In This Moment
In This Moment
Karma Brown
In a single moment everything can change. Meg Pepper has a fulfilling career and a happy family. Most days she’s able to keep it all together and glide through life. But then, in one unalterable moment, everything changes.After school pickup one day, she stops her car to wave a teenage boy across the street…just as another car comes hurtling down the road and slams into him.Meg can’t help but blame herself for her role in this horrific disaster. Full of remorse, she throws herself into helping the boy’s family as he rehabs from his injuries. But the more Meg tries to absolve herself, the more she alienates her own family – and the more she finds herself being drawn to the boy’s father.Soon Meg’s picture-perfect life is unravelling before her eyes. As the painful secrets she’s been burying bubble dangerously close to the surface, she will have to decide: Can she forgive herself, or will she risk losing everything she holds dear to her heart?Readers love Karma Brown:“touching, heartfelt, and compelling”“huge fan of her writing style”“I LOVED this book and the way it deals with guilt and grief and forgiveness”“her books just get better and better!”
Bestselling author Karma Brown is back with a morally infused and emotionally riveting exploration of one woman’s guilt over an unexpected—yet avoidable—tragedy
Meg Pepper has a fulfilling career and a happy family. Most days she’s able to keep it all together and glide through life. But then, in one unalterable moment, everything changes.
After school pickup one day, she stops her car to wave a teenage boy across the street...just as another car comes hurtling down the road and slams into him.
Meg can’t help but blame herself for her role in this horrific disaster. Full of remorse, she throws herself into helping the boy’s family as he rehabs from his injuries. But the more Meg tries to absolve herself, the more she alienates her own family—and the more she finds herself being drawn to the boy’s father.
Soon Meg’s picture-perfect life is unravelling before her eyes. As the painful secrets she’s been burying bubble dangerously close to the surface, she will have to decide: Can she forgive herself, or will she risk losing everything she holds dear to her heart?
KARMA BROWN is an award-winning journalist and author of the bestsellers Come Away with Me and The Choices We Make. In addition to her novels, Karma’s writing has appeared in publications such as Redbook, SELF and Chatelaine. Karma lives just outside Toronto with her husband, daughter and their labradoodle, Fred. In This Moment is her most recent novel.
www.KarmaKBrown.com (http://www.KarmaKBrown.com)
Also By Karma Brown (#u03196365-e241-516a-a543-24cc33d0df3f)
Come Away with Me
The Choices We Make
In This Moment
Karma Brown
Copyright (#u03196365-e241-516a-a543-24cc33d0df3f)
An imprint of HarperCollins Publishers Ltd.
1 London Bridge Street
London SE1 9GF
First published in Great Britain by HQ in 2018
Copyright © Karma Brown 2017
Karma Brown asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work.
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.
All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins.
Ebook Edition © January 2018 ISBN: 9781474083591
Praise for the novels of Karma Brown
“We adored Come Away with Me and are ready for more of Brown’s powerful, heartfelt prose. She’s the female Nicholas Sparks.”
—Redbook
“Brown delivers an emotional punch in The Choices We Make. This is a good, old-fashioned tear-jerker of a book.”
—The Toronto Star
“The Choices We Make presents gut-wrenching questions about friendship and loyalty... Should appeal to readers who relish Nicholas Sparks’ sentimental stories combined with the kind of weighty issues often raised by Jodi Picoult.”
—New York Journal of Books
“A warmly compelling love story [and] deeply moving debut.”
—Booklist
“A compelling premise with a plot that intensifies satisfyingly in the second half, this book is a good bet for readers who don’t shy away from difficult moral questions.”
—Kirkus Reviews
“[A] beautifully written story of love and loss... Come Away with Me had me smiling through my tears.”
—Tracey Garvis Graves, New York Times bestselling author of On the Island
“[A] heartbreaking yet hopeful tale... Karma Brown is a talented new voice in women’s fiction.”
—Lori Nelson Spielman, #1 international bestselling author of The Life List
“Laughing one minute, then fiercely blinking back tears the next, we tore through this novel—so gripping that we were both excited and scared out of our minds to turn the page. Multilayered and completely consuming...[a] stunning page turner.”
—Liz Fenton and Lisa Steinke, authors of The Status of All Things
“One woman’s journey through grief becomes the journey of a lifetime.”
—Colleen Oakley, author of Before I Go
For Mom & Dad—you told me I could do whatever I put my mind to.
You were right. xo
Contents
Cover (#u91ac1b27-4d36-5172-83a4-9f0861d39a41)
Back Cover Text (#u15b79dee-a16b-523a-a617-0cd5f125bf45)
About the Author (#u33dcbcc5-82ce-5d82-9605-d1fa46be10d7)
Booklist (#uff45b5af-dba4-5a20-8ed0-0278fc66596d)
Title Page (#ue6622f7e-4534-53ab-9063-684025cf7432)
Copyright (#u6c1dabd0-77b0-5324-b533-0fd82fbfaa63)
Praise (#u0cc35454-1bb0-5ab8-83d7-8a03fd808ebd)
Dedication (#ue456a578-f24f-575b-bf9c-89c9c8328d6b)
Quote (#u6be5426d-de3d-52a5-bee0-eaffb5346f3f)
Chapter 1 (#u758242ac-3419-5456-b7a5-4f7bd4fbb5ab)
Chapter 2 (#uf5209357-492e-553c-b7b6-78b37f21ba7f)
Chapter 3 (#ua59b37f5-fbd4-56bd-b36b-47aab8be0179)
Chapter 4 (#u6958e26d-a996-53aa-b862-b5998e64d8a4)
Chapter 5 (#u4d163493-0390-5120-8425-953e84dc974c)
Chapter 6 (#ubc2af5fc-d017-56ac-8523-65d3aea4963f)
Chapter 7 (#ub764474e-b11e-5843-8ea3-7653d61f7544)
Chapter 8 (#u98ca9daf-b609-55fc-9acb-bab04ed74b75)
Chapter 9 (#u96b6cf5e-688f-5afa-ae5a-3f53291db7a8)
Chapter 10 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 11 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 12 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 13 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 14 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 15 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 16 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 17 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 18 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 19 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 20 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 21 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 22 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 23 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 24 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 25 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 26 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 27 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 28 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 29 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 30 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 31 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 32 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 33 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 34 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 35 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 36 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 37 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 38 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 39 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 40 (#litres_trial_promo)
Acknowledgments (#litres_trial_promo)
Questions for Discussion (#litres_trial_promo)
A Conversation with Karma Brown (#litres_trial_promo)
Extract (#litres_trial_promo)
Remember upon the conduct of each depends the fate of all.
—Alexander the Great
1 (#u03196365-e241-516a-a543-24cc33d0df3f)
I wake with a start thanks to a loud bang against the window on my side of the bed. Without looking I know what’s happened—another bird, tricked by the clear glass of our balcony windows, has soared to its death and snapped me out of my slumber.
Using my fingertips I pull my phone off the nightstand and squint at the clock icon. When I see the time I sit straight up, pulling the covers off Ryan, who groans with annoyance. “Ryan. We have to get up.”
“Five more minutes,” Ryan mumbles, his back to me as he tries to pull the duvet back up over his shoulders.
I nudge him again, tug at the duvet. “Get up. We’re late.”
He rolls toward me, and I hold my phone in front of him. He lets out a quiet string of curse words. “Didn’t you set your alarm?”
“Didn’t you?” I grumble, throwing the duvet off my legs but still not getting out of bed. I feel leaden, like in the night someone replaced my blood with molasses, and my head hurts. Ryan is out of bed and has already started the shower, and my mind drifts again to the bird. Maybe it was only stunned and has already flown away.
I place my feet gingerly on the floor, wiggling some warmth into my toes. Flicking on the balcony light I glance down. Damn. The bird’s neck is torqued at a distressing angle, its feathers ruffling with the breeze, but otherwise there’s no movement in its tiny body.
I contemplate the best way to get rid of it without upsetting Audrey. After the last one broke its neck, a vibrant yellow finch that Audrey buried under our hydrangeas, Ryan refused to let her soap all the windows in the house. So she made glass gel clings, thanks to the internet and twenty dollars of gelatin from the bulk store and a determination to save every last neighborhood bird. I think of the gel clings inside my nightstand drawer, likely sticking to whatever else I’d forgotten about in there, and whisper an apology to the bird.
Guilt getting the better of me, I’m about to grab the clings and put them up when the coffee timer beeps a floor below. With sudden clarity I realize what else I’ve forgotten to do. I race down the stairs and groan when I get to the kitchen. The coffeemaker is surrounded by a spreading pool of black liquid and coffee grounds, cascading over the counter’s lip and on to the floor. What the hell is it with this day?
* * *
I’m on my hands and knees mopping up the grungy coffee when Ryan comes into the kitchen, tucking his shirt into his pants and looking fresh and well-rested, especially in comparison to me—disheveled in my pajamas and unruly, finger-swept bun. “What happened?”
“I forgot to empty the carafe before I set the timer last night,” I say.
Ryan steps around the mess and me, and opens the fridge door. “That’s not like you.”
I pause midwipe, give him a look that suggests he’s said enough. He holds his hands up, giving me the smile that makes it hard to stay irritable.
“Oh, also, there’s a dead bird on our balcony.”
“I guess Audrey’s sticky things didn’t work?” he asks.
“They might work. If I actually put them up.” I scowl and he chuckles. I set a mental reminder to put the window clings up tonight after work. Then I let out three sneezes in quick succession, which is when I realize how sore my throat is.
Ryan glances at me, fridge door open and orange juice in hand. “You getting sick?”
“Allergies.” I stand to wring the brackish coffee-drenched cloth out in the sink.
He juggles the orange juice with the carton of eggs, and nudges the door closed with his hip. Placing the eggs on the counter beside the stove, he lays a hand against my forehead. “Meg, you’re sick,” he says. Then he kisses me on the lips.
“Ryan!” I shove him weakly with my free elbow. “Now you’re going to get sick.”
“I thought it was allergies?” He smirks, grabs a frying pan from the rack and turns on the stove, the gas flame coming to life with a whoosh. “Maybe you should take the day off. Drink hot water and lemon. Doctor’s orders.” He cracks an egg into the frying pan one-handed, then tosses the shell into the sink before repeating the steps with a second egg, leaving a thick trail of egg white along the countertop as he does. Ryan is a decent cook, but has never learned to clean up as he goes, and somehow I’ve ended up doing most of both. I sigh, run the dishcloth across the counter to wipe up the egg white and then turn on the water and nudge the broken shells into the disposal’s whirling blades until they’re pulverized.
While I refill the coffee machine I fantasize about crawling back into bed, indulging in a day of on-demand movies and copious amounts of tea with honey, and then I picture my calendar. I could do the agreements and marketing plans for my new listings from bed, but everything else—including the four showings I have today—requires me to be dressed and present.
“I wish,” I say. “But houses can’t stage or show themselves.”
“Good thing, otherwise you’d be out of a job,” Ryan says, generously pouring hot sauce on top of his eggs. “What about pushing your showings back a bit? Go in a little late.”
I take a sip of orange juice and wince, the acidity burning my throat. “I told Tom I’d help him out this morning. He’s got an agents’ open house at the McLaren property in a couple of weeks. Remember, I told you about that listing? The one with the tennis court and pool?”
Ryan nods, swallows a bite of egg. “Right. With the nude statues in the garden?”
“The very one.” The home’s owner, a widow with a lot of money and specific tastes, had a thing for bronze statues of naked women in a variety of bizarre poses—Tom and I were currently debating whether to have the statues removed and put in storage before the open house. “Anyway, it’s a major listing, and he’s promised me a chunk if I help him out.”
“How big a chunk?” Ryan asks.
I set my index finger and thumb about an inch apart and squint at the space between them. Ryan pushes back from the table, wiping his face with a napkin. “That hardly seems worth getting out of bed for even when you’re well.”
A prickle of irritation moves through me. I know I’m being oversensitive, and Ryan simply voiced a fact. I’ll probably do most of the work, and Tom will take most of the credit—and the commission. Tom’s reliance on me—calling me on vacation, on my days off, much too late in the evening, and me always taking his calls—has been somewhat of a sore spot between me and Ryan, especially lately as my own client list has grown.
However, as I’ve often reminded Ryan, I owe Tom—so I take his calls when they come in, and help him when he asks. When I tried to reenter the workforce after a decade home with Audrey, my skills stale and as outdated as the plastic-cased Bondi blue iMac I used to craft my resume, Tom and his brokerage gave me a chance when no one else would. I started as his administrative assistant, then got my real estate license, and over the last six years I’ve proven I’m great at selling houses—I’m now in the top one percent of Realtors at the brokerage. But as Ryan has reminded me more than once, I didn’t have to go back to work, his salary plenty to keep us more than comfortable. In some ways it seems like he still sees my career as a hobby, which is incredibly frustrating.
My phone pings at me, and I glance at the screen. Pull dinner out of freezer. “Do you want chicken Marbella or tilapia tacos for dinner?” I ask Ryan. My best friend, Julie Larrington, and I do batch cooking once a month, which makes life a lot easier when I have to work late, like I will be doing tonight. “Or turkey and white bean chili? I have one more of those, I think.” My arms reach deep to the back of the freezer, and I shiver with the cold blast of air on my bare arms.
“Chicken gets my vote.” He swallows the last of his vitamins before grabbing his travel mug to wash it out. “But remember I’m in that conference all day? I won’t be home until eight, eight-thirty.” Ryan’s a radiologist at Massachusetts Memorial Hospital, which is only fifteen minutes from the house. He loves his job, especially the flexibility, but has grown weary of the hospital’s inefficiencies. Today’s conference, for example, is focused on “nurturing internal relationships,” which Ryan says could be covered in sixty minutes but will take ten excruciating hours instead.
There’s a sigh from the kitchen doorway. Our fifteen-going-on-twenty-five-year-old daughter leans against the door with her backpack slung over one shoulder and an amused look on her face—which has more makeup on it than we agreed was appropriate for school. But I think back to my dad’s advice when she was born. “Margaret, not everything should be a battle. Ask yourself, ‘Is this the hill I want to die on?’ I promise you not every hill is battle-worthy.” I decide the makeup hill is not the one I want to die on today.
I miss having my dad nearby, but he and his arthritis escaped Massachusetts’s frigid winters a few years ago for a condo in sunshiny Florida that he shares with a Boston Terrier named Polly, and his second wife, a retired accountant named Carla.
Audrey pushes off the doorframe and walks into the kitchen, the rubber soles of her moccasin shoes squeaking against the hardwood. “Did you say Rabbit Rabbit Rabbit this morning?” Her English class recently did a mythology and folklore segment, where she learned the superstition of repeating the word rabbit on the first day of each month, for good luck.
“No, I did not.” I wish it were that easy to ensure luck, but I keep my pessimism to myself.
“You look, like, really bad,” Audrey says, glancing at me from the fridge.
“Thanks a lot.” Then I see the clock on the microwave and curse under my breath. “Did you eat breakfast?” I ask Audrey, as I gather my phone, wallet and a wad of tissues, stuffing them into my purse. I have exactly fifteen minutes to get ready before I have to take her to school, which means dry shampoo and a ponytail.
“Like, an hour ago. I packed you a lunch, too, because you weren’t up yet.” She grabs my reusable lunch bag out of the fridge, and I see the sticky note on it reading, Mom.
I’m so grateful she’s not the kind of kid I have to drag out of bed in the morning and nag constantly to clean her room, eat properly, do her homework. Audrey has a 4.2 GPA, is the assistant editor of Merritt High’s student newspaper, and volunteers with her friend Kendall at the assisted living center, helping run the senior center’s art program. Sometimes I think she’s better at being an adult than I am. While I rely on multiple calendars and far too many reminders that beep and trill and interrupt me on a daily basis to keep on top of our lives, Audrey seems able to do it with a natural ease.
“Thank you,” I say, kissing her on top of her head and setting the bag beside my purse. “I’ll be right down. Just need ten minutes. Twelve, tops.” I start out of the kitchen, then turn back. “Chicken okay for you tonight, Aud?”
“I don’t eat chicken, Mom,” she says, sitting down now that she knows we’re not leaving right away.
I look from her to Ryan, who shrugs at this news. “Since when?” Audrey recently stopped eating red meat and pork, but so far we’ve managed to keep chicken, turkey and fish on the menu.
She taps on her phone, somehow texting and talking with me simultaneously. “I can just make a sandwich.”
“No, it’s fine. Your dad and I can have the chicken another night.” I rummage around the freezer a bit more. “What about turkey?” She shakes her head. I sigh. “Fish tacos?”
“Sounds good,” she says. Clearly fish haven’t made it to her “animals not to eat” list yet. “As long as they don’t have to numb my mouth.”
I stare at her, bag of fish tacos in hand, a memory niggling at my brain.
“I have a dentist appointment after school? I sent you the calendar reminder last week,” Audrey says.
“Right. Dentist.” I shoot her an apologetic look, and quickly scroll through my calendar. Shit. There it is. I mentally run through my day to figure out how I can be in two places at once—at my last showing and in the school pickup queue. “I didn’t forget. See?” I hold out my phone to show her, but she doesn’t look fooled. “It’s fine. We’ll make it work.” I sneeze again, but don’t get to the tissue box in time.
“Gross, Mom,” she says, disdain on her face. “What’s wrong with you?”
“Allergies,” I reply, blowing my nose.
Audrey shrugs at my response, then leans into Ryan when he bends down to hug her. “Bye, Dad.”
“Bye, pumpkin,” Ryan says. “Have a great day.”
But her attention is already back to her phone, her fingers flying furiously over the keys.
Ryan rubs a ruby-red apple against his thigh, holding the door to the garage slightly open with his other hand. “Meg, why don’t you at least reschedule the dentist? She’s fifteen. Her teeth are perfect.”
“I’ve already rescheduled once, and I’m scared of Dr. Snowden’s receptionist. She’s not kind to serial reschedulers.” I sneeze again. “Guess there’s no chance you could pick her up and take her?”
“Nope.” He shakes his head. “The conference goes until four-thirty, and then I have to do some paperwork.”
“You said the conference was pointless,” I say. “What’s the big deal if you miss the last hour?”
“I’m already missing the last hour,” he says, his tone shifting to one of impatience. “I have a meeting about the clinic, and it was a miracle we could all get our schedules lined up.”
“Another one?” I say, trying to quell my irritation. “Can’t you guys do a conference call or something?” Ryan has been meeting with a few coworkers about starting their own clinic for the past eight months, though there’s been little action on it aside from these get-togethers that seem to take place at inconvenient times. Like when I’ve double booked our daughter’s dentist appointment and a house showing.
“No, we can’t do a conference call. It’s important we’re face-to-face. There’s a lot at stake here, Meg.”
“So you’ve said,” I reply.
He lets his hand holding the apple drop, swallows the last bite, and as he does I see his face change. Harden, like it does when he’s had enough of discussing a particular topic.
“Just reschedule the damn appointment if you can’t get her there. Why are you making me feel like the bad guy here?”
“You’re not the only one with work shit going on,” I say, lowering my voice so Audrey doesn’t hear. “I’ve got a lot happening, too.”
“Then maybe you shouldn’t have booked her dentist appointment for this week.”
We stare at one another, both of us waiting for the other one to give in first, which I do. “Don’t worry about it. I’ll figure it out.” I always do, I want to add.
I walk back through the door and let it slam without waiting for his response, and a moment later hear the garage door open and him pull his car out. This has been happening more often, Ryan and I starting, or ending, our days with an argument. I hate how unsettled I feel when we’re not jibing, and I know we need to talk about it. But lately it seems like we’re both running on hamster wheels—him with work and this new clinic start-up, and me with more clients and responsibilities outside the house—rarely jumping off to spend time together not focused on the logistics of our lives.
“You only have five minutes left,” Audrey says, not looking up from her phone when I walk back into the kitchen.
“I know.” I’m mentally picking out my outfit as I race up the stairs, still frustrated with Ryan and having no clue that later I will forever regret not taking to my sick bed this day.
2 (#u03196365-e241-516a-a543-24cc33d0df3f)
Ten minutes later I find Audrey sitting in the front seat of my car, seat belt on and eyes cast down on her phone. She’s likely texting her boyfriend, Sam Beckett, or Kendall—Julie’s daughter and one of Audrey’s best friends—probably complaining that her snot-filled mom is going to make her late for class.
“Who are you talking to?” I ask, and I don’t have to look at her to know she’s rolling her eyes at my question.
“I’m not talking to anyone, I’m texting,” she replies. She certainly plays the sullen teenager when she wants to, but most days I know it’s more an act than anything else. As if reading my mind, she adds, “Just Sam.” I steal a glance at her while I back out of our garage and catch the small smile that plays on her lips when her phone buzzes again. Sam is Audrey’s first real boyfriend, and while they’ve only been dating six months she’s clearly smitten. I’m equal parts delighted for her to be experiencing the blush of first love, and terrified about what other firsts come with it. “He’s sick and his dad is making him stay home.”
“Oh? That’s too bad. There must be something going around.” I clear my throat, which now feels like it’s filled with razor blades, hoping I have ibuprofen in my purse.
Audrey asks if I’ve booked the parental driver’s education class Ryan and I need to attend before Audrey can start driving. She’s been asking about it daily for the past week now that her sixteenth birthday (and the day she can get her learner’s permit) is less than a month away. I tell her I have, even though I’ve only left one voice mail, yesterday, and am not officially registered. Satisfied with my answer, she then tells me about Human Pudding—a band she and her friends love whose songs give me a headache—releasing a new album, and about how one of her teachers, who apparently no one likes much, wore white pants that showcased her black-and-pink polka-dotted underwear. Hearing this makes me grateful I never became a high school teacher. Teenagers, at least the ones I know, are fairly ruthless in their judgment of grown-ups—as though your time to make mistakes ends the moment you turn twenty-one and are labeled as an adult. Though I try to listen and respond appropriately, my mind is already past the car ride and school drop-off and on to my work to-do list and what dish I’m going to make for the cookbook club night I’m hosting on the weekend. Soon Audrey is back to her buzzing phone, and I’m lulled into the soft sounds of the car’s interior, and I jump when she speaks again.
“So you’ll pick me up after school, right?”
“Can’t you just walk home?” I turn to her, confusion on my face.
“Mom, seriously—”
I lean toward her and kiss her cheek, closer to her ear than mouth—protecting her from whatever virus I have—and laugh. “Seriously. I’m joking. I’ll be here. Promise.”
“Stick to your day job, Margaret,” she says, but gives me a sweet smile that makes my heartbeat jump, like it so often does when I’m in her presence. A feeling I expect is impossible to describe except to other mothers. “Love you,” she says, leaning over to hug me tight. I hold her until she lets go, like always. “See you at three-thirty. Don’t be late.”
I go to say I’ll be there, I know the time thank-you-very-much and won’t be late because I set a reminder on my phone in between brushing my teeth and pulling on my tights, but my words are cut off by the slam of the car door and she’s off, swallowed up in the tide of teenagers flowing into the open mouth of the school’s front doors.
* * *
Between arguing with Tom about removing the garden statues—we settled on leaving the more tasteful ones and storing the others—late clients, and a snapped heel on my favorite shoes, thanks to a loose walkway stone at my first showing, the day drags painfully by. Plus, I’m feeling at least 150 percent worse than I did this morning, my voice now deep and rough and my fever making me alternate between chills and sweats. So by the time my last appointment arrives, which I pushed up so I could get Audrey in time for the dentist, I’m operating on fumes and desperate for things to go smoothly. I pop a Claritin while I wait for my clients, adding it to my grocery list on my phone when I see the blister pack is nearly empty. I’ve had a dog and cat allergy since I was a kid, and have learned through experience to never go into a house showing without Claritin onboard.
My clients, Noah and Jillian Delacorte, are a young couple, new to Merritt by way of Boston where they’ve been living for the past three years in a one-bedroom condo. With a baby on the way, they’re “ready to move to the ‘burbs,’” as Noah said when we first chatted, and I gladly agreed to work with them. Parents-to-be are generally on a tight timeline to get moved in, as no one wants to be dragging a fussy newborn around to a bunch of showings. However, it’s been two months and a dozen showings later, and we have yet to find them the perfect house. Mostly because Jillian—a pixie of a woman, whose seven months pregnant belly is smaller than mine was at three months—is fairly particular about, well, everything, as it turns out. She once walked right out of a house because the front hallway smelled “a bit earthy,” and she thought that meant mold, despite my assurances it was likely due to the giant potted plant by the front door.
So today, while I wait shivering with fever at a house I’m certain ticks all the boxes, I pray to the real estate gods that Jillian Delacorte is in a ready-to-buy state of mind. However, turns out my shitty day wasn’t done with me yet, and so when Noah shows up without Jillian—the decision maker of the two—I’m a bit concerned. Being the decision maker of the two, it’s critical she be here.
“Hi, Noah.” I shake his outstretched hand as he walks up to me. I look toward his car, hoping Jillian will somehow materialize from inside it. “Where’s Jillian?”
“She wasn’t feeling well, so I told her to stay home.” Noah adjusts his messenger bag on his shoulder, looks toward the house. “She said she trusts my judgment.” I smile weakly at him, both of us knowing how false this statement is.
The house is perfect for them—it’s within budget, has the required three bedrooms, a fenced-in backyard and, by some miracle, both the master bedroom on the main floor and the butler’s pantry Jillian insisted upon—but unfortunately with only Noah here, I know I won’t be writing up an offer tonight.
“I think this may be the one, Meg,” Noah says, after we tour the house. “But I want Jillian to see it, just to be one hundred percent certain.” Of course. So we run through our calendars at the home’s kitchen table and try to find a date that works.
With only a few minutes to spare until I have to get Audrey I sit in my running car—Audrey would have a fit, reminding me how terrible it is for the environment—and return a call to another client who’s having second thoughts about the asking price we agreed on, then with my final minute craft an email to Tom about an idea I have for the agent’s open house. While I’m typing, a text comes through from Ryan. Sorry about this morning. Can I make it up to you later? I quickly type back, Deal and am about to sign off on the email to Tom when my cell phone whistles.
“What the hell?” On top of the screen a little calendar reminder pops up.
Mom—Leave work NOW.
I chuckle. She must have programmed the reminder into my phone this morning, probably while I raced around trying to do an hour’s worth of stuff in fifteen minutes.
After I hit Send on the email to Tom, I pull away from the curb hoping there’s no traffic downtown, so I can get Audrey to her appointment on time and avoid the receptionist’s wrath.
3 (#u03196365-e241-516a-a543-24cc33d0df3f)
I’m only three minutes behind schedule when I pull into the long pickup queue to wait for Audrey. I quickly check my phone, feeling relief when I see replies from both Noah—Jillian is excited to see the house, how does Thursday work?—and Tom, who has had a change of heart and agrees perhaps all the statues should go, though he words the email in a way that makes it seem it was his idea all along. Clearly things have taken a turn for the better, and even my fever seems under control with the ibuprofen I’ve been popping all day.
I see Audrey come through the doors, looking for my car in the long pickup line, and I put down the passenger window. “Audrey!” I try to shout, though it comes out sounding more like a squeak. I would honk, but that’s frowned upon in the school parking lot. Audrey still hasn’t seen me, but Emma Steen, waiting for her own daughter, Charlotte, by the front doors, does. I bristle as Emma strides toward me, cursing today’s timing.
She tightens the belt of her Burberry-patterned coat around her tall, slim body and steps toward the passenger side of my car and the open window. “Oh, hell,” I mutter, trying to decide if I have time to pick up my phone and fake a call. Emma’s smiling as she approaches, but I notice it’s strained. As it should be, I think.
“Hi there, Meg,” she says, bending down so her face is framed by the window. Her auburn hair is pulled back in a tight, high ponytail, her smooth bangs hanging perfectly upon her forehead, showcasing fabulous eyebrows. I absentmindedly rub a finger over my own brows, knowing it’s been too long since I had them waxed. My fingers itch with the urge to type a reminder to call the spa into my phone.
“How are you? Sorry you missed the last meeting, but hopefully the minutes were helpful.” I think of Emma’s last email, which I deleted without opening. This is her first year as president of Merritt High’s Parent Teacher Organization, and it’s the perfect position for her—some people lead through creativity or inspiration, but Emma relies on her Martha Stewart–like tendencies and homemade chocolate chunk cookies.
I wish I could put up the window without it appearing downright rude, and imagine with some satisfaction what it would be like to catch her nose between the glass and the steel frame of the door. Instead I nod, force a smile and silently beg Audrey to hurry up so we can get out of this damn queue.
“I can’t chat, Emma. Audrey has a dentist appointment. Oh, and here she is.” I move my purse off the passenger seat for Audrey, who has thankfully just opened the car door, having squeezed around Emma.
“Hi, Audrey,” Emma says, shoving her hands in her pockets and watching Audrey as she buckles her seat belt. “How’s the tennis these days?”
“I don’t play anymore,” Audrey says, her tone polite but not inviting more questions. Audrey’s a natural athlete, like her dad, and used to play tennis and soccer, but when she turned twelve she decided she didn’t care for the competitive nature of organized sports. She still hits balls with her dad on occasion, but her interests have shifted: to journalism, environmentalism, saving the backyard birds.
“Oh?” Emma holds on to her wide smile, though I can see it faltering. I know Emma still feels a connection to Audrey, having spent so much time with her when she was young, but Audrey has all but forgotten that relationship and treats her no differently than any other adult she’s forced to converse with—polite, but revealing little.
“Well, I can see you’re in a rush,” Emma says, even though we both know I’m going to be stuck here for another few minutes until the line moves again. “But maybe we can do coffee soon?” She smiles brightly as though this is a normal thing we do, a perfectly reasonable suggestion. I don’t bother to remind her that we haven’t had a coffee together in about six years and instead point to my watch. “We have to go,” I say. Perhaps she thinks this passage of time is long enough for things to thaw between us, but after what she did, Emma and I will never have another coffee date—even though we used to be best of friends, seeing each other daily when our girls were in elementary school.
“Absolutely. Off you go.” She pushes the air in front of her like she’s shoving water out of the way in a pool, walking backward toward the school as she does, still forcing that bright smile. “Don’t want those beautiful teeth to be late!” She gives a final wave to Audrey, then tucks her hands back into her coat pockets as she turns around.
Audrey—who was too young to understand the abruptness with which my relationship with Emma ended, and who has long since forgotten how she and Charlotte used to tell everyone they were twin sisters—looks at me and rolls her eyes. I mutter, “Be nice,” as I put up the window and move ahead another car length.
I hate how flustered I still get whenever I see Emma, each time remembering what happened six years ago. When I walked into my kitchen to restock the ice bar during our annual New Year’s Eve bash, warm with celebration and a few nips of champagne, to see Emma and Ryan standing too close. Emma’s lips were on Ryan’s, but with his arms like wooden planks at his sides, his body rigid and disengaged, it was clear he wasn’t a willing participant—which he vehemently reinforced after I physically threw her out of my house.
“You’re one to talk,” Audrey says, raising her eyebrows at me, clearly referencing my thinly veiled dislike of Emma.
“Well, she’s...exhausting.” It’s the kindest comment I can offer as I settle back into my seat. Right or wrong, Ryan and I have always adopted the team approach to our family, meaning Audrey has participated in adult conversations since she was a little girl. I’ve only regretted it once, when Audrey announced proudly, and loudly, when she was four years old—during a library reading group for moms and tots—that a man puts his penis in a woman’s vagina to make a baby. Always curious, we had the day before read The Book of Life and had some graphic—particularly for her age—conversations about how babies came to be. That was our last parent and tot library visit.
“How was school?” I ask, pulling out of the pickup roundabout, trying to shake off the Emma annoyance that has settled into my shoulders.
“Good,” Audrey says, and I know that’s probably all I’ll get for now. Years ago I read an article in some parenting magazine that said to never, ever, ask your child a question that had a yes or no response. So I used to think up all sorts of clever ways to mine her for information with open-ended questions, but after a few months I realized I usually got more and better information if I let her tell me in her own way.
“I didn’t even know my phone could whistle at me. Did you know that?” I ask, a smile on my face, turning on to the main road.
Audrey grins at me, then looks out her window. “I know how busy you are, Mom. Just wanted to help.”
“Thank you, baby.” I rub her legging-covered knee. I slow for the first speed bump in a series of three, my car’s shocks groaning as we crest it.
“Hey, there’s Jack.” Audrey points a half a block ahead, to a tall, blond teenager, crouched down at the curb, tying his shoelaces. “His dad took Sam to the clinic, so I guess no ride home for him today.” Jack and Sam Beckett are identical twins and look so much alike I’ve never been able to tell them apart.
“I guess his mom is still at work?” I ask. Alysse Beckett, the boys’ mother, is a financial whiz and works at one of Boston’s most-respected private equity firms, drawing a salary that, when I sold them their current house, resulted in my best commission check ever. Their dad, Andrew, is a bit of a legend among the stay-at-home moms, having quit a journalism career when the twins were born to stay home with them.
“Sam said she’s working on something big right now and goes to work before six in the morning and stays until, like, midnight sometimes.” Audrey takes out a stick of gum, folds it into her mouth. “I never want a job where I have to work that early or stay that late,” she adds. I don’t bother bursting her bubble—she’ll figure out soon enough getting up early and working late are fairly basic parts of being an adult. I slow down for the final bump, practically coming to a full stop.
Jack stands and bounces on his tiptoes on the curb’s edge, skateboard in one hand, impatiently waiting for the car coming toward me to pass so he can cross. His shorts hang low on his hips and land just below the knee the way all the boys seem to be wearing them these days. On his head is a red baseball cap, turned backward, with large earphones—the noise-canceling kind—circling his neck.
I look to the other side of the road and see a couple of other teen boys, skateboards also in hand, clearly waiting for Jack to catch up.
“We should let him cross, Mom,” Audrey says.
I press my foot firmly on the brake, completely stopping the car. “You know, they look so much alike,” I say. “I don’t know how you tell who’s who.”
Audrey waves at Jack, and he waves back and smiles, recognizing her. “It’s the hair,” she says.
“What is?” I ask.
“How I tell them apart,” Audrey replies. I hold my hand up and wave Jack across the otherwise empty road, toward his group of friends. He smiles in acknowledgment and sets his skateboard on the pavement. “Sam’s hair is a bit longer, sort of curling around his ears. See?” Audrey holds up her phone, a picture of her and Sam lighting up the screen. Where he’s tall, she’s a pipsqueak—long-legged like me, but still short for her age; where he’s fair, she’s dark, brown-haired like her dad. In the photo they’re laughing, their faces squished together inside the picture’s frame.
“Cute photo,” I say, picking up my travel mug half full of now cold coffee. I’m about to take a sip when Audrey screams, jolting me. The next sounds I hear are a sickening thump and the squealing of brakes. The mug drops from my hands, and, as the coffee seeps into my lap, I gasp, watching Jack Beckett’s lanky, fifteen-year-old body smash into the windshield of the other car—which came out of nowhere, too fast—and cartwheel into the air like it weighs nothing at all.
4 (#u03196365-e241-516a-a543-24cc33d0df3f)
I’m pushing so hard on the brake pedal my toes start to cramp. Instinctually I withdraw my foot to stop the pain, and the car jerks ahead. It’s only a couple of inches, but Audrey screams again with the jarring movement, and the shrill sound rattles in my head, confusing me. What happened? Did I hit someone? No, no. It wasn’t me. My car was stopped. My foot, hard on the brake.
My eyes dart to my rearview mirror, and I see Jack Beckett lying still on the pavement not far behind us, mostly obscured by a woman on her knees beside him, wearing a Burberry-style trench coat. The coat triggers recognition, but still, I stay buckled in my seat. “This is my fault,” I say, the beating of my heart pounding in my ears, my voice shaking. “I shouldn’t have stopped in the middle of... I shouldn’t have... Where did that car come from?” Audrey cries softly beside me, and I focus on her, murmuring that it’s going to be okay. I quickly turn off the ignition and put the car in Park but don’t unbuckle my seat belt just yet. I think of the bird, broken on my balcony, forgotten in the crazy rush of the morning. I’m terrified to see Jack up close—unfortunately, I know what a body looks like after it has done battle with a car—but am irrationally hoping, as I did this morning with the bird, that he’s simply stunned. He’ll be up and walking it off in a few minutes.
My breath comes too fast, but the influx of oxygen is also bringing back awareness and clarity. Now I hear the shouts and panicked instructions being barked out by a male voice that rises above the others. Someone thankfully taking charge of the situation.
What finally brings me back to the present and spurs me into action is the sound of Audrey gagging. She’s twisted in her seat, straining against her still buckled belt, eyes wild as she stares through our SUV’s back window at Jack. I grab her chin and turn her face to mine, noticing how odd her color is. Gray, like the caulking putty Ryan used to seal the cracks in the garage last winter. “If you’re going to throw up, get out of the car now.” My voice is calm, directive, though it has no power to it.
Regardless, my words reach her. She says nothing but unbuckles her seat belt. Then she quickly opens her door, jumps out and promptly vomits on to the curb, about where Jack was standing only a minute ago. For a moment I’m unsure what to do: my mothering instincts command me to go to Audrey, to rub her back like I have many times before when she’s been sick, but a stronger instinct tells me to get out of the car and go—no, run—to Jack Beckett.
He’s only ten feet or so behind my SUV, on the other side of the road, splayed out like he’s mid-jumping jack. I’m the third person there, joining the trench-coated woman I now recognize as Emma, who must have just started walking home with Charlotte when the accident happened. A man is crouched beside her, talking, I think, to the 911 operator on his phone. I recognize his voice as the barking, take-charge one, but now that I’m closer I can hear how the slight, nervous shake of his body is making his words tremble, as well.
“Yes, he’s breathing. Not conscious...There’s a lot of blood...His head...Okay, okay.” He turns to Emma, who is amazingly in control of herself, despite what’s in front of us. She used to be an emergency room nurse before leaving to stay home with her two children, and I often sought her advice when Audrey had a fever or a cough that wouldn’t leave her little lungs. “We have to try and stop the bleeding.” The man then notices me standing there and hands me his phone. I put it to my ear, not yet seeing the streak of red on it that has now transferred to my hand, my ear, and he stands to take off his sweater. Now that he has moved slightly away from Jack, I can see how much blood there is, and that the knees of the man’s khakis are soaked dark crimson. I unwrap the pashmina from around my neck and hand it to the man. “To help with the bleeding,” I say, my voice quivering with the adrenaline coursing through me. I notice Jack’s ball cap is gone, but the headphones are still around his neck—backward now, so it sort of looks as though he’s wearing a plastic dog collar.
“Hello?” the operator says. “Are you still with me? Don’t hang up, okay?”
“Yes, sorry. I’m here,” I respond, trying to stop my arms from shaking while I hold the phone tight to my ear and listen to her instructions. “She says to apply pressure on the head wound, with whatever we have. But to be careful not to move his neck.” With a nod the man passes his sweater to Emma, who gently places it around Jack’s head, before folding my scarf into neat squares to firmly press against Jack’s skull. Emma takes over, her confident and nimble hands holding the scarf to Jack’s head as she talks softly to him about help being on the way and that he shouldn’t worry, they are going to take good care of him. Her coat is still tightly belted, though now there are splotches of blood mingling with the tan, black and red plaid squares. I have no idea where Charlotte is. Then I realize I have no idea where Audrey is, either.
There are now two lines of cars, one behind my SUV and another behind the white Volvo wagon that hit Jack, curious heads poking out of rolled-down windows, wondering what the holdup is about, the odd honk to get things moving. A crowd has gathered around us, including Jack’s buddies who were waiting for him to cross the road and whose faces betray the horror—a horror I know all too well, the kind you can never erase—of what they just witnessed. They all hold phones to their ears, their panicked voices mingling, so I can’t hear distinct words.
But the onlookers, including Jack’s friends, stay along the periphery of the accident scene. Outside the worst of it, some sharing prayers for this poor young man. I wish to be with them instead of standing in this inner circle, where we are removing clothing as quickly as Jack’s blood is flowing, trying to do something, anything to help. Things feel wildly out of control, a sensation I loathe. The man is now shirtless, his nipples hard with the cool fall breeze, a little pooch of white belly hanging over his belted pants. My own fingers have gone numb with the chill, and I squeeze them tighter around the phone, hoping I don’t drop it.
“Meg,” Emma says, repeating my name when I don’t immediately answer. “Can you untie my coat?” I nod and come behind her, which seems the easiest way to do what she’s asked without getting in the way, and with quaking fingers, I wrestle the knot at her waist, still keeping the phone tight to my ear with the pressure of my shoulder. Emma shrugs off her trench coat with my help—being careful to leave one hand on the clothes on Jack’s head—and tells the man to put it on. He does, without seeming to notice it’s too small. Even though Emma is tall, the black-piped cuffs rise above the man’s wrists by a few inches, and in any other setting I might have laughed at how ridiculous he looks.
A woman from the peripheral circle hands the man in Emma’s coat a thick wad of gauze, a large pressure dressing from a first aid kit in someone else’s car, she says. He hands me my blood-soaked pashmina and his shirt, and he and Emma apply the dressing against Jack’s skull. I don’t realize how hard I’m pressing my scarf and the shirt against my stomach until I try to take a deep breath and feel resistance. I look down and my dove-gray wrap dress is now marked red and brown, damp with Jack Beckett’s blood and the spilled coffee.
Then I hear someone say, “Oh, my God, his leg,” and I pull my eyes down from Jack’s head, and for the first time I look at Jack’s left leg. His shorts have shifted up, so there’s nothing obscuring the injury. But despite the clear view I can’t make sense of what I’m seeing.
Because nothing is where it should be. Most noticeable is Jack’s foot, pointing in the wrong direction—facing inward the way Audrey used to draw the shoes on her stick figures when she was in preschool. The leg also seems crooked where there isn’t a joint, a few inches above his ankle, and I feel bile rise in my throat when I realize what the thing sticking out of his shin is: a jagged piece of bone. “I think I can see his bone,” I whisper to the operator, my voice catching. “It’s...it’s coming out of his leg.” The man looks at me, pale, clearly unsure what to do, while Emma murmurs, “Compound fracture to the tibia.”
“Should we do anything with his leg?” the man asks quietly, looking from me to Emma, hands still levitating above Jack’s mangled leg.
“She said to leave the leg,” I tell the man, who nods—a look of relief passing across his face. “The ambulance is almost here.” Moments later we hear the sirens, and it’s as though the three of us take a collective deep breath. Help is almost here, and soon it won’t be up to us to hold the pieces of this poor young man together.
Someone comes up beside me, brushing against my arm. Audrey. “I called Sam,” she says, her voice quiet and close to my ear—the one without the phone. “He and his dad will be here soon.” My heart lurches at the thought of getting that phone call. Of the crushing panic of hearing a car has hit your child.
“I want to help,” she whispers. “What can I do?” Her tear-streaked face is still a concerning shade of gray, but there’s a firm set to her mouth I know well. It’s the face she gets when she’s determined to have her way, and is similar to the face Ryan made this morning when we argued. I want to tell her to go back to the car, to not look too closely at Jack, but I know there’s no point now.
I shift the mouthpiece of the phone away and whisper back to her. “Talk to him, honey. Can you do that? Just don’t touch him, okay? We need to keep him still.” With a nod she kneels on the ground beside Jack’s head, beside Emma. Watching her, I vow to put up the gel clings the moment we get home and to bury the bird under the hydrangeas.
“I can see the ambulance,” I tell the operator, who in her fluid, calming voice, tells me we’ve done a great job, the paramedics are almost here, but don’t hang up yet. Just then a police officer approaches and starts pressing the crowd back, repeating in a loud and authoritative voice, “Give us some room, folks,” to make space for the incoming ambulance.
I scan the faces nearby, looking to see if Andrew Beckett has arrived. It’s then that I see her—the woman who drove her car right into Jack—sitting on the curb beside the white Volvo wagon with a massive dent in its hood, a blood-spattered air bag hanging out its open driver’s side window, the windshield smashed in a spiderweb-like circle, like a basketball—or someone’s head—hit it.
A shiver moves through me when I realize I know this woman. It’s Sarah Dunn, Audrey’s history teacher. She’s staring straight ahead, at Jack’s skateboard—which is upside down and trapped under her front wheel—her face slack and mouth hanging open. She’s bleeding from her forehead, with two red rivers streaming out of her nose, but she seems unaware of her injuries. There are two more officers standing beside her, one peering inside the Volvo and the other talking into the walkie-talkie attached to his shoulder, but both ignoring her. I wonder how the hell she didn’t see Jack, and it’s then she glances up and our eyes meet.
Maybe it’s my own guilt rising up through the wall of shock, but it’s as though she knows I was driving the other car. That I was the one who deemed it a safe crossing for this innocent and clearly vulnerable teenager, now lying in the road with an injury that will forever change his life. Maybe even—I realize with a sickening lurch in my stomach—end it.
How did you not see me coming? I can almost hear her saying. How could you let him cross the street?
Why were you driving so fast in the school zone? I would shout back, not understanding how she wouldn’t know better and feeling defensive for my part in this accident.
But she wouldn’t answer my question, would only say one thing in this dreamlike conversation I have with her. We did this, Meg, is what she would say if she weren’t catatonic on the curb.
My eyes drop back to Jack, now surrounded by paramedics moving quickly and quietly, like they’ve rehearsed this exact scenario a hundred times. The half-naked man, shivering under the ill-fitting trench coat, takes his phone gently from my hand, and Emma wraps her arms around Charlotte, who has tears running down her face, and when I look back up, Sarah isn’t sitting on the curb anymore.
We did this.
I’m suddenly slammed with a memory from when I was sixteen; from a terrible night where another teenager lay bleeding and broken on a road in front of me. I have worked hard not to think about that night anymore, because I can’t breathe around my guilt when I do. But just like that, it’s back, and I’m left sucking in air around the heaviness of the memory, a fish out of water.
And like the part I played in that night when I was sixteen, I am the reason Jack Beckett crossed the road when he did. It’s my fault, I think, as the ambulance pulls out, sirens blaring. With a simple, careless wave of my hand, I did this.
5 (#u03196365-e241-516a-a543-24cc33d0df3f)
The police have taped off the area and asked me to stay put until they can take statements, which they’re currently doing with Emma and the man who has now replaced the bloodied trench coat with a sweatshirt that fits much better. I’m sitting in my SUV, restless and still trembling even with my coat on, trying to bring life back into my fingers while also trying to reach Ryan for the tenth time, when Audrey tells me Sam and his dad are here. Before I can respond she opens the car door and jumps out, running toward them.
A shiver runs through me when I look at Sam, so much like Jack in every way it’s disconcerting—for a moment my shock-weary mind tries to believe he is Jack, just fine and home from school as though nothing has happened. That this afternoon’s accident was merely a fever-fueled nightmare brought on by whatever virus has infiltrated my body.
I see Andrew, tall and lean-limbed like his boys, some thickness around his middle only visible because the wind today is strong, molding his shirt to his stomach. He’s standing slightly behind Sam, who is hugging Audrey so tight she looks as though she might disappear into his body, and staring at the road where Jack was lying only minutes before. His eyes are trained on the pool of blood, now littered with medical supplies the paramedics left in their hasty departure. He stumbles back slightly, a hand going to his open mouth. Audrey and Sam are lost together, not noticing Andrew’s stumble, and I step closer to him, concerned.
“Andrew,” I say, putting my hand on his arm. We’ve been friendly with one another since I sold them their house, more so now that our kids are dating, and have had our fair share of backyard barbecue conversations over the last few years. But even still, Ryan and I don’t count the Becketts as close friends. I suddenly wish there was someone else here, someone he knows better than me—the last thing you want is to get this kind of news from the person who knows how you like your hamburger cooked and what your home-buying budget is, but not much beyond that.
He looks at my hand on his arm, my SUV that I just got out of, and finally at my face. “Did you hit him?” he asks, the words tumbling from his lips desperate, quiet, laced with anguish.
“No,” I say, shaking my head a bit wildly. Then, with more conviction I add, “No. It wasn’t me. We were on the other side of the road.” I say nothing about waving Jack across the street. “They just took him, in the ambulance. To Children’s.” I’m about to offer to drive him to the hospital and then remember I can’t leave the scene. “The police have asked me to stay. Can you drive yourself to the hospital? Andrew?” Watching him, I know that’s not a good idea. “Or maybe the police can take you?”
He’s no longer looking at me, or the road. I follow his gaze and see Sarah in the back of a police cruiser parked a few feet away, her head down and long, dark curls framing her face. “Is that who hit my son?” he asks, so quietly I lean closer to hear him better. But he doesn’t say anything else, so I simply nod. “Yes,” I reply. “It’s Sarah Dunn.”
“Sarah Dunn,” he repeats, his voice monotone, his eyes unblinking as he stares at Sarah inside the car. “Jack’s history teacher.” He makes a strange sound in the back of his throat, and with some alarm I notice how unwell he looks. “How? Why?”
“I don’t know exactly what happened, Andrew. I don’t know how she didn’t—” I’m about to say, “see him,” but I hold my words, because I can tell he can’t take any more in right now. He’s operating on autopilot, and precariously close to losing it. “I don’t know exactly what happened,” I repeat. “Her car wasn’t there one moment and then the next...”
I glance toward the cruiser and Sarah, where his gaze continues to rest. “I still have to talk with the police,” I say, trying to fill the silence.
His face has lost what little color it had when he arrived, and he’s shaking head to toe. “Andrew?” Even though he’s much taller, wider than me, I put an arm around him as best I can. “Do you want to sit down?” I wonder if he’s going to collapse and how I’ll keep him from crashing to the ground if he does. I move my feet slightly farther apart, as far as my dress allows, so I have better balance. But he doesn’t fall. Instead he turns to me, his back to the scene, and says, “I have to go.” His eyes are unfocused, and it’s clear he should not be getting behind the wheel. Just then Emma hurries up to us, holding Charlotte’s hand tightly as they cross the road, the way she used to when Charlotte was much younger. Though another day I might scoff at her overprotectiveness, I don’t blame her for it after what just happened.
“Andrew. I’m going to drive you and Sam to the hospital. Give me your keys.” Emma’s tone is no-nonsense and urgent, and Andrew hands her his key chain without a word. Then she says, “Sam, take your dad back to the car. We’re right behind you.” She turns to me. “The police are ready to talk with you now, Meg,” she says, before she and Charlotte break into a run, heading to Andrew’s car.
“Mom, I want to go with Sam,” Audrey cries, tugging on my arm, her eyes on Andrew’s car a half block away. “Mom, they’re leaving. Please!” I see Emma get in the driver’s side of Andrew’s car, and the car takes off quickly toward the hospital.
I shake my head. “You’re staying with me.”
She makes a sound that’s partway between a sob and an angry, frustrated groan, and I go to rub her back, but she pulls away so my hand only finds air. “After I talk with the police we’ll drive to the hospital. Promise. Okay?”
Her lips are pressed tightly together, eyes red-rimmed, and for a moment I think she might scream at me. But then she launches herself into my arms, and I hold her petite, shaking body and whisper that everything will be all right, praying it’s the truth.
* * *
The police take my statement—no, I didn’t notice anything strange about Ms. Dunn’s car or her driving or that she was on her phone. I didn’t even see her car until it was too late. Yes, I did wave Jack Beckett across the street in a nonpedestrian crossing zone. Yes, I thought it was safe for him to cross, because I didn’t see the other car coming, like I already told you—and then they let me go. I’m grateful the drive to the hospital is a short one because I’m so bone-weary I probably shouldn’t be driving.
We park in the visitors’ lot and make our way into the hospital. There’s an email from Emma, which this time I don’t delete—Jack is being evaluated, and she and Charlotte are with Sam and Andrew in the emergency waiting room.
It’s surprisingly busy for late afternoon on a Monday, the waiting room littered with worried parents and kids holding kidney-shaped pans under their chins, ice packs pressed to foreheads, and arms held stiffly in makeshift slings. I see Emma on the other side of the room, and we hurry over. Sam and Charlotte are sitting side by side, a few seats down from Emma, both staring at their phone screens. I don’t see Andrew.
“Sam,” Audrey says, and at the sound of her voice he looks up. Charlotte moves over one seat so Audrey can sit beside Sam, who leans heavily against her. She takes the weight of him and grabs his hand, and I smile gently when she catches my eye. I sit down beside Emma. “What’s happening?”
“I don’t know,” she replies. “Andrew is with Jack, and Alysse is trying to get on a plane. She’s in New York City and isn’t supposed to be home until late tomorrow night.” Emma shakes her head. “I can’t even imagine, being a plane ride away when this is happening to your child.” I swallow hard, feeling my head spin a little.
“Are you all right?” Emma asks, before shaking her head and letting her breath out slowly. “Of course not. How could any of us be okay?”
For a moment I wish things between us were the way it used to be. Back when Emma knew the day-to-day nuances of my life better than even Ryan did, and would have known exactly what to say to make things better. I’m trying to think of how to respond when I catch a glimpse of Andrew standing just inside the glass emergency room doors. He looks awful, and he’s crying. A doctor wearing green scrubs is with him; their heads bent together, Andrew nods, a fist clutched to his mouth as the doctor talks.
Emma glances at her watch. “Meg, I need to get home. Can you stay for a bit? Andrew’s parents are on their way, but they’ve got an hour’s drive or so before they can get here.”
“Of course,” I say, my voice cracking. I clear my throat. “Thank you, Emma.” I’m not sure exactly what I’m thanking her for, but it’s the first thing that comes to mind. It’s so strange to be sitting next to her, talking with her like this after all these years of silence. I wonder if she’s feeling as discombobulated as I am.
She nods and gives me a small smile. “Will you keep me updated?”
“I will,” I say, thinking perhaps this will be the moment when I forgive Emma Steen for kissing my husband, because it suddenly feels like such a small thing in the face of this tragedy we’ve shared.
A few minutes after Emma and Charlotte leave, Andrew walks into the waiting room. He looks surprised to see me, and I quickly stand to meet him. “Emma had to go home,” I say. “But I’m happy to stay with Sam for as long as you need me to. Or he can come home with us. Whatever’s best for you.”
“They’re taking Jack into surgery,” Andrew says, and I let out a weak, “oh.” He goes to say something else, but then leans toward me and puts his forehead on my shoulder in much the same way Sam did with Audrey at the accident scene. His arms stay at his sides and we stand there for a moment in the packed waiting room, awkwardly close yet with only his forehead and my shoulder making contact, his cries muffled by my jacket.
Then I swiftly step closer and wrap my arms around him, and he does the same to me, holding tight in a way that feels too intimate yet exactly right for the moment. I feel tears prick my eyes but will myself not to cry. I take a deep breath, smell a hint of something woodsy, like aftershave or cologne, and squeeze him tighter when I exhale. His chest heaves against mine, and his heart beats furiously. A moment later he pulls away so quickly, I’m left with arms still in a semicircle, suspended in the air. I quickly drop them, feeling uncomfortable.
“Thank you,” Andrew says, scrubbing a hand across his chin and wiping at his eyes. He sounds better, stronger, though he looks anything but, and we sit back down.
“It’s the least I can do.”
He tilts his head slightly to the side, confusion on his face, and I feel self-conscious. Then he turns to Sam, who is sitting with Audrey on another bank of waiting room chairs. “How are you doing, buddy? Feeling okay?”
“I’m fine, Dad,” Sam says, only briefly raising his eyes to meet Andrew’s.
“Good,” he says. Then more quietly he says to me, “He’s been sick. Has had this fever and sore throat thing for a couple of days.”
I nod, and then there’s a lull between us. I start to get antsy; I don’t do well with silence, especially in highly emotional situations. “How long do they expect Jack to be in surgery?”
Andrew’s jaw works furiously. I know he’s holding back more tears, and I quickly regret asking the question. “They can’t know for sure, but the surgeon said to prepare for a long night.”
Without realizing I’ve done it, I press a hand tightly to my stomach as I think of Jack in the operating room all night, his parents waiting for news, hoping for the best, trying to ignore the worst.
“Are you okay?” Andrew asks, for the first time taking in my open coat, my soiled dress—the bloodstain. He shifts his body to face mine, his hands hovering slightly in front of my stained dress. “You weren’t hurt, were you?”
“No, I’m fine,” I say. “This isn’t my...” My voice trails, thankfully stopping before I finish the sentence, say the word blood. He looks ill, because even though I didn’t say it, we’re both thinking it. I use one hand to close my coat over the stain on my dress and place my other hand on his arm. This time he rests his fingers overtop of mine and squeezes slightly.
“I’m so sorry this is happening, Andrew.” My chest contracts again, the vice grip of guilt moving through me.
He nods, mouth set in a grim line. “Me, too,” he says, voice breaking. He looks down. “They also said Jack’s back is broken. Probably from when he...hit the ground.”
“Oh, Andrew.” I’m finding it hard to breathe, the fabric of my dress, the wrapped tightness of my coat suddenly too constricting.
He keeps his voice low, so Sam and Audrey don’t hear the conversation. “They said there’s a chance he might not walk again.” His eyes fill, and his voice catches. “How the hell do you tell your kid that?”
Jack Beckett is a gifted athlete, a golfer who apparently has a decent chance at playing the professional circuit if he keeps going the way he has been. He has his whole life ahead of him: college, career, a family of his own one day. He needs to walk out of here.
“I don’t know,” I say, a little breathless. My words are the truth, but they sound terribly useless in the moment. “Andrew, is there someone else I can call for you? Or can I get you something? A coffee? Something to eat?”
He shakes his head. “Don’t think I could keep anything down. Thanks, though.” His eyes drop to his phone, where a text message illuminates the screen, and he’s quickly typing back to whoever it is. I tell him I’m just stepping out to make a call, then once outside, sit on a bench beside a hospital gown–clad woman attached to an IV pole, halfway through a cigarette. I can’t catch my breath and so bend at the waist and suck in great heaving lungfuls of air.
“You okay, honey?” the woman asks, her voice raspy. She rests her elbows on her splayed knees and takes a long pull on her cigarette, watching me.
I look to her face, heavily wrinkled and a sickly shade of yellow, and shake my head. “No,” I say. The cigarette smoke is making me nauseous, and I want to leave, but my legs aren’t yet ready to hold my weight.
She nods. “Most of us here aren’t.”
6 (#u03196365-e241-516a-a543-24cc33d0df3f)
“I want to stay with Sam,” Audrey implores, after I tell her we need to head home. Andrew’s parents and sister, Suzanne, have arrived, and Alysse managed to get on a flight that will get her here before Jack’s out of surgery.
“We should give them some privacy, Aud,” I reply quietly. I wonder when you learn that particular nuance of crisis—that giving people time and space is appropriate in situations like these—but then just as quickly wonder if that’s actually the best thing for anyone. When Audrey asks again if she can stay with Sam, this time a bit louder, I wish I could use the old “Three...two...one...” trick I used to when she was a preschooler. Audrey would usually concede when I got to “one,” and I never had to follow through on whatever consequence would happen after the countdown. But she’s a teenager now, on the cusp of being a woman who can make her own decisions, and my influence over her is diminishing. Which scares the hell out of me.
Andrew glances at us. “She’s welcome to stay, Meg,” he says. “Suzie can drive them back to our place in a bit.” Suzanne, who with her short blond bob and long limbs looks like the female version of Andrew, nods in response and rubs Sam’s back. I open my mouth to insist Audrey come with me, then see her face and Sam’s, and pause. He needs her right now.
“As long as you’re sure,” I say to Andrew. He murmurs again that it’s fine, and I nod. “Audrey, Dad or I will come get you at Sam’s place a bit later. Text me, okay?”
She hugs me and assures me she will, and after a quick goodbye to Andrew and his family, I head home.
* * *
I sit at the kitchen table in my bloodstained dress, too tired to do all the things I need to: get changed, bury the dead bird, deal with work stuff. My mind is both racing too fast and moving too slow, and I still feel like I can’t draw a full breath.
With shaking hands I pick up my phone and dial Julie, who answers on the first ring.
“Meg! Are you okay? What happened? I heard about Jack Beckett. Oh, my God. Where are you?”
I’m crying too hard to speak.
“Are you at home? Meg?”
“Yes,” I manage to say.
“I’m coming over. Give me ten minutes.”
Nine minutes later Julie lets herself in the front door, and seconds after that she’s got me in a tight hug. “Oh, Maggie. You’re okay.” Though she’s shorter than me, no one would ever call Julie petite. She’s solid and fit, yet still has a soft layer over top of her muscles. She does not subscribe to potions, surgical interventions or negative body image, saying her girls need to see the way “God made her” and understand what a real woman’s body looks like. Her halo of dark curls, that never seem to lay flat no matter what she does, tickle my face, making me sneeze.
“Sorry,” I say, sniffling, but she doesn’t let me go.
“What’s a little snot between friends?” she asks, finally pulling back and holding either side of my face in her hands. “Mags, you look like hell.”
I sniffle again, take the tissue she hands me and honk my nose into it. “I know. I feel like hell, too.”
“Why don’t you go get changed and I’ll make you a cup of tea.” She gently nudges me toward the stairs. “After that you can tell me what happened. Okay?”
I nod. “Thanks. Also, there’s a dead bird upstairs. I need to bury it before Audrey gets home.”
Julie doesn’t miss a beat. “Then I’ll meet you upstairs with tea, and rubber gloves. Off you go.”
Once I’ve stripped out of the bloodstained dress, balling it up with the pashmina and stuffing both into a plastic bag in my closet that I’ll throw in the trash bin later, I pull on some yoga pants and a sweatshirt and swallow two more ibuprofen. I’m standing at the balcony door staring at the tiny brown bird, lying exactly where it fell this morning, when Julie comes in my bedroom.
“Here,” she says, putting the hot tea in my hands. I take a tentative sip, and my eyes widen, the honey and lemon mingling with a hit of whiskey. She shrugs. “I brought the booze with me. Figured this was the time for something stronger than chamomile.” She’s wearing the pink rubber gloves I keep under the kitchen sink and has her hands on her hips. “So that’s the little guy, huh?”
I nod, staring back at the bird. In a flash I see Jack on the road, feel the pills I just swallowed trying to make their way back up.
“Do you want to talk about it?” she asks, and I know she doesn’t mean the bird.
“Not even a little bit.”
Julie nods. “Okay, so about this bird.” She crouches down and gives it a long look. “What do you want to do with it?”
“We could just put it in the trash,” I say. “Audrey doesn’t know what happened.” Making the effort to bury it does seem pointless.
But Julie shakes her head. “I think it needs a proper burial.” She looks pointedly at me. “I think you need this as much as the bird.”
She’s right. I can’t bring myself to put it out with the trash, like its life didn’t matter at all—not today. Frowning, I take a deep breath and hold out my hands. “Give me the gloves.”
“I don’t mind,” Julie says but then, seeing my face, pulls the gloves off her hands and gives them to me. I open the sliding glass door to the balcony and gently pick up the bird with some difficulty, thanks to how small its body is and how awkward the gloves are. Its body is stiff, yet so light it’s practically weightless. Julie holds the half-empty tissue box from my nightstand toward me and I set the bird’s body inside, covering it with a few tissues so I don’t have to look at it anymore.
We already have two birds buried in our backyard—a baby robin that was pushed from its nest a few springs ago, and the yellow finch that started Audrey’s save-the-backyard-birds campaign in our house. The graves are marked by two stones, upon which Audrey has painted red hearts with wings, and I start digging with the garden spade about a foot away from the one on the left. The wind blows strong, and Julie, sitting on the grass beside me, holds tightly to the tissue box so it doesn’t get knocked over by a gust.
A half hour later back in the bedroom, Julie and I are meticulously placing Audrey’s gel clings in a pattern on the balcony windows, tiny semicircles of dirt still stuck under my fingernails from the bird’s burial, when my phone rings.
“Hey, sorry. I’ve been in the meeting. Everything all right? I just saw your missed calls.” He sounds like he’s had a couple drinks, his words soft around the edges, and I wonder exactly where this afternoon’s meeting is taking place.
“Ryan.” I sit hard on the side of the bed, the gel cling in my hand wilting against my fingers. “Just a second,” I say to him, pressing the phone to my chest and looking at Julie. “I’m good. You don’t need to finish that.”
“Are you sure?” she asks. “I still have—” she glances at her watch “—thirty minutes before the kids go ballistic wondering where their dinner is.” She smiles, and I return it.
“I’m sure,” I say. “Thank you, Jules.”
She watches me for a beat, then blows me a kiss. “Always, my friend. Okay, call me later?”
“I will.” I wave as she leaves my bedroom, then put the phone back to my ear.
“Sorry, just saying bye to Julie.”
Ryan gives a low whistle. “You sound rough. Guess you’re not feeling bet—”
“There was a car accident.”
A pause, heavy between us. Then the rush of questions. “What happened? Are you okay? Is Audrey okay? What kind of accident?” His tone now sharp, worried, impatient.
“It wasn’t us. We’re okay.” My tone weak and weary. “But Jack Beckett got hit by a car. Right in—” My throat catches as I try to hold things in, control the flood of emotions. I shake my head and close my eyes against the images of Jack, his jagged shinbone, the nausea bubbling inside my stomach. “Right in front of us.”
“Sam’s brother? Shit. Is he okay? Was Audrey in the car with you? What the hell happened?”
Yes. No. Yes. I’m not entirely sure, but it’s at least partly my fault.
“It was a couple of blocks from the school. I had just picked Audrey up for her appointment, so, yes, she was with me,” I reply. “She’s at Children’s now with Sam.”
“Why is she at Children’s? I thought you said she was okay?”
“She’s fine, Ryan. She wanted to stay with Sam.”
“God, what a nightmare.” Ryan lets out a long breath, and I know he’s imagining what it would be like for Audrey to be the one hurt. But he’s thankfully saved from the images in my head, which are making it difficult to stay upright. “Are you all right?”
“I’m fine,” I say, forcing strength I’m not feeling into my voice. “I’ll fill you in when you get home.”
“Do you want me to come home?” Ryan asks. “I can pick Audrey up on the way.”
“She wants to stay with Sam, at least for now. And I’m fine. You don’t need to come home.” I work hard to make this part sound true, because I realize how much I want to be alone right now.
“I’ll text Audrey and let her know I’m picking her up,” Ryan says, his voice firm.
“Don’t,” I say, too fast. I pause briefly, then decide it needs to be said. “I can tell you’ve been drinking.”
There’s silence on the other end. “I’ve had half a beer, Meg.”
“Sorry, I didn’t mean...” I sigh, exhausted, lying back against the pillows and closing my eyes.
“No, I’m sorry.” He sounds frustrated but genuinely apologetic. I’m not even sure what we’re apologizing for at this point.
I turn my head, and a tear drops on to the pillow. “I’ll text you when she’s ready to be picked up, and we’ll figure it out.”
“Okay,” Ryan says, pausing again. “Are you sure you’re okay?”
My body quivers with my need to get off the phone. “Yes. Go back to your meeting.”
He sighs, and I know he’s struggling to decide what to do, despite what I’ve said. “I love you, Meg.”
“Me, too,” I say, then hit End Call.
I feel my fever climbing again, a chill tickling my skin, and give in, folding my sick self under the duvet. I turn up the volume on my phone so I’ll know when Audrey texts, then press my heavy head against the cool pillow. At first all I can see when I close my eyes is Jack Beckett, the aftereffects of the accident, and I’m not sure I’ll be able to sleep. But moments later I fall into a deep slumber.
7 (#u03196365-e241-516a-a543-24cc33d0df3f)
The dream is restless, terrifying, and all I want to do is get away from the scene in front of me. But it isn’t the accident I’m dreaming about—at least not today’s accident.
I’m trembling, my tank top and denim miniskirt soaked and clinging cold to my body. It’s raining and dark—aside from two beams of light that seem to be pointing straight up into the sky. I want to run, to get out of the storm, but as I turn in circles I see wide-open fields, a long and empty road stretched in front of me. It’s then I notice someone, walking on the road toward me. I squint, wipe at my eyes, taste raindrops when I open my mouth to shout to this person. It doesn’t occur to me to be scared. But my body is humming with something...adrenaline, I think, though I can’t sort out why my muscles seem to know something is wrong, but my mind doesn’t.
A few moments later the person is close enough for me to see who it is. Paige Holden. My high school best friend. Relief ripples through me, and I start laughing with release.
“Paige!” But my mouth is full of water, the rain everywhere, and I choke a little. Coughing, I shout again. “Paige!” I’m relieved she’s here, but she doesn’t seem to hear my cries despite being only a few feet away. She’s also soaked to the bone but isn’t doing anything to wipe the steady stream of water running down her face.
I’m about to call her name again when the words die in my throat. She’s stopped walking—too far for me to reach if I stretch my arms as far as they’ll go, but she’s close enough I can see everything, the two streams of light, which I now realize are headlights, illuminating her. Oh. God.
Her blond hair, once so pretty and the envy of most of our friends, is caked with rusty red clumps, the usually bone-straight strands tangled in knots. The rain seems to have done nothing to rid her shirt—which used to be a pretty pale blue eyelet tank—of the dark crimson blotches covering its surface. I suddenly understand all the red is blood, her blood. But it’s her head, specifically the shape of it, that makes my legs give out. I didn’t notice before, the shadows that followed her while she walked toward me hiding it, but now I see what’s missing. The left side of her head—including one beautiful blue eye—is gone. Just...gone.
I wake myself screaming. Taking a few deep breaths I try to calm the rattling inside me, but the image of Paige’s face hovers around the edges of my consciousness, and I think I’m going to be sick.
It has been twenty-eight years since that horrible night, and nearly as many since Paige came to me while I slept.
And now it’s happening again.
* * *
Two days after Ryan slid the engagement ring on my finger—only a week after my twenty-fifth birthday—was when I learned my mom had breast cancer.
Back then we had a weekly, standing dinner with my parents: Sunday night, seven o’clock. A free meal was always welcome as we were broke—Ryan in pre-med at Tufts and me working a front desk job at an orthodontist’s office, my eye on teacher’s college by the fall if we could afford it. Ryan proposed on a Friday evening and though I was bursting to call my mom moments after, I decided to wait until our dinner. So I sat on our exciting news for two days, having no idea my mom was sitting on some news of her own.
We arrived ten minutes early, like always, because for my parents, showing up on time meant you were already late. I wore my engagement ring but kept my hand in my skirt’s pocket when Dad opened the door. He seemed distracted and tired, his face drawn and the buttons on his shirt mismatched by one hole, which was out of character. He was always immaculately dressed, even for a trip to the gas station. But I assumed he was merely work-weary—being a high school principal wasn’t an easy job, teenagers masters at creating drama-fueled challenges—and that mom was too busy getting ready for dinner to notice.
After Dad poured our drinks, Danny, my younger brother, regaled us with stories from middle school, while Mom’s famous black bean and cilantro cream enchiladas warmed in the oven. I couldn’t keep the grin off my face. I was sitting on my left hand, had been careful to keep the ring out of view. A lull in the conversation came, and I opened my mouth to shout the words, “We’re engaged!” when my mom suddenly stood, her small shoulders rolling back and her chin held high.
“I have cancer.”
I don’t remember doing it, but suddenly I was standing as well, facing her. “What?” The word, barely a whisper. My hands shook, the beautiful, if not tiny, cushion-cut diamond ring on my finger forgotten.
A lot happened all at once. Dad started crying. So did I. Danny fetched a box of tissues, seeming more mature than his thirteen years, and pushed them into our hands. Mom assured us, in her best nurse’s no-nonsense tone, she would be fine. Ryan stood beside me and I clutched on to him.
Though Mom’s cancer was advanced, there were decent treatment options. Plenty of people survived cancer these days, so why not Mom, who was tenacious and well-equipped for what lay ahead?
But those three words, “I have cancer,” shook something loose in me, took my confidence and spun it around like socks in a dryer. My mother was my rock, a small woman with a huge personality and the ability to put my brother and me in our places with only a glance. Because of her I knew how to throw a proper dinner party, I understood being kind was as important as being smart or successful, and that she would always be there for me. Without her I would not have survived the aftermath of Paige’s accident—along with a million tiny heartbreaks in my childhood, like when my beloved guinea pig, Sherman, died and when Johnny Saxon dumped me after I gave him my first kiss. My mother carried me through the grief that threatened to swallow me whole after Paige died—I knew I needed her as much as an adult as I did as a child.
I wanted to be stoic, like she, my dad and Danny were that evening, but her diagnosis pulled the rug right out from under me. To this day I’m still embarrassed by how selfishly I took her news. One of my first thoughts upon hearing she’d need chemotherapy and would likely lose her hair was to hope it would grow back in time for the wedding. I couldn’t cope, so instead focused on the small, unimportant things, like taking wedding pictures with a bald mother-of-the-bride.
Six months later Ryan and I were married—in a no-frills ceremony at city hall, Mom wearing a gorgeous wig—and I quit my job to take care of her a month after that when it became clear the cancer was winning. Dad had Danny to worry about, plus he had to keep working to pay the bills, and I needed to be useful. But there was only so much a daughter’s love and devotion could do, and much too soon for all of us, Dad and I were picking out a granite headstone, Danny standing beside us with silent tears rolling down his peach-fuzz covered face, me understanding I would now have to live with a hole inside me, forever.
It was around that time the debilitating nausea started. I was distracted by my grief and so, not worried, but Ryan—suffering “second year syndrome,” medical student hypochondria—dragged me to a specialist after I threw up in the sink one night after dinner. The doctor agreed it might be an ulcer, certainly the stress of the last year could have done it, she said, and they took enough blood I actually felt woozy when we left the clinic. Of all the possible things it could have been, I was not expecting the result: I was pregnant.
With the baby on the way and my heart still shattered from Mom’s death, I nested in our cramped apartment full of secondhand furniture and cheap but cheerful decor and tried to prepare for motherhood. Meanwhile, Ryan finished second year, and Dad started dating, which I thought was absolutely too soon, but I never said so because I’d promised Mom I wouldn’t let Dad wither away.
“I love your father, Margaret, but he is a man born without the ability to read a recipe or keep his whites and darks separate in the laundry machine. Bless him, my Hugh.” I’d laughed softly when she said this, but I knew the domestic tasks excuse was a cover. Dad did better as a team. Plus, Danny, only a week away from celebrating his fourteenth birthday when Mom died, also needed someone. He was too young, she said, to be left without a mother.
“But he has a mother,” I’d said, biting my lip to keep the tears at bay so she would see how strong I was. How capable she raised me to be. “I’ll take care of Dad. And Danny.”
She’d taken my hand then and pressed my palm to the paper-thin skin of her cancer-hollowed cheek. “You have your own life to worry about,” she’d said. “I won’t steal the joy of that away from you, along with everything else I’m taking.” I’d nodded, leaned into her body so bony and frail and smelling like antiseptic—the scent of sickness and death—but still warm with life and love.
I never did announce my engagement that evening. It wouldn’t be until the next day, when I sat with Mom and Dad at her oncology appointment, that my secret would be revealed.
“What is this?” she’d exclaimed, grabbing my hand and holding it up to the light. Delight had brightened her face as she stared at the ring. She’d still looked like herself—wavy brown hair to her shoulders, enough weight on her body to prove she loved good food—and despite where we were and why we were there, it’s one of my favorite memories of my mother.
“Hugh, the grandbabies are coming!” she’d trilled loudly. Her enthusiasm and happiness had made me laugh, but I also felt bolstered—she wouldn’t leave before meeting her first grandchild.
* * *
By the time I drag myself out of bed and splash cold water on my face it’s just before seven, and I still feel horrible—brittle with fever, consumed by shock and worry for Jack, and humming from the vestiges of my nightmare about Paige and the bittersweet memories of Mom. I text Audrey and am making a cup of tea when I hear the front door open.
“Meg?”
Tears come to my eyes, and I hastily wipe them away. “In here,” I call out. I turn and lean against the counter, the ceramic mug hot in my hands. Ryan comes into the kitchen and I smile, all the bad feelings I was holding on to about this morning’s argument gone the moment I see him, wanting nothing more than to be inside the safety of his arms.
“Hi,” he says.
“Hi,” I reply, taking a sip of my drink and glancing at the clock. 7:06 p.m. “You came home early.”
He smiles. “I came home early.” He walks to me and, careful not to spill my drink, puts his hands on my shoulders and kisses my forehead. “I left the meeting right after you called and went to Children’s. Audrey was still there.” His eyes—at times blue, at times gray, but today a flecked mix—are concerned. He holds a gentle hand to my forehead, in the spot he just kissed. “You’re hot.”
“Thank you,” I say, batting my eyelashes. Then I cough hard, and my tea spills, scalding and sticky on to my hands. “Ouch!”
Ryan rips off a few sheets from the paper towel roll. He gently wipes my hands, then the edge of my mug and the small circle of wet on the floor near my feet.
“How was everyone doing?” I ask, as he tosses the soiled paper towel into the trash.
“As well as can be expected. Audrey filled me in on what happened.” He watches my face, waiting to see if I want to talk about it. I just nod. “She wanted to stay with Sam until Jack is out of surgery, which might be a while,” he adds. The corners of his mouth turn down, and I wonder what else he knows. “Go, sit,” he says, gesturing to the living room couch. “I’ll join you in a minute, okay?”
I kiss his cheek before heading to the living room, where, with a contented sigh, I sink into the plush cushions. A few minutes later Ryan sits beside me, pulling my slippered feet onto his lap and wrapping my legs in a blanket. Once he’s cocooned me, he grabs the beer he brought with him from the kitchen and twists the cap.
“What did you find out? About Jack?” I hold my breath, my heart racing. Ryan doesn’t answer immediately, and suddenly I’m terrified.
“Is he going to live?” I whisper.
He pauses. With his telling silence I wilt deeper into the cushions, tears springing to my eyes.
“Oh, my god, Ryan—”
“He’s fighting hard,” Ryan says. “But he has a tough road ahead.”
I sit up a bit straighter and steel myself for what a “tough road” means.
“He has a skull fracture and some bleeding in his brain.” Ryan puts a hand on my knee, rubs firmly. “Meg, Praskesh is his surgeon, and he’s the best. He’ll get it under control.”
“I don’t know if Audrey should be there, Ryan. It’s too much. For them. For her.” I take a deep breath, my heart hammering in my chest. I recognize the feeling as panic—I desperately want Audrey home with me, where I can know for sure that she’s okay.
“Someone she loves is suffering a whole lot right now,” he says. “Sam needs her there. And she’s okay. I just saw her. She’s fine, Meg, all things considered.”
I nod and try to control my quivering lips. “What about Jack’s leg? And his back? Andrew said it was broken?”
“They’re trying to save his leg,” Ryan says. Then he sighs, runs a hand over his face, and I try to focus. I think about how when Jack woke up this morning, he had no idea it would be his last as a carefree teenager. That the moment he stepped off the curb, his life would never be the same again. “As for his spine, jury’s still out. It depends on the break. And if his spinal cord was completely severed or not.”
Bile moves up in my throat, and I swallow reflexively a few times. “And if it is completely severed? What will that mean?”
“He’ll be paralyzed.”
A violent shiver moves through me, and my tea nearly spills again on the couch.
“Hey. Hey, come here.” Ryan takes my mug and places it on the ottoman tray. He shimmies closer, tucks me under his arm and rests his head on mine. I fight the tears so hard my shaking intensifies, and Ryan rocks me, like he did when my mom died, and when Audrey was hospitalized with a terrifying case of pneumonia when she was only a year old. “He’s young, Meg. And strong. Even if we’re talking worst case and he’s paralyzed, he can make it through this.” Of course “worst case” isn’t actually paralysis—that would be Jack not surviving this—but I don’t say anything because I understand Ryan is trying to help me.
“Talk to me.” Ryan’s face, so familiar, is creased with worry—his age beginning to show in how easily the lines form on his forehead and around his eyes and don’t fully disappear when at rest. I want to tell him that seeing Jack Beckett fly off Sarah Dunn’s car has brought up what I went through at sixteen, and I wonder if he’s already figured that out.
But still, Ryan doesn’t know everything about the night that Paige died. Just that there was a horrific car accident after a reckless teenage party—the incident made all the papers and news channels, and though we weren’t named, being young adults, our story was used as a cautionary tale in practically every high school in Massachusetts. But though Ryan knows the details of how Paige died and that I witnessed the accident, he’s never understood why I hold myself responsible. The full truth is right there on the tip of my tongue, straining to be released as he holds me. “If you can’t trust the ones you love,” my mom used to say, “life will always feel harder than it needs to be.” But then he shifts position, and the moment is gone, and I tuck the secret and all it carries back inside again.
8 (#u03196365-e241-516a-a543-24cc33d0df3f)
The next morning I see the gel clings on our bedroom windows and smile, thinking of Audrey and her big, bird-loving heart. Then I remember what happened the day before, and the smile melts from my face.
I’m alone in bed, Ryan already up. Squinting at the clock I see it’s nearly seven, and as I come more fully to consciousness I hear shuffling, movement underneath me. The sounds of my family getting ready for the day. I wait a few more minutes, working up the courage to face the day—it was late by the time Ryan went to pick Audrey up at the Becketts, and I was half asleep on the couch when she gave me a kiss good-night before heading to bed. I’m not sure how she’s doing today, though I can imagine.
When I finally walk into the kitchen in my robe and slippers, the vestiges of sleep still clinging to me, Ryan hands me a mug of coffee, and I grimace. “Can’t do it,” I croak, handing it back.
He pulls out his phone and taps the flashlight icon. “I called Prakesh to check in on how Jack’s doing this morning. They were able to stop the bleeding and stabilize his skull fracture, and repair the leg. He’s hanging in there.”
“Oh, thank god,” I say, momentarily refreshed by the sense of relief that washes over me. But then I remember the possible paralysis. “What about...the other thing?”
He shakes his head, a frown on his face, and I know Jack is paralyzed. The weight is back, painfully heavy on my shoulders, and it’s all I can do not to burst into tears. Ryan notices and places a gentle finger under my chin. “Let’s worry about you for now, okay?” he says softly. “Open up.”
I open my mouth and stick my tongue way out while he shines the light into my throat. I can smell my rose face cream on his skin—he claims to not need moisturizer whenever I offer to pick up some for him, but my own bottle seems to disappear at a mysterious rate.
“Yuck!” Audrey says, her head right beside Ryan’s as he shines the light down my throat. I resist the urge to close my mouth, my jaw beginning to complain.
“Strep,” Ryan announces, releasing my chin. “Classic.” Even though as a radiologist he probably hasn’t seen a case of strep since medical school, Ryan prides himself on being able to diagnose illnesses that send one to a family doctor. He also likes to guess how many stitches a cut will need, or how many degrees a fever is, or which strain of flu has felled us.
I sigh, rubbing my jaw. “At least I don’t have any showings today. But I can’t do strep right now. No time.”
“That’s what Sam has,” Audrey says, licking yogurt off her spoon before dipping it back into the container. “Apparently it’s going around school.” She looks a bit tired but otherwise seems fairly chipper, considering yesterday’s events. I wonder if she’s simply putting on a good performance.
“Well, I hate to tell you this, sweetheart, but you’re doing it,” Ryan says to me as he tucks his phone into the side pocket of his bag and swigs the last of his coffee. “I’m going to drop Audrey at school on the way in, and you’re going to go get swabbed. Just to be sure.”
“You’re going to school?” I turn to her with surprise.
“Why wouldn’t I?” She jumps from her chair at the table and rinses her empty yogurt container out before tossing it into the recycling bin under the sink. I look over at Ryan. Surely she needs at least one day off, to process and talk about what we went through yesterday?
“She’s okay, Meg,” Ryan says, as I open and then close my mouth.
“I’m okay, Mom,” she reiterates, glancing between Ryan and me. “It’s not like we were the ones in the accident or anything.”
“That’s true, Aud, but it’s still a pretty scary thing to see a friend go through.” I wish I could explain how the trauma of being an observer to something so horrifying can be nearly as bad as physical bumps or bruises. Audrey is nearly the same age I was when Paige died, and I’ll never forget what it felt like to realize we weren’t invincible—that terrible things could happen at any moment. “How’s Sam doing?” She shrugs, says he’s okay. “Is there anything you want to talk about? About Jack, or the accident?” I ask, giving her arm a rub.
She slings her backpack over her shoulder, knocking my hand off her arm in the process. I tell myself she didn’t mean to do it. “Nope,” she says, then turns to Ryan. “Can we go? I don’t want to be late.”
I look at Ryan as if to say, “Can you give it a try?” but he’s busy packing up his bag and doesn’t notice.
“We can talk later,” I say to Audrey, tugging on her backpack shoulder strap so she looks at me. “Audrey?”
“Fine,” she says, rolling her eyes. I pull her to me for a tight hug despite the resistance I feel in her lithe body. I breathe in the scent of her hair, something fruity with a hint of lavender, feeling grateful for the hundredth time since yesterday afternoon that she wasn’t the one in front of that car.
“Mom, we’ve got to go.” She pats my back a couple of times to placate me. “Love you.”
“Love you, too.”
Ryan grabs the handles of his leather duffel bag that he takes to the gym on his lunch break and gives me a kiss. I turn at the last minute so his lips graze my cheek, and he smiles. “Meg, you know I never get sick.” It’s true. After so many years in med school and working in the hospital, Ryan never seems to catch anything.
“I’ll pick you up after school,” I say to Audrey. “We can get ice cream or something.”
She scowls. “It’s too cold for ice cream. And I don’t need a ride. I’m going to the hospital with Sam after school to see Jack.”
I frown.
“Dad said it was okay,” she says, pointing at Ryan.
“Not a good idea, Aud,” I say, not commenting on Ryan’s lax attitude. “Jack’s only just had surgery, and we don’t know where things are at. Plus, I’m sure they’re all exhausted. They don’t need company right now.”
Audrey looks perturbed in the way only a teenaged girl can. “Sam asked me to go with him. It’s fine, Mom. And Dad already said I could.”
I take a deep breath. “Well, it’s not fine with me.” Ryan sighs, almost imperceptibly, but I catch it. “I’ve asked you to come home so we can have a chat. And that can be over ice cream or hot chocolate or whatever, but we are going to talk about things. So I’ll see you in the pickup line, okay?”
She stomps her foot, the way she used to when she was little and didn’t get her way. “You are so annoying!” she shouts before slamming the door to the garage behind her with extra force.
Ryan adjusts the strap of his messenger bag, looks at me with eyebrow raised.
I sit down at the kitchen table and rest my head in my hands. “Why did you tell her she could go? I’m sure the Becketts need time alone right now. Plus, I want to talk with her about yesterday. Make sure she’s all right.”
He doesn’t respond right away, watches me closely. “Look, I know this has probably brought up a lot of stuff for you,” he says, and I peer at him through my hands. I swallow hard, know he’s talking about Paige. “But this situation is completely different. And if she wants to talk about it, she’ll talk, Meg. I don’t think forcing the issue is a great idea.”
I nod, but not because I agree. Simply to acknowledge I’ve heard him. “Tell her I’ll see her in the pickup line, okay?”
Ryan sighs again, this time with barely concealed frustration. “I think you should be prepared for things not to go the way you hope.”
The way I hope? Nothing about this is what I hoped for—but I won’t pretend like our fifteen-year-old has enough emotional maturity to process what happened yesterday on her own. I know how the aftereffects of witnessing such a tragedy can be slow to show themselves, coming out when you least expect them, and it’s my job to support Audrey, whether she wants it or not. Like my mother did for me.
“Noted,” I say to Ryan, matching his frustrated tone. “See you later.”
He starts to open the door, then turns back. “If you want to talk, I’m here, okay?”
“I know,” I reply, some of my irritation slipping away. “Hope you have a good day.”
“You, too,” he says, before heading through the door.
There have been many times I’ve missed having my mom to talk with since she died—when Audrey was a newborn and I couldn’t figure out how to get her to latch on, after what happened with Emma on New Year’s, when I sold my first house, when I caught seven-year-old Audrey stealing a pack of gum from the variety store and marched her back to confess and apologize. But it’s been a long time since I felt the pain of her loss, like someone is burning me from the inside out, and with a sob I wrap my arms around my body and imagine they’re her arms instead.
9 (#u03196365-e241-516a-a543-24cc33d0df3f)
After a jittery, somewhat white-knuckled drive to the clinic—this is the first time I’ve been behind the wheel since the blurry drive to and from the hospital yesterday after Jack’s accident—I make a quick stop at the pharmacy for antibiotics, then go home. My plan is to spend the rest of the day before school pickup alternating between our bed and the living room couch. But by the time I get home my phone has exploded with messages and texts, and sleep seems out of the question.
Julie has sent three check-in texts and Ryan one, asking if I made it the clinic and if I mind if he plays squash after work with his colleague Jamie. My in-box has twenty-five unread messages, a dozen of which are from Tom—even though he knows I’m taking a sick day—about everything from how much wine to get for the open house to whether lilies are “too predictable.” Emma and the PTO need volunteers for the town hall meeting at Merritt High Sunday night, to kick off the school’s anti-texting-while-driving campaign. My dad sent flight details for his upcoming visit for Thanksgiving, along with a link to Elizabeth Gilbert’s TED talk, which he feels should be mandatory watching for Audrey.
And though I’m busy and distracted most of the day—finally sending out the open house invitation and responding to Tom’s unrelenting questions—thoughts of Jack and the accident squeeze their way into the quiet moments in-between. I’m desperate to know what’s happening but am not sure how to find out. I don’t want to bother Andrew and Alysse, plus Ryan would likely update me if he had any new information. I suppose I could text Audrey, but based on how we left things this morning, I suspect she’ll ignore me.
I try to focus on work but end up obsessing over the “what ifs” while making a cup of tea, only realizing once I take a sip I never actually boiled the water. What if Jack hadn’t stopped to tie his shoelace? What if I’d been paying closer attention, had seen Sarah’s car? What if Sarah Dunn hadn’t chosen that moment to respond to her ex-husband’s text and had kept her eyes on the road?
By the time it’s school pickup time, I’m still feeling ragged and worn out, but at least it’s a beautiful day, warm enough for only a sweater and jeans. With only one main road leading to and from Merritt High, it’s impossible not to drive right past the accident site, where signs have recently been erected, including a hand-painted one that reads, Honk if you love Jesus, text while driving if you want to meet Him. I try to keep my eyes on the road ahead, but they drift to the large pile of colorful flowers in plastic wrap situated on the edge of the curb, right near where Jack lay bleeding in the street yesterday afternoon. I’m weak when I approach the accident spot and press the gas a little more firmly to get by it all more quickly.
A minute later I drive past the semicircle driveway in front of the school and into Merritt High’s parking lot. I’ve decided Audrey and I will take a walk on the nearby trail and have a chat. The school sent an email about the crisis team they set up to talk with the students, but I know how easy it is to tell experts what they want to hear. No, Audrey needs to convince me she’s coping before I leave it alone, like Ryan suggests I should.
I’m standing by the front doors, only a few cars in the pickup line because it’s still early, holding a tray with two lattes—after much nagging, I’ve recently agreed that Audrey can drink coffee, as long as it comes with loads of milk—when I hear my name.
“Meg?”
I turn and see Andrew, in his car at the front of the pickup line. The window is down, and he’s leaning across the passenger seat.
“Hi,” I say, walking over to the car and bending down. “How are you?”
It’s a question asked out of habit, but I resist the urge to cringe because the answer is obvious. Dark shadows cup his eyes, the darkness highlighted because of how pale he looks. His hair is disheveled, some pieces sticking up, others laying flat against his head. He’s obviously been up all night.
“We’re hanging in there.” He dips his chin, and I can see him fighting to maintain an expression that backs up his words. “Want to get in? They won’t be out for another ten minutes or so.”
“Sure,” I say, even though I don’t want to. Because when I look at Andrew I see Jack, and all I can think about is my careless wave, about how Jack’s body looked flying off of Sarah Dunn’s car. Swallowing hard and forcing the image from my mind, I nudge the passenger side door with my hip and hand Andrew the tray of lattes as I get in. “Do you want one?” I ask, pointing to the tray, hoping my voice sounds steady, because inside I’m a wobbly mess. “It’s for Audrey, but honestly, I’m still not fully onboard with her drinking coffee.”
“No, thanks,” he says. “It was a pretty rough night, and I don’t think my body can take any more caffeine, to be honest.”
I nod, rest the tray on my lap, unsure what to say next as we sit quietly side by side. “So Sam’s at school today?”
“Yeah. No fever and he seems better, physically at least, so it was hard to say no when he wanted to be at school with his friends.” Now I better understand Audrey’s insistence this morning—Sam was here. “I wanted to keep him home, not just because he’s been sick...obviously.” He tries, but this time he can’t control his face, which is cracking with his new reality. I put my hand on his arm and give it a squeeze, turning slightly away from him, so I don’t start crying. “It’s hard to believe, but life just carries on, you know?”
“I know,” I say. I’m about to ask how Jack’s doing even though I’m afraid of the answer, when a tickle in my throat makes me cough. Which turns in to a full-blown coughing fit I try desperately to quell with my hot latte, unsuccessfully.
Andrew pulls a wrapped throat lozenge out of his coat pocket. “Sam says they taste like poison.” He smiles, though I notice it doesn’t reach his eyes. Still coughing I take the lozenge from his hand before quickly unwrapping it and popping it in my mouth. The eucalyptus is strong and wafts out with my breath, cool air rushing into the back of my throat.
“Thanks,” I say, the tickle subsiding. I clear my throat, steel myself to ask the question I know must be asked. “How’s Jack doing?”
His mouth drops into a frown. “Surgery went as well as expected, but he’s still critical. And he might need more surgery for his leg.” He doesn’t say anything about the paralysis, and I don’t ask. But my stomach aches, thinking about how Jack is never going to be the same now—he’s lost a part of his identity, and I can’t imagine what that does to a young person at the prime of his physicality. Meg, look what you’ve done...
“We’re heading back to the hospital as soon as I get Sam,” he adds. “I need to give Aly a break, too. She hasn’t left his room, and she’s...” His frown deepens, and I imagine what it must be like to be Alysse. To be Jack’s mother. “She just needs a break. If she’ll take it.”
Alysse Beckett is one of those woman you want to hate—successful, beautiful, somehow finds time for triathlons and charity benefits—but can’t, because she has this intoxicating way of making you feel important when you’re talking with her. We recently had a lovely chat about Sam and Audrey at a mutual friend’s barbecue, and shared a joke about how we might get to co-plan a future wedding. But even with her flawless exterior, I know there must be cracks under the surface. No one can be that perfect all the time.
“I’m sure you all need a break,” I say softly. Guilt twists in my gut. I have an overwhelming need to help them, to do something. Anything. “How can I help? Maybe bring you some meals, so you don’t have to worry about that?”
Andrew stares straight ahead, and for a moment I’m not sure my words have reached him. “That would be great,” he finally says, when he comes back to himself. “I have a feeling we’re going to be spending too much time in the hospital’s cafeteria.”
“Consider it done.” I’m pleased he’s accepted the offer. Usually people retreat in these situations—I saw it happen with my dad, when he kept saying he was fine, didn’t need help from anyone but thank you for the thought.
“We’re going to be at the hospital 24/7, at least for now, but I want life to stay as sane and normal for Sam as possible.” He looks to the school entrance, still empty, and I notice a slight shake to his voice. “I’m trying to hold it together for him, you know?” I nod as tears come to my eyes. “This is a lot for us to handle, but Sam. Well, I’m worried about him.”
I’m about to ask more about Sam, say a kind word about how hard this must be for him and Alysse, juggling the needs of their sick son with those of their healthy one, when my phone rings. I jump, look at the screen, see it’s Tom.
“Do you need to get that?” Andrew asks as I frown at the phone, wondering which of the issues in the dozen emails I sent back to Tom he’s calling about.
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Karma Brown
In a single moment everything can change. Meg Pepper has a fulfilling career and a happy family. Most days she’s able to keep it all together and glide through life. But then, in one unalterable moment, everything changes.After school pickup one day, she stops her car to wave a teenage boy across the street…just as another car comes hurtling down the road and slams into him.Meg can’t help but blame herself for her role in this horrific disaster. Full of remorse, she throws herself into helping the boy’s family as he rehabs from his injuries. But the more Meg tries to absolve herself, the more she alienates her own family – and the more she finds herself being drawn to the boy’s father.Soon Meg’s picture-perfect life is unravelling before her eyes. As the painful secrets she’s been burying bubble dangerously close to the surface, she will have to decide: Can she forgive herself, or will she risk losing everything she holds dear to her heart?Readers love Karma Brown:“touching, heartfelt, and compelling”“huge fan of her writing style”“I LOVED this book and the way it deals with guilt and grief and forgiveness”“her books just get better and better!”
Bestselling author Karma Brown is back with a morally infused and emotionally riveting exploration of one woman’s guilt over an unexpected—yet avoidable—tragedy
Meg Pepper has a fulfilling career and a happy family. Most days she’s able to keep it all together and glide through life. But then, in one unalterable moment, everything changes.
After school pickup one day, she stops her car to wave a teenage boy across the street...just as another car comes hurtling down the road and slams into him.
Meg can’t help but blame herself for her role in this horrific disaster. Full of remorse, she throws herself into helping the boy’s family as he rehabs from his injuries. But the more Meg tries to absolve herself, the more she alienates her own family—and the more she finds herself being drawn to the boy’s father.
Soon Meg’s picture-perfect life is unravelling before her eyes. As the painful secrets she’s been burying bubble dangerously close to the surface, she will have to decide: Can she forgive herself, or will she risk losing everything she holds dear to her heart?
KARMA BROWN is an award-winning journalist and author of the bestsellers Come Away with Me and The Choices We Make. In addition to her novels, Karma’s writing has appeared in publications such as Redbook, SELF and Chatelaine. Karma lives just outside Toronto with her husband, daughter and their labradoodle, Fred. In This Moment is her most recent novel.
www.KarmaKBrown.com (http://www.KarmaKBrown.com)
Also By Karma Brown (#u03196365-e241-516a-a543-24cc33d0df3f)
Come Away with Me
The Choices We Make
In This Moment
Karma Brown
Copyright (#u03196365-e241-516a-a543-24cc33d0df3f)
An imprint of HarperCollins Publishers Ltd.
1 London Bridge Street
London SE1 9GF
First published in Great Britain by HQ in 2018
Copyright © Karma Brown 2017
Karma Brown asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work.
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.
All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins.
Ebook Edition © January 2018 ISBN: 9781474083591
Praise for the novels of Karma Brown
“We adored Come Away with Me and are ready for more of Brown’s powerful, heartfelt prose. She’s the female Nicholas Sparks.”
—Redbook
“Brown delivers an emotional punch in The Choices We Make. This is a good, old-fashioned tear-jerker of a book.”
—The Toronto Star
“The Choices We Make presents gut-wrenching questions about friendship and loyalty... Should appeal to readers who relish Nicholas Sparks’ sentimental stories combined with the kind of weighty issues often raised by Jodi Picoult.”
—New York Journal of Books
“A warmly compelling love story [and] deeply moving debut.”
—Booklist
“A compelling premise with a plot that intensifies satisfyingly in the second half, this book is a good bet for readers who don’t shy away from difficult moral questions.”
—Kirkus Reviews
“[A] beautifully written story of love and loss... Come Away with Me had me smiling through my tears.”
—Tracey Garvis Graves, New York Times bestselling author of On the Island
“[A] heartbreaking yet hopeful tale... Karma Brown is a talented new voice in women’s fiction.”
—Lori Nelson Spielman, #1 international bestselling author of The Life List
“Laughing one minute, then fiercely blinking back tears the next, we tore through this novel—so gripping that we were both excited and scared out of our minds to turn the page. Multilayered and completely consuming...[a] stunning page turner.”
—Liz Fenton and Lisa Steinke, authors of The Status of All Things
“One woman’s journey through grief becomes the journey of a lifetime.”
—Colleen Oakley, author of Before I Go
For Mom & Dad—you told me I could do whatever I put my mind to.
You were right. xo
Contents
Cover (#u91ac1b27-4d36-5172-83a4-9f0861d39a41)
Back Cover Text (#u15b79dee-a16b-523a-a617-0cd5f125bf45)
About the Author (#u33dcbcc5-82ce-5d82-9605-d1fa46be10d7)
Booklist (#uff45b5af-dba4-5a20-8ed0-0278fc66596d)
Title Page (#ue6622f7e-4534-53ab-9063-684025cf7432)
Copyright (#u6c1dabd0-77b0-5324-b533-0fd82fbfaa63)
Praise (#u0cc35454-1bb0-5ab8-83d7-8a03fd808ebd)
Dedication (#ue456a578-f24f-575b-bf9c-89c9c8328d6b)
Quote (#u6be5426d-de3d-52a5-bee0-eaffb5346f3f)
Chapter 1 (#u758242ac-3419-5456-b7a5-4f7bd4fbb5ab)
Chapter 2 (#uf5209357-492e-553c-b7b6-78b37f21ba7f)
Chapter 3 (#ua59b37f5-fbd4-56bd-b36b-47aab8be0179)
Chapter 4 (#u6958e26d-a996-53aa-b862-b5998e64d8a4)
Chapter 5 (#u4d163493-0390-5120-8425-953e84dc974c)
Chapter 6 (#ubc2af5fc-d017-56ac-8523-65d3aea4963f)
Chapter 7 (#ub764474e-b11e-5843-8ea3-7653d61f7544)
Chapter 8 (#u98ca9daf-b609-55fc-9acb-bab04ed74b75)
Chapter 9 (#u96b6cf5e-688f-5afa-ae5a-3f53291db7a8)
Chapter 10 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 11 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 12 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 13 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 14 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 15 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 16 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 17 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 18 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 19 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 20 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 21 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 22 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 23 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 24 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 25 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 26 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 27 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 28 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 29 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 30 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 31 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 32 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 33 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 34 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 35 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 36 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 37 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 38 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 39 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 40 (#litres_trial_promo)
Acknowledgments (#litres_trial_promo)
Questions for Discussion (#litres_trial_promo)
A Conversation with Karma Brown (#litres_trial_promo)
Extract (#litres_trial_promo)
Remember upon the conduct of each depends the fate of all.
—Alexander the Great
1 (#u03196365-e241-516a-a543-24cc33d0df3f)
I wake with a start thanks to a loud bang against the window on my side of the bed. Without looking I know what’s happened—another bird, tricked by the clear glass of our balcony windows, has soared to its death and snapped me out of my slumber.
Using my fingertips I pull my phone off the nightstand and squint at the clock icon. When I see the time I sit straight up, pulling the covers off Ryan, who groans with annoyance. “Ryan. We have to get up.”
“Five more minutes,” Ryan mumbles, his back to me as he tries to pull the duvet back up over his shoulders.
I nudge him again, tug at the duvet. “Get up. We’re late.”
He rolls toward me, and I hold my phone in front of him. He lets out a quiet string of curse words. “Didn’t you set your alarm?”
“Didn’t you?” I grumble, throwing the duvet off my legs but still not getting out of bed. I feel leaden, like in the night someone replaced my blood with molasses, and my head hurts. Ryan is out of bed and has already started the shower, and my mind drifts again to the bird. Maybe it was only stunned and has already flown away.
I place my feet gingerly on the floor, wiggling some warmth into my toes. Flicking on the balcony light I glance down. Damn. The bird’s neck is torqued at a distressing angle, its feathers ruffling with the breeze, but otherwise there’s no movement in its tiny body.
I contemplate the best way to get rid of it without upsetting Audrey. After the last one broke its neck, a vibrant yellow finch that Audrey buried under our hydrangeas, Ryan refused to let her soap all the windows in the house. So she made glass gel clings, thanks to the internet and twenty dollars of gelatin from the bulk store and a determination to save every last neighborhood bird. I think of the gel clings inside my nightstand drawer, likely sticking to whatever else I’d forgotten about in there, and whisper an apology to the bird.
Guilt getting the better of me, I’m about to grab the clings and put them up when the coffee timer beeps a floor below. With sudden clarity I realize what else I’ve forgotten to do. I race down the stairs and groan when I get to the kitchen. The coffeemaker is surrounded by a spreading pool of black liquid and coffee grounds, cascading over the counter’s lip and on to the floor. What the hell is it with this day?
* * *
I’m on my hands and knees mopping up the grungy coffee when Ryan comes into the kitchen, tucking his shirt into his pants and looking fresh and well-rested, especially in comparison to me—disheveled in my pajamas and unruly, finger-swept bun. “What happened?”
“I forgot to empty the carafe before I set the timer last night,” I say.
Ryan steps around the mess and me, and opens the fridge door. “That’s not like you.”
I pause midwipe, give him a look that suggests he’s said enough. He holds his hands up, giving me the smile that makes it hard to stay irritable.
“Oh, also, there’s a dead bird on our balcony.”
“I guess Audrey’s sticky things didn’t work?” he asks.
“They might work. If I actually put them up.” I scowl and he chuckles. I set a mental reminder to put the window clings up tonight after work. Then I let out three sneezes in quick succession, which is when I realize how sore my throat is.
Ryan glances at me, fridge door open and orange juice in hand. “You getting sick?”
“Allergies.” I stand to wring the brackish coffee-drenched cloth out in the sink.
He juggles the orange juice with the carton of eggs, and nudges the door closed with his hip. Placing the eggs on the counter beside the stove, he lays a hand against my forehead. “Meg, you’re sick,” he says. Then he kisses me on the lips.
“Ryan!” I shove him weakly with my free elbow. “Now you’re going to get sick.”
“I thought it was allergies?” He smirks, grabs a frying pan from the rack and turns on the stove, the gas flame coming to life with a whoosh. “Maybe you should take the day off. Drink hot water and lemon. Doctor’s orders.” He cracks an egg into the frying pan one-handed, then tosses the shell into the sink before repeating the steps with a second egg, leaving a thick trail of egg white along the countertop as he does. Ryan is a decent cook, but has never learned to clean up as he goes, and somehow I’ve ended up doing most of both. I sigh, run the dishcloth across the counter to wipe up the egg white and then turn on the water and nudge the broken shells into the disposal’s whirling blades until they’re pulverized.
While I refill the coffee machine I fantasize about crawling back into bed, indulging in a day of on-demand movies and copious amounts of tea with honey, and then I picture my calendar. I could do the agreements and marketing plans for my new listings from bed, but everything else—including the four showings I have today—requires me to be dressed and present.
“I wish,” I say. “But houses can’t stage or show themselves.”
“Good thing, otherwise you’d be out of a job,” Ryan says, generously pouring hot sauce on top of his eggs. “What about pushing your showings back a bit? Go in a little late.”
I take a sip of orange juice and wince, the acidity burning my throat. “I told Tom I’d help him out this morning. He’s got an agents’ open house at the McLaren property in a couple of weeks. Remember, I told you about that listing? The one with the tennis court and pool?”
Ryan nods, swallows a bite of egg. “Right. With the nude statues in the garden?”
“The very one.” The home’s owner, a widow with a lot of money and specific tastes, had a thing for bronze statues of naked women in a variety of bizarre poses—Tom and I were currently debating whether to have the statues removed and put in storage before the open house. “Anyway, it’s a major listing, and he’s promised me a chunk if I help him out.”
“How big a chunk?” Ryan asks.
I set my index finger and thumb about an inch apart and squint at the space between them. Ryan pushes back from the table, wiping his face with a napkin. “That hardly seems worth getting out of bed for even when you’re well.”
A prickle of irritation moves through me. I know I’m being oversensitive, and Ryan simply voiced a fact. I’ll probably do most of the work, and Tom will take most of the credit—and the commission. Tom’s reliance on me—calling me on vacation, on my days off, much too late in the evening, and me always taking his calls—has been somewhat of a sore spot between me and Ryan, especially lately as my own client list has grown.
However, as I’ve often reminded Ryan, I owe Tom—so I take his calls when they come in, and help him when he asks. When I tried to reenter the workforce after a decade home with Audrey, my skills stale and as outdated as the plastic-cased Bondi blue iMac I used to craft my resume, Tom and his brokerage gave me a chance when no one else would. I started as his administrative assistant, then got my real estate license, and over the last six years I’ve proven I’m great at selling houses—I’m now in the top one percent of Realtors at the brokerage. But as Ryan has reminded me more than once, I didn’t have to go back to work, his salary plenty to keep us more than comfortable. In some ways it seems like he still sees my career as a hobby, which is incredibly frustrating.
My phone pings at me, and I glance at the screen. Pull dinner out of freezer. “Do you want chicken Marbella or tilapia tacos for dinner?” I ask Ryan. My best friend, Julie Larrington, and I do batch cooking once a month, which makes life a lot easier when I have to work late, like I will be doing tonight. “Or turkey and white bean chili? I have one more of those, I think.” My arms reach deep to the back of the freezer, and I shiver with the cold blast of air on my bare arms.
“Chicken gets my vote.” He swallows the last of his vitamins before grabbing his travel mug to wash it out. “But remember I’m in that conference all day? I won’t be home until eight, eight-thirty.” Ryan’s a radiologist at Massachusetts Memorial Hospital, which is only fifteen minutes from the house. He loves his job, especially the flexibility, but has grown weary of the hospital’s inefficiencies. Today’s conference, for example, is focused on “nurturing internal relationships,” which Ryan says could be covered in sixty minutes but will take ten excruciating hours instead.
There’s a sigh from the kitchen doorway. Our fifteen-going-on-twenty-five-year-old daughter leans against the door with her backpack slung over one shoulder and an amused look on her face—which has more makeup on it than we agreed was appropriate for school. But I think back to my dad’s advice when she was born. “Margaret, not everything should be a battle. Ask yourself, ‘Is this the hill I want to die on?’ I promise you not every hill is battle-worthy.” I decide the makeup hill is not the one I want to die on today.
I miss having my dad nearby, but he and his arthritis escaped Massachusetts’s frigid winters a few years ago for a condo in sunshiny Florida that he shares with a Boston Terrier named Polly, and his second wife, a retired accountant named Carla.
Audrey pushes off the doorframe and walks into the kitchen, the rubber soles of her moccasin shoes squeaking against the hardwood. “Did you say Rabbit Rabbit Rabbit this morning?” Her English class recently did a mythology and folklore segment, where she learned the superstition of repeating the word rabbit on the first day of each month, for good luck.
“No, I did not.” I wish it were that easy to ensure luck, but I keep my pessimism to myself.
“You look, like, really bad,” Audrey says, glancing at me from the fridge.
“Thanks a lot.” Then I see the clock on the microwave and curse under my breath. “Did you eat breakfast?” I ask Audrey, as I gather my phone, wallet and a wad of tissues, stuffing them into my purse. I have exactly fifteen minutes to get ready before I have to take her to school, which means dry shampoo and a ponytail.
“Like, an hour ago. I packed you a lunch, too, because you weren’t up yet.” She grabs my reusable lunch bag out of the fridge, and I see the sticky note on it reading, Mom.
I’m so grateful she’s not the kind of kid I have to drag out of bed in the morning and nag constantly to clean her room, eat properly, do her homework. Audrey has a 4.2 GPA, is the assistant editor of Merritt High’s student newspaper, and volunteers with her friend Kendall at the assisted living center, helping run the senior center’s art program. Sometimes I think she’s better at being an adult than I am. While I rely on multiple calendars and far too many reminders that beep and trill and interrupt me on a daily basis to keep on top of our lives, Audrey seems able to do it with a natural ease.
“Thank you,” I say, kissing her on top of her head and setting the bag beside my purse. “I’ll be right down. Just need ten minutes. Twelve, tops.” I start out of the kitchen, then turn back. “Chicken okay for you tonight, Aud?”
“I don’t eat chicken, Mom,” she says, sitting down now that she knows we’re not leaving right away.
I look from her to Ryan, who shrugs at this news. “Since when?” Audrey recently stopped eating red meat and pork, but so far we’ve managed to keep chicken, turkey and fish on the menu.
She taps on her phone, somehow texting and talking with me simultaneously. “I can just make a sandwich.”
“No, it’s fine. Your dad and I can have the chicken another night.” I rummage around the freezer a bit more. “What about turkey?” She shakes her head. I sigh. “Fish tacos?”
“Sounds good,” she says. Clearly fish haven’t made it to her “animals not to eat” list yet. “As long as they don’t have to numb my mouth.”
I stare at her, bag of fish tacos in hand, a memory niggling at my brain.
“I have a dentist appointment after school? I sent you the calendar reminder last week,” Audrey says.
“Right. Dentist.” I shoot her an apologetic look, and quickly scroll through my calendar. Shit. There it is. I mentally run through my day to figure out how I can be in two places at once—at my last showing and in the school pickup queue. “I didn’t forget. See?” I hold out my phone to show her, but she doesn’t look fooled. “It’s fine. We’ll make it work.” I sneeze again, but don’t get to the tissue box in time.
“Gross, Mom,” she says, disdain on her face. “What’s wrong with you?”
“Allergies,” I reply, blowing my nose.
Audrey shrugs at my response, then leans into Ryan when he bends down to hug her. “Bye, Dad.”
“Bye, pumpkin,” Ryan says. “Have a great day.”
But her attention is already back to her phone, her fingers flying furiously over the keys.
Ryan rubs a ruby-red apple against his thigh, holding the door to the garage slightly open with his other hand. “Meg, why don’t you at least reschedule the dentist? She’s fifteen. Her teeth are perfect.”
“I’ve already rescheduled once, and I’m scared of Dr. Snowden’s receptionist. She’s not kind to serial reschedulers.” I sneeze again. “Guess there’s no chance you could pick her up and take her?”
“Nope.” He shakes his head. “The conference goes until four-thirty, and then I have to do some paperwork.”
“You said the conference was pointless,” I say. “What’s the big deal if you miss the last hour?”
“I’m already missing the last hour,” he says, his tone shifting to one of impatience. “I have a meeting about the clinic, and it was a miracle we could all get our schedules lined up.”
“Another one?” I say, trying to quell my irritation. “Can’t you guys do a conference call or something?” Ryan has been meeting with a few coworkers about starting their own clinic for the past eight months, though there’s been little action on it aside from these get-togethers that seem to take place at inconvenient times. Like when I’ve double booked our daughter’s dentist appointment and a house showing.
“No, we can’t do a conference call. It’s important we’re face-to-face. There’s a lot at stake here, Meg.”
“So you’ve said,” I reply.
He lets his hand holding the apple drop, swallows the last bite, and as he does I see his face change. Harden, like it does when he’s had enough of discussing a particular topic.
“Just reschedule the damn appointment if you can’t get her there. Why are you making me feel like the bad guy here?”
“You’re not the only one with work shit going on,” I say, lowering my voice so Audrey doesn’t hear. “I’ve got a lot happening, too.”
“Then maybe you shouldn’t have booked her dentist appointment for this week.”
We stare at one another, both of us waiting for the other one to give in first, which I do. “Don’t worry about it. I’ll figure it out.” I always do, I want to add.
I walk back through the door and let it slam without waiting for his response, and a moment later hear the garage door open and him pull his car out. This has been happening more often, Ryan and I starting, or ending, our days with an argument. I hate how unsettled I feel when we’re not jibing, and I know we need to talk about it. But lately it seems like we’re both running on hamster wheels—him with work and this new clinic start-up, and me with more clients and responsibilities outside the house—rarely jumping off to spend time together not focused on the logistics of our lives.
“You only have five minutes left,” Audrey says, not looking up from her phone when I walk back into the kitchen.
“I know.” I’m mentally picking out my outfit as I race up the stairs, still frustrated with Ryan and having no clue that later I will forever regret not taking to my sick bed this day.
2 (#u03196365-e241-516a-a543-24cc33d0df3f)
Ten minutes later I find Audrey sitting in the front seat of my car, seat belt on and eyes cast down on her phone. She’s likely texting her boyfriend, Sam Beckett, or Kendall—Julie’s daughter and one of Audrey’s best friends—probably complaining that her snot-filled mom is going to make her late for class.
“Who are you talking to?” I ask, and I don’t have to look at her to know she’s rolling her eyes at my question.
“I’m not talking to anyone, I’m texting,” she replies. She certainly plays the sullen teenager when she wants to, but most days I know it’s more an act than anything else. As if reading my mind, she adds, “Just Sam.” I steal a glance at her while I back out of our garage and catch the small smile that plays on her lips when her phone buzzes again. Sam is Audrey’s first real boyfriend, and while they’ve only been dating six months she’s clearly smitten. I’m equal parts delighted for her to be experiencing the blush of first love, and terrified about what other firsts come with it. “He’s sick and his dad is making him stay home.”
“Oh? That’s too bad. There must be something going around.” I clear my throat, which now feels like it’s filled with razor blades, hoping I have ibuprofen in my purse.
Audrey asks if I’ve booked the parental driver’s education class Ryan and I need to attend before Audrey can start driving. She’s been asking about it daily for the past week now that her sixteenth birthday (and the day she can get her learner’s permit) is less than a month away. I tell her I have, even though I’ve only left one voice mail, yesterday, and am not officially registered. Satisfied with my answer, she then tells me about Human Pudding—a band she and her friends love whose songs give me a headache—releasing a new album, and about how one of her teachers, who apparently no one likes much, wore white pants that showcased her black-and-pink polka-dotted underwear. Hearing this makes me grateful I never became a high school teacher. Teenagers, at least the ones I know, are fairly ruthless in their judgment of grown-ups—as though your time to make mistakes ends the moment you turn twenty-one and are labeled as an adult. Though I try to listen and respond appropriately, my mind is already past the car ride and school drop-off and on to my work to-do list and what dish I’m going to make for the cookbook club night I’m hosting on the weekend. Soon Audrey is back to her buzzing phone, and I’m lulled into the soft sounds of the car’s interior, and I jump when she speaks again.
“So you’ll pick me up after school, right?”
“Can’t you just walk home?” I turn to her, confusion on my face.
“Mom, seriously—”
I lean toward her and kiss her cheek, closer to her ear than mouth—protecting her from whatever virus I have—and laugh. “Seriously. I’m joking. I’ll be here. Promise.”
“Stick to your day job, Margaret,” she says, but gives me a sweet smile that makes my heartbeat jump, like it so often does when I’m in her presence. A feeling I expect is impossible to describe except to other mothers. “Love you,” she says, leaning over to hug me tight. I hold her until she lets go, like always. “See you at three-thirty. Don’t be late.”
I go to say I’ll be there, I know the time thank-you-very-much and won’t be late because I set a reminder on my phone in between brushing my teeth and pulling on my tights, but my words are cut off by the slam of the car door and she’s off, swallowed up in the tide of teenagers flowing into the open mouth of the school’s front doors.
* * *
Between arguing with Tom about removing the garden statues—we settled on leaving the more tasteful ones and storing the others—late clients, and a snapped heel on my favorite shoes, thanks to a loose walkway stone at my first showing, the day drags painfully by. Plus, I’m feeling at least 150 percent worse than I did this morning, my voice now deep and rough and my fever making me alternate between chills and sweats. So by the time my last appointment arrives, which I pushed up so I could get Audrey in time for the dentist, I’m operating on fumes and desperate for things to go smoothly. I pop a Claritin while I wait for my clients, adding it to my grocery list on my phone when I see the blister pack is nearly empty. I’ve had a dog and cat allergy since I was a kid, and have learned through experience to never go into a house showing without Claritin onboard.
My clients, Noah and Jillian Delacorte, are a young couple, new to Merritt by way of Boston where they’ve been living for the past three years in a one-bedroom condo. With a baby on the way, they’re “ready to move to the ‘burbs,’” as Noah said when we first chatted, and I gladly agreed to work with them. Parents-to-be are generally on a tight timeline to get moved in, as no one wants to be dragging a fussy newborn around to a bunch of showings. However, it’s been two months and a dozen showings later, and we have yet to find them the perfect house. Mostly because Jillian—a pixie of a woman, whose seven months pregnant belly is smaller than mine was at three months—is fairly particular about, well, everything, as it turns out. She once walked right out of a house because the front hallway smelled “a bit earthy,” and she thought that meant mold, despite my assurances it was likely due to the giant potted plant by the front door.
So today, while I wait shivering with fever at a house I’m certain ticks all the boxes, I pray to the real estate gods that Jillian Delacorte is in a ready-to-buy state of mind. However, turns out my shitty day wasn’t done with me yet, and so when Noah shows up without Jillian—the decision maker of the two—I’m a bit concerned. Being the decision maker of the two, it’s critical she be here.
“Hi, Noah.” I shake his outstretched hand as he walks up to me. I look toward his car, hoping Jillian will somehow materialize from inside it. “Where’s Jillian?”
“She wasn’t feeling well, so I told her to stay home.” Noah adjusts his messenger bag on his shoulder, looks toward the house. “She said she trusts my judgment.” I smile weakly at him, both of us knowing how false this statement is.
The house is perfect for them—it’s within budget, has the required three bedrooms, a fenced-in backyard and, by some miracle, both the master bedroom on the main floor and the butler’s pantry Jillian insisted upon—but unfortunately with only Noah here, I know I won’t be writing up an offer tonight.
“I think this may be the one, Meg,” Noah says, after we tour the house. “But I want Jillian to see it, just to be one hundred percent certain.” Of course. So we run through our calendars at the home’s kitchen table and try to find a date that works.
With only a few minutes to spare until I have to get Audrey I sit in my running car—Audrey would have a fit, reminding me how terrible it is for the environment—and return a call to another client who’s having second thoughts about the asking price we agreed on, then with my final minute craft an email to Tom about an idea I have for the agent’s open house. While I’m typing, a text comes through from Ryan. Sorry about this morning. Can I make it up to you later? I quickly type back, Deal and am about to sign off on the email to Tom when my cell phone whistles.
“What the hell?” On top of the screen a little calendar reminder pops up.
Mom—Leave work NOW.
I chuckle. She must have programmed the reminder into my phone this morning, probably while I raced around trying to do an hour’s worth of stuff in fifteen minutes.
After I hit Send on the email to Tom, I pull away from the curb hoping there’s no traffic downtown, so I can get Audrey to her appointment on time and avoid the receptionist’s wrath.
3 (#u03196365-e241-516a-a543-24cc33d0df3f)
I’m only three minutes behind schedule when I pull into the long pickup queue to wait for Audrey. I quickly check my phone, feeling relief when I see replies from both Noah—Jillian is excited to see the house, how does Thursday work?—and Tom, who has had a change of heart and agrees perhaps all the statues should go, though he words the email in a way that makes it seem it was his idea all along. Clearly things have taken a turn for the better, and even my fever seems under control with the ibuprofen I’ve been popping all day.
I see Audrey come through the doors, looking for my car in the long pickup line, and I put down the passenger window. “Audrey!” I try to shout, though it comes out sounding more like a squeak. I would honk, but that’s frowned upon in the school parking lot. Audrey still hasn’t seen me, but Emma Steen, waiting for her own daughter, Charlotte, by the front doors, does. I bristle as Emma strides toward me, cursing today’s timing.
She tightens the belt of her Burberry-patterned coat around her tall, slim body and steps toward the passenger side of my car and the open window. “Oh, hell,” I mutter, trying to decide if I have time to pick up my phone and fake a call. Emma’s smiling as she approaches, but I notice it’s strained. As it should be, I think.
“Hi there, Meg,” she says, bending down so her face is framed by the window. Her auburn hair is pulled back in a tight, high ponytail, her smooth bangs hanging perfectly upon her forehead, showcasing fabulous eyebrows. I absentmindedly rub a finger over my own brows, knowing it’s been too long since I had them waxed. My fingers itch with the urge to type a reminder to call the spa into my phone.
“How are you? Sorry you missed the last meeting, but hopefully the minutes were helpful.” I think of Emma’s last email, which I deleted without opening. This is her first year as president of Merritt High’s Parent Teacher Organization, and it’s the perfect position for her—some people lead through creativity or inspiration, but Emma relies on her Martha Stewart–like tendencies and homemade chocolate chunk cookies.
I wish I could put up the window without it appearing downright rude, and imagine with some satisfaction what it would be like to catch her nose between the glass and the steel frame of the door. Instead I nod, force a smile and silently beg Audrey to hurry up so we can get out of this damn queue.
“I can’t chat, Emma. Audrey has a dentist appointment. Oh, and here she is.” I move my purse off the passenger seat for Audrey, who has thankfully just opened the car door, having squeezed around Emma.
“Hi, Audrey,” Emma says, shoving her hands in her pockets and watching Audrey as she buckles her seat belt. “How’s the tennis these days?”
“I don’t play anymore,” Audrey says, her tone polite but not inviting more questions. Audrey’s a natural athlete, like her dad, and used to play tennis and soccer, but when she turned twelve she decided she didn’t care for the competitive nature of organized sports. She still hits balls with her dad on occasion, but her interests have shifted: to journalism, environmentalism, saving the backyard birds.
“Oh?” Emma holds on to her wide smile, though I can see it faltering. I know Emma still feels a connection to Audrey, having spent so much time with her when she was young, but Audrey has all but forgotten that relationship and treats her no differently than any other adult she’s forced to converse with—polite, but revealing little.
“Well, I can see you’re in a rush,” Emma says, even though we both know I’m going to be stuck here for another few minutes until the line moves again. “But maybe we can do coffee soon?” She smiles brightly as though this is a normal thing we do, a perfectly reasonable suggestion. I don’t bother to remind her that we haven’t had a coffee together in about six years and instead point to my watch. “We have to go,” I say. Perhaps she thinks this passage of time is long enough for things to thaw between us, but after what she did, Emma and I will never have another coffee date—even though we used to be best of friends, seeing each other daily when our girls were in elementary school.
“Absolutely. Off you go.” She pushes the air in front of her like she’s shoving water out of the way in a pool, walking backward toward the school as she does, still forcing that bright smile. “Don’t want those beautiful teeth to be late!” She gives a final wave to Audrey, then tucks her hands back into her coat pockets as she turns around.
Audrey—who was too young to understand the abruptness with which my relationship with Emma ended, and who has long since forgotten how she and Charlotte used to tell everyone they were twin sisters—looks at me and rolls her eyes. I mutter, “Be nice,” as I put up the window and move ahead another car length.
I hate how flustered I still get whenever I see Emma, each time remembering what happened six years ago. When I walked into my kitchen to restock the ice bar during our annual New Year’s Eve bash, warm with celebration and a few nips of champagne, to see Emma and Ryan standing too close. Emma’s lips were on Ryan’s, but with his arms like wooden planks at his sides, his body rigid and disengaged, it was clear he wasn’t a willing participant—which he vehemently reinforced after I physically threw her out of my house.
“You’re one to talk,” Audrey says, raising her eyebrows at me, clearly referencing my thinly veiled dislike of Emma.
“Well, she’s...exhausting.” It’s the kindest comment I can offer as I settle back into my seat. Right or wrong, Ryan and I have always adopted the team approach to our family, meaning Audrey has participated in adult conversations since she was a little girl. I’ve only regretted it once, when Audrey announced proudly, and loudly, when she was four years old—during a library reading group for moms and tots—that a man puts his penis in a woman’s vagina to make a baby. Always curious, we had the day before read The Book of Life and had some graphic—particularly for her age—conversations about how babies came to be. That was our last parent and tot library visit.
“How was school?” I ask, pulling out of the pickup roundabout, trying to shake off the Emma annoyance that has settled into my shoulders.
“Good,” Audrey says, and I know that’s probably all I’ll get for now. Years ago I read an article in some parenting magazine that said to never, ever, ask your child a question that had a yes or no response. So I used to think up all sorts of clever ways to mine her for information with open-ended questions, but after a few months I realized I usually got more and better information if I let her tell me in her own way.
“I didn’t even know my phone could whistle at me. Did you know that?” I ask, a smile on my face, turning on to the main road.
Audrey grins at me, then looks out her window. “I know how busy you are, Mom. Just wanted to help.”
“Thank you, baby.” I rub her legging-covered knee. I slow for the first speed bump in a series of three, my car’s shocks groaning as we crest it.
“Hey, there’s Jack.” Audrey points a half a block ahead, to a tall, blond teenager, crouched down at the curb, tying his shoelaces. “His dad took Sam to the clinic, so I guess no ride home for him today.” Jack and Sam Beckett are identical twins and look so much alike I’ve never been able to tell them apart.
“I guess his mom is still at work?” I ask. Alysse Beckett, the boys’ mother, is a financial whiz and works at one of Boston’s most-respected private equity firms, drawing a salary that, when I sold them their current house, resulted in my best commission check ever. Their dad, Andrew, is a bit of a legend among the stay-at-home moms, having quit a journalism career when the twins were born to stay home with them.
“Sam said she’s working on something big right now and goes to work before six in the morning and stays until, like, midnight sometimes.” Audrey takes out a stick of gum, folds it into her mouth. “I never want a job where I have to work that early or stay that late,” she adds. I don’t bother bursting her bubble—she’ll figure out soon enough getting up early and working late are fairly basic parts of being an adult. I slow down for the final bump, practically coming to a full stop.
Jack stands and bounces on his tiptoes on the curb’s edge, skateboard in one hand, impatiently waiting for the car coming toward me to pass so he can cross. His shorts hang low on his hips and land just below the knee the way all the boys seem to be wearing them these days. On his head is a red baseball cap, turned backward, with large earphones—the noise-canceling kind—circling his neck.
I look to the other side of the road and see a couple of other teen boys, skateboards also in hand, clearly waiting for Jack to catch up.
“We should let him cross, Mom,” Audrey says.
I press my foot firmly on the brake, completely stopping the car. “You know, they look so much alike,” I say. “I don’t know how you tell who’s who.”
Audrey waves at Jack, and he waves back and smiles, recognizing her. “It’s the hair,” she says.
“What is?” I ask.
“How I tell them apart,” Audrey replies. I hold my hand up and wave Jack across the otherwise empty road, toward his group of friends. He smiles in acknowledgment and sets his skateboard on the pavement. “Sam’s hair is a bit longer, sort of curling around his ears. See?” Audrey holds up her phone, a picture of her and Sam lighting up the screen. Where he’s tall, she’s a pipsqueak—long-legged like me, but still short for her age; where he’s fair, she’s dark, brown-haired like her dad. In the photo they’re laughing, their faces squished together inside the picture’s frame.
“Cute photo,” I say, picking up my travel mug half full of now cold coffee. I’m about to take a sip when Audrey screams, jolting me. The next sounds I hear are a sickening thump and the squealing of brakes. The mug drops from my hands, and, as the coffee seeps into my lap, I gasp, watching Jack Beckett’s lanky, fifteen-year-old body smash into the windshield of the other car—which came out of nowhere, too fast—and cartwheel into the air like it weighs nothing at all.
4 (#u03196365-e241-516a-a543-24cc33d0df3f)
I’m pushing so hard on the brake pedal my toes start to cramp. Instinctually I withdraw my foot to stop the pain, and the car jerks ahead. It’s only a couple of inches, but Audrey screams again with the jarring movement, and the shrill sound rattles in my head, confusing me. What happened? Did I hit someone? No, no. It wasn’t me. My car was stopped. My foot, hard on the brake.
My eyes dart to my rearview mirror, and I see Jack Beckett lying still on the pavement not far behind us, mostly obscured by a woman on her knees beside him, wearing a Burberry-style trench coat. The coat triggers recognition, but still, I stay buckled in my seat. “This is my fault,” I say, the beating of my heart pounding in my ears, my voice shaking. “I shouldn’t have stopped in the middle of... I shouldn’t have... Where did that car come from?” Audrey cries softly beside me, and I focus on her, murmuring that it’s going to be okay. I quickly turn off the ignition and put the car in Park but don’t unbuckle my seat belt just yet. I think of the bird, broken on my balcony, forgotten in the crazy rush of the morning. I’m terrified to see Jack up close—unfortunately, I know what a body looks like after it has done battle with a car—but am irrationally hoping, as I did this morning with the bird, that he’s simply stunned. He’ll be up and walking it off in a few minutes.
My breath comes too fast, but the influx of oxygen is also bringing back awareness and clarity. Now I hear the shouts and panicked instructions being barked out by a male voice that rises above the others. Someone thankfully taking charge of the situation.
What finally brings me back to the present and spurs me into action is the sound of Audrey gagging. She’s twisted in her seat, straining against her still buckled belt, eyes wild as she stares through our SUV’s back window at Jack. I grab her chin and turn her face to mine, noticing how odd her color is. Gray, like the caulking putty Ryan used to seal the cracks in the garage last winter. “If you’re going to throw up, get out of the car now.” My voice is calm, directive, though it has no power to it.
Regardless, my words reach her. She says nothing but unbuckles her seat belt. Then she quickly opens her door, jumps out and promptly vomits on to the curb, about where Jack was standing only a minute ago. For a moment I’m unsure what to do: my mothering instincts command me to go to Audrey, to rub her back like I have many times before when she’s been sick, but a stronger instinct tells me to get out of the car and go—no, run—to Jack Beckett.
He’s only ten feet or so behind my SUV, on the other side of the road, splayed out like he’s mid-jumping jack. I’m the third person there, joining the trench-coated woman I now recognize as Emma, who must have just started walking home with Charlotte when the accident happened. A man is crouched beside her, talking, I think, to the 911 operator on his phone. I recognize his voice as the barking, take-charge one, but now that I’m closer I can hear how the slight, nervous shake of his body is making his words tremble, as well.
“Yes, he’s breathing. Not conscious...There’s a lot of blood...His head...Okay, okay.” He turns to Emma, who is amazingly in control of herself, despite what’s in front of us. She used to be an emergency room nurse before leaving to stay home with her two children, and I often sought her advice when Audrey had a fever or a cough that wouldn’t leave her little lungs. “We have to try and stop the bleeding.” The man then notices me standing there and hands me his phone. I put it to my ear, not yet seeing the streak of red on it that has now transferred to my hand, my ear, and he stands to take off his sweater. Now that he has moved slightly away from Jack, I can see how much blood there is, and that the knees of the man’s khakis are soaked dark crimson. I unwrap the pashmina from around my neck and hand it to the man. “To help with the bleeding,” I say, my voice quivering with the adrenaline coursing through me. I notice Jack’s ball cap is gone, but the headphones are still around his neck—backward now, so it sort of looks as though he’s wearing a plastic dog collar.
“Hello?” the operator says. “Are you still with me? Don’t hang up, okay?”
“Yes, sorry. I’m here,” I respond, trying to stop my arms from shaking while I hold the phone tight to my ear and listen to her instructions. “She says to apply pressure on the head wound, with whatever we have. But to be careful not to move his neck.” With a nod the man passes his sweater to Emma, who gently places it around Jack’s head, before folding my scarf into neat squares to firmly press against Jack’s skull. Emma takes over, her confident and nimble hands holding the scarf to Jack’s head as she talks softly to him about help being on the way and that he shouldn’t worry, they are going to take good care of him. Her coat is still tightly belted, though now there are splotches of blood mingling with the tan, black and red plaid squares. I have no idea where Charlotte is. Then I realize I have no idea where Audrey is, either.
There are now two lines of cars, one behind my SUV and another behind the white Volvo wagon that hit Jack, curious heads poking out of rolled-down windows, wondering what the holdup is about, the odd honk to get things moving. A crowd has gathered around us, including Jack’s buddies who were waiting for him to cross the road and whose faces betray the horror—a horror I know all too well, the kind you can never erase—of what they just witnessed. They all hold phones to their ears, their panicked voices mingling, so I can’t hear distinct words.
But the onlookers, including Jack’s friends, stay along the periphery of the accident scene. Outside the worst of it, some sharing prayers for this poor young man. I wish to be with them instead of standing in this inner circle, where we are removing clothing as quickly as Jack’s blood is flowing, trying to do something, anything to help. Things feel wildly out of control, a sensation I loathe. The man is now shirtless, his nipples hard with the cool fall breeze, a little pooch of white belly hanging over his belted pants. My own fingers have gone numb with the chill, and I squeeze them tighter around the phone, hoping I don’t drop it.
“Meg,” Emma says, repeating my name when I don’t immediately answer. “Can you untie my coat?” I nod and come behind her, which seems the easiest way to do what she’s asked without getting in the way, and with quaking fingers, I wrestle the knot at her waist, still keeping the phone tight to my ear with the pressure of my shoulder. Emma shrugs off her trench coat with my help—being careful to leave one hand on the clothes on Jack’s head—and tells the man to put it on. He does, without seeming to notice it’s too small. Even though Emma is tall, the black-piped cuffs rise above the man’s wrists by a few inches, and in any other setting I might have laughed at how ridiculous he looks.
A woman from the peripheral circle hands the man in Emma’s coat a thick wad of gauze, a large pressure dressing from a first aid kit in someone else’s car, she says. He hands me my blood-soaked pashmina and his shirt, and he and Emma apply the dressing against Jack’s skull. I don’t realize how hard I’m pressing my scarf and the shirt against my stomach until I try to take a deep breath and feel resistance. I look down and my dove-gray wrap dress is now marked red and brown, damp with Jack Beckett’s blood and the spilled coffee.
Then I hear someone say, “Oh, my God, his leg,” and I pull my eyes down from Jack’s head, and for the first time I look at Jack’s left leg. His shorts have shifted up, so there’s nothing obscuring the injury. But despite the clear view I can’t make sense of what I’m seeing.
Because nothing is where it should be. Most noticeable is Jack’s foot, pointing in the wrong direction—facing inward the way Audrey used to draw the shoes on her stick figures when she was in preschool. The leg also seems crooked where there isn’t a joint, a few inches above his ankle, and I feel bile rise in my throat when I realize what the thing sticking out of his shin is: a jagged piece of bone. “I think I can see his bone,” I whisper to the operator, my voice catching. “It’s...it’s coming out of his leg.” The man looks at me, pale, clearly unsure what to do, while Emma murmurs, “Compound fracture to the tibia.”
“Should we do anything with his leg?” the man asks quietly, looking from me to Emma, hands still levitating above Jack’s mangled leg.
“She said to leave the leg,” I tell the man, who nods—a look of relief passing across his face. “The ambulance is almost here.” Moments later we hear the sirens, and it’s as though the three of us take a collective deep breath. Help is almost here, and soon it won’t be up to us to hold the pieces of this poor young man together.
Someone comes up beside me, brushing against my arm. Audrey. “I called Sam,” she says, her voice quiet and close to my ear—the one without the phone. “He and his dad will be here soon.” My heart lurches at the thought of getting that phone call. Of the crushing panic of hearing a car has hit your child.
“I want to help,” she whispers. “What can I do?” Her tear-streaked face is still a concerning shade of gray, but there’s a firm set to her mouth I know well. It’s the face she gets when she’s determined to have her way, and is similar to the face Ryan made this morning when we argued. I want to tell her to go back to the car, to not look too closely at Jack, but I know there’s no point now.
I shift the mouthpiece of the phone away and whisper back to her. “Talk to him, honey. Can you do that? Just don’t touch him, okay? We need to keep him still.” With a nod she kneels on the ground beside Jack’s head, beside Emma. Watching her, I vow to put up the gel clings the moment we get home and to bury the bird under the hydrangeas.
“I can see the ambulance,” I tell the operator, who in her fluid, calming voice, tells me we’ve done a great job, the paramedics are almost here, but don’t hang up yet. Just then a police officer approaches and starts pressing the crowd back, repeating in a loud and authoritative voice, “Give us some room, folks,” to make space for the incoming ambulance.
I scan the faces nearby, looking to see if Andrew Beckett has arrived. It’s then that I see her—the woman who drove her car right into Jack—sitting on the curb beside the white Volvo wagon with a massive dent in its hood, a blood-spattered air bag hanging out its open driver’s side window, the windshield smashed in a spiderweb-like circle, like a basketball—or someone’s head—hit it.
A shiver moves through me when I realize I know this woman. It’s Sarah Dunn, Audrey’s history teacher. She’s staring straight ahead, at Jack’s skateboard—which is upside down and trapped under her front wheel—her face slack and mouth hanging open. She’s bleeding from her forehead, with two red rivers streaming out of her nose, but she seems unaware of her injuries. There are two more officers standing beside her, one peering inside the Volvo and the other talking into the walkie-talkie attached to his shoulder, but both ignoring her. I wonder how the hell she didn’t see Jack, and it’s then she glances up and our eyes meet.
Maybe it’s my own guilt rising up through the wall of shock, but it’s as though she knows I was driving the other car. That I was the one who deemed it a safe crossing for this innocent and clearly vulnerable teenager, now lying in the road with an injury that will forever change his life. Maybe even—I realize with a sickening lurch in my stomach—end it.
How did you not see me coming? I can almost hear her saying. How could you let him cross the street?
Why were you driving so fast in the school zone? I would shout back, not understanding how she wouldn’t know better and feeling defensive for my part in this accident.
But she wouldn’t answer my question, would only say one thing in this dreamlike conversation I have with her. We did this, Meg, is what she would say if she weren’t catatonic on the curb.
My eyes drop back to Jack, now surrounded by paramedics moving quickly and quietly, like they’ve rehearsed this exact scenario a hundred times. The half-naked man, shivering under the ill-fitting trench coat, takes his phone gently from my hand, and Emma wraps her arms around Charlotte, who has tears running down her face, and when I look back up, Sarah isn’t sitting on the curb anymore.
We did this.
I’m suddenly slammed with a memory from when I was sixteen; from a terrible night where another teenager lay bleeding and broken on a road in front of me. I have worked hard not to think about that night anymore, because I can’t breathe around my guilt when I do. But just like that, it’s back, and I’m left sucking in air around the heaviness of the memory, a fish out of water.
And like the part I played in that night when I was sixteen, I am the reason Jack Beckett crossed the road when he did. It’s my fault, I think, as the ambulance pulls out, sirens blaring. With a simple, careless wave of my hand, I did this.
5 (#u03196365-e241-516a-a543-24cc33d0df3f)
The police have taped off the area and asked me to stay put until they can take statements, which they’re currently doing with Emma and the man who has now replaced the bloodied trench coat with a sweatshirt that fits much better. I’m sitting in my SUV, restless and still trembling even with my coat on, trying to bring life back into my fingers while also trying to reach Ryan for the tenth time, when Audrey tells me Sam and his dad are here. Before I can respond she opens the car door and jumps out, running toward them.
A shiver runs through me when I look at Sam, so much like Jack in every way it’s disconcerting—for a moment my shock-weary mind tries to believe he is Jack, just fine and home from school as though nothing has happened. That this afternoon’s accident was merely a fever-fueled nightmare brought on by whatever virus has infiltrated my body.
I see Andrew, tall and lean-limbed like his boys, some thickness around his middle only visible because the wind today is strong, molding his shirt to his stomach. He’s standing slightly behind Sam, who is hugging Audrey so tight she looks as though she might disappear into his body, and staring at the road where Jack was lying only minutes before. His eyes are trained on the pool of blood, now littered with medical supplies the paramedics left in their hasty departure. He stumbles back slightly, a hand going to his open mouth. Audrey and Sam are lost together, not noticing Andrew’s stumble, and I step closer to him, concerned.
“Andrew,” I say, putting my hand on his arm. We’ve been friendly with one another since I sold them their house, more so now that our kids are dating, and have had our fair share of backyard barbecue conversations over the last few years. But even still, Ryan and I don’t count the Becketts as close friends. I suddenly wish there was someone else here, someone he knows better than me—the last thing you want is to get this kind of news from the person who knows how you like your hamburger cooked and what your home-buying budget is, but not much beyond that.
He looks at my hand on his arm, my SUV that I just got out of, and finally at my face. “Did you hit him?” he asks, the words tumbling from his lips desperate, quiet, laced with anguish.
“No,” I say, shaking my head a bit wildly. Then, with more conviction I add, “No. It wasn’t me. We were on the other side of the road.” I say nothing about waving Jack across the street. “They just took him, in the ambulance. To Children’s.” I’m about to offer to drive him to the hospital and then remember I can’t leave the scene. “The police have asked me to stay. Can you drive yourself to the hospital? Andrew?” Watching him, I know that’s not a good idea. “Or maybe the police can take you?”
He’s no longer looking at me, or the road. I follow his gaze and see Sarah in the back of a police cruiser parked a few feet away, her head down and long, dark curls framing her face. “Is that who hit my son?” he asks, so quietly I lean closer to hear him better. But he doesn’t say anything else, so I simply nod. “Yes,” I reply. “It’s Sarah Dunn.”
“Sarah Dunn,” he repeats, his voice monotone, his eyes unblinking as he stares at Sarah inside the car. “Jack’s history teacher.” He makes a strange sound in the back of his throat, and with some alarm I notice how unwell he looks. “How? Why?”
“I don’t know exactly what happened, Andrew. I don’t know how she didn’t—” I’m about to say, “see him,” but I hold my words, because I can tell he can’t take any more in right now. He’s operating on autopilot, and precariously close to losing it. “I don’t know exactly what happened,” I repeat. “Her car wasn’t there one moment and then the next...”
I glance toward the cruiser and Sarah, where his gaze continues to rest. “I still have to talk with the police,” I say, trying to fill the silence.
His face has lost what little color it had when he arrived, and he’s shaking head to toe. “Andrew?” Even though he’s much taller, wider than me, I put an arm around him as best I can. “Do you want to sit down?” I wonder if he’s going to collapse and how I’ll keep him from crashing to the ground if he does. I move my feet slightly farther apart, as far as my dress allows, so I have better balance. But he doesn’t fall. Instead he turns to me, his back to the scene, and says, “I have to go.” His eyes are unfocused, and it’s clear he should not be getting behind the wheel. Just then Emma hurries up to us, holding Charlotte’s hand tightly as they cross the road, the way she used to when Charlotte was much younger. Though another day I might scoff at her overprotectiveness, I don’t blame her for it after what just happened.
“Andrew. I’m going to drive you and Sam to the hospital. Give me your keys.” Emma’s tone is no-nonsense and urgent, and Andrew hands her his key chain without a word. Then she says, “Sam, take your dad back to the car. We’re right behind you.” She turns to me. “The police are ready to talk with you now, Meg,” she says, before she and Charlotte break into a run, heading to Andrew’s car.
“Mom, I want to go with Sam,” Audrey cries, tugging on my arm, her eyes on Andrew’s car a half block away. “Mom, they’re leaving. Please!” I see Emma get in the driver’s side of Andrew’s car, and the car takes off quickly toward the hospital.
I shake my head. “You’re staying with me.”
She makes a sound that’s partway between a sob and an angry, frustrated groan, and I go to rub her back, but she pulls away so my hand only finds air. “After I talk with the police we’ll drive to the hospital. Promise. Okay?”
Her lips are pressed tightly together, eyes red-rimmed, and for a moment I think she might scream at me. But then she launches herself into my arms, and I hold her petite, shaking body and whisper that everything will be all right, praying it’s the truth.
* * *
The police take my statement—no, I didn’t notice anything strange about Ms. Dunn’s car or her driving or that she was on her phone. I didn’t even see her car until it was too late. Yes, I did wave Jack Beckett across the street in a nonpedestrian crossing zone. Yes, I thought it was safe for him to cross, because I didn’t see the other car coming, like I already told you—and then they let me go. I’m grateful the drive to the hospital is a short one because I’m so bone-weary I probably shouldn’t be driving.
We park in the visitors’ lot and make our way into the hospital. There’s an email from Emma, which this time I don’t delete—Jack is being evaluated, and she and Charlotte are with Sam and Andrew in the emergency waiting room.
It’s surprisingly busy for late afternoon on a Monday, the waiting room littered with worried parents and kids holding kidney-shaped pans under their chins, ice packs pressed to foreheads, and arms held stiffly in makeshift slings. I see Emma on the other side of the room, and we hurry over. Sam and Charlotte are sitting side by side, a few seats down from Emma, both staring at their phone screens. I don’t see Andrew.
“Sam,” Audrey says, and at the sound of her voice he looks up. Charlotte moves over one seat so Audrey can sit beside Sam, who leans heavily against her. She takes the weight of him and grabs his hand, and I smile gently when she catches my eye. I sit down beside Emma. “What’s happening?”
“I don’t know,” she replies. “Andrew is with Jack, and Alysse is trying to get on a plane. She’s in New York City and isn’t supposed to be home until late tomorrow night.” Emma shakes her head. “I can’t even imagine, being a plane ride away when this is happening to your child.” I swallow hard, feeling my head spin a little.
“Are you all right?” Emma asks, before shaking her head and letting her breath out slowly. “Of course not. How could any of us be okay?”
For a moment I wish things between us were the way it used to be. Back when Emma knew the day-to-day nuances of my life better than even Ryan did, and would have known exactly what to say to make things better. I’m trying to think of how to respond when I catch a glimpse of Andrew standing just inside the glass emergency room doors. He looks awful, and he’s crying. A doctor wearing green scrubs is with him; their heads bent together, Andrew nods, a fist clutched to his mouth as the doctor talks.
Emma glances at her watch. “Meg, I need to get home. Can you stay for a bit? Andrew’s parents are on their way, but they’ve got an hour’s drive or so before they can get here.”
“Of course,” I say, my voice cracking. I clear my throat. “Thank you, Emma.” I’m not sure exactly what I’m thanking her for, but it’s the first thing that comes to mind. It’s so strange to be sitting next to her, talking with her like this after all these years of silence. I wonder if she’s feeling as discombobulated as I am.
She nods and gives me a small smile. “Will you keep me updated?”
“I will,” I say, thinking perhaps this will be the moment when I forgive Emma Steen for kissing my husband, because it suddenly feels like such a small thing in the face of this tragedy we’ve shared.
A few minutes after Emma and Charlotte leave, Andrew walks into the waiting room. He looks surprised to see me, and I quickly stand to meet him. “Emma had to go home,” I say. “But I’m happy to stay with Sam for as long as you need me to. Or he can come home with us. Whatever’s best for you.”
“They’re taking Jack into surgery,” Andrew says, and I let out a weak, “oh.” He goes to say something else, but then leans toward me and puts his forehead on my shoulder in much the same way Sam did with Audrey at the accident scene. His arms stay at his sides and we stand there for a moment in the packed waiting room, awkwardly close yet with only his forehead and my shoulder making contact, his cries muffled by my jacket.
Then I swiftly step closer and wrap my arms around him, and he does the same to me, holding tight in a way that feels too intimate yet exactly right for the moment. I feel tears prick my eyes but will myself not to cry. I take a deep breath, smell a hint of something woodsy, like aftershave or cologne, and squeeze him tighter when I exhale. His chest heaves against mine, and his heart beats furiously. A moment later he pulls away so quickly, I’m left with arms still in a semicircle, suspended in the air. I quickly drop them, feeling uncomfortable.
“Thank you,” Andrew says, scrubbing a hand across his chin and wiping at his eyes. He sounds better, stronger, though he looks anything but, and we sit back down.
“It’s the least I can do.”
He tilts his head slightly to the side, confusion on his face, and I feel self-conscious. Then he turns to Sam, who is sitting with Audrey on another bank of waiting room chairs. “How are you doing, buddy? Feeling okay?”
“I’m fine, Dad,” Sam says, only briefly raising his eyes to meet Andrew’s.
“Good,” he says. Then more quietly he says to me, “He’s been sick. Has had this fever and sore throat thing for a couple of days.”
I nod, and then there’s a lull between us. I start to get antsy; I don’t do well with silence, especially in highly emotional situations. “How long do they expect Jack to be in surgery?”
Andrew’s jaw works furiously. I know he’s holding back more tears, and I quickly regret asking the question. “They can’t know for sure, but the surgeon said to prepare for a long night.”
Without realizing I’ve done it, I press a hand tightly to my stomach as I think of Jack in the operating room all night, his parents waiting for news, hoping for the best, trying to ignore the worst.
“Are you okay?” Andrew asks, for the first time taking in my open coat, my soiled dress—the bloodstain. He shifts his body to face mine, his hands hovering slightly in front of my stained dress. “You weren’t hurt, were you?”
“No, I’m fine,” I say. “This isn’t my...” My voice trails, thankfully stopping before I finish the sentence, say the word blood. He looks ill, because even though I didn’t say it, we’re both thinking it. I use one hand to close my coat over the stain on my dress and place my other hand on his arm. This time he rests his fingers overtop of mine and squeezes slightly.
“I’m so sorry this is happening, Andrew.” My chest contracts again, the vice grip of guilt moving through me.
He nods, mouth set in a grim line. “Me, too,” he says, voice breaking. He looks down. “They also said Jack’s back is broken. Probably from when he...hit the ground.”
“Oh, Andrew.” I’m finding it hard to breathe, the fabric of my dress, the wrapped tightness of my coat suddenly too constricting.
He keeps his voice low, so Sam and Audrey don’t hear the conversation. “They said there’s a chance he might not walk again.” His eyes fill, and his voice catches. “How the hell do you tell your kid that?”
Jack Beckett is a gifted athlete, a golfer who apparently has a decent chance at playing the professional circuit if he keeps going the way he has been. He has his whole life ahead of him: college, career, a family of his own one day. He needs to walk out of here.
“I don’t know,” I say, a little breathless. My words are the truth, but they sound terribly useless in the moment. “Andrew, is there someone else I can call for you? Or can I get you something? A coffee? Something to eat?”
He shakes his head. “Don’t think I could keep anything down. Thanks, though.” His eyes drop to his phone, where a text message illuminates the screen, and he’s quickly typing back to whoever it is. I tell him I’m just stepping out to make a call, then once outside, sit on a bench beside a hospital gown–clad woman attached to an IV pole, halfway through a cigarette. I can’t catch my breath and so bend at the waist and suck in great heaving lungfuls of air.
“You okay, honey?” the woman asks, her voice raspy. She rests her elbows on her splayed knees and takes a long pull on her cigarette, watching me.
I look to her face, heavily wrinkled and a sickly shade of yellow, and shake my head. “No,” I say. The cigarette smoke is making me nauseous, and I want to leave, but my legs aren’t yet ready to hold my weight.
She nods. “Most of us here aren’t.”
6 (#u03196365-e241-516a-a543-24cc33d0df3f)
“I want to stay with Sam,” Audrey implores, after I tell her we need to head home. Andrew’s parents and sister, Suzanne, have arrived, and Alysse managed to get on a flight that will get her here before Jack’s out of surgery.
“We should give them some privacy, Aud,” I reply quietly. I wonder when you learn that particular nuance of crisis—that giving people time and space is appropriate in situations like these—but then just as quickly wonder if that’s actually the best thing for anyone. When Audrey asks again if she can stay with Sam, this time a bit louder, I wish I could use the old “Three...two...one...” trick I used to when she was a preschooler. Audrey would usually concede when I got to “one,” and I never had to follow through on whatever consequence would happen after the countdown. But she’s a teenager now, on the cusp of being a woman who can make her own decisions, and my influence over her is diminishing. Which scares the hell out of me.
Andrew glances at us. “She’s welcome to stay, Meg,” he says. “Suzie can drive them back to our place in a bit.” Suzanne, who with her short blond bob and long limbs looks like the female version of Andrew, nods in response and rubs Sam’s back. I open my mouth to insist Audrey come with me, then see her face and Sam’s, and pause. He needs her right now.
“As long as you’re sure,” I say to Andrew. He murmurs again that it’s fine, and I nod. “Audrey, Dad or I will come get you at Sam’s place a bit later. Text me, okay?”
She hugs me and assures me she will, and after a quick goodbye to Andrew and his family, I head home.
* * *
I sit at the kitchen table in my bloodstained dress, too tired to do all the things I need to: get changed, bury the dead bird, deal with work stuff. My mind is both racing too fast and moving too slow, and I still feel like I can’t draw a full breath.
With shaking hands I pick up my phone and dial Julie, who answers on the first ring.
“Meg! Are you okay? What happened? I heard about Jack Beckett. Oh, my God. Where are you?”
I’m crying too hard to speak.
“Are you at home? Meg?”
“Yes,” I manage to say.
“I’m coming over. Give me ten minutes.”
Nine minutes later Julie lets herself in the front door, and seconds after that she’s got me in a tight hug. “Oh, Maggie. You’re okay.” Though she’s shorter than me, no one would ever call Julie petite. She’s solid and fit, yet still has a soft layer over top of her muscles. She does not subscribe to potions, surgical interventions or negative body image, saying her girls need to see the way “God made her” and understand what a real woman’s body looks like. Her halo of dark curls, that never seem to lay flat no matter what she does, tickle my face, making me sneeze.
“Sorry,” I say, sniffling, but she doesn’t let me go.
“What’s a little snot between friends?” she asks, finally pulling back and holding either side of my face in her hands. “Mags, you look like hell.”
I sniffle again, take the tissue she hands me and honk my nose into it. “I know. I feel like hell, too.”
“Why don’t you go get changed and I’ll make you a cup of tea.” She gently nudges me toward the stairs. “After that you can tell me what happened. Okay?”
I nod. “Thanks. Also, there’s a dead bird upstairs. I need to bury it before Audrey gets home.”
Julie doesn’t miss a beat. “Then I’ll meet you upstairs with tea, and rubber gloves. Off you go.”
Once I’ve stripped out of the bloodstained dress, balling it up with the pashmina and stuffing both into a plastic bag in my closet that I’ll throw in the trash bin later, I pull on some yoga pants and a sweatshirt and swallow two more ibuprofen. I’m standing at the balcony door staring at the tiny brown bird, lying exactly where it fell this morning, when Julie comes in my bedroom.
“Here,” she says, putting the hot tea in my hands. I take a tentative sip, and my eyes widen, the honey and lemon mingling with a hit of whiskey. She shrugs. “I brought the booze with me. Figured this was the time for something stronger than chamomile.” She’s wearing the pink rubber gloves I keep under the kitchen sink and has her hands on her hips. “So that’s the little guy, huh?”
I nod, staring back at the bird. In a flash I see Jack on the road, feel the pills I just swallowed trying to make their way back up.
“Do you want to talk about it?” she asks, and I know she doesn’t mean the bird.
“Not even a little bit.”
Julie nods. “Okay, so about this bird.” She crouches down and gives it a long look. “What do you want to do with it?”
“We could just put it in the trash,” I say. “Audrey doesn’t know what happened.” Making the effort to bury it does seem pointless.
But Julie shakes her head. “I think it needs a proper burial.” She looks pointedly at me. “I think you need this as much as the bird.”
She’s right. I can’t bring myself to put it out with the trash, like its life didn’t matter at all—not today. Frowning, I take a deep breath and hold out my hands. “Give me the gloves.”
“I don’t mind,” Julie says but then, seeing my face, pulls the gloves off her hands and gives them to me. I open the sliding glass door to the balcony and gently pick up the bird with some difficulty, thanks to how small its body is and how awkward the gloves are. Its body is stiff, yet so light it’s practically weightless. Julie holds the half-empty tissue box from my nightstand toward me and I set the bird’s body inside, covering it with a few tissues so I don’t have to look at it anymore.
We already have two birds buried in our backyard—a baby robin that was pushed from its nest a few springs ago, and the yellow finch that started Audrey’s save-the-backyard-birds campaign in our house. The graves are marked by two stones, upon which Audrey has painted red hearts with wings, and I start digging with the garden spade about a foot away from the one on the left. The wind blows strong, and Julie, sitting on the grass beside me, holds tightly to the tissue box so it doesn’t get knocked over by a gust.
A half hour later back in the bedroom, Julie and I are meticulously placing Audrey’s gel clings in a pattern on the balcony windows, tiny semicircles of dirt still stuck under my fingernails from the bird’s burial, when my phone rings.
“Hey, sorry. I’ve been in the meeting. Everything all right? I just saw your missed calls.” He sounds like he’s had a couple drinks, his words soft around the edges, and I wonder exactly where this afternoon’s meeting is taking place.
“Ryan.” I sit hard on the side of the bed, the gel cling in my hand wilting against my fingers. “Just a second,” I say to him, pressing the phone to my chest and looking at Julie. “I’m good. You don’t need to finish that.”
“Are you sure?” she asks. “I still have—” she glances at her watch “—thirty minutes before the kids go ballistic wondering where their dinner is.” She smiles, and I return it.
“I’m sure,” I say. “Thank you, Jules.”
She watches me for a beat, then blows me a kiss. “Always, my friend. Okay, call me later?”
“I will.” I wave as she leaves my bedroom, then put the phone back to my ear.
“Sorry, just saying bye to Julie.”
Ryan gives a low whistle. “You sound rough. Guess you’re not feeling bet—”
“There was a car accident.”
A pause, heavy between us. Then the rush of questions. “What happened? Are you okay? Is Audrey okay? What kind of accident?” His tone now sharp, worried, impatient.
“It wasn’t us. We’re okay.” My tone weak and weary. “But Jack Beckett got hit by a car. Right in—” My throat catches as I try to hold things in, control the flood of emotions. I shake my head and close my eyes against the images of Jack, his jagged shinbone, the nausea bubbling inside my stomach. “Right in front of us.”
“Sam’s brother? Shit. Is he okay? Was Audrey in the car with you? What the hell happened?”
Yes. No. Yes. I’m not entirely sure, but it’s at least partly my fault.
“It was a couple of blocks from the school. I had just picked Audrey up for her appointment, so, yes, she was with me,” I reply. “She’s at Children’s now with Sam.”
“Why is she at Children’s? I thought you said she was okay?”
“She’s fine, Ryan. She wanted to stay with Sam.”
“God, what a nightmare.” Ryan lets out a long breath, and I know he’s imagining what it would be like for Audrey to be the one hurt. But he’s thankfully saved from the images in my head, which are making it difficult to stay upright. “Are you all right?”
“I’m fine,” I say, forcing strength I’m not feeling into my voice. “I’ll fill you in when you get home.”
“Do you want me to come home?” Ryan asks. “I can pick Audrey up on the way.”
“She wants to stay with Sam, at least for now. And I’m fine. You don’t need to come home.” I work hard to make this part sound true, because I realize how much I want to be alone right now.
“I’ll text Audrey and let her know I’m picking her up,” Ryan says, his voice firm.
“Don’t,” I say, too fast. I pause briefly, then decide it needs to be said. “I can tell you’ve been drinking.”
There’s silence on the other end. “I’ve had half a beer, Meg.”
“Sorry, I didn’t mean...” I sigh, exhausted, lying back against the pillows and closing my eyes.
“No, I’m sorry.” He sounds frustrated but genuinely apologetic. I’m not even sure what we’re apologizing for at this point.
I turn my head, and a tear drops on to the pillow. “I’ll text you when she’s ready to be picked up, and we’ll figure it out.”
“Okay,” Ryan says, pausing again. “Are you sure you’re okay?”
My body quivers with my need to get off the phone. “Yes. Go back to your meeting.”
He sighs, and I know he’s struggling to decide what to do, despite what I’ve said. “I love you, Meg.”
“Me, too,” I say, then hit End Call.
I feel my fever climbing again, a chill tickling my skin, and give in, folding my sick self under the duvet. I turn up the volume on my phone so I’ll know when Audrey texts, then press my heavy head against the cool pillow. At first all I can see when I close my eyes is Jack Beckett, the aftereffects of the accident, and I’m not sure I’ll be able to sleep. But moments later I fall into a deep slumber.
7 (#u03196365-e241-516a-a543-24cc33d0df3f)
The dream is restless, terrifying, and all I want to do is get away from the scene in front of me. But it isn’t the accident I’m dreaming about—at least not today’s accident.
I’m trembling, my tank top and denim miniskirt soaked and clinging cold to my body. It’s raining and dark—aside from two beams of light that seem to be pointing straight up into the sky. I want to run, to get out of the storm, but as I turn in circles I see wide-open fields, a long and empty road stretched in front of me. It’s then I notice someone, walking on the road toward me. I squint, wipe at my eyes, taste raindrops when I open my mouth to shout to this person. It doesn’t occur to me to be scared. But my body is humming with something...adrenaline, I think, though I can’t sort out why my muscles seem to know something is wrong, but my mind doesn’t.
A few moments later the person is close enough for me to see who it is. Paige Holden. My high school best friend. Relief ripples through me, and I start laughing with release.
“Paige!” But my mouth is full of water, the rain everywhere, and I choke a little. Coughing, I shout again. “Paige!” I’m relieved she’s here, but she doesn’t seem to hear my cries despite being only a few feet away. She’s also soaked to the bone but isn’t doing anything to wipe the steady stream of water running down her face.
I’m about to call her name again when the words die in my throat. She’s stopped walking—too far for me to reach if I stretch my arms as far as they’ll go, but she’s close enough I can see everything, the two streams of light, which I now realize are headlights, illuminating her. Oh. God.
Her blond hair, once so pretty and the envy of most of our friends, is caked with rusty red clumps, the usually bone-straight strands tangled in knots. The rain seems to have done nothing to rid her shirt—which used to be a pretty pale blue eyelet tank—of the dark crimson blotches covering its surface. I suddenly understand all the red is blood, her blood. But it’s her head, specifically the shape of it, that makes my legs give out. I didn’t notice before, the shadows that followed her while she walked toward me hiding it, but now I see what’s missing. The left side of her head—including one beautiful blue eye—is gone. Just...gone.
I wake myself screaming. Taking a few deep breaths I try to calm the rattling inside me, but the image of Paige’s face hovers around the edges of my consciousness, and I think I’m going to be sick.
It has been twenty-eight years since that horrible night, and nearly as many since Paige came to me while I slept.
And now it’s happening again.
* * *
Two days after Ryan slid the engagement ring on my finger—only a week after my twenty-fifth birthday—was when I learned my mom had breast cancer.
Back then we had a weekly, standing dinner with my parents: Sunday night, seven o’clock. A free meal was always welcome as we were broke—Ryan in pre-med at Tufts and me working a front desk job at an orthodontist’s office, my eye on teacher’s college by the fall if we could afford it. Ryan proposed on a Friday evening and though I was bursting to call my mom moments after, I decided to wait until our dinner. So I sat on our exciting news for two days, having no idea my mom was sitting on some news of her own.
We arrived ten minutes early, like always, because for my parents, showing up on time meant you were already late. I wore my engagement ring but kept my hand in my skirt’s pocket when Dad opened the door. He seemed distracted and tired, his face drawn and the buttons on his shirt mismatched by one hole, which was out of character. He was always immaculately dressed, even for a trip to the gas station. But I assumed he was merely work-weary—being a high school principal wasn’t an easy job, teenagers masters at creating drama-fueled challenges—and that mom was too busy getting ready for dinner to notice.
After Dad poured our drinks, Danny, my younger brother, regaled us with stories from middle school, while Mom’s famous black bean and cilantro cream enchiladas warmed in the oven. I couldn’t keep the grin off my face. I was sitting on my left hand, had been careful to keep the ring out of view. A lull in the conversation came, and I opened my mouth to shout the words, “We’re engaged!” when my mom suddenly stood, her small shoulders rolling back and her chin held high.
“I have cancer.”
I don’t remember doing it, but suddenly I was standing as well, facing her. “What?” The word, barely a whisper. My hands shook, the beautiful, if not tiny, cushion-cut diamond ring on my finger forgotten.
A lot happened all at once. Dad started crying. So did I. Danny fetched a box of tissues, seeming more mature than his thirteen years, and pushed them into our hands. Mom assured us, in her best nurse’s no-nonsense tone, she would be fine. Ryan stood beside me and I clutched on to him.
Though Mom’s cancer was advanced, there were decent treatment options. Plenty of people survived cancer these days, so why not Mom, who was tenacious and well-equipped for what lay ahead?
But those three words, “I have cancer,” shook something loose in me, took my confidence and spun it around like socks in a dryer. My mother was my rock, a small woman with a huge personality and the ability to put my brother and me in our places with only a glance. Because of her I knew how to throw a proper dinner party, I understood being kind was as important as being smart or successful, and that she would always be there for me. Without her I would not have survived the aftermath of Paige’s accident—along with a million tiny heartbreaks in my childhood, like when my beloved guinea pig, Sherman, died and when Johnny Saxon dumped me after I gave him my first kiss. My mother carried me through the grief that threatened to swallow me whole after Paige died—I knew I needed her as much as an adult as I did as a child.
I wanted to be stoic, like she, my dad and Danny were that evening, but her diagnosis pulled the rug right out from under me. To this day I’m still embarrassed by how selfishly I took her news. One of my first thoughts upon hearing she’d need chemotherapy and would likely lose her hair was to hope it would grow back in time for the wedding. I couldn’t cope, so instead focused on the small, unimportant things, like taking wedding pictures with a bald mother-of-the-bride.
Six months later Ryan and I were married—in a no-frills ceremony at city hall, Mom wearing a gorgeous wig—and I quit my job to take care of her a month after that when it became clear the cancer was winning. Dad had Danny to worry about, plus he had to keep working to pay the bills, and I needed to be useful. But there was only so much a daughter’s love and devotion could do, and much too soon for all of us, Dad and I were picking out a granite headstone, Danny standing beside us with silent tears rolling down his peach-fuzz covered face, me understanding I would now have to live with a hole inside me, forever.
It was around that time the debilitating nausea started. I was distracted by my grief and so, not worried, but Ryan—suffering “second year syndrome,” medical student hypochondria—dragged me to a specialist after I threw up in the sink one night after dinner. The doctor agreed it might be an ulcer, certainly the stress of the last year could have done it, she said, and they took enough blood I actually felt woozy when we left the clinic. Of all the possible things it could have been, I was not expecting the result: I was pregnant.
With the baby on the way and my heart still shattered from Mom’s death, I nested in our cramped apartment full of secondhand furniture and cheap but cheerful decor and tried to prepare for motherhood. Meanwhile, Ryan finished second year, and Dad started dating, which I thought was absolutely too soon, but I never said so because I’d promised Mom I wouldn’t let Dad wither away.
“I love your father, Margaret, but he is a man born without the ability to read a recipe or keep his whites and darks separate in the laundry machine. Bless him, my Hugh.” I’d laughed softly when she said this, but I knew the domestic tasks excuse was a cover. Dad did better as a team. Plus, Danny, only a week away from celebrating his fourteenth birthday when Mom died, also needed someone. He was too young, she said, to be left without a mother.
“But he has a mother,” I’d said, biting my lip to keep the tears at bay so she would see how strong I was. How capable she raised me to be. “I’ll take care of Dad. And Danny.”
She’d taken my hand then and pressed my palm to the paper-thin skin of her cancer-hollowed cheek. “You have your own life to worry about,” she’d said. “I won’t steal the joy of that away from you, along with everything else I’m taking.” I’d nodded, leaned into her body so bony and frail and smelling like antiseptic—the scent of sickness and death—but still warm with life and love.
I never did announce my engagement that evening. It wouldn’t be until the next day, when I sat with Mom and Dad at her oncology appointment, that my secret would be revealed.
“What is this?” she’d exclaimed, grabbing my hand and holding it up to the light. Delight had brightened her face as she stared at the ring. She’d still looked like herself—wavy brown hair to her shoulders, enough weight on her body to prove she loved good food—and despite where we were and why we were there, it’s one of my favorite memories of my mother.
“Hugh, the grandbabies are coming!” she’d trilled loudly. Her enthusiasm and happiness had made me laugh, but I also felt bolstered—she wouldn’t leave before meeting her first grandchild.
* * *
By the time I drag myself out of bed and splash cold water on my face it’s just before seven, and I still feel horrible—brittle with fever, consumed by shock and worry for Jack, and humming from the vestiges of my nightmare about Paige and the bittersweet memories of Mom. I text Audrey and am making a cup of tea when I hear the front door open.
“Meg?”
Tears come to my eyes, and I hastily wipe them away. “In here,” I call out. I turn and lean against the counter, the ceramic mug hot in my hands. Ryan comes into the kitchen and I smile, all the bad feelings I was holding on to about this morning’s argument gone the moment I see him, wanting nothing more than to be inside the safety of his arms.
“Hi,” he says.
“Hi,” I reply, taking a sip of my drink and glancing at the clock. 7:06 p.m. “You came home early.”
He smiles. “I came home early.” He walks to me and, careful not to spill my drink, puts his hands on my shoulders and kisses my forehead. “I left the meeting right after you called and went to Children’s. Audrey was still there.” His eyes—at times blue, at times gray, but today a flecked mix—are concerned. He holds a gentle hand to my forehead, in the spot he just kissed. “You’re hot.”
“Thank you,” I say, batting my eyelashes. Then I cough hard, and my tea spills, scalding and sticky on to my hands. “Ouch!”
Ryan rips off a few sheets from the paper towel roll. He gently wipes my hands, then the edge of my mug and the small circle of wet on the floor near my feet.
“How was everyone doing?” I ask, as he tosses the soiled paper towel into the trash.
“As well as can be expected. Audrey filled me in on what happened.” He watches my face, waiting to see if I want to talk about it. I just nod. “She wanted to stay with Sam until Jack is out of surgery, which might be a while,” he adds. The corners of his mouth turn down, and I wonder what else he knows. “Go, sit,” he says, gesturing to the living room couch. “I’ll join you in a minute, okay?”
I kiss his cheek before heading to the living room, where, with a contented sigh, I sink into the plush cushions. A few minutes later Ryan sits beside me, pulling my slippered feet onto his lap and wrapping my legs in a blanket. Once he’s cocooned me, he grabs the beer he brought with him from the kitchen and twists the cap.
“What did you find out? About Jack?” I hold my breath, my heart racing. Ryan doesn’t answer immediately, and suddenly I’m terrified.
“Is he going to live?” I whisper.
He pauses. With his telling silence I wilt deeper into the cushions, tears springing to my eyes.
“Oh, my god, Ryan—”
“He’s fighting hard,” Ryan says. “But he has a tough road ahead.”
I sit up a bit straighter and steel myself for what a “tough road” means.
“He has a skull fracture and some bleeding in his brain.” Ryan puts a hand on my knee, rubs firmly. “Meg, Praskesh is his surgeon, and he’s the best. He’ll get it under control.”
“I don’t know if Audrey should be there, Ryan. It’s too much. For them. For her.” I take a deep breath, my heart hammering in my chest. I recognize the feeling as panic—I desperately want Audrey home with me, where I can know for sure that she’s okay.
“Someone she loves is suffering a whole lot right now,” he says. “Sam needs her there. And she’s okay. I just saw her. She’s fine, Meg, all things considered.”
I nod and try to control my quivering lips. “What about Jack’s leg? And his back? Andrew said it was broken?”
“They’re trying to save his leg,” Ryan says. Then he sighs, runs a hand over his face, and I try to focus. I think about how when Jack woke up this morning, he had no idea it would be his last as a carefree teenager. That the moment he stepped off the curb, his life would never be the same again. “As for his spine, jury’s still out. It depends on the break. And if his spinal cord was completely severed or not.”
Bile moves up in my throat, and I swallow reflexively a few times. “And if it is completely severed? What will that mean?”
“He’ll be paralyzed.”
A violent shiver moves through me, and my tea nearly spills again on the couch.
“Hey. Hey, come here.” Ryan takes my mug and places it on the ottoman tray. He shimmies closer, tucks me under his arm and rests his head on mine. I fight the tears so hard my shaking intensifies, and Ryan rocks me, like he did when my mom died, and when Audrey was hospitalized with a terrifying case of pneumonia when she was only a year old. “He’s young, Meg. And strong. Even if we’re talking worst case and he’s paralyzed, he can make it through this.” Of course “worst case” isn’t actually paralysis—that would be Jack not surviving this—but I don’t say anything because I understand Ryan is trying to help me.
“Talk to me.” Ryan’s face, so familiar, is creased with worry—his age beginning to show in how easily the lines form on his forehead and around his eyes and don’t fully disappear when at rest. I want to tell him that seeing Jack Beckett fly off Sarah Dunn’s car has brought up what I went through at sixteen, and I wonder if he’s already figured that out.
But still, Ryan doesn’t know everything about the night that Paige died. Just that there was a horrific car accident after a reckless teenage party—the incident made all the papers and news channels, and though we weren’t named, being young adults, our story was used as a cautionary tale in practically every high school in Massachusetts. But though Ryan knows the details of how Paige died and that I witnessed the accident, he’s never understood why I hold myself responsible. The full truth is right there on the tip of my tongue, straining to be released as he holds me. “If you can’t trust the ones you love,” my mom used to say, “life will always feel harder than it needs to be.” But then he shifts position, and the moment is gone, and I tuck the secret and all it carries back inside again.
8 (#u03196365-e241-516a-a543-24cc33d0df3f)
The next morning I see the gel clings on our bedroom windows and smile, thinking of Audrey and her big, bird-loving heart. Then I remember what happened the day before, and the smile melts from my face.
I’m alone in bed, Ryan already up. Squinting at the clock I see it’s nearly seven, and as I come more fully to consciousness I hear shuffling, movement underneath me. The sounds of my family getting ready for the day. I wait a few more minutes, working up the courage to face the day—it was late by the time Ryan went to pick Audrey up at the Becketts, and I was half asleep on the couch when she gave me a kiss good-night before heading to bed. I’m not sure how she’s doing today, though I can imagine.
When I finally walk into the kitchen in my robe and slippers, the vestiges of sleep still clinging to me, Ryan hands me a mug of coffee, and I grimace. “Can’t do it,” I croak, handing it back.
He pulls out his phone and taps the flashlight icon. “I called Prakesh to check in on how Jack’s doing this morning. They were able to stop the bleeding and stabilize his skull fracture, and repair the leg. He’s hanging in there.”
“Oh, thank god,” I say, momentarily refreshed by the sense of relief that washes over me. But then I remember the possible paralysis. “What about...the other thing?”
He shakes his head, a frown on his face, and I know Jack is paralyzed. The weight is back, painfully heavy on my shoulders, and it’s all I can do not to burst into tears. Ryan notices and places a gentle finger under my chin. “Let’s worry about you for now, okay?” he says softly. “Open up.”
I open my mouth and stick my tongue way out while he shines the light into my throat. I can smell my rose face cream on his skin—he claims to not need moisturizer whenever I offer to pick up some for him, but my own bottle seems to disappear at a mysterious rate.
“Yuck!” Audrey says, her head right beside Ryan’s as he shines the light down my throat. I resist the urge to close my mouth, my jaw beginning to complain.
“Strep,” Ryan announces, releasing my chin. “Classic.” Even though as a radiologist he probably hasn’t seen a case of strep since medical school, Ryan prides himself on being able to diagnose illnesses that send one to a family doctor. He also likes to guess how many stitches a cut will need, or how many degrees a fever is, or which strain of flu has felled us.
I sigh, rubbing my jaw. “At least I don’t have any showings today. But I can’t do strep right now. No time.”
“That’s what Sam has,” Audrey says, licking yogurt off her spoon before dipping it back into the container. “Apparently it’s going around school.” She looks a bit tired but otherwise seems fairly chipper, considering yesterday’s events. I wonder if she’s simply putting on a good performance.
“Well, I hate to tell you this, sweetheart, but you’re doing it,” Ryan says to me as he tucks his phone into the side pocket of his bag and swigs the last of his coffee. “I’m going to drop Audrey at school on the way in, and you’re going to go get swabbed. Just to be sure.”
“You’re going to school?” I turn to her with surprise.
“Why wouldn’t I?” She jumps from her chair at the table and rinses her empty yogurt container out before tossing it into the recycling bin under the sink. I look over at Ryan. Surely she needs at least one day off, to process and talk about what we went through yesterday?
“She’s okay, Meg,” Ryan says, as I open and then close my mouth.
“I’m okay, Mom,” she reiterates, glancing between Ryan and me. “It’s not like we were the ones in the accident or anything.”
“That’s true, Aud, but it’s still a pretty scary thing to see a friend go through.” I wish I could explain how the trauma of being an observer to something so horrifying can be nearly as bad as physical bumps or bruises. Audrey is nearly the same age I was when Paige died, and I’ll never forget what it felt like to realize we weren’t invincible—that terrible things could happen at any moment. “How’s Sam doing?” She shrugs, says he’s okay. “Is there anything you want to talk about? About Jack, or the accident?” I ask, giving her arm a rub.
She slings her backpack over her shoulder, knocking my hand off her arm in the process. I tell myself she didn’t mean to do it. “Nope,” she says, then turns to Ryan. “Can we go? I don’t want to be late.”
I look at Ryan as if to say, “Can you give it a try?” but he’s busy packing up his bag and doesn’t notice.
“We can talk later,” I say to Audrey, tugging on her backpack shoulder strap so she looks at me. “Audrey?”
“Fine,” she says, rolling her eyes. I pull her to me for a tight hug despite the resistance I feel in her lithe body. I breathe in the scent of her hair, something fruity with a hint of lavender, feeling grateful for the hundredth time since yesterday afternoon that she wasn’t the one in front of that car.
“Mom, we’ve got to go.” She pats my back a couple of times to placate me. “Love you.”
“Love you, too.”
Ryan grabs the handles of his leather duffel bag that he takes to the gym on his lunch break and gives me a kiss. I turn at the last minute so his lips graze my cheek, and he smiles. “Meg, you know I never get sick.” It’s true. After so many years in med school and working in the hospital, Ryan never seems to catch anything.
“I’ll pick you up after school,” I say to Audrey. “We can get ice cream or something.”
She scowls. “It’s too cold for ice cream. And I don’t need a ride. I’m going to the hospital with Sam after school to see Jack.”
I frown.
“Dad said it was okay,” she says, pointing at Ryan.
“Not a good idea, Aud,” I say, not commenting on Ryan’s lax attitude. “Jack’s only just had surgery, and we don’t know where things are at. Plus, I’m sure they’re all exhausted. They don’t need company right now.”
Audrey looks perturbed in the way only a teenaged girl can. “Sam asked me to go with him. It’s fine, Mom. And Dad already said I could.”
I take a deep breath. “Well, it’s not fine with me.” Ryan sighs, almost imperceptibly, but I catch it. “I’ve asked you to come home so we can have a chat. And that can be over ice cream or hot chocolate or whatever, but we are going to talk about things. So I’ll see you in the pickup line, okay?”
She stomps her foot, the way she used to when she was little and didn’t get her way. “You are so annoying!” she shouts before slamming the door to the garage behind her with extra force.
Ryan adjusts the strap of his messenger bag, looks at me with eyebrow raised.
I sit down at the kitchen table and rest my head in my hands. “Why did you tell her she could go? I’m sure the Becketts need time alone right now. Plus, I want to talk with her about yesterday. Make sure she’s all right.”
He doesn’t respond right away, watches me closely. “Look, I know this has probably brought up a lot of stuff for you,” he says, and I peer at him through my hands. I swallow hard, know he’s talking about Paige. “But this situation is completely different. And if she wants to talk about it, she’ll talk, Meg. I don’t think forcing the issue is a great idea.”
I nod, but not because I agree. Simply to acknowledge I’ve heard him. “Tell her I’ll see her in the pickup line, okay?”
Ryan sighs again, this time with barely concealed frustration. “I think you should be prepared for things not to go the way you hope.”
The way I hope? Nothing about this is what I hoped for—but I won’t pretend like our fifteen-year-old has enough emotional maturity to process what happened yesterday on her own. I know how the aftereffects of witnessing such a tragedy can be slow to show themselves, coming out when you least expect them, and it’s my job to support Audrey, whether she wants it or not. Like my mother did for me.
“Noted,” I say to Ryan, matching his frustrated tone. “See you later.”
He starts to open the door, then turns back. “If you want to talk, I’m here, okay?”
“I know,” I reply, some of my irritation slipping away. “Hope you have a good day.”
“You, too,” he says, before heading through the door.
There have been many times I’ve missed having my mom to talk with since she died—when Audrey was a newborn and I couldn’t figure out how to get her to latch on, after what happened with Emma on New Year’s, when I sold my first house, when I caught seven-year-old Audrey stealing a pack of gum from the variety store and marched her back to confess and apologize. But it’s been a long time since I felt the pain of her loss, like someone is burning me from the inside out, and with a sob I wrap my arms around my body and imagine they’re her arms instead.
9 (#u03196365-e241-516a-a543-24cc33d0df3f)
After a jittery, somewhat white-knuckled drive to the clinic—this is the first time I’ve been behind the wheel since the blurry drive to and from the hospital yesterday after Jack’s accident—I make a quick stop at the pharmacy for antibiotics, then go home. My plan is to spend the rest of the day before school pickup alternating between our bed and the living room couch. But by the time I get home my phone has exploded with messages and texts, and sleep seems out of the question.
Julie has sent three check-in texts and Ryan one, asking if I made it the clinic and if I mind if he plays squash after work with his colleague Jamie. My in-box has twenty-five unread messages, a dozen of which are from Tom—even though he knows I’m taking a sick day—about everything from how much wine to get for the open house to whether lilies are “too predictable.” Emma and the PTO need volunteers for the town hall meeting at Merritt High Sunday night, to kick off the school’s anti-texting-while-driving campaign. My dad sent flight details for his upcoming visit for Thanksgiving, along with a link to Elizabeth Gilbert’s TED talk, which he feels should be mandatory watching for Audrey.
And though I’m busy and distracted most of the day—finally sending out the open house invitation and responding to Tom’s unrelenting questions—thoughts of Jack and the accident squeeze their way into the quiet moments in-between. I’m desperate to know what’s happening but am not sure how to find out. I don’t want to bother Andrew and Alysse, plus Ryan would likely update me if he had any new information. I suppose I could text Audrey, but based on how we left things this morning, I suspect she’ll ignore me.
I try to focus on work but end up obsessing over the “what ifs” while making a cup of tea, only realizing once I take a sip I never actually boiled the water. What if Jack hadn’t stopped to tie his shoelace? What if I’d been paying closer attention, had seen Sarah’s car? What if Sarah Dunn hadn’t chosen that moment to respond to her ex-husband’s text and had kept her eyes on the road?
By the time it’s school pickup time, I’m still feeling ragged and worn out, but at least it’s a beautiful day, warm enough for only a sweater and jeans. With only one main road leading to and from Merritt High, it’s impossible not to drive right past the accident site, where signs have recently been erected, including a hand-painted one that reads, Honk if you love Jesus, text while driving if you want to meet Him. I try to keep my eyes on the road ahead, but they drift to the large pile of colorful flowers in plastic wrap situated on the edge of the curb, right near where Jack lay bleeding in the street yesterday afternoon. I’m weak when I approach the accident spot and press the gas a little more firmly to get by it all more quickly.
A minute later I drive past the semicircle driveway in front of the school and into Merritt High’s parking lot. I’ve decided Audrey and I will take a walk on the nearby trail and have a chat. The school sent an email about the crisis team they set up to talk with the students, but I know how easy it is to tell experts what they want to hear. No, Audrey needs to convince me she’s coping before I leave it alone, like Ryan suggests I should.
I’m standing by the front doors, only a few cars in the pickup line because it’s still early, holding a tray with two lattes—after much nagging, I’ve recently agreed that Audrey can drink coffee, as long as it comes with loads of milk—when I hear my name.
“Meg?”
I turn and see Andrew, in his car at the front of the pickup line. The window is down, and he’s leaning across the passenger seat.
“Hi,” I say, walking over to the car and bending down. “How are you?”
It’s a question asked out of habit, but I resist the urge to cringe because the answer is obvious. Dark shadows cup his eyes, the darkness highlighted because of how pale he looks. His hair is disheveled, some pieces sticking up, others laying flat against his head. He’s obviously been up all night.
“We’re hanging in there.” He dips his chin, and I can see him fighting to maintain an expression that backs up his words. “Want to get in? They won’t be out for another ten minutes or so.”
“Sure,” I say, even though I don’t want to. Because when I look at Andrew I see Jack, and all I can think about is my careless wave, about how Jack’s body looked flying off of Sarah Dunn’s car. Swallowing hard and forcing the image from my mind, I nudge the passenger side door with my hip and hand Andrew the tray of lattes as I get in. “Do you want one?” I ask, pointing to the tray, hoping my voice sounds steady, because inside I’m a wobbly mess. “It’s for Audrey, but honestly, I’m still not fully onboard with her drinking coffee.”
“No, thanks,” he says. “It was a pretty rough night, and I don’t think my body can take any more caffeine, to be honest.”
I nod, rest the tray on my lap, unsure what to say next as we sit quietly side by side. “So Sam’s at school today?”
“Yeah. No fever and he seems better, physically at least, so it was hard to say no when he wanted to be at school with his friends.” Now I better understand Audrey’s insistence this morning—Sam was here. “I wanted to keep him home, not just because he’s been sick...obviously.” He tries, but this time he can’t control his face, which is cracking with his new reality. I put my hand on his arm and give it a squeeze, turning slightly away from him, so I don’t start crying. “It’s hard to believe, but life just carries on, you know?”
“I know,” I say. I’m about to ask how Jack’s doing even though I’m afraid of the answer, when a tickle in my throat makes me cough. Which turns in to a full-blown coughing fit I try desperately to quell with my hot latte, unsuccessfully.
Andrew pulls a wrapped throat lozenge out of his coat pocket. “Sam says they taste like poison.” He smiles, though I notice it doesn’t reach his eyes. Still coughing I take the lozenge from his hand before quickly unwrapping it and popping it in my mouth. The eucalyptus is strong and wafts out with my breath, cool air rushing into the back of my throat.
“Thanks,” I say, the tickle subsiding. I clear my throat, steel myself to ask the question I know must be asked. “How’s Jack doing?”
His mouth drops into a frown. “Surgery went as well as expected, but he’s still critical. And he might need more surgery for his leg.” He doesn’t say anything about the paralysis, and I don’t ask. But my stomach aches, thinking about how Jack is never going to be the same now—he’s lost a part of his identity, and I can’t imagine what that does to a young person at the prime of his physicality. Meg, look what you’ve done...
“We’re heading back to the hospital as soon as I get Sam,” he adds. “I need to give Aly a break, too. She hasn’t left his room, and she’s...” His frown deepens, and I imagine what it must be like to be Alysse. To be Jack’s mother. “She just needs a break. If she’ll take it.”
Alysse Beckett is one of those woman you want to hate—successful, beautiful, somehow finds time for triathlons and charity benefits—but can’t, because she has this intoxicating way of making you feel important when you’re talking with her. We recently had a lovely chat about Sam and Audrey at a mutual friend’s barbecue, and shared a joke about how we might get to co-plan a future wedding. But even with her flawless exterior, I know there must be cracks under the surface. No one can be that perfect all the time.
“I’m sure you all need a break,” I say softly. Guilt twists in my gut. I have an overwhelming need to help them, to do something. Anything. “How can I help? Maybe bring you some meals, so you don’t have to worry about that?”
Andrew stares straight ahead, and for a moment I’m not sure my words have reached him. “That would be great,” he finally says, when he comes back to himself. “I have a feeling we’re going to be spending too much time in the hospital’s cafeteria.”
“Consider it done.” I’m pleased he’s accepted the offer. Usually people retreat in these situations—I saw it happen with my dad, when he kept saying he was fine, didn’t need help from anyone but thank you for the thought.
“We’re going to be at the hospital 24/7, at least for now, but I want life to stay as sane and normal for Sam as possible.” He looks to the school entrance, still empty, and I notice a slight shake to his voice. “I’m trying to hold it together for him, you know?” I nod as tears come to my eyes. “This is a lot for us to handle, but Sam. Well, I’m worried about him.”
I’m about to ask more about Sam, say a kind word about how hard this must be for him and Alysse, juggling the needs of their sick son with those of their healthy one, when my phone rings. I jump, look at the screen, see it’s Tom.
“Do you need to get that?” Andrew asks as I frown at the phone, wondering which of the issues in the dozen emails I sent back to Tom he’s calling about.
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Karma Brown
Тип: электронная книга
Жанр: Современная зарубежная литература
Язык: на английском языке
Издательство: HarperCollins
Дата публикации: 16.04.2024
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О книге: In a single moment everything can change. Meg Pepper has a fulfilling career and a happy family. Most days she’s able to keep it all together and glide through life. But then, in one unalterable moment, everything changes.After school pickup one day, she stops her car to wave a teenage boy across the street…just as another car comes hurtling down the road and slams into him.Meg can’t help but blame herself for her role in this horrific disaster. Full of remorse, she throws herself into helping the boy’s family as he rehabs from his injuries. But the more Meg tries to absolve herself, the more she alienates her own family – and the more she finds herself being drawn to the boy’s father.Soon Meg’s picture-perfect life is unravelling before her eyes. As the painful secrets she’s been burying bubble dangerously close to the surface, she will have to decide: Can she forgive herself, or will she risk losing everything she holds dear to her heart?Readers love Karma Brown:“touching, heartfelt, and compelling”“huge fan of her writing style”“I LOVED this book and the way it deals with guilt and grief and forgiveness”“her books just get better and better!”