Chương 6
“I called her careless,” I said.
Claire touched her own wrist instead of reaching for me.
“You had just lost Rose and Owen.”
“I called her a stupid girl who killed my children.”
“You said it to me.”
“That doesn’t make it better.”
“No.”
Claire’s answer was quiet.
“It doesn’t.”
I looked at her.
She did not soften it.
That was why I loved her.
Samantha’s phone rang.
Miller.
She answered.
Her eyes stayed on me.
“Yes.”
Then she turned away.
“No, she’s still here.”
A longer silence.
“When?”
Another.
“I’ll tell her.”
She hung up.
My chest tightened.
“What?”
“They found something in Kayla’s car.”
“What car?”
“The car she’s been driving since the crash.”
“I thought hers was totaled.”
“It was.”
“What did they find?”
“A flash drive.”
I almost laughed again because the phrase sounded ridiculous.
A flash drive.
Something office workers lost in desk drawers.
Something students forgot in computer labs.
Not something that belonged inside this day.
“How did it get there?”
“Kayla says Silas gave it to her.”
Claire stared.
“When?”
“The hospital.”
My mouth went dry.
“Why?”
“He told her to keep it.”
“That’s it?”
“He told her not to plug it in and not to give it to anyone unless something happened to him.”
Samantha studied my face.
“Kayla got scared after his visit.”
“Why didn’t she give it to police?”
“She says she didn’t know what was on it, and he told her it contained private family material that could ruin you.”
Of course he had.
Even when building an escape route, he had used me as the warning label.
“What’s on it?”
“They don’t know yet.”
Claire rubbed both hands over her face.
“Can they check?”
“They’re getting a warrant because Kayla formally turned it over during the interview.”
“That takes how long?”
“I’m not guessing.”
I paced three steps and stopped.
People were still waiting to speak to me.
A woman from Silas’s office stood near the aisle holding a sympathy card.
She looked away when I noticed her listening.
I suddenly could not stand being watched.
“I’m leaving.”
Claire nodded immediately.
“The cemetery?”
“No.”
Samantha’s expression sharpened.
“Where?”
“To see Kayla.”
“Miller said not to go to county.”
“I’m not going to county.”
“Evelyn.”
“I heard you.”
“You’re doing that thing.”
“What thing?”
“Where you interpret a narrow instruction as permission to do something worse.”
Claire muttered, “She’s always done that.”
I looked at her.
“Whose side are you on?”
“Currently?”
Despite myself, a sound escaped me.
Not quite a laugh.
Claire’s mouth twitched.
For two seconds, we were sisters again instead of survivors of a public catastrophe.
Then the funeral director approached.
He did it carefully, as though moving around an injured animal.
“Mrs. Fletcher?”
“Yes.”
“We need to proceed to the cemetery soon.”
I stared at him.
Of course.
There was still another part.
The graves.
The dirt.
The lowering.
The impossible mechanical procedures after the impossible emotional ones.
“I’m sorry,” he added.
“No.”
I rubbed my forehead.
“Don’t apologize for doing your job.”
He nodded.
“We can give you a few minutes.”
“Thank you.”
He stepped away.
Claire looked at me.
“We finish this.”
I hated the word finish.
But she was right.
The police could interview Kayla.
The lab could examine the drive.
Samantha could preserve Daniel’s email.
Nothing I did in the next hour would make those processes move faster.
Rose and Owen had one funeral.
Silas had already taken enough of it.
“We finish this,” I said.
At the cemetery, the wind kept lifting the edges of the green canopy.
Someone had placed fake grass around the open graves so nobody had to look directly at the raw earth.
I looked anyway.
Two rectangles.
Side by side.
The sight was so obscene in its neatness that I nearly walked back to the car.
Claire took my elbow.
This time I let her.
My mother stood on my other side.
She did not touch me.
I noticed that too.
Father Brennan said the prayers.
People cried.
A truck shifted gears on the highway beyond the cemetery wall.
Somewhere farther away, a dog barked three times.
The world had not noticed what it was doing to us.
When the first coffin began lowering, my mother made a sound I had never heard from her before.
I held her upright.
That surprised both of us.
Rose went down first.
Then Owen.
I wanted to jump after them.
The thought came without poetry.
Without drama.
My body simply objected to the distance.
Six feet was too far.
The men operating the straps looked away from me.
One had mud on his work boots.
Another wore a wedding ring with a deep scratch across it.
I noticed everything except what mattered because what mattered was unbearable.
Afterward, people placed roses on the coffins.
Claire went before me.
She set one flower on Rose’s lid and another on Owen’s.
My mother did the same.
When my turn came, I stood at the edge and could not move.
Everyone waited.
I hated them for waiting.
I hated myself for making them.
Finally, I took the two small wooden stars from my coat pocket.
Owen had painted one blue.
Rose had painted hers purple and covered one side in too much glitter.
They had made them at the kitchen table three months earlier and argued for twenty minutes about whether stars needed faces.
Rose said yes.
Owen said that was scientifically embarrassing.
I had kept them because mothers keep things without knowing why.
I knelt at the edge.
My knees sank into damp ground.
“I’m sorry,” I whispered.
Nobody could hear me.
That was good.
I placed the stars beside the flowers.
“I’m sorry I didn’t know.”
The wind moved Rose’s glitter star half an inch.
I reached down automatically to straighten it.
Then I stopped.
Nothing had to be straight anymore.
I stood.
May you like
When I turned back toward the cars, Samantha was looking at her phone.
She raised her eyes.
