Chapter 46
Tessa stared out the expanse of airport window, across the tarmac and into the past. Wondering if it had come back to haunt her.
“The pivotal moments of our lives cannot always be recognized when they happen,” Tessa would tell her audiences.
“It’s not until later that your personal time bombs explode, and that’s when they show you their power. ”
On a day like today, in the same kind of summer but so long ago, the same infinite azure sky offering the same lush promises, Tessa had ignored her mother’s imprecations and told Emily, her dearest, darling Emily, about the bad thing.
Tessa lost herself now, into the green of the distant hills, the bustling airport noise going muffled and indistinct. She became sixteen again. Remembering Emily.
Emily. The only other person alive who knew about Tessa’s past. Sitting on that rickety wooden pier that sunny afternoon, she’d told her trusted friend about the cherry Popsicle. The five dollars. The kidnapping.
If Emily had researched it at some point later, she’d also know about the Maumee River.
That same night, Tessa’s mother had gone out to one of her events, escorted by yet another “prospect,” as she secretly called them.
Giggling and plotting, Tessa and Emily, soul sisters, Tessa truly believed it, had taken the car her mom rented for that summer, shared illicit beer in their “forest primeval” secret place, told stories and made promises by flashlight under the endless New England sky.
But then it was time to go home. Her mother would be returning soon.
“I want to drive.” Tessa remembered Emily’s voice, coaxing. “Let me.”
Tessa had tried to say no. “My mother would kill me.”
“No one will know.” Emily had been Emily, her dearest, special friend. “It’s only us.”
Soon after, Tessa remembered, the approaching shadow. And the sound. And Emily’s cry as she slammed on the brakes.
The impact. The instant, infinite, gasping knowledge that the road in front of them had not been empty.
How they’d been terrified to look. And there had been nothing to do, nothing , Emily hit the gas, and the car lurched ahead, but it made a terrible noise and finally it just stopped— what was it they’d left behind?
— and there was nothing to do in the silence except call Emily’s father from the tiny phone he made her carry and tell him the truth.
Lying was impossible, what was real was real, and how could they— change anything?
They were stranded and lost and trapped and doomed.
They waited, huddled on the narrow shoulder of the deserted dirt road, both of them sobbing, in filthy yellow flip-flops and ripped jeans. Terrified of what was to come. They would be in trouble forever.
It seemed like forever later when Emily’s father arrived in his black-and-white cruiser.
Played his flashlight across the murky darkness behind their broken car, then consoled them.
“Don’t worry, ” he’d told them. “You hit a deer. I’m the sheriff, and I’ll handle everything.
” He’d comforted Emily, too, though the two girls never got to talk about it again.
Tessa remembered—did she?—the cruiser headlights glinting on his glasses. The sheriff’s blue uniform shirt, silver shield pinned to the pocket, the fabric clinging to his back with sweat or fear or power. Emily had sniffled, edged closer to her.
“Girls. Listen to me. Look at me,” Emily’s father said. “Emily. You should not have been driving this car. Tessa, that was tremendously poor judgment. An extremely irresponsible decision. You’ve both been drinking. I’m disappointed in you.”
They’d both hung their heads. They were in so much trouble. Even now, Tessa could hear the silence.
“Look at me.” He’d then pointed a forefinger at Tessa, instructing.
“ You were supposed to be driving. Emily’s too young.
You should never have let her. You should have protected her.
Drinking teenagers and a rental car. Unacceptable.
Now. Listen to me. I’ll take care of this. I’ll call your mother. I’ll handle it.”
The darkness had almost swallowed her then. She’d done another bad thing, her mother would surely declare. She should have protected Emily. Just like she should have protected Annabelle. She’d be grounded for the rest of her life.
She deserved it.
Emily’s father had crossed his beefy arms over his chest, turned his back on them, strode away to see what was in the road.
He and his new wife had never liked Tessa, Emily had divulged that about her stepmother, early on.
And the Owens didn’t like Tessa’s mother, either.
Called her “summer people.” Entitled. Elite.
“From away,” as if that were the ultimate dismissal.
Emily’s stepmother, nonexistent in Tessa’s world and disdained in Emily’s, “bought things,” Emily always said.
But that night, Emily’s father had taken care of them.
She had watched him put one hand on the hood of the car, his back to them. After a minute, or an eternity, he marched back and faced them. She and Emily were arm in arm, shivering in the heat, Emily still sobbing, with no words to share.
“But I need to think of your future,” he’d said. “Your future families. All of it, everything you hope for, it could still happen. But only if you erase tonight from your minds. Only if you make a new story.”
Tessa had heard a night bird call then, proclaiming the darkness or looking for a lost love.
“And listen to me, both of you girls need to calm down. What you hit. What you killed. It was just a deer.”
Emily’s tears had glistened in the cruiser’s headlights, like her father’s sunglasses, like his shiny badge.
“Say it,” Sheriff Owen had commanded. “Say it, girls. Each of you. It was a deer.”
Her own voice had vanished, her entire body numb, and she’d listened for the night bird again. But heard Emily’s quavering whisper instead.
“It was a deer.”
“Again.”
“It was a deer.”
“And now you, Tessa. And I’ll assure your mother, too, when I take you home. It was a deer.”
That poor, poor deer, she remembered thinking, yearning to run back on the dirt road to see the reality, knowing if she did, if she saw it, and could not comfort it or save it, the crushing weight of it would never leave her.
“It was just a deer,” she whispered, too, and it felt like a column of wild flames shot orange into the vast night sky.
In silence and darkness, he’d driven them both to Tessa’s rented summer house, and must have notified her mother, because she met him at the door.
Tessa had watched Sheriff Owen take Mommy aside, watched her face in the half-light as he talked, watched her mother put her head in her hands as he told the story.
“I’ll bring the rental car back to you tonight,” he’d said. “I’ll handle it. Just turn it in whenever you leave.”
Before dawn the next morning, they were heading for the airport again, in their somehow shiny rental car, with Tessa crumpled into the passenger seat and her mother stiff-backed at the wheel, red-eyed, radiating fury.
“I’ve done everything for you, given you everything,” her mother had said. “How could you fail me again?”
“She’s my friend, ” Tessa had tried to explain.
“You clearly have a problem with ‘friends,’” her mother said. “And with making the right decisions. It’s beyond belief that you’re forcing us to leave town again. We’ll have to forfeit all the cottage rent, and I’ll miss the Atkinson gala, and—I’m appalled, Tessa. What were you thinking?”
“I’m so sorry, I didn’t mean to—”
“Those people . That ridiculous, silly girl .” She could hear her mother’s voice, a knife’s edge cutting through the awakening day. “Did you tell her about… oh, my God, you did, didn’t you. Have you lost your mind? Did you?”
Tessa had stared at the floor of the rental car, wished she could fall through to the pavement below and be crushed and destroyed and gone, just like that poor deer.
“Don’t lie to me, young lady.” Her mother had not even let her answer. “You will never speak to her again. You will never contact her again. Ever. She can utterly, irrevocably, completely, ruin your life.”
Now, somewhere in the far distance of the airport concourse, they were calling her plane.