The Mystery Texter - Chapter 2 (of 8)
Present Day
As much as I wish I could just pretend he doesn't exist, I have to reply to William. It's time. William has hardly been in my life at all since
the
day. Since November 10, 1989. We went from being lifelong friends to having almost zero contact - literally overnight.
The same thing happened with our old house. Despite having grown up there, I never stepped foot in it again. I never revisited the scene of my mother's murder and I stopped hanging out with William Jones. He had been there. Just seeing him is a painful reminder. If he saw something I didn't, then I don't want to know what that something is. Maybe he saw my mother's final breath. Maybe he saw her in a more gruesome state than I did. Maybe I don't want to know what he knows.
Maybe that's not fair of me.
According to Brian Jones, the prosecutor had said William and I should stay apart until after the trial so that the defense couldn't claim we collaborated or contrived our testimony together. The wait felt like forever as the trial didn't start until the next July. So much life had happened in those months: Christmas, New Years, Senior Prom, Graduation, becoming an adult... A long-term absence from William effectively extricated him from the cast of supporting characters in the drama of my life. By the time it was all over, I was a different person. College was right around the corner and I had moved on from William Jones. I was a little surprised to find that I was okay with that. Our connection had always been the friendship between our moms. Well, that was gone. In the most violent and abrupt way possible, their friendship had ended. My dad and Mr. Jones had sort of been friends too. They each had a wife who had a best friend since childhood. There was an obligation there. There were gatherings and events. There were bar-b-ques and joint family vacations. And while the friendship between the husbands existed because of their wives, there was still a domino effect of endings.
While I almost never spoke
to
William, I spent too many years to count talking a lot
about
William. He had been there that night. He was a big topic in my therapy sessions. My dad never pushed me to talk to William. Laura, my girlfriend and ultimately my wife, never pushed me to talk to William. Charlie and Abbi never brought him up. My therapist did. She encouraged me for years to reach out. She thought it would be cathartic or some shit. She told me it might be good for both of us. It wasn't until years into our sessions that I finally admitted the truth of that night. What he did. What I did.
She stopped pushing for a reunion.
Dad had kept me home from school until after the holiday break. I stayed away for almost two months. Laura visited my teachers every day and brought me my assignments so I wouldn't fall behind. When I finally did go back to school, Laura, Charlie and Abbi, in some combination, were always by my side. They were supporting me, protecting me, ensuring I was okay. I had no classes with William, but they shielded me anyway, all day, every day. I appreciated their intentions but the truth was, outside of my teachers and friends, no one said a word to me. What do you say to the kid who went through what I had been through? It was long before social media, long before texting, even before the internet was a common thing, but still...everyone knew what had happened and who I was. It was big local news.
After I had come back to consciousness in the hospital, things were initially fuzzy. The crystallization of my memories was excruciating. The hardest thing for me to face was that when I walked into that kitchen and found Mom on the floor, she was still alive. Her eyes were open. We made eye contact. And then I was attacked from behind. I feared that the last thing she saw, the last thought she had was that I was hurt, in trouble or had been killed. I was afraid that my mom died thinking that her son died too. To this day, if I ponder that too much, I - well... More than three decades later I still battle those demons.
I told my therapist from the beginning; I'm an atheist. Don't try to sell me any of this "she's looking down on you" crap. Don't tell me she's out there somewhere, that she can see me, that she knows I'm okay. Don't speak of heaven or angels or any of that bullshit.
In the end, I decided that it was irrelevant. Mom died knowing that her family loved her. Whatever she saw or thought in her final moments didn't matter. They were just that; her final moments. The brutal, cold, hard truth is that dead is dead and gone is gone. She ceased to be. Those thoughts didn't stay with her because there was no more her.
It took me too many years to get to that.
Therapy can be frustrating. Sometimes I just wanted someone to fix it. To tell me what to think and how to feel. But that's not how it works. Susan would guide and lead me to my own discoveries and conclusions. It was hard work that I hated every minute of, but very much needed to do.
No one ever helped William to do that work.
William struggled after the events of November, 1989. He struggled hard. While my sister is seven years younger than me, William's was one year older. Maureen had gone away for college, leaving William and her childhood behind. William's mother was in deep mourning over the loss of her lifelong best friend. Ultimately, she stayed in Maine, never to return. William was pretty much alone with his father. I had my support system. William didn't. As much as I downplayed my friendship with William to Laura, Charlie and Abbi, from William's perspective, I was his only real friend and I had abandoned him. I would be lying if I didn't admit that I felt more than a little guilty about that.
He saw things too. He saw the killer fleeing. He saw me, his best friend, unconscious on the floor. He saw my mom dead or maybe still dying. He was left shattered and broken. I know what it takes to get well again. I had the constant love and support of important people in my life - family, friends and even a therapist. William didn't have any of that. Of course he fell into a downward spiral.
After graduation, William continued to live at home. He enrolled in classes at the College of DuPage, one of the biggest and best junior colleges in the country. He dropped out within the first year. Ultimately, he turned to drugs and battled addiction for the next two decades.
At the far too young age of forty, William's sister Maureen died tragically from cancer. Laura, Dad and I attended the memorial service. I hadn't seen William since Warren Lewis's sentencing in July of 1990. The age of a person who could legally drink had passed by then.
William was gaunt - emaciated. We were both skinny kids, but on this day, he was skeletal. It was at this encounter that he assured me he was "clean" and had been for a while. This was also when he asked me if we could exchange cell phone numbers. I reluctantly agreed and he has texted me periodically over the last decade plus. We've never called each other. I only occasionally respond to his texts and I never initiate them.
Who has William become? His dreams were never realized. He didn't find himself in college. He never flourished in meaningful work. He's never been in a committed, significant relationship that I know of. The guy that I knew, who I was friends with for eighteen years, liked to read, draw, listen to music, solve puzzles. He deserved to live a fulfilling, happy life.
That didn't work out for him.
He never finished school, never held a steady job and he still lives with his father. I hope he stayed off the drugs. He seemed clean when I saw him at Laura's memorial service two years ago, but to be honest, I was a bit distracted that day. Who knows? He did look anorexic. Malnourished. Like in a strong wind, he could erode like the sand on the beach.
My feelings of guilt are complicated. This happened to him at my house. If he hadn't slept over that night, he wouldn't have been there. He wouldn't have witnessed those horrific events that altered his life too. Or, at the very least, if I hadn't abandoned him, maybe he might have found his way back. If I had resumed our friendship after the trial, maybe he would have rebounded and turned out to be the person he was meant to become.
Or maybe not.
Nobody ever blamed me for staying away. For choosing self-preservation. But I guess we'll never know what could have been.
I've been staring at my phone for fifteen minutes, thinking about what to say. I open my text thread with William. Scrolling back, I see that it's no less than 90% one-sided. All William and hardly any me.
I finally type:
Yes, I got the letter. What would meeting up change?
I send it and the status goes from "delivered" to "read" immediately. Three dots appear.
William:
