Page 9 of Silent Echo
CHAPTER EIGHT
E li hadn’t even said goodbye when he left for work the next day.
After dropping Harper at school, Charlotte had headed straight to the Maryland Transportation Authority to request an official copy of the police report from the accident.
She took a deep breath now, her hand resting on the sealed envelope, trying to muster the strength to read it.
What if Eli was right? If her son really was dead, did she want to add to her grief by reading a vivid description of everything that had happened that day?
She shook her head as if to empty it of her doubts and ripped the envelope open.
Her heart sped up as she pulled the thick document from the envelope and read the title: School Bus Run-Off Bridge Accident, Annapolis, Maryland.
She moved to the table of contents and was stunned to see that the report was eighty-five pages long.
With a sinking heart, she read the first page, containing the narrative describing the accident.
Seeing it all in black and white made it all the more real, and she couldn’t stop herself from imagining what it must have been like inside that bus.
She flashed back to that morning, wishing with all her heart that she’d let her son stay home that day.
She studied the page with the medical and pathological information.
It had a diagram of the bus, and a legend at the bottom explained the designation next to each seat with the injury level.
They were all F for fatal, with the exception of five seats—the ones of the bodies that were never found.
The bus driver’s seat was also empty. She knew that the bus was filled because a friend of Sebastion’s turned his permission slip in too late, and there was no room left on the bus.
She skimmed through the information on the bus driver’s background as well as the description of the bus.
It was all becoming too much for her. She flipped the pages until she reached the conclusion page.
She already knew some of it because the driver was determined not to be at fault.
Parents had wanted to sue the school, but the blame lay squarely on the driver of the truck that had hit them, and that driver had also perished.
She leaned back in her chair and sighed.
She needed to look over the list of names of the bodies that had been recovered.
At the time, the only thing she’d cared about was that Sebastion’s body hadn’t been found.
She retrieved her file on the accident and pulled out the police report.
Looking over the names, she realized that Sebastion’s teacher, Penelope, wasn’t listed as one of the bodies on the bus either.
That seemed strange. She couldn’t imagine that Penelope would have left any of the children.
Aside from the bus driver, she was the only adult not accounted for.
Charlotte could understand the bus driver, he was probably at the door trying to get the children out, but a teacher would be one of the last off the bus.
And Penelope always struck Charlotte as a good teacher.
There were times that she almost resented how close she was to Sebastion.
Times the teacher would try to give Charlotte advice on ways to coax him out of a sullen mood or suggestions about what kinds of shows he might enjoy, as if she knew Charlotte’s son better than Charlotte did.
Something was niggling at her. What was it?
Something about Penelope. She went into her office and logged in to her mobile carrier.
Navigating to last November’s bill, she pulled up the phone log for that day.
There it was. At the time, it hadn’t registered with the shock of the accident.
Before the missed calls from the school, which had come at 12:30 p.m., there was a missed call from Penelope’s cell phone at 10:25 a.m. Why had Penelope called her?
She navigated to the details for Eli’s phone and saw that he also had a call from Penelope, but that call had lasted eleven seconds.
Had he spoken to her? And if so, why hadn’t he mentioned it?
Penelope called them before the bus crashed, and around the same time they were at McDonald’s.
It had to have had something to do with Sebastion.
Had he gotten lost in the crowd? That could be why they were there for so long.
But surely, they wouldn’t have left without finding him.
His stomachache—maybe it had gotten worse.
What if he’d gotten really sick, and the bus had dropped him and Penelope off at a hospital or medical center?
Now she wondered if the reason their bodies were never found was because they weren’t on the bus when it crashed!
A surge of adrenaline rushed through her.
That had to be the answer. But where were they now?