Epilogue

Mr. and Mrs. Frederick James III

Jimmy’s mom never quite recovered from Jimmy’s infidelities. She had the same intuition she had with her first husband so many decades ago. The same intuition that Abby had felt. In her heart she had known something had happened after that damn bachelor party and was constantly alert to other signs of indiscretion. If it had been the one time she would have heartbroken, but when the pattern emerged, culminating with Sheila she fell into a deep depression that took months of therapy to address.

Frederick fared better, at least on the outside, than his wife. He continued with his home renovation projects, oftentimes helping his friends and neighbors when they had upgrades that they wanted done without the expense of hiring a professional. He saw Carlos and Butch a few times a month and no one ever mentioned their night of spying that led to Jimmy’s demise.

Sheila Howard

Sheila had been a borderline alcoholic for the past few years. After being fired she abandoned all pretext of being on a wagon and was only sober a few hours per week. Her most recent habit was to frequent a biker-bar at the edge of town. She would oftentimes end up the bedroom, or on the backroom pool table, with one or more bikers that were able to supply her with fresh booze, or more recently, cocaine. Four months to the day after being fired she had a particularly extreme bender at the bar. She serviced six bikers while on the pool table, got a line of coke from three, and a handful of pills from a fourth. She was there with the sixth guy until after the bar closed for the night so no one was around to question her decision to drive home. She made it as far as the Killemon River Bridge that marked the southern end of downtown, but could not navigate the car between what appeared to her like four sets of waving lights on each side of the road. She was pronounced dead on the scene at the age of 38 when her car was finally dredged from the river.

Frederick James Melton IV

Jimmy spent the first night of the rest of his life in a homeless shelter in a town about halfway between his parents home and his former home. The car started to smoke violently as he approached the town’s exit so he got off the highway and pulled into a service station. It was already closed for the day so he left the car in the parking lot and started to walk. He thought his overnight stay would be just that, a one night layover, but he ended up staying for almost three months. He made someone, most likely a paralegal, come to him in order for him to sign the final divorce papers, which he didn’t contest at all. He panhandled during the day and stayed at the shelter most nights. When he wasn’t at the shelter he stayed with Rita. She was a beggar that worked the corner opposite him. She had scavaged a series of appliance boxes that she crafted into a multi-room dwelling close to where they shook their tin cups.