CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE #2
I frown. "What are you talking about? What accident? Liz and Lena's mother walked out when they were kids. She packed a bag one night and left. Liz remembers the whole thing. Her mother crying to her father that she was sorry, but that she had to go."
I think that's the piece that's scarred Liz the most. Witnessing her mother break not only her father's heart and hers and Lena's, but that the drive to do so was so strong, she was willing to destroy everyone to do it. Herself included.
There was no sense to it. No logic for her brain to conclude anything other than the possibility that she has this same self-destructive time bomb ticking away inside of her.
My mother's eyes close, and her chin tilts in the slightest nod, as though she's just made sense of something. When she opens them again, there's pain there. And when her hand reaches out to untangle mine and give them a reassuring squeeze, I brace myself for what I'm about to learn.
"Rebecca Penny didn't walk out on her family," she starts, and her voice has that tone I used to dread, the one when she'd tell me that my father's cancer was back.
Or that his treatment had stopped working.
"I don't know why it never occurred to me that you didn't know, that the girls didn't know.
I suppose you were all too young to hear the full story unless an adult told you, and clearly, we all chose not to burden you. If likely for different reasons."
I want to tell her to spit it out already, but I keep my mouth shut, grind my teeth together, and wait it out.
"It was all over the news, so what I know, I know because it was public knowledge. I never got a firsthand telling from anyone, not even in all the years I was friends with Harold."
One shoulder lifts and drops in a helpless motion.
"It was all so tragic, I guess I never wanted to have to look too closely at it."
She takes a resolute breath, and on the exhale, it all comes together, "Lena had been ill for a while.
Persistent ear infection, I think. I gather she was fussy and miserable and too exhausted to sleep.
And, as many parents will tell you, often going for a drive will settle a little one when nothing else will.
So, after a few nights of no rest, sleep-deprived and desperate, Rebecca found herself packing her toddler into the car, and taking the backroads behind town, hoping the steady, sloping path would finally offer them both some relief. "
Tension tightens my jaw, down my throat and up to my temples. I have a feeling I know where this is going.
"She wound up on Tranton Drive, and back then, there wasn't a light in sight, not like there is now.
She must have dozed off, because she reportedly startled awake as she was headed straight for the woods.
Yanking the steering wheel on instinct, she got herself back onto the road.
Rebecca said later that in the moment, everything had happened so fast. The ground had been uneven, she'd been terrified to find herself driving toward the tree line, realizing she'd fallen asleep.
But when she pulled back onto the road, Lena still sleeping, and no sign of damage, she thought she'd been lucky.
That she'd woken up before anything terrible happened. "
The way my mother's eyes shutter tells me that wasn't quite the case.
"The next morning, she learned that there'd been a hit and run on Tranton during the night. That the Cambridge's eldest boy was walking home late after a party out at the creek, too drunk to drive home. He died out there, on the side of the road."
She swallows hard. "Much as I'm sure Rebecca wanted to deny it, there was a dent on the passenger side of her car that hadn't been there before."
She averts her gaze, looking to Gavin and Remmi in a heated discussion over which stuffed animal to risk their tokens for in the claw machine.
"No one outside of the Penny household knows what transpired over the next forty-eight hours, but many have guessed at the turmoil they faced between the moment they realized what had happened, understood the consequences that would follow if she were discovered, and the night she made the decision to turn herself in. "
"Holy shit." I don't know what I was expecting, how I thought this would play out. But it was never this. "Liz's mom went to jail."
My mother nods. "Plead guilty on all charges, and they weren't easy on her despite the nature of the accident.
She left the scene. A boy died. A boy who might have lived had she realized sooner what happened and gotten him help.
" She wipes her palm over her mouth. "Honestly, I don't think she wanted a lighter sentence.
Liz is like her mother. Takes her responsibilities seriously to a fault.
Bears the cost of it all without question.
" Her eyes land on mine again. "She's still there, you know. Serving her time at the women’s prison in Nashville. "
"That's," I stammer, speechless. "I don't know what to do with that."
My mother's hand tightens around mine again. "Of course you do."
I nod. She's right.