Free Son of a Gun by Justin St. Germain Page B

where she died. Leighanne was the lone bridesmaid. Josh and I were groomsmen.
    As we stood waiting for the bride to walk up the aisle, I heard hoofbeats and turned to see a white pony trotting through a gate in the fence, pulling a small cart that carried my mother, with a young towheaded boy driving. The cart pulled up to the minister and stopped. I had never seen the pony or the boy before, although later I would learn that the boy was Connie’s grandson. Josh and I did our best not to laugh as Mom stepped out of the cart and the pony trotted away.
    She and Ray held hands throughout the brief service. Leighanne says my mother watched Ray the entire time, andthat she shed a single tear and let it roll down her face without wiping it away. I don’t remember any of that, but I do remember something the guestbook doesn’t mention: they got married on Mother’s Day. I’m sure Mom planned it that way. She must have thought having all of us there together on her special day would symbolize the new family she’d been seeking for two decades and through a handful of marriages. But even then it struck me as a strange day to get married. Now every Mother’s Day I think of Ray’s face on the guestbook, my inscription inside welcoming him into our family, and my words to my mother on her wedding day:
You deserve it
.
    Before we left, Connie turned on the TV. She’d heard there would be something about my mother on the news. A Tucson station’s intro played, shots of saguaros and the city skyline. We waited through a few stories about local events and the aftermath of September 11th, and then the name of my hometown appeared in the box in a cartoonish Western font. “And in Tombstone today,” the anchorwoman said, “an Old West murder mystery.” The camera panned down Allen Street, showing groups of pasty tourists and the sign for the O.K. Corral, as the anchorwoman discussed a murder that had happened fifteen miles from there. Her voice was high and hollow as she advised anyone with information to call the Cochise County sheriff. Connie turned off the television and we sat in silence.
    “An Old West murder mystery?” I said.
    We didn’t discuss it again, but the next morning I looked up the network’s newsroom number and called. Some poor intern answered. I yelled myself hoarse, throttling the handset, my voice quaking and tears welling in my eyes as I asked a stranger if he had any idea how it felt to have his mother’s death on theevening news, described as an Old West murder mystery. When he found his voice, he apologized and promised to pass my complaint along to the producers. I never heard from them.
    As we were leaving Bob and Connie’s, they asked what we wanted to do with Chance. They offered to keep him, but even though he was Ray’s dog, he’d become a part of the family. He was a good dog, obedient and protective, not a barker, never mean. And even if he would always remind me of his owner, that wasn’t Chance’s fault. I said I’d keep him.
    I stopped at the Reischls’ house on my way back to Tucson. Their oldest son, Marques, was my closest friend in Tombstone, and his family had always treated me like one of their own. Nobody was there—Marques was away at college, his brother was in school, and their parents had gone to work after the funeral. I went in through the side door, took my shoes off, and crossed the cool marble tiles to the guest bedroom, where I changed out of my funeral clothes and gathered the things I’d left there the night before. I went into the kitchen and thought about making myself something to eat—Julie cooked dinner every night, so their fridge was always full of leftovers—but I didn’t have an appetite. Maybe I’d sit on the couch for a while and watch TV and wait for the Reischls to return. They’d told me their house was mine, but they didn’t really need to tell me that, because their house had felt like home for a long time. In high school, when I left their