Page 48

The neighbors never came, but Brett did.

After I’d hung up on him, he had sped his way over with the girls asleep in the back seat.

Once he arrived, I ran to his car to stop him from getting Lizzie and Jane out of the car. I told him to call the police, told him there’d been an accident, told him we needed help, told him to leave … and with one look at my face, he did.

He turned around and left, and I had no idea then, as I watched him pull away with the girls I had called my daughters for the last five years, still sleeping in the back seat, that I wouldn’t ever see them again.

The police arrived ten minutes later, just seconds before the ambulance.

I told them everything they needed to know as they took Laura away.

They asked me to come down to the station for further questioning, and despite the raging grief tearing my heart to tattered shreds, I went with them.

I cooperated, and after a few long, torturous hours, they came to the conclusion that I hadn’t, in fact, murdered my wife and unborn son, that it was all just a horrible, tragic accident.

“But I did kill her,” I whispered to the cop who led me through the station to the pay phone. “I killed them. I-I-I killed my wife. My baby. God, my baby …”

I was crying again. I had never wept so unabashedly in the presence of other people— strangers —in my life, but I couldn’t stop it. I had lost all control, and I could only imagine what my father would’ve said about that.

But the cop didn’t care as he laid a hand on my shoulder.

“I wish I knew what to tell you to make this better,” he said, “but there isn’t a damn thing I can say that’ll make this go away. What I can tell you is that you didn’t do anything to intentionally hurt anyone.”

“But she told me to salt the steps. God, she told me.” I laid a hand over my eyes, the sobs tearing through my chest and clenching my gut.

“How many times do we all just forget to do something we’re asked to do? You didn’t do it on purpose. You didn’t know this would happen. You could call it irresponsible, you could call it negligence, but you are not a killer.”

Oh, but he was wrong, wasn’t he? I had killed before.

Men. Women. Fuck, I had put a bullet right between the eyes of that woman who’d killed my old friend, Lizzie, and I felt nothing .

I hadn’t given a single fuck if she was leaving behind a husband or children or if she was with child at the time of her death.

And if I could do that, what was to say I didn’t have it in me to —

I dug my fingertips into my scalp. No. No!

I wasn’t going to do this. I wasn’t going to lose my shit …

but how could I not when, oh my fucking God , it hurt so much ?

It hurt so horribly much, and it dug deep, deep, deep down to tear at my bones until it reached my naked soul.

Until that point, I hadn’t known a soul could feel pain, but it did .

God, it did, and what the hell were you supposed to do when the agony surpassed the physical confines of your body?

Fuck, not even death itself could free me from this torture.

With ragged breaths, I picked up the phone in the hallway of the police station, right beside the room where they’d just questioned me for hours, and called Sid.

He answered on the first ring. “Hello?”

“Sid,” I whispered pathetically, pressing my forehead to the cold tiled wall beside the pay phone.

“Max?”

He was immediately alarmed, instantly awake. I knew he’d been sleeping. It was late; it had to be.

“God, Sid,” I whispered again, a pitiful whimper escaping my lips.

Through the phone, I listened to my sister’s sleepy, mumbled tone say something I couldn’t hear, and he replied, “It’s Max.”

“What? What’s going on?” Grace asked, suddenly alert.

“Serg, what’s wrong?” my best friend asked, already panicked. “Is it Laura? Is the baby okay?”

The sound that came from me was strangled, a half cry, half groan. “No,” I replied, my face crumpling as another wave of tears began to fall from my eyes. “They’re … th ey’re not okay. Oh God, Sid. God, I don’t know what to do. I don’t know what to fucking do.”

He was silent for a moment, so fucking quiet, before asking slowly, “Max, what … what are you saying? Where are you?”

It hurt to breathe. It hurt to think. It hurt to live in this nightmare I’d somehow found myself in. But I managed to utter a strangled, “The police station.”

“You’re …” He took a deep breath. “You’re with the cops? You’re at the police station? Where? Near your house?”

I nodded as if he could see, the tears leaking from my eyes uncontrollably. “I-I think so.”

In the background, my sister panicked as Sid bustled, moving around.

“All right, Serg. Don’t move, okay? Don’t go anywhere. I’m on my way, all right?”

“Okay,” I whispered, wondering if I could wait that long before I collapsed.

“Hang in there, buddy,” he said as if reading my mind. “I’m on my way.”

***

Sid didn’t think it was a good idea for me to be alone, so when he picked me up from the police station, he immediately turned around and drove back to his place.

It wasn’t until we were ten minutes away from the station that he finally said, “I … I don’t know how to ask this, Serg, or if you even want me to ask, but you know I have to. ”

“So, ask,” I whispered, my voice hoarse.

“What happened, man? Where’s Laura?”

I had only just gotten ahold of my emotions, but now, at the mention of her name, I felt that crushing weight pressing once again on my shoulders, and I heaved a sigh.

“She’s gone,” I said.

Sid held the wheel with two hands, his grip tight. “Gone,” he muttered, letting the word settle against his tongue, as if he needed to taste it to know its true meaning. “What do you mean, she’s gone ?”

“God, Sid, she’s fucking dead .”

I looked at him now, seething. Instantly enraged. Ready to beat the living shit out of him for no other reason than he was, right now, on his way home to his wife and his baby. Both alive and healthy—and thank God for that!

But, oh my fucking Lord, why did this happen to me? Why did this happen to them ?

“Fuck!” I screamed, the word scraping through my stinging throat as I punched the dashboard repeatedly. “Fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck!”

I slumped back into the seat, struggling to catch my breath.

My chest heaved with every expansion of my lungs.

Everything ached. Simply being alive hurt.

I fell sideways against the door, smacking my forehead against the window.

The coldness of the glass was both soothing and triggering as I remembered Laura’s frozen fingers and face, and an agony-fueled wail broke through my lips as every wall I’d constructed collapsed in a heap of dust and rubble around my trembling soul .

Sid remained quiet as he reached out, grasping my shoulder in his hand. He held tight as he drove, shedding silent tears, and I cried. I knew he’d want to know what had happened. I knew they’d all have questions, and I’d answer them. But right now, I just needed for him to let me cry.

And that was exactly what he did.

***

When I opened my eyes, I found myself in the bed Sid shared with my sister.

I couldn’t remember how or when I’d gotten there.

I couldn’t remember when I’d fallen asleep.

But for a few blissful, silly moments, I forgot all about the events of the previous night.

For a few moments, I even felt good after having slept for a while.

But then I remembered, and I turned my face into the pillow and let the air out of my lungs, wishing for the relief of never having to fill them again.

Sid came in a little while later to check in on me, and not wanting to be bothered, I warred with whether I should pretend to sleep or wake up.

“You’re forgetting I slept with you for years,” he said, sitting on the bed beside me. “I’m like Santa Claus, man. I know when you’re sleeping, and I know when you’re awake.”

I groaned, rubbing a hand over my face. “Fuck off.”

He chuckled a bit, and then he went somber as he asked, “How you feeling, man?”

“Like shit. ”

He nodded, a sympathetic look in his eyes. “Yeah, I can only imagine—”

“No, I mean, literally. Do you have Tylenol or NyQuil or something? The girls gave me whatever plague they’d picked up at school and …” I swallowed against a throat full of razor blades as I thought of the girls, and I whispered a tortured, “Oh God. Lizzie … Jane …”

He patted a hand on my arm and nodded. “Hold on, Serg. Lemme see what we have.” Then he left the room.

By the time I pulled myself into a seated position, leaning against the headboard, he was back with a bottle of NyQuil. “It expired a few months ago …”

“Better than nothing,” I grumbled, taking it from him and twisting off the cap. “I don’t remember falling asleep.”

He nodded as I took a sip from the bottle—Laura would’ve yelled at me for that, but Sid didn’t say a word.

“You were pretty fucked up last night. Completely out of it by the time we got to the house. I got you in here, and you pretty much passed out as soon as your head hit the pillow.”

I looked at him with an apologetic, embarrassed grimace. “Where did you guys sleep?”

“The couch,” he admitted, and before I could open my mouth to rip him a new one, he held up a hand to stop me. “Don’t say anything. You needed the sleep more than we did, so don’t worry about us. We’re fine.”

Reluctantly, I nodded. “Well, thanks.”

He lowered his gaze to his hands. “Anything for you, man. You know that. ”

Silence fell over the room, and I tipped my head back against the wall to stare at the ceiling.