hidden under all those curls, but I felt way too visible. Edward had known me. I was the one he had nodded to, not Grace. If he had so easily seen through the makeup and bangs, the press would, too. Oh sure, I had nothing to run from. My case was over and done—well, done except for these last few months of probation. My fear was irrational. But that didn’t mean it wasn’t real.
The police station was a mile from where the three roads met in the center of Devon. It consisted of a low set of buildings strung along the southernmost blocks of South Main, and was built of square stones the color of unbleached linen, with wide stone steps leading to a black double door. The Town Hall was directly across the street, built of the same local stone but with ivory pillars, black shutters, and nine front steps to the police station’s three.
Desperate to be done with it, I drove through the parking lot and right up to the station’s entrance. As onrushers merged on the steps, their numbers seemed to swell. I heard Grace breathe, Oh God, though the thought might have been mine. Frantic, I checked in my rearview mirror and saw Jay rubbernecking for a place to park. Finally, he just pulled up beside me.
I rolled down my window and spoke before he could. Call me a coward, but there was nothing more I could do for Grace.
“I shouldn’t be here,” I told him straight off. “Grace is going to get in your car now. You’ll take her inside.” I turned to Grace. “Jay can help you. I’ll only be in the way.”
I don’t know what I’d have said had she argued. Mercifully, she simply swallowed, pulled up her fur-edged hood, opened the door and rushed around the front of my truck to Jay’s car. If the vultures saw her, they didn’t yet know who she was.
They had certainly known me once. The Massachusetts Attorney General made sure of it. My crime, while unintentional and tragic, was personal for her. Her father had been crippled several years earlier when his car was hit by a person who was texting, and while the state legislature subsequently made texting-while-driving illegal, the penalty was a fine so small as to be no deterrent at all. The AG was incensed—and she was right. I’m the first to say that. A slap on the wrist accomplishes nothing. So she continued to make noise, louder each time a new car came on the market that offered enhanced access to technology.
Then I showed up, lost in a densely wooded area and—stupid, stupid, stupid—taking my eyes from the road to look at my navigation screen and missing a STOP sign just as a van sped through. That driver and my daughter were killed. It didn’t matter that he hit us or that forensics showed him going faster than the limit. I was the only survivor.
Seizing on the case, the AG strong-armed a bill through the state legislature banning interactive technology from functioning in a moving car. Granted, auto manufacturers sought injunctions and have since won years to implement changes, but the legal maneuvers took the case viral. The Massachusetts AG had called it the Mackenzie Cooper Law, and the name stuck. As if the horror of losing my only child wasn’t enough, I became the poster child for distracted driving.
And the press? Ate. It. Up. For weeks, the media was parked outside our door, crowding in every time I left home, intruding on our misery with telephoto lenses, even at our daughter’s funeral.
I deserved it. I deserved every bit of the punishment. Still, here, now, the memory threatened to close up my throat.
“Text me,” I managed to call, but to Grace or Jay? I was too desperate to escape to care which. Shifting gears, I paused only to make sure that none of those converging on the police station were anywhere near the front of my truck, before leaving the horror behind.
3
Driving against traffic, I returned to the center of town. Officer Gill wasn’t there; he would be at the station, wanting in on any excitement to be had. I stopped at the crosswalk anyway before turning right onto Cedar. Then I kept a moderate foot on the gas, block by block, quarter mile by quarter mile, pushing against the walls of the past until they began to recede.
My window was still down. The fresh air was a must. This late in