He scrambled out of the car, desperate to escape. His jacket snagged on the emergency brake lever, holding him fast. He yanked at it, hearing the cloth tear as he pulled free. He staggered onto the driveway and moved away from the car.
Gradually, the heart attack subsided.
“Jeez,” he muttered, wiping his brow with a sleeve. How stupid was that, to be afraid of a car like it was something out of a Stephen King novel.
Chagrined, he told his uncle he was going over to a friend’s for a bit. To his relief, Sean seemed to understand he needed to get the hell out of the house for a while.
“I know what’ll get your mind off things,” Jason Schaefer said later that evening.
“A lobotomy?” Cameron had coasted to his friend’s house on his skateboard and was dribbling a basketball in Jason’s driveway. The Schaefers had heard the news, and Jason seemed kind of wary around him, like losing your parents off a cliff was somehow contagious. Jason seemed desperate to avoid all thought of the accident, like that could happen.
“Ha-ha,” Jason replied. “Mailbox baseball.”
Cameron kept dribbling the ball. “That’s lame.”
“It rocks. You’ll see. We can take the Jeep.” Jason already had his license and wanted any excuse to drive. “Let’s pick up some of the other guys and go to that new subdivision out on Ranger Road. There’s a whole row of them—pow!” He pantomimed the swinging of a bat.
Maybe he was right, thought Cameron. Maybe he needed to do some damage.
At 10:20 p.m., Lily fell apart. She was sitting on the bed of the guest room in Crystal’s house, listening to the silence. At her insistence, Sean was using Crystal’s room, which was too filled with reminders for Lily to face. It was quiet in there and no light showed under the door, and she envied him for sleeping. She had taken another shower and was wearing a borrowed terry-cloth robe with sleeves that were way too long. She felt warm and clean, and when she reached into the pocket of the robe, she found a crumpled Kleenex and a note scribbled with 503-555-2412. The number was surrounded by the little bubbles and swirls of Crystal’s doodling, and for a moment, just a split second, she thought about going downstairs and having a cup of tea with Crystal and handing her the slip of paper.
The finality of the loss hit her—no more cups of tea, no more long phone calls or shopping excursions. Nothing. Yesterday she’d had a best friend. Today, just like that, she didn’t.
A terrible howl of pain and grief welled up inside her. All day long, it had been building and swelling, clamoring to erupt. Around the children, she’d held in the consuming wildness of her grief through sheer force of will.
Now her control slipped away and she fell back on the bed, hugged a pillow against her face and let go. The sobs came like a great, unstoppable storm, lashing through her. Her anguished voice was muffled by the pillow, but in her head it sounded as loud as a scream.
Crystal was gone. The reality consumed Lily. Without warning and with irrevocable finality, her best friend, the sister of her heart, was gone. Lily wept for all the laughter and conversation they would never again share, for all the time they’d never have together. She wept for the children who would grow up without a mother and for the horrible injustice of their pain, which they’d done nothing to deserve. She wept until she felt emptied out, weak and raw and scraped hollow with a grief that seemed to have a peculiar energy of its own.
“Lily?” A small voice intruded.
She sat up, already scrubbing her face with her sleeve. Charlie stood in the doorway, looking uncertain and frightened as she clutched a stuffed toy in her hands. “I saw you crying.”
“Oh, Charlie,” Lily said. “I’m sad about your mom. I’ll be all right, but I needed to cry for a bit.”
“I woke up and started feeling sad all over again,” Charlie said. “I can’t sleep.”
Lily got up, feeling as though she’d run a marathon. “Come on, sweet thing. Let’s go eat some ice cream.”
“I’m not hungry. I’m not…anything.”
“Then how about I sit with you for a while.” She took the little girl by the hand, walked her back to her room. They stopped to check on Ashley in her crib, tucking a blanket around her. Then they sat together in the window seat, moving