in my brain, perfectly captured in vivid Technicolor.
Me, fishing Tig’s car keys out of my skirt pocket.
Me, sliding behind the wheel.
Me, stabbing once, twice, three times at the ignition and finally feeling the click and twist of the key sliding home.
My whole body thickened into a solid. No breath, no flowing blood. My gaze flew to the detective’s eyes, and he was looking back, watching my reaction.
“But she wasn’t,” my lawyer said in a bored tone. “So what’s the point?”
“She sees the point,” the detective said. He looked at me with deep empathy, as if he were sorry to be saying these hard things. “Whatever loyalty you’re feeling, Amy, it’s not reciprocated.”
“That little shit!” my father exploded. “How dare he! How dare he!”
“Jim,” my lawyer said, a warning tone.
“No, Mitch, that delinquent is slandering my family!” my mother said. She bent toward the cop now, her tone demanding. “When did he come up with this fabrication?”
The cop was still looking mostly at me, but he answered her.
“Earlier today. He was arrested for possession at the scene, but we had to wait for his mother before we could question him. She refused to let him give a statement then. Asked for a lawyer.” I felt my head shaking, back and forth. Tig’s mom had probably been high, because she was almost always high, and she hated the police. “We got him a public defender, but those guys are overworked. Not like this guy you’ve got,” the cop went on, jerking a folksy thumb at my lawyer, like he and I were together on this.
I stared at him, still frozen. He was coming at me, just like those memories had come at me, rushing in and hitting me dead-on, so that I was still shaking with the impact.
I closed my eyes. Nothing in the room mattered. Only that night, that road, that lost time.
I concentrated inward, peering down into the well of memory, but I saw nothing more. It was still true that I did not remember driving, only the brutal kiss of steel rending Mrs. Shipley’s sporty little tin can of a car. I did not remember getting out of the Ambassador. I only remembered standing in the road, after. But oh, I had remembered enough—I’d had the keys. I’d slid in behind the wheel. I’d started the car.
My lawyer was talking now, but his calm voice sounded so far away. “Don’t make this about loyalty or her feelings for this boy. It’s almost as if you want her to lie for him. This is about the truth, and the truth is, my client was traumatized by Mr. Simms’s actions. She watched her neighbor die. Let’s not forget, this boy gave her drugs and got her so drunk she had to be treated for alcohol poisoning. The crash itself was traumatic. She simply doesn’t remember.”
I opened my eyes a crack. I could see that the detective was still focused entirely on me. He said, “Time passes. Memories come back.”
He was right. Memories did that. They did come back. I closed my eyes again.
I could see my hand stabbing the key at that swaying ignition slot, the homecoming feel of it sliding in at last. I was so numb I only then realized that my mother’s grip had become painful, squeezing a chunk of my leg bloodless.
“There is nothing more my client can tell you,” my lawyer said, but that was no longer true.
I wanted to speak. I did. I wanted to open my mouth and say, I think Tig might be right?
But I wasn’t supposed to. I wasn’t allowed to, unless my lawyer gave me specific permission. And what if I’m remembering wrong? I asked myself, desperate. Desperate and silent. What if the detective had put those memories in my head by telling me about Tig’s accusation? It was Tig’s car, after all. I didn’t even really have a license. He had to have been driving.
Maybe after I turned the key in the ignition, Tig slid in behind me and I scooted down the bench seat to the passenger side. Maybe we changed seats sometime later, in an unremembered pit stop. Surely if I’d been driving, the police would know. They would figure it out. I told myself all this, picturing scenes like I’d seen in movies. Teams of cops and scientists and doctors, seeking truth. I didn’t understand that a sleepy, midsize college town in 1991 didn’t have those resources.
The relevant truths were few and already written down: It was