Free Do You Want to Know a Secret? by Mary Jane Clark

capacities may have been, William understood that his father, the man he loved more than any other, had died. He sobbed like the child that he was.
    The police had been polite but there really wasn’t much they could tell her beyond what she had already heard on the car radio. The autopsy would tell more.
    Louise had appeared calm. Icy, a policeman would later describe her to his celebrity-struck wife. Louise remained in the townhouse until the body had been taken away and the police had completed what they had to do. She instructed the badly shaken Millie to go home, pressed some crisp bills into the housekeeper’s palm and told her that she would call her about what to do next. Louise and William left through the rear to avoid the television cameras out front. Ironic, she thought. Bill made his living in front of those cameras, and in his death we were trying to escape them.
    On the ride home, Louise fought back the tears as she listened to her son recall a conversation about the Yankees that he’d had with his father.
    Louise could always tell when William was trying to make sense of something. He would do a replay of a conversation with the person involved. Amazingly, she’d known him to be extremely accurate in his recall. He was a wonderful mimic.
    Now he was trying to somehow make sense of the fact that his father, who’d promised they’d go to some Yankee games, was gone and wouldn’t be taking him.
    William had stayed with her last night. Surprisingly he fell asleep quickly and he slept through the night. Louise knew that while it was easier for those around him to think that the young man really didn’t have the same emotions as “normal” people, William did have feelings. He felt things deeply. William idolized his father. This was a profound loss.
    There had been a few phone calls last night, friends wanting to connect. But she was exhausted and hadn’t really wanted to talk. The phone had continued to ring today. Neither she nor Bill had ever remarried. Bill’s parents were dead and there were no brothers or sisters. As the mother of Bill’s son, Louise was the one they called with condolences and questions about arrangements.
    By late afternoon, William, who had spent most of the day in the den playing video games on the computer, approached her in the kitchen.
    “I want to go to my house,” he said.
    Louise was surprised. “You do? Why?”
    “I’m used to it. I want to go.”
    Knowing how important order was to him and knowing that he had never really considered the condominium his home, Louise had driven William back to the group home a few miles away. She herself would have preferred to have her son with her tonight, but she always remembered what a friend who had long taught special education told her: the children who do the best are the ones whose parents let go the most. She encouraged acts of independence. She wanted William to function as well as he could on his own, to have some measure of self-confidence. The counselor had reassured Louise that he would call if William seemed to need her.
    Now, home again, she sat in the crewel-covered Queen Anne wing chair and began to flip absentmindedly through the mail. A department store flyer, a couple of bills, mail order catalogs, the order form for the tickets for the New Visions for Living fund-raiser in June. Tired, she rubbed her forehead round and round with her fingertips. God, Bill was scheduled to be the featured speaker at the fund-raising dinner. He did it every year. It was a big draw. Now what would they do? Maybe she could get someone else from KEY News to fill in for Bill and make a speech. But who could do it nearly as well as Bill with all the experience he brought to the subject? Louise didn’t want to think about that now.
    The familiar handwriting on a long white envelope caught her up short. Her name and address were written in Bill’s distinctive scrawl.
    Louise sat for a few moments, staring at the letter. She pictured