Chapter 3
Three
The small town of Granville is nestled in the rural northwest corner where Rhode Island comes together with Connecticut to the west and Massachusetts to the north.
With an easy commute to Providence and Boston, Granville attracted executives looking to raise their families in a more bucolic setting.
The “commuters” tended to gravitate to the fancy new subdivisions on the south side.
Residents who could trace their roots back to the town’s early nineteenth century origins clustered closer to a downtown made up of converted mills from Granville’s glory days as an industrial hub.
In a town of just over fifteen thousand, the loss of six teenagers touched almost everyone in some way or another, uniting the commuters and the townies in a shared grief that brought the usual buzz of activity to a halt during the week following “the tragedy,” as it came to be known.
Flags flew at half-mast, routine meetings were canceled, and the high school suspended classes but offered counseling to students who needed help making sense of something that made no sense.
With an unexpected week off from school, young people gathered in subdued groups in the town common, at the beach by the lake, and in all their usual hangouts downtown.
Within two days, the scorched earth around the Tucker Road crash site was almost completely hidden by a makeshift shrine erected by the victims’ classmates.
Freshly painted white wooden crosses bearing the six names—Sam, Toby, Pete, Michelle, Jenny, and Sarah—were surrounded by flowers, candles, balloons, stuffed animals, letters, and drawings protected from the elements by plastic bags.
Thousands of people descended upon the town to pay their respects, to offer their support, and to satisfy the odd curiosity generated by epic tragedy. Recent Granville High School graduates flocked home from colleges around the country, and the story garnered national press coverage.
On Friday, one week to the day after the accident, Sam was the last to be laid to rest in the town cemetery where six fresh new graves dotted the landscape.
Just two rows from his girlfriend Jenny and four rows from Pete, Sam’s final resting place overlooked the town common where he had spent many an aimless afternoon.
Standing with his parents at the gravesite after everyone else had left, Brian thought his brother would approve of the location.
He gave his parents credit for attending all six funerals, something many of the other parents had been unable to do.
The lingering numbness from the other five funerals had no doubt helped the Westburys through this unimaginable day.
Was it really only a week ago that the eight of us were dancing in Toby’s basement without a care in the world?
And now six of them were dead, Carly had yet to fully emerge from the stupor she’d descended into after the accident, and Brian was more alone than he’d ever been in his life.
His mother dabbed at her swollen eyes with a handkerchief grown sodden with tears.
Resting a hand on Brian’s shoulder, his father asked, “Are you ready to go, son?”
Michael Westbury’s broad shoulders were hunched, and his ruggedly handsome face had aged overnight. That his son had been driving the doomed car weighed heavily on the chief, as did the preliminary findings of the investigation.
“I’m going to take a walk over to check on Carly,” Brian said, adding quickly, “If it’s all right with you.”
Mary Ann Westbury had clung to Brian over the last week, as if letting him out of her sight might bring about further disaster.
He’d done his best to be patient with her, but he needed some distance, some time to process what had happened now that the protracted and agonizing ceremony of grieving had finally ended.
“What time will you be home?” his mother asked with an anxious frown.
Mary Ann, a petite blonde with the hazel eyes she had passed to her sons, was first and foremost a mother.
A full-time homemaker, she had devoted her life to her boys and their friends.
More than anyone else touched by the tragedy, Brian worried about her.
Well, he was desperately worried about Carly, too, but had yet to fully deal with that in the midst of all the other details and concerns of the past week.
“An hour, maybe two,” he said in answer to his mother’s question. “I’ll call you if I’m going to be any later.”
He knew she wanted him to come home with them to where their extended family waited to offer what comfort they could, and it seemed to cost her something to nod her approval. “Give Carly our love.”
“I will.” Brian wondered if it would matter to her.
They hugged him and left him standing at the top of the hill as they made their way to where the exhausted funeral director waited for them. Brian watched his father put an arm around his mother to guide her down the slope. He hoped they would somehow find a way to survive the crushing loss.
After they had driven off in the limo, Brian crouched down to run his fingers through the soft dirt that covered his brother.
“What’re we supposed to do without you?” he asked in a whisper as grief gave way to the anger that had simmered just below the surface all week.
“What were you thinking driving like that? You didn’t even try to slow down.
They said there were no skid marks, that you just drove off the road into that tree.
You knew better, Sammy! How many times has Dad told us we have to be better than everyone else because of who he is in this town?
How could you do this to him?” Brian’s throat closed, and tears filled eyes already raw and gritty.
That there could be any tears left astounded him.
His voice was once again a whisper when he added, “How could you do this to me? How could you leave me here all alone?”
He bent his head and cried the same way he had the night it happened, the same way he suspected he would cry for a long time to come.
Over the last week Brian had discovered there was no escape from grief.
If he was awake, it hung over every breath, every word, every corner of his life.
Sporadic sleep provided no reprieve, haunted as it was by vivid dreams that forced him to relive the horror over and over again.
Wiping his face, he stood and took a long last look at his brother’s grave before he turned and forced himself to walk away.
He ambled down the hill and crossed the street to the sidewalk that wrapped around the town common.
A group of boys he knew from school were in a circle playing hacky sack on the grass.
They stopped their game to watch him walk by.
Brian acknowledged them with a brief nod but didn’t stop.
He couldn’t bear to listen to another awkward word of sympathy from peers so far out of their league they said only the wrong things.
As he left them to continue their game, it occurred to Brian that he didn’t have any friends left.
He had plenty of acquaintances but no one he could call to hang out with.
He’d always had Sam and Toby, who’d been their friend since they were babies.
Their mothers had been close before Mrs. Garrett’s drinking had worsened right around the time the boys started high school.
They met Pete through Toby, and with the three of them always around, Brian hadn’t felt the need for more close friends.
Once he started going out with Carly, he’d had even less of a need for others.
The eight of them hadn’t set out to distance themselves from the rest of the kids, but they had nonetheless.
Now Brian was left without a friend in the world and a girlfriend who either couldn’t or wouldn’t share her grief with him.
Wanting to avoid the accident site, he took the long way around downtown to Carly’s house on South Road. They’d once counted the seven hundred and eighty steps between their houses.
The tulip border Mrs. Holbrook lovingly tended was in full bloom on either side of the sidewalk in front of the two-story white clapboard house.
White wicker furniture with pretty floral pads decorated a wide front porch where Brian had whiled away many an hour with Carly.
He closed the gate behind him and climbed the stairs.
As he waited for someone to answer the door, he tugged his tie loose and took off his suit coat.
Mrs. Holbrook came to the door in the same dress she had worn to Sam’s funeral.
A headband contained her short auburn curls, and as she opened the screen door for him, he noticed her brown eyes, so much like Carly’s, were still rimmed with red.
“Brian,” she said, welcoming him with a warm embrace. “How are you, honey?”
Mortified when his eyes filled again, he wondered if it would ever stop. “I’m okay.”
She cradled his face in her hands. “Your eulogies for Sam and the others were just beautiful. I was so proud of you this week. How you ever managed to do what you did—”
Shrugging off her praise, he said, “Somebody had to.” He glanced up the stairs. “How is she?”
“About the same.” Mrs. Holbrook shook her head with dismay. “She let me feed her some soup earlier, so I guess that’s something.”
“Do you mind if I—”
“Go right ahead.” With the wave of her hand, she invited him upstairs to Carly’s room, which he had never even seen before this week. Everything was different now. Allowing their daughter’s boyfriend into her bedroom was suddenly the least of her parents’ worries.
Brian hung his suit coat on the newel post and started up the stairs.