Chapter 21
amy
I park my car in the narrow side alley across the street from my rental apartment and turn off the engine. I’m exhausted and desperate for bed, but instead of getting out of the car, I lean on the steering wheel and stare out into the rain-splashed darkness, unable to bring myself to move.
It’s been a beautiful, crisp autumn day, with vivid blue skies, though I only know this because I just heard the local newscaster say so on the radio.
It was dark when I left my apartment at five-thirty this morning to open up at Al’s Burgers, and now, at just after eight p.m., it’s dark again, and I can tell from the damp chill in the air, the way the wind whips dead leaves down the street, that the weather is about to turn.
Perhaps I’ll just stay here and sleep in my car.
It wouldn’t be the first time.
The end of my work day doesn’t bring me peace or relaxation, or even the chance to wallow in my own misery; my mother is always there, in my apartment, waiting for me like a giant spider.
And my fatigue doesn’t stem from a fourteen-hour day spent slinging hash browns and cleaning a decade’s worth of congealed grease from industrial filters.
It’s a weariness of the soul.
For the first year after the accident, I told myself it would somehow get better once all the terrible firsts were out of the way.
Our boys’ birthdays: Nicky’s on the fifteenth of September, and Finn’s just six days later.
The first Thanksgiving without them: instead of the traditional gathering of the extended Gray clan around a table groaning with turkey and pumpkin pie and cranberry sauce and sweet potatoes, Mac and I each grabbed sandwiches and ate standing up in the kitchen, alone.
And then Christmas, Valentine’s Day, Mother’s Day, my own birthday in June: all the Hallmark events that led the way, inexorably, unbearably, to an anniversary for which there were no card or words.
How stupid, to have expected things to be better the second year.
It’s worse: there’s no longer the consolation of this time last year. Nicky grows further away from me with every day.
And now I’ve lost Mac, too.
I think of the divorce papers on the dining table, still awaiting my signature.
Mac left me six months ago, exhausted by my inability to let our son go and move on.
I don’t even know where he is now: he fled out West – first to Colorado, and then Utah and Washington State, and Alaska, and then the postcards stopped coming – desperate to put as much distance between himself and this town and its terrible memories as he could.
He begged me to come with him, but I can’t leave Stowebury, not until they find my son.
Leaving broke Mac’s heart as well as mine, but he had to go, for his own survival.
Just as I had to stay, for mine.
Grief doesn’t heal. It’s as raw today as it was the first morning I awoke to a world without my son.
But nor does it kill you, no matter how hard you pray it will.
The waves of loss that knock you off your feet become smaller, less violent; you’re able to stand and let them wash around you, not over you.
You no longer have to remind yourself to breathe.
Sometimes I can even say his name without crying.
Occasionally I wake up in the morning, and Nicky isn’t the first thing I think about.
But there’s a dark shadow that covers the world now my husband has gone. Everything looks different; it even has a different smell. And I have to keep on living until my son is returned to me, even though, without Mac, there’s nothing left to live for.
The wind is picking up, smacking litter from the nearby dumpster against the windshield.
I finally get out of my car, leaving it unlocked.
In this part of town, it’s better to let thieves rifle unhindered through your glovebox than have them smash the windows to see if you’ve left spare change in the cupholder.
No one’s going to steal the car itself; the gas in the tank is worth more than the vehicle.
My apartment is in darkness, but I know Helen will be awake. Denying me peace is the only pleasure she has left.
The apartment is too small to have a hallway, so as soon as I open the front door, I’m standing in the tiny living room where I sleep.
In another life, I’d have put away the sofa bed as soon as I woke up, tidied away the blankets and pillows, plumped the cushions; but in this one, in this pathetic shadow existence, I don’t even bother to wash my sheets from one month to the next.
My mother is waiting for me, as I predicted, coiled in her ratty, stained armchair in front of the ancient rabbit-ear television propped on a side table.
But I hadn’t predicted she’d have company.
‘Get out,’ I say.
I don’t wait to see if the woman complies. I squeeze past the unmade sofa bed and into the dingy galley kitchen, ignoring my mother’s malicious cackle. When I straighten up from the wheezing refrigerator with my last bottle of screw-top wine, Quinn Wilde is standing beside me.
‘Hear me out,’ she says calmly.
‘I have nothing to say to you.’
‘You don’t have to say anything. Just listen.’
‘Out of my way.’
‘No,’ she says.
I dodge right, but she blocks me. I go left, and she blocks me again. For a brief moment, I grapple with the sheer ludicrousness of being trapped in my own kitchen. ‘Move,’ I snap. ‘Or I’ll just push you out of the way.’
‘You wouldn’t. I’m a cripple.’
‘Try me. And you’re no such thing.’
Quinn takes the bottle of wine from my hand, and puts it down on the counter. ‘You can drink yourself into a coma after you’ve heard me out,’ she says.
In the other room, my mother turns on the television. Fox News: she knows I hate it.
‘I told you last week, when you showed up at my place of work,’ I tell Quinn, ‘I’m not interested in telling you my side of the story. I’m not looking for redemption or forgiveness. I just want to be left alone to get on with what’s left of my life.’
‘I don’t believe you.’
I reach for the bottle. ‘Fine by me.’
‘You could have left this town,’ Quinn says. ‘Gone somewhere new. Put the past behind you and started again. But you chose not to.’
‘I don’t have to explain myself to you.’
Her singular blue eye gleams. She’s enjoying this, I realise. Scavengers like her always do.
‘Amy, I’m not here to ambush you,’ she says. ‘Look, no cameras. No secret phone recording you. I’m not even asking you to trust me. I just want five minutes of your time.’
‘You want a story,’ I say.
‘Yes. Fine.’ She throws up a hand. ‘There’s a story here, and sooner or later I’m going to get it. I want to know what happened that night, and I want to hold those responsible to account. But that’s no skin off your nose, right? Your life’s fucked already. I mean, how much worse can it be?’
I laugh shortly. The woman’s got balls; I’ll say that for her.
‘I thought I was the one to blame,’ I say bitterly.
‘You took the blame. Not quite the same thing.’
‘Tell that to the people in this town,’ I say.
‘Look. Amy. You made some bad choices that night, and sure, that’s on you. But you didn’t cause the accident, whatever the bullshit inquiry said. The Lady didn’t just sink for no reason. Don’t you want to know what happened?’
‘You want to stir everything up again?’ I say. ‘Invite all the trolls who might just have forgotten me back out of the woodwork?’
‘Ashley Lincoln’s awake,’ Quinn says.
‘So I heard.’
News travels fast in this town. People may not talk to me, but they talk to each other. In grocery stores, at the gas station, queuing for their burgers in Al’s.
Ashley Lincoln is awake, but she’s been in a coma for fifteen months.
The chances of her regaining any cognitive function, never mind talking, are slim-to-zero, according to the chief neurologist there – who also happens to be one of Al’s most devoted customers.
Hawaiian sauce, medium rare, no pickles. Orders the same thing every time.
Quinn’s tone softens. ‘Look, Amy. The girl isn’t talking yet, but that could change tomorrow,’ she says. ‘And who knows what she’s got to say?’
‘What makes you think she’ll say anything good for me?’
‘Because something – or someone – else caused the accident, not you. And this fucked-up town is covering it up.’
For the first time since I can remember, I feel a spark of something. Not hope, not even interest. But . . . something.
‘It doesn’t matter,’ I say. ‘It’s not going to change anything.’
‘It could change everything,’ Quinn says.
‘You ruined my life,’ I say. ‘You and all the other vultures. You made sure no one forgot me, even for a second. You didn’t care that I was grieving, that I’d lost my own son. What little was left of my life, you people turned to rubble. Why would I want to help you?’
‘Because you want to find out what happened to Nicky,’ she says.