Rescue - By Anita Shreve Page 0,55

to outlaw semis on 42.”

“Where would they go?” Webster, one hand on the wheel, sitting back now. “It’s the only route up the western side of the state.”

“Put the stuff on smaller trucks. That semi had no business on that road going that fast.”

“How fast?”

“The estimate from the statie was sixty.”

“Never buy a Hyundai.”

“The Touareg on the other hand…,” Koenig suggests.

“Like you could afford one.”

“The cops just drove it away.”

“I hate these kinds of calls,” Webster says.

“No shit.”

“How was the wedding?”

Koenig shakes his head. “Almost a disaster.”

“What happened?”

“Annabelle’s smarter than I gave her credit for. She cried in the car, and I had to wait a good twenty minutes for her to stop. She was scared. She didn’t want to marry Jackson before he shipped out, but she didn’t think it was morally right to let him go off without being married. And she couldn’t bear the thought of leaving him at the altar, or whatever you call it when you have a wedding at an inn.”

“Jesus.”

“She’d been agonizing over this for weeks.”

“So what did you tell her?” Webster asks.

“That I felt bad for her. I knew that Ruth, sitting right up front as mother of the bride, would have a fit if Annabelle backed out at that late stage. But I told Annabelle that all I had to do was put the car in gear, and we would drive away, and I would go back and explain it to Jackson and Ruth and the guests. I put the car in gear and went about ten feet before she begged me to stop. I finally said she either had to get out of the car or let me drive on. She fixed herself up as best she could, and then I took her into the inn. It felt like I was leading her to the slaughter.”

“Hey, I’m sorry,” Webster says as he makes the turn in to Rescue.

“She seemed happy enough at the reception, so maybe it was mostly nerves. That’s what I’m hoping, anyway. She’s going to have a lot of time over the next year to wonder if she did the right thing.”

“She’d be better off not to think about it at all,” Webster says. “She can’t undo it while he’s in Afghanistan.”

Webster drags himself from the cruiser and through his own back door. Twelve thirty a.m., the end of one of the longest and worst days on the job he’s had in ages. A shift and a half. Rowan is sitting at the kitchen table with leftovers waiting to be put in the microwave.

“You’re still up?” Webster asks, surprised. “You cooked?”

“Just stew. You look tired.”

“Rough day.”

“I heard about the pileup. What was it like?”

Webster has always answered Rowan’s questions about emergent care and its aftermath. Lately, he’s been hiding nothing, even the gruesome deaths. “A horror show. Four dead, three of them kids. I worked on a girl who was stuck under a bench on a bus. Head injury, I think, though I hope not. She can’t have been more than fifteen.”

“How did the adult die?”

“Crushed, in her Hyundai.”

Rowan is silent at this news. Does she try to picture it?

Webster peels off his jacket. He wants to take everything off right then and there and carry it to the washing machine. All deaths still make him feel slimy.

“It’s great what you do,” Rowan says, looking up at her father.

She’s waited up all night to tell him that.

“Thank you,” he says. “That makes it all worthwhile.”

“Good,” she says, standing.

“You’d better get to bed. You have to get up for school in six hours.”

“I took a nap.”

Webster watches his tired child climb the stairs.

Reparations. For the fuck? For shooting the leaves and flowers?

In the afternoon, after his nap, Webster is working in his newly dug garden. He hears the squeak of the back door and glances up. For a second, not even a second, he thinks it’s Sheila. Not as she might be now, but as she was then: the long brown hair, the slightly defiant posture, the gray sweater and jeans, the sunglasses back on her head, even the dress boots. But it isn’t Sheila—it’s his daughter looking about two years older than she did the last time he saw her.

He meets her in the driveway.

“Where are you going?” he asks. He wipes his hands on his old jeans. He has on a short-sleeved maroon T-shirt that reads HART-STONE MARAUDERS.

“Out,” she says.

“Rowan?”

“I’m meeting Tommy at the mall. We’re going shopping for his mother’s birthday and then we’re going