Chapter 4
Four
The night before graduation, Brian found his mother in her favorite position since the accident—on the sofa, nursing a glass of what looked like whiskey.
The drinking was new in the last month, and it just added to his already full plate of worries.
He had seen what alcohol had done to Toby’s mother and to their family.
He’d wanted to go over to see Mr. and Mrs. Garrett but had been afraid of what he might find there, so he’d stayed away.
“Mom?”
“Oh, hi, honey. I ironed your shirt and hung it in your closet. Are you going to wear the maroon tie?”
“I guess so. Whatever you want.”
“That would look nice with the black gown.”
“You know, Mom, I’d understand if it was too much for you to go tomorrow night.”
She pushed herself into a sitting position. “Don’t be ridiculous. I wouldn’t miss it for the world, Brian. I’m so very proud of you. Number four in your class.” She shook her head with amazement and patted the cushion next to her.
He sat with her. “I’ve been thinking about deferring Michigan for a year and staying closer to home next year. I’m sure one of the state schools would take me in light of everything that’s happened—”
“No,” she said firmly. “Absolutely not.”
“How am I supposed to leave you and Dad and go halfway across the country? It won’t matter if I wait a year. I’ll still get the degree from Michigan.”
“I won’t have you changing your plans so you can babysit me. That’s not going to happen. You’re going to Michigan, and I don’t want to hear another word about it.”
“What about Carly, Mom? What’s going to happen to her?”
Mary Ann reached for his hand. “I don’t know, honey. But you can’t put your life on hold until she bounces back. The two of you saw the same things, but for some reason it hit her harder. I wish I knew why.”
“We were going to get married.”
“What? Married?”
“I asked her the night of the accident.”
“Oh, Brian.”
“We used the money you guys and her parents gave us to rent an off-campus apartment in Ann Arbor so we could live together.”
“I wondered if you would.”
“Really?” Brian asked, amazed.
“I may be old, but I wasn’t born yesterday,” she said dryly.
“Wow,” he said with a smile. “I really thought I was getting away with something, but I should’ve known you’d figure it out. Anyway, she was kind of freaking out about living together, and since we were going to get married someday anyhow, I just figured why not now?”
Mary Ann held his hand between both of hers.
He rested his head on her shoulder. “I don’t know what I’m supposed to do, Mom. She’s my fiancée. Do I leave her here and go to school? How do I do that? I love her.”
“Maybe she’ll be better by the time August rolls around. It’s only been a month. She might just need some more time.”
“I’m not so sure. The Carly I know and love would never have let me go through the last month by myself, you know?”
“I know what you mean.” She sniffed and wiped away the stray tear that rolled down her cheek. “Are you worried her condition might be permanent?”
“I’m starting to wonder,” he said, giving voice to his greatest fear. “What am I supposed to do, Mom? This is killing me. I miss her so much. I miss them all, but having her here and unavailable is somehow worse. Is that awful for me to say?”
“No, baby, it isn’t.” She cradled his head on her chest. “It’s not awful. All you can do is hope she’ll come around.”
He looked up at her. “And if she doesn’t?”
“Then you have to find a way to go on. That’s all you can do. You’ve got your whole life ahead of you, Brian, and you have to live every minute of it to the best of your ability. If you’ve learned nothing else from all this, I hope you’ve learned that.”
“What will you do?”
“I’ve been thinking about getting a job.”
“For real?” He had never known her to work.
“I’ve got to do something. I can’t sit here drinking whiskey forever. It’s time to pick myself up and figure out what’s next.”
“I’m glad to hear you say that. I’ve been worried about you.”
She kissed his forehead. “I’m sorry you were worried.”
“You’ll really be okay if I go to Michigan?”
“I’ll miss you like crazy, but I’ll be fine. I promise.”
Brian made two trips to the stage at graduation—one to collect the diploma the school board had voted to give Carly, even though she hadn’t taken her final exams, and the other to pick up his own diploma.
Both times his classmates stood and cheered.
He’d declined the invitation to narrate a tribute to the five members of their class who had died in the accident.
Their empty chairs, as well as Carly’s, were decorated with photos, flowers, and balloons.
As he listened to the class president talk about each of his fallen friends, he felt all eyes on him as he struggled to maintain his composure.
He managed to hold it together until they mentioned Sam.
Tina West, a talented soprano in their class, concluded the tribute by singing “The Wind Beneath My Wings.” Brian quit trying to control his tears when he realized there wasn’t a dry eye in the big tent on the high school lawn.
After commencement, his parents invited his extended family back to the house for cake, and everyone made a tremendous effort to keep the mood celebratory.
Brian opened gifts and ate the chocolate cake his mother had baked for him, but the forced sense of merriment was stifling.
He kept waiting for Sam to appear, making wisecracks that Granville High would give a diploma to anyone.
As soon as Brian could escape, he picked up Carly’s diploma and walked over to her house.
She was sitting on the front porch, almost as if she had been waiting for him.
With a kiss to her cheek, he handed her the leather-bound piece of paper that declared her a high school graduate. “Congratulations.”
She brushed a hand over the black leather.
“They did a nice tribute to the gang, and they included Sam, too, which was cool. Tina sang that song from Beaches. I bawled my head off, but everyone did.”
Reaching for his hand, she brought him down next to her on the porch swing.
After swinging in silence for several minutes, Brian said, “I can’t believe we’re high school graduates.”
She replied with a small, sad smile.
Unable to resist the urge, he leaned in and kissed her. When she didn’t pull back like he expected her to, he wrapped a hand around her neck and nudged at her lips with his tongue.
She turned her face away.
“Carly, honey, please. I miss you. I miss us. I miss making love with you. If you love me the way you always said you did, you’ll talk to me. I need you.”
Clutching his hand, she wept quietly as if even making the noise it took to cry was too much for her.
He pulled his hand free and stood up. “I can’t do this anymore. I don’t know how to help you, and you won’t tell me. I’m not coming back again. When you’re ready to talk to me, you know where to find me.”
Her eyes beseeched him to stay, but he forced himself to turn away from her. He went down the stairs and out through the gate, letting it slam closed behind him.
The week after Brian left her was the worst of Carly’s life, even worse than the week that followed the accident. Without his visits to look forward to, there was nothing left to live for. Except for occasional trips to the bathroom, she never got out of bed and refused to eat or shower.
“This is bullshit!” Her father’s voice broke the silence one morning.
“Be quiet, Steve,” her mother said. “She’ll hear you.”
“I don’t care if she hears me! I’ve had enough of this! Apparently so has Brian.”
“She’s traumatized. She just needs some time to get over it.”
“It’s been five weeks, Carol! Brian saw the same things she did, but he’s not refusing to talk or eat or get out of bed.”
As Carly heard her mother speaking quietly in an attempt to pacify her father, she rolled her face into her pillow to keep from hearing any more.
Does he really think I want to live like this?
What she wanted was to be going to work at the coffee shop like she had every summer for years.
She wanted to be meeting Brian after work to swim in the lake and make love under the willow.
She wanted everything to be the way it used to be.
Carly heard her sisters talking as they got ready for work.
“She’s doing it for attention,” Caren said. She had recently finished her freshman year at the University of Connecticut.
“Why would she do that?” asked Cate, who’d just graduated from Boston College. “Brian’s furious with her and so is Dad. Why would she be stirring up all this trouble on purpose? That’s not Carly. Besides, you know how much she loves Brian. She’d never want to drive him away.”
Thanks, Cate. Carly heard her father’s car start and was relieved to realize he was leaving for work.
Because they’d always been so close, Carly hated that she was upsetting him.
As the youngest of the four Holbrook kids, she had loved being her daddy’s little girl.
The two most important men in her life were mad at her.
She knew it was because they loved her so much and were frightened by her withdrawal from life, but knowing that didn’t make it any easier.
Her mother came into the room and opened the drapes. “I drew you a bubble bath.”
Carly winced from the sudden onset of light but didn’t resist when her mother pulled back the covers, tugged her out of bed, led her into the bathroom, and undressed her like she would a baby. Carly slipped into the tub and let the fragrant bubbles envelop her in their warmth.