The Wreck (4 page)

Mortified when his eyes filled again, he
wondered if it would
ever
stop. “I’m okay.”

She cradled his face in her hands. “Your
eulogies for Sam and the others were just beautiful. I was so proud of you this
week. How you ever managed to do what you did—”

Shrugging off her praise, he said,
“Somebody had to.” He glanced up the stairs. “How is she?”

“About the same.” Mrs. Holbrook shook her
head with dismay. “She let me feed her some soup earlier, so I guess that’s
something.”

“Do you mind if I—”

“Go right ahead.” With the wave of her
hand, she invited him upstairs to Carly’s room, which he had never even seen
before this week. Everything was different now. Allowing their daughter’s
boyfriend into her bedroom was suddenly the least of her parents’ worries.

Brian hung his suit coat on the newel
post and started up the stairs.

Carly
pulled a blanket around her and nestled deeper into the window seat. She’d had
trouble staying warm over the last week, as if her blood had turned to ice or something.
Maybe it had. She had spent most of the day staring out the window that
overlooked Michelle’s house. The police had come by again to see if she was
able to talk with them about what she remembered from that night. She had heard
her mother tell them she wasn’t up to seeing them yet.

An hour or so ago, Michelle’s mother had
shuffled out to the mailbox. Mrs. Townsend wore an old housecoat and slippers.
Her usually stylish hair had hung in ratty strings down her back. On her way
inside, she had glanced up to find Carly watching her. She had attempted a
smile for her daughter’s best friend, but it had come out more like a grimace.

Carly wondered if Mrs. Townsend was mad
at her for not dying with Michelle. She wouldn’t blame her, because Carly felt
the same way herself. If she and Brian hadn’t been so anxious to have sex, they
would have been in the car with the others. And Carly could say, without a
shadow of a doubt, that she would rather be dead than have to live with the
images of the others dying.

Over and over she remembered Michelle
tugging at her hand.
“You can shag him anytime. You can shag him anytime.”
Carly
put her hands over her ears as if that could stop the relentless refrain.

Everyone was worried. She saw it on the
faces of her parents and in Brian’s eyes when he came by to see her. They
wanted to know why she hadn’t said anything since the accident. She had heard
her parents talking about post-traumatic stress and shock and other terms she
didn’t recognize. Carly wasn’t sure why she couldn’t talk. She wanted to,
mostly because she was desperate to help Brian through the loss of his brother.
But she was afraid if she tried there would only be screams. So she didn’t try.

“Hey,” Brian said from the doorway,
diverting her attention away from the window. He crossed the room, knelt before
her, and wrapped his arms around her.

Carly ran her fingers through his thick
dark hair. Wearing the shirt and tie they had chosen for homecoming what seemed
now like a lifetime ago, he looked as she imagined he would someday when he was
a successful attorney.

“It was nice,” he said after a long
period of silence. “Sam would’ve loved all the attention.” He waited, as if he
hoped she might say something. When she didn’t, he continued. “My parents seem
to be holding up okay.”

Carly was relieved to hear that. She had
thought of them constantly.

“But I’m worried about how my mother’s
going to be after her sisters leave and things go back to normal—or what’s
passing for normal now. I guess my Aunt Elaine is going to stick around for a
week or two, which should help. Toby’s parents were there today and Jenny’s. I
think Toby’s mom was drunk, but I can’t say I blame her. I would’ve liked to
have been, too.”

He looked up at her with heartbroken
eyes. “Talk to me, Carly,” he begged. “I need you.”

Her eyes flooded with tears. Oh, how she
wanted to! But the words just wouldn’t come.

Scooping her up, blanket and all, he
carried her to the double bed with the fluffy pink comforter. Kicking off his
shoes, he lay down next to her and brought her into his arms.

Carly rested her head on his chest.

“This doesn’t have to change everything
for us. We’ll have a quiet wedding and go to Michigan, just like we planned.
That’s what they would’ve wanted us to do. I know they would.”

She shook with silent sobs.

Brian turned on his side and cupped her
damp cheek in his hand. “We’re still alive, Carly, and we have to find a way to
go on. We have to live our lives the best way we can. We’ll do it for them.”

She pulled away from him and tried to sit
up, but he stopped her.

“I’m sorry, honey.” He guided her head
back to his chest. “It’s too soon to be talking about moving on. I know. I’m
sorry.” He exhaled a long deep breath full of the hitches that come after
tears.

She hated that he was in so much pain,
that he needed her so badly, and she had nothing to give him. Hanging heavily
over her also was the guilt that came from thanking God over and over again for
sparing Brian. If He’d had to take all the others, at least He had left behind
the one she couldn’t live without.

She glanced up at Brian and saw his eyes
were closed.

Her mother came to the door. A week ago
she would have freaked out at the sight of them snuggled together on the bed.
Now, though, she came in and adjusted Carly’s blanket to cover Brian, too. She
brushed a hand over her daughter’s hair and kissed her forehead. “He needs the
rest,” she whispered. “The poor guy has been a trouper this week. I’ll call his
mother to let her know he’ll be here for a while.”

After her mother left the room, Carly
closed her eyes and wallowed in the comfort and safety of Brian’s tight
embrace. If she kept her eyes closed long enough, she could imagine they were
married and resting in their bed in the small apartment they had rented in
Michigan. She could pretend nothing bad had happened and they were right where
they’d always planned to be. But then she remembered something bad
had
happened. Flashes of fire and that smell… It came rushing back like a nightmare
that refused to end. Closing her eyes tighter to ward off the memories, it was
all she could do not to scream.

May
slipped into June, and somehow life went on. Brian forced himself to get up
each day and go to school where he was treated with cautious but distant
respect. Outside the main office, they had set up a memorial to the six
students who had died. Once, when no one else was around, he stopped to study
the portraits: Jenny and Sarah, both blond and blue-eyed; Michelle with her
long dark hair and porcelain complexion; Pete’s sandy curls and mischievous
smile; Toby, dark-eyed and serious with the military bearing that made him a
perfect fit for the Naval Academy.

And Sam. Brian and his brother had so
often been mistaken for twins. Looking at Sam’s smiling face was like looking
in the mirror. How many times had he been called Sam? How many times had Sam
jokingly complained about being mistaken for Brian? Realizing that would never,
ever happen again was like losing his brother a second time.
There should be
two more pictures up there,
Brian thought,
of the two whose lives had
been ruined by the loss of the other six
. God, how he missed them—the ones
who had died and the one who had checked out of life.

He sat through class in the mornings and
left each day at lunchtime, something he wasn’t allowed to do, but no one
stopped him. By not showing up to practice, he quit a baseball team already
crippled by the loss of the three starters who’d died. Brian simply couldn’t
bear to do anything that reminded him of that last day.

Every afternoon, he spent a couple of
hours with Carly. She’d yet to leave her house or say a word, and had
apparently developed a fear of cars, too. When her parents tried to take her to
a post-traumatic stress disorder specialist, she had silently refused to get
into the car. The doctor made an exception by coming to the house, but he had
no success in getting through to her. The longer her silence persisted, the
more frustrating it became for Brian, who had no one else to talk to.

Carly’s father was equally frustrated,
often ranting that she was refusing to talk on purpose. Her mother disagreed,
and even though the Holbrook house was thick with tension, Brian preferred it
to his own house where his mother rarely left the sofa.

Carly and Brian spent the night of their
senior prom watching a movie in her basement family room. He had stopped
pleading with her to talk to him and had given up on trying to get her to write
notes to him, settling instead for her company, for the opportunity to hold her
hand and be close to her. Final exams were done, graduation was just a week
away, and the future that once seemed so assured was now filled with
uncertainty.

After the movie, Brian took his time
walking home. He went into the dark house where his father watched TV alone in
the living room.

“Hey,” Brian said.

“Hi, son. How’s Carly?”

“About the same. How about Mom?”

“Same. She just went to bed.” If things
had been normal, she would’ve been waiting up for her boys to get home from the
prom.

As Brian took a seat on the sofa, he and
his father shared a sad smile, united in their concerns about the women they
loved. “Is anything ever going to be the same again?” Brian asked.

“I don’t think so.”

Brian sighed.

“My father used to have a theory that
there’s one great tragedy in every lifetime. The good news is yours is behind
you now, so you can rest easier. You won’t have to worry as much about your own
kids.”

“Great,” Brian said with a touch of
sarcasm. “That’s good to know.”

Michael shrugged. “I know it doesn’t
bring much solace right now in light of all you’ve lost, but someday maybe it
will.”

Seeing that his father was struggling to
help him, Brian said, “I guess so.” He hesitated and then took the plunge.
“Dad? Can I talk to you about something?”

“Of course.” Michael reached for the
remote to turn off the TV. He flipped on a lamp and gave his eyes a moment to
adjust to the light. “What’s on your mind?”

“Well, ever since the accident, it’s
just…”

“What, son?”

“Sam didn’t drive like that, Dad,” Brian
said in a rush of words. “I never once saw him be careless or reckless behind
the wheel. And it wasn’t just because I was in the car, either. I would’ve
heard about it if he were being crazy. I know the investigation found he was
speeding and lost control of the car, but I can’t imagine that. I knew him,
Dad. I
knew
him.”

“There were no skid marks, no sign he did
anything to try to stop or even slow down. That kind of evidence is hard to
overlook, even for me as his father. If there was something else to be found,
Brian, believe me, I would’ve found it.”

“There
is
something else. I’m not
sure if it matters, but—”

Michael sat up straighter. “What?”

“A couple of months before the accident,
I was coming home from the library one night pretty late. I was on Tucker Road,
right around the same place where the accident happened. Anyway, I came around
that bend and there was someone standing in the road. I had to swerve to miss
hitting him. It scared the shit out of me.”

“Why haven’t you said anything about this
before?” Michael asked, speaking now in what his sons referred to as his
chief-of-police voice.

“I’d forgotten all about it. The whole
thing lasted less than ten seconds, and I never thought about it again until
two days ago when I suddenly remembered it. Now it’s all I can think about.”

“You didn’t see his face?”

“No, he was wearing a ball cap pulled
down, but it was like he was waiting for someone to come around that bend, you
know? What if he was there again and Sam lost control of the car when he
swerved to miss him?”

Michael rubbed at the stubble on his
chin. “I like that explanation a whole lot better than any of the others.”

“I do, too. I can’t imagine Sam driving
that fast, Dad. Especially with Jenny and the others in the car, and
especially
around those bends on Tucker Road. You were forever warning us about getting
into trouble and how it would embarrass you. I’m not saying we were perfect,
but we were always careful. Neither of us wanted to disappoint you.”

 Michael’s eyes filled with tears.
“Thank you,” he said in a hushed tone. “Somehow that makes me feel better.”

“Is there anything we can do about the
other thing? The guy in the road?”

“I’ll have someone look into it.”

“Good,” Brian said, relieved. “That’s
good. I’d hate to have Sam’s name forever tied to this if it wasn’t his fault.”

“So would I, son.”

T
he night before graduation, Brian found
his mother in her favorite position since the accident—on the sofa, nursing a
glass of what looked like whiskey. The drinking was new in the last month, and
it just added to his already full plate of worries. He had seen what alcohol
had done to Toby’s mother and to their family. He’d wanted to go over to see
Mr. and Mrs. Garrett but had been afraid of what he might find there, so he’d
stayed away.