“You should,” I told her. “You need to.”
“I will,” she agreed. “One of these days.”
I eyed her, and her eyes were glassy and haunted. I reached out and cupped her hand, and she closed her eyes, shutting it all away.
“Fuck them, King,” she said softly, and her fingers tightened around mine. “Fuck them all.”
She wet her lips and they were dry, really chapped. I hadn’t noticed before.
“We have to get dog food for Winston,” she added. “He’s really hungry.”
“Okay.”
We stepped over the broken boards in the back window and slunk down the alleyway toward the closest convenience store. Trash blew against the brick buildings, and there was a painted penis on the fence, which was charming, but soon the 7-Eleven loomed ahead.
When we entered, the cashier watched us.
“Hello,” I said politely.
“Hello,” he answered suspiciously. “Can I help you?”
“We just need a few things.”
He didn’t answer, just watched my every move. I hadn’t showered in a while, and my clothes were dirty. I knew what we looked like to him, and I couldn’t say that I blamed him, but it still pissed me off. I had money, goddamn it. I wasn’t going to steal anything. Today.
While Angel got the dog food, I found the lip balm and grabbed a tube, making sure I kept it in plain sight of the cashier.
We plunked our stuff down, and the cashier rang us up.
“Sixteen forty-two,” he said, and I think he was waiting for me to say I didn’t have it. He was annoyed with me already and I hadn’t done anything wrong.
I handed him a twenty.
He was surprised, but he counted out my change.
“Have a nice day,” he said as he handed it to me. I glanced at it, at the $4.58, then handed him back a dollar.
“You gave me too much,” I said stiltedly. I didn’t say anything else and he didn’t thank me for being honest.
“We should’ve gotten something to eat,” Angel said as we walked into the cold. “We haven’t eaten in a while.”
She was right. I didn’t remember the last time we had eaten. Was it days ago?
Up the road, there was a shady little sports bar.
“Keep Winston in your coat,” I told Angel as I guided her inside.
They brought us chips but I didn’t eat them. I shoved the basket toward Angel and she nibbled on a chip while she pushed another into her coat for Winston.
“Have you ever had a car?” she asked, quite randomly, and she was staring out at the parking lot. Rows of cars gleamed there in the sun, nice ones, crappy ones, old ones, new. I nodded.
“Yeah.”
She looked at me, her eyes large over her water glass.
“What happened to it?”
I looked away. “I don’t remember.”
But I did.
I gave it to someone in exchange for a week’s worth of hero. “It’s too bad you don’t still have it,” she said simply. “We could sleep in it.”
The waiter eyed us suspiciously as he brought out our food and, with a little distaste, asked if we wanted anything else.
I was sick of being treated like this.
Once upon a time, I tipped very well. My dad taught me that. He also taught me to be very kind to waiters. But this one was being a dick.
“That’ll be all for now,” I said, dismissing him, and he left, but he didn’t like it. I’m pretty sure he was afraid we’d steal the flatware. That hadn’t occurred to me, but it would make eating out of cans easier, so I slipped a fork in my pocket and then grabbed a new one from the next table.
“When you’re finished, take yours too,” I advised Angel. She nodded.
“Good idea. And maybe a napkin. I can use it for Winston’s whiskers. They’re cloth.”
I nodded and we ate and it tasted like cardboard to me because heroin shuts down the olfactory sense. I didn’t smell the food and I didn’t want the food, but my body needed it, so I chewed and swallowed, chewed and swallowed.
It was while I was chewing that I noticed a girl sitting across the room.
Her back was to me, but it was Elin.
I recognized the long blond hair and the dainty way her shoulders moved while she talked.
I sucked in a breath, and this couldn’t be happening, because I couldn’t see her. Not like this.
Especially not when she was here with another guy.
He was tall and muscular and I didn’t know him. But he was clean and he was handsome and he wasn’t me.
They laughed and talked, and her hand fluttered in her hair—that was what she did when she was nervous. They were on a date, I realized, and my heart sank because I loved her more than I cared to admit, and now she was sitting with someone else.
I didn’t pay attention to the fact that I was too, because it was different.
So different.
Elin was on a pedestal in my mind, and there in that safe place, she’d always be mine, always waiting for me to get better, to return.
But here she was, and she wasn’t waiting.
I couldn’t stop staring and Angel noticed.
She looked over her shoulder and then turned to me, questioningly.
“What?”
I shook my head. “Nothing.”
But I couldn’t shake it and we had to walk past their table after we’d paid and were leaving.
The guy leaned over and grabbed her hand, and how could she have moved on so fast?
I was stunned, and even though I needed to walk out the door, I needed to see her face even more. I was driven by a need I couldn’t control, so I stopped by her table.
I wanted her to see that I’d seen her, that I knew. That I knew she’d moved on, and how could she?
She looked up and I was shocked speechless because she wasn’t Elin.
She wasn’t Elin at all.
Her eyes were brown and her nose was too big, and her boyfriend was annoyed.
“Can we help you?” he asked, and he looked down his nose at us.
“No, my mistake,” I muttered, but the relief flooding through me was ridiculous as I pulled Angel toward the door. We almost plowed over a father and son coming in.
“What was that about?” she demanded as we hit the pavement, and I shook my head.
“Nothing,” I told her. But she knew.
“Was that the girl you dream about?” she asked, and I was astounded.
“I dream about her?”
“You say her name sometimes,” Angel answered. “Was that her?”
I shook my head again.
“No.”
“But you thought it was?”
I couldn’t answer.
Because I was staring through the window of the sports bar at the little boy who was now sitting there with his father. They were both watching the football game on television. Notre Dame was playing Navy, and the blood . . . it pulsed through my veins over and over and over, and throbbed in my ears.
That would never be me again. I’d never sit with my dad, and he’d never be proud of me again. I’d never see him laugh; he’d never see me smile.
It was over.
“King, are you listening?” Angel demanded, and I had no idea how long she’d been talking. “You love her. Clearly you love her. Why don’t you just make it work with her? What happened?”
I was frozen to the pavement as the father dipped his French fry in his son’s ketchup, and the little boy glared at him for taking his precious condiment.
“I can’t,” I finally was able to say, and God, it felt like I might die.
“That’s ridiculous,” Angel said wearily. “Why not?”
“Because I killed my father.”
thirty-one
NATALIE
MERCY HOSPITAL
5:57 P.M.
BECK’S HEART MONITOR STARTS BEEPING faster and I glance at the screen to find it’s at 112 beats a minute. It was only 75 a few mi
nutes ago.
I’m scared, but I try to stay calm. The breathing tube looks like it’s pinching the edge of Beck’s lip, so I wiggle it around a little bit to loosen its grip. It’s keeping him alive, so I can’t move it too much.
“You’re okay,” I tell him softly. “You’re okay.”
“What if he’s not, though?” Elin asks, and she’s terrified. “Even if he wakes up, he’ll never get over the accident, Mrs. K.”
“Don’t say that,” I tell her firmly, probably harsher than I needed to be. “He’s strong. He can move past it.”
“You know he blames himself,” she says shakily. “Because he was driving.”
“It wasn’t his fault,” I tell her. “Matt shouldn’t have let him. It was too late, and they were too tired. It wasn’t his fault.” I say that last bit more firmly than the rest, like I’m trying to convince myself. Because the horrible truth of the matter is, deep down, I do sometimes blame him.
I blame my son for taking my husband.
And it’s not fair. It’s not right. But it’s the truth.
“He has nightmares a lot,” Elin says, and she rubs her finger on Beck’s cheek, stroking his cheekbone. “Did you know that?”
I look down because no, I didn’t. He hadn’t told me.
“He dreams about the accident. He sees the tangled-up wreck, the red car, his dad . . .” Elin’s voice trails off, and she doesn’t know how far to go, how much to tell me. “He used to text me in the middle of the night when he couldn’t sleep. Before he left.”
“Go on,” I encourage her.
“He tortures himself,” she says, and her eyes fill with pain. “I wanted to help. I really did. But nothing I did mattered. He just . . . he was drowning in it.”
“I know,” I whisper.
“He’s a good person,” Elin tells me, and that’s not necessary because of course I know that. He’s my kid. I brought him into the world and I raised him to be good. “I feel like everyone here will judge him now. Because of this.”
She sweeps her arm over the bed, motioning toward the tubes and tape, and I flinch.
“What they think doesn’t matter.”
I know she’s right, though. They’ll look at Beck like the boy he is right now. They don’t know who he was before.
He was such a good boy, from the very beginning. Even as a baby, he’d rarely cried and always smiled. He’d always been a people pleaser, someone who wanted to make everyone around him happy.
I would’ve never in a thousand years guessed that we’d end up here, in this sterile room.
I suddenly wish with all my being that I could reach into time and just change it, that I could strangle it into submission.
It’s not fair that things happen and we don’t know that they will be the last time. The last time I’d kissed Matt goodbye. The last time I’d tucked Beck into bed without worrying about him. The last time I’d gotten into my car and fastened my seat belt without wondering if it would malfunction and I’d die.
Time is a bitch.
If only I’d known ahead of time, I would’ve changed things.
I would’ve warned them.
* * *
I SAT WITH ANNABELLE and Devin and watched the brand-new shiny black Honda Civic slowly circle the high school parking lot. It was such a beautiful day with a blue sky and cotton candy clouds that when Matt had come out of the bedroom and announced that Beck was going to learn to drive today, we’d decided to make it a picnic.
We’d made sandwiches and brought a lawn blanket, and it had been perfect so far.
Beck had been nervous, though he’d tried to hide it. He was far too cool to experience jitters. At least, that’s what he wanted us to think. But I’d noticed how he was dragging out his lunch, eating his sandwich so slowly and nursing his chocolate milk.
“You’ll be fine,” I’d whispered to him. “Don’t worry.”
“I’m not,” he said, winking at me, and I’d only seen the uncertainty in his eyes for a second.
Beck was behind the wheel now, a hundred feet away from us, and he studied the pavement so studiously that we all three giggled. We’d never seen him concentrate on anything so hard before. Of course, next to him Matt was solemn too.
Teaching his firstborn to drive was serious business.
Annabelle slurped at her Capri Sun and pointed.
“Daddy looks mad,” she chirped.
“He’s not mad, honey,” I assured her. “He’s just focused.”
By focused, I meant terrified.
I chuckled again. His hand was curled tightly enough around the oh-shit bar that his knuckles were white.
I was glad it was him and not me.
He’d set up all the cones in perfect configurations, and Beck had only hit two. Of course, Beck was only going eleven miles an hour.
He was having issues changing gears. But that was one thing Matt was insistent about.
“All of the kids will learn on a stick,” he’d told me. “That way, they can drive anything.”
I’d agreed because it had made sense.
But now, watching the car lurch around the lot and Matt’s face turn green, I had to wonder if he was reconsidering.
He stuck it out, though. I helped Dev and Annabelle with their homework on the blanket under the tree, and Beck and Matt went round and round the pavement.
Within an hour, Beck was whipping in and out of the cones like a pro, and both father and son were beaming when they finally parked the car and rejoined us under the tree.
“I’m an excellent driver,” Beck announced as they sat down and he gulped a soda.
“He can only dream he’ll be as good as me,” Matt told me, smacking Beck on the back in the way that men did.
This was such an interesting age for a boy. Beck was starting to become a man, and he questioned Matt’s knowledge every now and again, but today . . . today had been perfect. He’d accepted Matt’s guidance without a word, and the sun shone down on our shoulders.
It was the stuff that all good memories were made of.
Later that night, in the privacy and darkness of our bedroom, Matt turned to me.
“I know you’re nervous about him driving. But you don’t have to worry about him,” he told me confidently. “He’s going to be a great driver. He’s too cautious to be anything else.”
I had to laugh at that. “Beck? Cautious?”
“You know he doesn’t like to make mistakes,” Matt said introspectively. “He likes to toe the line, and he likes to do it perfectly. If he puts his mind to something, he does it.”
That was certainly true.
If Beck did something, he did it all the way and he did it right the first time.
thirty-two
BECK
MERCY HOSPITAL
7:12 P.M.
“WE’RE GOING TO BRING HIM out around eleven,” the doctor tells my mother. I feel a jolt at that, adrenaline pumping into my fingers and toes. What time is it now? How long do I have to wait to know whether I will live or die?
“Why?” my mother asks, her voice forced and thin. “What about his kidneys? Why not just wait until morning? Why not give him a little more time?”
“The swelling in his brain has shown signs of reducing,” the doctor answers. “His kidneys are stable for the moment, enough so that we’re discontinuing the dialysis. Recovery from this type of thing isn’t linear, because the medication we use builds up in his system. The longer he’s on it, the longer he might take to come out. Because of that, I want to stop the use of Versed as quickly as I can.”
“But will he be ready?” my aunt whispers.
The doctor is silent.
“I hope so,” he finally says. There is a rustling of paper and then the door opens and closes, and I think he’s gone.
“We have less than four hours,” my mom says, and she’s in shock.
She grasps my hand and pushes the hair back from my forehead.
I don’t know why she’s so kind to me.
I killed Dad and she knows it. She tries not to talk about it, and she probably tries not to think about it, but the fact is I deserve to be in this bed.
If I could die and trade places with my dad so that he was alive again, I’d do it in a second.
Unfortunately, it doesn’t work that way.
If only it did.
I try to remember the accident. How exactly did it happen? Why are parts of my brain simply not working? Why am I even thinking at all? Aren’t I supposed to be comatose?
I’m a prisoner in my own body.
Maybe that’s my own karma. My own penance for killing my father.
It’s only right that I should suffer.
I focus on that day again. I remember getting up, and I remember driving to South Bend with my dad. We were visiting the Notre Dame campus. I thought it was a day like any other.
But it wasn’t.
* * *
“VISITORS, FOLLOW ME,” OUR tour guide said, and he was such a nerd. My dad rolled his eyes because the kid’s voice actually squeaked.
“Don’t worry,” Dad said. “You won’t turn into that guy. Lots of amazing people went here. Joe Montana, Knute Rockne, Condoleezza Rice, Tim Brown . . .”
“You forgot you,” I mentioned.
“Well, yeah. That goes without saying. This is a great school, kid.”
“I know,” I said. “I’ve never said it wasn’t. I just kinda wanted to go farther away from home.”
We walked out from the locker room, under the legendary PLAY LIKE A CHAMPION TODAY sign, and onto the football field. On the far end, Touchdown Jesus stood tall and golden in the night. We stay in the legendary stadium for a few minutes.
“We’re going to tour the basilica now, so follow me,” the kid said. While everyone else followed him across campus, we stayed in place, breathing the crisp air.
“It’s far enough away that it’s not right next door,” Dad pointed out. “An hour and a half—that’s pretty far. But it’s still close enough that if you need us, we’re here. You know?”
“I get what you’re saying,” I said as I followed him into a nearby inlet. It was made from rock, and candles were lit everywhere around us in the night. “It’s just that I don’t want you to have to bail me out. I want to sink or swim, Dad.”