It would have been so much better for everyone.
I need to get out of here. I need to go home. I can’t go home.
I didn’t hit anyone that night. I didn’t hurt anyone.
I know I didn’t.
I’m pretty sure.
I’m not sure at all.
I feel sick. I’m going to be sick, right here in the grass.
Did I kill someone? Did I kill her mother?
I need Rev. I need to talk to Rev.
BUT HE WON’T ANSWER HIS PHONE.
I try again anyway. My fingers are sweaty, and I can’t get the screen to work. A noise escapes my throat, and I fling the phone in the grass.
I’m losing my mind. I press my fingers into my eyes. My hands are shaking.
“Murph?” Melonhead is in front of me, peering at me, his eyes concerned. “What’s going on with you, man?”
“I need to go.” My voice sounds like I’m choking. “I can’t do this.”
“What’s going on?”
I turn away and head toward the path that leads to the employee parking lot. Each step feels as though I’m moving through quicksand, but instead of pulling me into the earth, I’m being towed back to Juliet.
I need her. More than anything right now. I need her.
And because of everything between us, I can’t have her.
Melonhead is still beside me. “DECK-lin. Talk to me.”
I find my car and fumble with the keys. Twice. The steel prong refuses to slide into the slot.
I yell and punch the car with the handful of keys. Steel teeth bite into my palm and I hear metal screek.
“Hey. Hey.” Melonhead catches my arm, and he’s stronger than I expect. “Talk to me. Are you high, kid?”
“God. No.” I put my forehead against the roof of the car. I wish I were. “I need to get out of here, Frank. Please let me go.”
He inhales, and I’m ready for warnings about not fulfilling my community service, about calling the judge, about getting thrown back in jail.
“Okay,” he says. “You drive. I’ll listen.”
I drive, but I don’t talk. There’s something soothing about being behind the wheel of a car, and I’m able to settle into the rhythm of the clutch and the hum of the road. At first, I do a few loops through the neighborhood where the cemetery sits, because I’m certain Melonhead is going to tell me that’s enough, that I need to get myself together and go back.
He doesn’t.
So I head farther east, merging onto the highway, until we’re approaching the bridge over the Chesapeake Bay. I’m going to have to shell out six bucks for the toll, because I don’t want to stop.
“Take the Jennifer Road exit,” he says.
We’ve been driving for twenty minutes, and it’s the first word either of us has said. “Why?”
“I want to stop at the hospital.”
My hands grip the steering wheel more tightly. “I don’t need a hospital.”
“Who said anything about you? We’re down here, I’m going to say hello to my wife.”
That cuts through my self-obsession. My eyes flick over. “Your wife is sick?”
He shakes his head. “She works here. I want to surprise her.”
It’s not like I have a planned destination in mind. I hit the turn signal and take the exit.
When I’ve parked in the garage, I don’t kill the engine.
Melonhead unbuckles his seat belt and hits me in the arm. “Come on, Murph.”
“I can wait.”
“Too good to meet my wife? Get out of the car, kid.”
My nerves are shot, and I glare at him. “I’m not in the mood for this.”
“What are you in the mood for?”
I’m in the mood to crawl under this car and hide there forever.
Rev’s words keep echoing in my head. Stop acting like such a damn victim.
The words hit me like a bullet to the vest, and I’m still sore from the impact. I don’t think I’ve ever heard him swear.
I pull the brake and turn the key and climb out of the car. “Whatever. Lead the way.”
The hospital is as busy as it was yesterday. We go in through the main entrance, and people walk in every direction. The people in scrubs and white coats all walk a little bit faster. There’s a guy sleeping on one of the waiting room sofas, and a hugely pregnant woman leaning against the wall by the elevator. She’s swirling a drink in a plastic cup. That baby is giving her T-shirt a run for its money. A toddler is throwing a tantrum somewhere down the hallway. The shrieking echoes.
We move to the bank of elevators, too, and Melonhead isn’t one of those guys who insists on pressing a button that’s already lit. He smiles and says “Good afternoon” to the pregnant woman, but I can’t look away from her swollen belly.
My mother is going to look like that.
My mother is going to have a baby.
My brain still can’t process this.
Suddenly, the woman’s abdomen twitches and shifts. It’s startling, and my eyes flick up to find her face.
She laughs at my expression. “He’s trying to get comfortable.”
The elevator dings, and we all get on. Her stomach keeps moving.
I realize I’m being a freak, but it’s the creepiest thing I’ve ever seen. I can’t stop staring.
She laughs again, softly, then comes closer. “Here. You can feel it.”
“It’s okay,” I say quickly.
Melonhead chuckles, and I scowl.
“Not too many people get to touch a baby before it’s born,” she says, her voice still teasing. “You don’t want to be one of the chosen few?”
“I’m not used to random women asking me to touch them,” I say.
“This is number five,” she says. “I’m completely over random people touching me. Here.” She takes my wrist and puts my hand right over the twitching.
Her belly is firmer than I expect, and we’re close enough that I can look right down her shirt. I’m torn between wanting to pull my hand back and not wanting to be rude.
Then the baby moves under my hand, something firm pushing right against my fingers. I gasp without meaning to.
“He says hi,” the woman says.
I can’t stop thinking of my mother. I try to imagine her looking like this, and I fail.
I try to imagine her encouraging me to touch the baby, and I fail.
Four months.
The elevator dings.
“Come on, Murph,” says Melonhead.
I look at the pregnant lady. I have no idea what to say. Thanks?
“Be good,” she says, and takes a sip of her drink.
The elevator closes and she’s gone.
Melonhead is striding away, and I hustle to catch up to him. We’re on a patient floor now, and the walls are white and conversations are hushed. Monitors beep everywhere. I’m still in my school clothes, so I’m not too dirty, but he’s been at the cemetery all day, and I keep waiting for someone to shoo him out of here.
A slim, dark-haired doctor is tapping keys on a computer built into the wall, and Frank walks right up to her, turns her around, and doesn’t even wait for her to express surprise before planting a kiss right on her lips.
Clearly, it’s a day for people to make me uncomfortable in all kinds of ways.
I turn away, trying to find something else to look at. The nurses. The crayoned pictures taped up along the wall of the nurses’ station.
They’re speaking in Spanish now, and I glance over awkwardly. I imagine their conversation.
What are you doing here?
Nothing really. I was in the area.
Who’s the freak?
Just a murderer who hasn’t been caught yet.
My stomach balls up in knots again. I shouldn’t be here.
I just don’t know where else I should be.
“DECK-lin. This is Carmen.”
I snap back to reality and put a hand out, running on autopilot. “Hi,” I say.
/> “Hello, Declan.” She smiles at me. Her white coat reads Dr. Melendez over the right breast, but when she speaks English, her voice has no trace of an accent. “So you’re the boy Marisol keeps telling me she’s going to marry.”
I cough. “Well. You know. We’re taking it slow.”
Her smile makes her eyes twinkle. “Frank tells me you’re giving him a ride in the car you rebuilt? I’m impressed. I really thought that was a dying art.”
“Nah. I don’t think it’s going anywhere.”
“My neighbor said you picked out the problem with her husband’s car in less than thirty seconds. That’s quite a talent.”
I shrug, unsure what to say. “I guess I have an ear for it.”
A nurse walks by and puts a hand on Dr. Melendez’s shoulder. “Excuse me for interrupting,” she says quietly. “You asked me to let you know when the test results for two-twenty-one were in.”
Melonhead clears his throat. “We’ll let you go.”
“I’m glad you stopped by.” She gives him another kiss, less impassioned this time. “It was nice meeting you, Declan.”
“It was nice meeting you, too.”
And then we’re back in the elevator. Walking to the car. Pulling onto Jennifer Road.
“We went through all that for you to give her a kiss?” I say.
He shrugs. “What else do we have to do?”
Mow half the cemetery. But I don’t say that. I glance over. “We spent more time with the freaky pregnant chick.”
“Maybe one day you’ll love a woman enough that a kiss will be worth all that trouble.”
The thought draws me up short. I’m not sure why, but I’m caught between scowling and blushing. I expect him to tell me to head back to the cemetery, but neither of us says anything else.
I don’t know where else to go, but I do know I’m not ready to head back there, especially if Juliet hasn’t gone home. When I get to the stoplight by Route 50, Melonhead glances over. “Hungry?”
“No.”
“Are you sure? My treat.”
I look at him. “What is this? You give me hell if I check my phone when I’m supposed to be mowing, but now you want to stop for dinner?”
He shrugs. We drive.
“Who’s the girl?” he says eventually.
“What girl?”
“The girl you were watching.”
He might as well have punched me in the side. My chest caves in a little, thinking of Juliet. “No one. I know her from school.”
“She used to come all the time. Now I don’t see her much.”
Juliet. Oh, Juliet.
I can see her first letter in my head, the words so full of pain that they inspired me to write back.
You can see it on her face. Her reality is being ripped away, and she knows it.
Her mother is gone, and she knows it.
There is agony in that picture.
Every time I look at it, I think, “I know exactly how she feels.”
Did I cause that?
“Her mother died.” My throat is closing up, and my words sound thick.
“Ah. So sad.”
My vision blurs and fogs, just a little, just enough. I’m glad I’m not on the highway. “She died in a hit-and-run crash. The same night I got drunk and crashed my father’s truck.”
His voice is quiet, and I see him making the same connections we all did this afternoon. “Were you involved?”
My chest is so tight that I can’t speak. I hit the turn signal hard, and we pull into a parking lot in front of a strip mall. Once I pull the parking brake, I can’t look at him.
I fold my arms tight against my stomach, as if I can somehow ease this pain. “I don’t know.”
“And you’re worried you were?”
“I don’t know. I don’t know what I am. I can’t figure anything out.”
He’s quiet for a little while, and I listen to my breathing, trying to keep it steady.
When he speaks, his voice is low. “You don’t have to figure it out on your own, you know.”
“There’s too much. It’s too complicated now.”
“My wife might be the doctor, but I’m not stupid, Murph. Give it a shot.”
I inhale to tell him off—but instead, I tell him everything.
I start at the beginning, with the letters against the gravestone, how we started writing back and forth to each other. I tell him everything I told Juliet and everything I haven’t told her, and describe how difficult it’s grown to maintain separate storylines of my own life. I tell him about the night I found her on the side of the road, and how she seemed so convinced that I wasn’t there to help her—and my willingness to let her keep on believing that.
I tell him everything about my father, and the auto shop, and secretly driving him around. I tell him about Kerry and how she died.
I tell him about my mother and Alan, and how I’ve turned into an outsider in my own home. I tell him about the pregnancy they’ve hidden from me, how every action they take ties her closer to someone else who will let her down.
I tell him about their wedding day. About the bottle of whiskey. About the crash and the jail cell and Alan’s muttered comments about how I’m turning into my father. I tell him how badly I wanted to end it all, right there.
Frank is a good listener. He doesn’t interrupt, and he doesn’t say anything except for the occasional question to clarify a point.
Finally, I tell him about sitting around the lunch table, about how Rev told me off, and how Juliet needed to be taken to the nurse’s office after learning the date I wrecked the truck.
When I’m done, darkness has begun its crawl among the buildings along Route 50. I feel wrung out and exhausted.
“That’s a lot,” he says when I fall silent.
I nod. “I knew the date,” I say, finding it easier to speak now that I’m speaking to the darkness. “It was the first thing I noticed about her gravestone. But . . . I didn’t know how she died. That came later. A lot later. And I didn’t put those together until today.”
“But you don’t remember striking another vehicle?”
“I barely remember getting in the car.”
His shadowed expression is thoughtful. “Do you know where her mother died? Or when?”
“No.” I hesitate. “I know she was on her way home from the airport. In the evening.”
“Where did you wreck? Would you have crossed paths?”
“I wrecked on Ritchie Highway. I have no idea.”
“But it all happened in the same county?”
“Yeah. I guess.”
He rubs at his jaw. “Well, the police aren’t incompetent, Murph. If you wrecked in the same county, anywhere near the same time, I’m sure they would have investigated you playing a role in a hit-and-run. Especially if a woman died.”
“The truck was destroyed. They had to cut me out of it. Mom said the only thing that saved my life was the seat belt because of the way the brick pillar collapsed onto the air bag. Maybe they couldn’t tell if I’d hit someone else.”
“There are still ways to tell. Paint marks, things like that. Don’t you ever watch crime shows?”
For the first time all evening, some of the weight on my chest eases. “Really?”
“Yes, really.” He pauses. “You could probably look up the mother. A fatal hit-and-run would have been in the news. They might have said what kind of car caused the crash, or at least what color.”
His explanation is so reasonable, so matter of fact, that I want to sob all over the steering wheel and then do cartwheels across the parking lot.
But I don’t.
There’s still the rest of it.
“Do you mind if I give you a few thoughts about everything else?” says Frank.
I shake my head.
“Start heading back,” Frank says. “I’ll talk.”
I shift into gear.
He doesn’t make me wait. “I think your mother and her husband were wrong to kee
p a pregnancy from you this long, if they were doing it intentionally. But from what you tell me about the adults in your life, I’m not too surprised.”
“I don’t know what you mean.”
“I mean your parents let you down when you were young, and they seem to keep doing it.”
I spare a glance at him while I turn back onto the main road. “I still don’t know what you mean.”
“Damn, kid.” For the first time, he sounds righteously angry. “You shouldn’t have been driving your father around. Your mother shouldn’t have let it happen. She shouldn’t be letting you think it’s your fault. I can’t imagine expecting Marisol to cover up something like that. And even if I did, I can’t imagine Carmen letting it continue. You said you don’t know how to apologize to your mother for what you did on her wedding night—has she apologized to you for what she did?”
I shake my head forcefully. “She didn’t—it was complicated.”
“No. It is not complicated. It was a crime, and as far as I’m concerned, your mother bears as much responsibility as your father did.” His accent thickens as his anger grows. “You’re lucky you weren’t killed. You were a child, Murph. And you’re still a kid, but she’s letting you walk around with this kind of guilt. You know why I think she doesn’t visit your father? Because she doesn’t want to face her own responsibility. As far as I’m concerned, she should be right there next to you mowing.” He breaks off and swears in Spanish.
I keep the car between the lines on the highway, but inside I’m spinning out. No one has ever spoken up for me like that. Ever. I’m used to people holding me back, not stepping up in my defense.
Even if we’re alone in the car, that makes a difference.
“It’s not all her fault,” I finally say. “When Kerry died—I think it killed something inside her.”
“She still had you.”
“That’s not exactly a prize. I’m not easy to live with.” I pause. “And I ruined her wedding. I don’t think they’ll ever forgive me for that.”
Melonhead grunts. He’s still pissed off.
That makes me smile, just a little.
“Thanks,” I say.
He nods, but more like he’s still thinking. “Does your stepfather know everything you told me?”
I snort. “Probably.”
“But you don’t know for sure?”