BooksBarbecue
Back Never Look Back Save as PDF
Chapters (51)
  1. Cover
  2. Dedication
  3. One
  4. Two
  5. Three
  6. Four
  7. Five
  8. Six
  9. Seven
  10. Eight
  11. Nine
  12. Ten
  13. Eleven
  14. Twelve
  15. Thirteen
  16. Fourteen
  17. Fifteen
  18. Sixteen
  19. Seventeen
  20. Eighteen
  21. Nineteen
  22. Twenty
  23. Twenty-One
  24. Twenty-Two
  25. Twenty-Three
  26. Twenty-Four
  27. Twenty-Five
  28. Twenty-Six
  29. Twenty-Seven
  30. Twenty-Eight
  31. Twenty-Nine
  32. Thirty
  33. Thirty-One
  34. Thirty-Two
  35. Thirty-Three
  36. Thirty-Four
  37. Thirty-Five
  38. Thirty-Six
  39. Thirty-Seven
  40. Thirty-Eight
  41. Thirty-Nine
  42. Forty
  43. Forty-One
  44. Forty-Two
  45. Forty-Three
  46. Acknowledgments
  47. P.S. Insights, Interviews & More . . .*
  48. About the Author
  49. About the Book
  50. Also by Alison Gaylin
  51. About the Publisher

He made it through the rest of the letter, the talk about how difficult life was, and how everyone had done the best they could, Reg included. It’s all just a matter of surviving. I know that now. I’m not sure that Mom ever wanted to survive. But you are a survivor, and I’m like you that way. He read about how Quentin still saw his mother’s face in dreams, and how he’d live the rest of his life wondering if he could have said or done anything to ease her sadness and heal her addiction. I don’t think either one of us was the right man for that job. He read too about the podcast Quentin was making—how Quentin now felt that it had been a mistake, lifting all those rocks just to look underneath, disrupting so many lives in the process. He said the only reason why he’d decided to make the podcast in the first place was that it seemed like a way to better understand Kate and Reg—the huge parts of them that had been stolen by April Cooper and Gabriel LeRoy. It’s not your fault, Mr. Sharkey, Quentin had written. We all make our own choices in life. My mother made hers. Please stop blaming yourself for everything. The only thing you did was go to a gas station.

Reg’s face was wet again, and he was sobbing, convulsing.

Katie, his Katie. All of his children, gone. And Quentin was wrong. It was Reg’s fault. All of it. From the very beginning.

Once Reg caught his breath, he picked up the kitchen phone. Called the number Quentin had given him, back when he’d first set up their interview. I’ll tell him, he thought. I’ll explain everything. But then Quentin’s voice mail was full, and Reg’s brain got the best of him, that gnawing, ever-present fear. I can’t do it, he thought, the secret staring him in the face, baring its sharp, yellowed teeth. I’m not strong enough. I can’t.

He hung up, pulled his bottle of Dewar’s out of the kitchen cupboard, poured himself a glass. Reg drank a toast to Katie. Then another, to everyone he’d ever loved and ruined, from that little boy on. “May they all rest in peace,” he said.

Twenty-Seven

Robin