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Show 166 genuinely surprised by it. I'd had a lot of conversations by this time about how there was nothing anyone could have done to help, but I also knew that what was meant by that was there was nothing anyone could do about it now. I also knew that I should have done better for my friend who shot himself in the Salt Lake desert than learning about it a day later, and then blurring though my life and keeping together for social appearances. I should have been out combing the salt for his body, or at least waiting with his mom in the cold October night air while they carried him in. It was in part because she refused to accept the idea that there was nothing we could have done that I needed to talk to Tamara so often. Since we walked on the salt together that first time I had been calling her more and more, and hanging out with her at least every Thursday, same as Steve and I used to do. Some of that was because I was worried about her; I could read a finished look in her face and movements, and I could see that she felt Steve's death in every one of her bones. Often she would start sobbing as though she could see Steve suffering right before her eyes. I didn't want Tamara to follow him out into the salt desert, but usually when I called her, it was for me. Through eight years of dating, she had the most Steve stories. And I didn't like to think of a time in my life where I might not think about him for days at a time. Tamara was just as obsessed with retracing Steve's last day, and she bought a gun at Gunneson's, the same store where Steve bought his .357. Tamara said I was the only one who knew she had the gun, and I wasn't sure what to do |
