could between you and your mother. You don’t know her,” he repeated, this time his tone conveying some of the bitterness he felt. He turned back to me, his expression pained yet steely. “You don’t know what she was capable of.”
“And what about my sister, Dad?” Grey’s gone, the note had said. What had become of her?
He bowed his head, but not before I could see the raw pain that flickered across his face. “She was already gone, Carson. She came back- she wasn’t- she-” he stammered. “She didn’t come back the same.”
“Come back? From where?”
Dad lifted his head, his glistening hazel eyes meeting mine across the room. In that one look, I could see what his secret had cost him all those years ago. And what it was still costing him. “Death.”
He sounded like a crazy person. I had joked about it for years, but I’d never really thought Dad might be…unbalanced. Until today. “I don’t understand,” I said, suddenly feeling wary.
Dad retold the story of “the accident”. For the most part it was the same as he’d always told it: hard rain, unstable bridge, car goes over, everyone trapped inside, Dad gets out, drags us all to shore. Only this time he filled in some crucial details, details that would forever change my life.
“By the time I could get you two out of the car and out of the water, you were already gone. Your mother and I did CPR on you for I don’t know how long. But it didn’t matter. You were both so cold and blue. And still,” he said, his voice soft and quiet and a million miles away. “So still.”
My heart pounded in my ears. “Then what?”
“Your mother and I sat with you for a long time, crying and holding you. I knew I’d have to go and get some help eventually, but I wanted to wait until she settled down a little bit more. She was…hysterical.
“When she did, I left to go find a phone or get us some help. She wanted to stay with you two, which was fine. I wasn’t gone more than an hour or so, but when I got back…” He trailed off again, leaving me on pins and needles.
“What? When you got back what?” I prompted sharply.
He paused for several seconds, obviously reliving a horror that I couldn’t imagine. “When I got back with the police, you were alive. Both of you.” His eyes met mine. I could see that he was once more in the present. “And she was bleeding.”
My stomach clenched painfully. I had no idea what that meant, but somewhere deep inside me, instinctively, I knew that it wasn’t good. “What happened, Dad?”
A frown crept across his face, followed by an expression of repulsion. “I don’t know what she’d done to herself, I just know she was bleeding and smiling and you two were alive.
“After the police dropped us off at home, I waited for her to say something, to explain what was going on, but she never offered to tell me. And, in a way, I think I was afraid to ask. I knew something was wrong, though. I could feel it. She was different,” he said mysteriously. “And so was your sister.”
A sick feeling overwhelmed me. The implications of what he was saying registered on a visceral level, even though I couldn’t wrap my mind around it. Something inside my mind, and my heart, wouldn’t allow it, shunned the very thought of what he was insinuating.
I sat quietly on the couch, overflowing with emotions, but unable to put any of them into words. I listened as he finished.
“That night, I couldn’t sleep. I lay on my side and stared at the wall, wondering what I should do. I kept thinking that you weren’t safe with them in the house. Something was telling me to get you out of there.
“Right before dawn, I felt your mother get out of bed. I waited for a few seconds then I followed her.
“She went into the nursery and got your sister out of her crib. She held her in her arms for a minute, talking to her, cooing to her. She took her blanket off her, then her pajamas and her diaper. She was mumbling things to your sister, things I couldn’t understand. Makes the hair on the back of my neck stand up just thinking about it.” I saw a fine shiver pass through him as he remembered. He raised one hand to massage his