone call . . . the police officer . . . the coroner’s van . . . the quietly grieving neighbors. All of it provided a truth that she could no longer deny. This wasn’t a dinner party for Josh’s neighbors, and no, her son wasn’t sick or asleep or struggling to breathe beneath the Christmas bedsheets.

  He was dead. Her baby was dead, and she hadn’t had the chance to tell him good-bye. She remembered something Josh had told her after his accident, how he was glad he hadn’t died that night because he would have been without family.

  “Whatever happens to me, I don’t want to die alone,” he’d told her. “There’s nothing more awful than that.”

  But that’s just what had happened. Her only son had died without any family at his side. “Josh . . . no! Not Josh, God . . . please. . . .” Annie started to cry again, and her cry became a wail. Her Josh was gone, and she would never draw another breath without feeling his loss, brushing against her ribs and hurting her insides like a permanent injury. The suffocating avalanche of pain shut out any glimmer of light, and beneath the weight of it, Annie closed her eyes and felt herself begin to fall.

  Nate caught her. It had to be Nate. But she couldn’t stop the dizzy swi
rling in her brain or the way her arms and legs and even her hands hurt from the loss. Josh was leaving and she couldn’t will herself to stand up and go to him, to tell him a proper good-bye. Black spots mixed with the blurred images in her mind, and around her the sounds began to dim. Josh . . . not Josh, God.

  She was fainting, and she couldn’t stop herself no matter how badly she wanted to move, to take the walk from where she was standing to wherever Josh was. But he wasn’t here at all, because he was in heaven. She couldn’t breathe right, couldn’t open her eyes. She had just witnessed two men wheel her son’s dead body out of his apartment and toward a coroner’s van. Nate was holding her, but she was falling harder, losing control. The last thing she remembered was the terrifying truth that Josh was dead, and the certainty that she would be next. She’d been right that day when Nate read her the article about the family on Pikes Peak. This was a pain she could never, ever bear.

  Even if God Himself held her up.

  ELEVEN

  Thomas Flynn hung up the phone, pushed his chair back from his mahogany desk, and paced slowly to the oversize window in his office on the twenty-third floor of the Markham Professional Building. He stared out at downtown Denver and let the futility of the situation wash over him. Josh Warren was dead.

  The message was waiting for him when he came in this morning. An urgent call from Josh’s mother, Annie Warren. Somehow Thomas knew even before he placed the call that something was very wrong. Josh hadn’t been himself at the deposition. His skin had paled to a sickly shade of gray and he shook from the pain. At the time, Thomas thought his client’s appearance could actually be good for the case. Anyone in the room could see the damage the accident had caused him, because he wore it like a second set of skin, tight around his body without the possibility of ever taking it off.