to our motel room. I didn’t want to talk to him. I didn’t want him to see my face and know everything. I shut my eyes and pretended to sleep.
He entered, locked the door behind him, and approached the bed. I felt his weight warp the mattress as he sat.
“I’m sorry for being so angry,” he said. “None of this is your fault.” He put the back of his hand on my cheek, his fingers warm and thick and strong. He hadn’t done it since I was a little girl. It took all my control not to stir. I wasn’t ready to face him.
“Forgive me,” he said, and I felt his weight come off the mattress. I heard a drawer open, the rattle of his heart pills in their orange bottle, the squeak of springs as he got into bed.
Ten minutes later, he was snoring.
I lay in bed exhausted but awake, mind spinning, thoughts blurring. Pieces of the crash: the hum of the rumble strip and the bleating dashboard alarm; splintered wood in the blinding red sunlight; twisted steel and the jagged feel of spiderwebbed glass under my thumb. Liam’s girlfriend, tall and pretty next to him in bed as they laughed. Dad hurling my phone down the steps, collapsing in the field behind the roadhouse, standing over me weeping in the dark as I drowned.
For a moment I thought I really was hearing the rumble strip—but it was my phone, vibrating on the particleboard nightstand. I lurched for it, thinking it might be Liam calling to apologize, to tell me that the girl had been just a friend playing a prank, calling to tell me anything.
But it wasn’t Liam; it was Ripley. I frowned, rubbed my eyes. He had never called without texting me first.
Something was wrong.
I held my thumb over the green button but couldn’t bring myself to tap it. I was drained, exhausted, unable to comfort myself, let alone another person. I was using every watt of energy I had just to stay alive, to keep from going under. There was nothing left for anybody else.
But then I thought about how Ripley had been there for me when I needed him most, despite the shit going on in his own life. And now, for once, he might need me. So I took a deep breath, squeezed my eyes shut, and answered the phone.
“Ripley?”
There was no response at first, only sounds of rustling fabric and something hard dropping to the floor.
“Ripley, are you there?”
I heard arguing voices somewhere at the outer range of the phone. Then Ripley’s voice, nasal and high-pitched:
“You’re high. Go home!” More rustling as if the phone was in his pocket instead of his hand. “Why did you even let her in?” Something else incomprehensible.
I got up, glanced at my dad to make sure he was still asleep, and left the motel room as quietly as I could. The night air was a cold slap in the face; it tethered me back to reality.
On the phone, I heard a kid crying.
“Ripley, are you okay?”
“Jude, come back!” A door slammed. Then, for the first time since the phone had rung, Ripley spoke directly to me. “Hang on.” Another door slammed. When he spoke again, his voice was thick and shaky. “Are you still there?”
“Yes, I’m here. What’s going on? Are you all right?”
“My mom came back.”
“Oh, no.” I moved down the walkway, out of earshot of the room, and leaned against the railing for support.
“Nothing for three months, and then she shows up and rings the fucking doorbell. Wakes up Jude.”
I tried to focus on what Ripley was saying, but the sound of every car on the road made me flinch with memories of the crash. I went down the steps and into the alcove where the ice machine was. Its hum insulated me from the sounds of the street.
Ripley was saying, “. . . and then Dad let her in like an idiot.”
“What happened?”
“He started talking to her. Being nice to her, as if she hadn’t wrecked our whole fucking family.”
I made a sighing noise that I hoped sounded sympathetic. I pictured my own mom showing up on the doorstep. Even if she was drunk or high or half-dead, I couldn’t imagine doing anything but throwing my arms around her.
I swallowed. “She was high?”
“Fuckin’ A. Eyes popping. Talking a million miles a minute. And Dad had Heather over!”
I blinked, trying to remember who Heather was.
“She had cooked us dinner and everything. She was literally in