my mother started crying against my shoulder, I started crying too, even though I wasn’t really sure why.
They led us into the small sitting room at the front of the house, and when we were all seated, introductions had been made and we had looked at each other self-consciously for a while, my father spoke.
“You say you don’t remember anything about your childhood?”
“No. I don’t.” When I’d phoned them earlier, I’d explained everything. My parents shared a sideways glance now. They both looked concerned.
“What?” I sat up straighter in my chair.
“You don’t remember anything from your childhood?” my mom asked now, even though my father had just covered that. “Nothing?”
I shook my head and my parents exchanged yet another look. A look that was quite obviously loaded with something.
“What? Tell me. Just tell me. I need to know.”
“Well,” my father said, moving forward in his chair and lacing his fingers together. I looked over at Noah. He too had sat forward, as if he was waiting to hear a really important thing. Because you knew it was important. The air in the room, the way it hummed and buzzed, told you what was about to be said was important. Everything in the room seemed to know that too, because soon the room felt smaller, as if the walls were also leaning in to listen.
“There was an accident, when you were young,” my dad said solemnly.
“What kind of accident?” Along with the walls, the space around me shrank.
“A car accident,” my dad said, glancing at my mother; she was crying again.
“Where? How?”
“We were on our way to a game reserve to spend Easter with your aunt and uncle. We were almost there, and you saw this field of cosmos on the side of the road.”
“What?” I looked over at Noah and my eyes widened, as did his.
“You wanted to pick your aunt some flowers. So, we all stopped and got out of the car. You ran around, picking flowers for her.”
“They were such beautiful flowers,” my mother added, wiping a tear away from her eyes. “And you were so happy and excited to take them to her.”
“And then what happened?” I asked.
“You had finished picking the flowers and we were all walking back to the car together, and then . . .” My father clenched his jaw and his fists, as if he wanted to hit someone.
“It happened so quickly,” my mom jumped in.
“It did. It happened so fast. He just came out of nowhere. No one saw him. We didn’t see him.” He sounded desperate while saying this.
“All we saw was this flash of red, and then we heard the sound. The sound . . .” My mother buried her face in her hands and shook her head. “I’ll never forget it.”
Noah looked at me. My mouth felt dry and my throat tight, but I managed a whispered “And then what happened?”
My mom looked like her throat was as tight as mine. She could barely get the words out and she too whispered. “A car lost control going around the corner and he just, he slammed into us. You were just about to climb back into the car, and the force of his car against ours . . . you just, you went flying.”
“It happened so fast,” my dad said again, that same air of intense desperation in his voice. “I didn’t see it coming. If I had, I would have grabbed you and pulled you out of the way. But I didn’t see it. It happened so quickly.”
“So quickly,” my mother echoed again, as if this was the thing that they still couldn’t wrap their heads around, and then . . .
Bam!
Like the car crashing into me, the memory crashed into me too.
I saw it. Me holding onto a bunch of flowers. Me flying through the air. The flowers flying through the air. Me landing on the ground . . . all I could see were stems. Green stems and then sky and then flowers falling from the sky onto me. I grabbed at my shoulder as a pain wracked my body.
“You broke your shoulder,” my dad said. “And your arm. Some ribs. Your back. You had to learn to do so many things all over again.”
My mom stifled a little cry, and I looked at her.
“We rushed you to the hospital and they immediately took you into surgery. You had to have a lot of surgeries. But when they were over, and they had repaired the damage, we