into a high chair. “She’s known that since yesterday.”
He grabbed a box of Peek Freans and handed one to Ashley, watching her as though she were a time bomb. She gazed at him for a moment of eloquent silence, then took the biscuit from him. “’Kyou,” she said.
She seemed to like Sean better this morning.
Lily picked up the cup of tea she’d brewed earlier and tried to take a sip, but the brew was lukewarm and bitter now. She remembered setting it to steep before Sean got home. That had been eons ago, it had happened in a different era, before she had to face the fact that her best friend and Derek had walked out of her classroom yesterday and had driven over a cliff.
“What’s going on?” asked Cameron in a grumpy, just-awakened voice.
Charlie scurried in and went straight to Sean. “I made him get up and he’s all mad at me.”
Lily filled a sippy cup with juice and gave it to the baby. Cameron stood, stolid and wary, straddling the threshold as though about to flee.
Lily felt Sean’s eyes on her. Now? he seemed to be asking.
These poor kids, Lily thought, clamping her teeth together to keep in a sob. We’re as lost as they are.
Sean cleared his throat. He kept hold of Charlie’s hand and looked into Cameron’s eyes. “There was a car accident yesterday…”
Charlie’s face crumpled and her shoulders drew inward and trembled. Sean put his arm around her. Lily moved toward Cameron, her hand outstretched. He ignored the gesture and right before her eyes, he seemed to turn as cold as stone, although his expression didn’t change.
“Your mom and dad were driving together, and the weather made it dangerous,” Sean continued, a subtle note of disbelief in his voice, “and their car went, uh, it went down a bank.”
While Lily listened, she watched Sean’s face grow whiter. Cameron’s expression vanished to nothing.
A thin sheen of sweat glistened on Sean’s brow and upper lip. Lily thought about what this night had been like for him while the rest of them slept. She considered the scratches on his face and hands, his torn sweatshirt, the muddy boots parked outside the door. He’d been the one to find his brother and Crystal. What had those haunted eyes seen? Had he touched them? Had he cried?
She wondered all these things as if she should be concerned, but to her mild surprise, she felt a numbness. She could register facts, but God help her, she couldn’t match them to any tangible feeling.
There were too many things to feel, to talk about. Too many inexplicable things to explain. Lily slowly lowered her hand, touching Cameron’s. “We don’t know what to say,” she whispered.
“You don’t need to say anything.” He glared at her.
“Yes, we do, but no one knows where to start.”
“So what are you looking at me for?” Cameron wrenched his hand away from hers. His face registered shock and pain for a fleeting second before the uncomprehending expression of a wounded animal masked his features.
Seeing his agony, feeling it pierce through the numbness—that was when Lily discovered something worse than her own grief.
chapter 16
Saturday
7:05 a.m.
Sean struggled to find the words to speak the unspeakable. His mouth was dry as dust.
“So where are they?” Cameron demanded.
“Mommy,” Charlie said in a tiny whisper.
“Emergency workers got them out.” Sean could still see the flash and glare of the generator-powered spotlights, the shower of sparks gushing from the cutting tool they used to make an incision through the crushed cab, the undisguised disappointment on the geared-up rescue workers’ faces. They were trained to save people. Recovering corpses was the last thing they wanted to do.
One of them, carrying a toolbox and a tank of oxygen, had paused to check on Sean. “How about you?” he’d asked. “You okay?”
“I’m not hurt,” Sean had told him, dry-mouthed. He’d felt a strange, numbing gauze enfolding him, softening the edges of his vision, muffling sound, insulating the distance between him and the world.
“Hold still,” the guy said. “I’ll clean up those cuts for you.”
“You don’t have to—”
“It’s my job.” He flung a blanket around Sean’s shoulders and set down the toolbox, which doubled as a stool. It contained an array of masks, shears, forceps, tubing and bandaging, instruments Sean couldn’t identify. Then he switched on his headlamp and a penlight.
Sean winced at the glare as the penlight stabbed at his pupils. “It’s just a couple of scratches.”
“Then this won’t take long.” The rescue worker cracked open a styptic