17. Chapter 17
17
Chapter 17
FINN
W hen she runs from the room, I don’t stop her.
And now, three races later, it’s November, and I’m wondering why the fuck I’m still here.
In Mexico, the suspension still isn’t great. There hasn’t been enough time to overhaul it, and Jack has done the best he could. Barely pulled away, and I’m called back to the pits. I violate the pit lane speed limit on my way back, furious. I get suspended for the next race.
I don’t even bother flying out to Brazil. I spend the week at home, thinking about Camille, and I overturn the terrace table, and refuse to let the staff right it.
For two weeks now I haven’t slept, could hardly eat.
After my suspension by the stewards, Erik had been so angry at me he refused to speak to me. Reuben had to represent Delta Victor alone. He did well.
Now, in the briefing room in Las Vegas, Erik’s tentatively proud over how much weight I managed to drop. It equates to faster lap times in the race .
Jack, however, doesn’t feel the same. He barges in while I’m getting dressed and he narrows his eyes as he takes me in.
“You missed the briefing call last week.”
I shrug.
“You smell like bourbon.”
“Tested clean.”
“Then when’s the last time you showered?”
I shrug again.
When he hands me my helmet, we both take a moment to watch my shaking hands as I take it from him.
“What the fuck is going on with you?” he bursts out.
I had planned to die on the Austin circuit, and here I was, three races later, having nothing but memories of Camille to torture myself with. Her tear-stained cheeks. The morning when she sat on the countertop, swinging her legs. In Japan, In Singapore. At my own fucking house, where I swear to God the burnt sugar smell of her lingers.
I need this to end. Now. This fucking torture needs to end.
Jack accompanies me to the car and clips me into the harness while he points out the corners I need to watch out for.
I have an awful starting position. I’m fourteenth on the grid.
There used to be a time that I would have been happy with that.
I watch as Jack leaves, but he only takes a few steps before he turns to me, confused. His time is up, he needs to leave, and he turns back, jogs away.
I unclip the harness.
Moments later, he comes on over comms.
“Finn.” It’s a statement.
“Loud and clear.”
“You didn’t touch the buttons. ”
“What?”
“Your pre-race ritual. You didn’t do it.”
I ignore him.
“Erik,” Jack’s gruff voice comes on, “withdraw Brennan.”
“What?” Erik’s voice is two octaves higher. “What’s going on?”
“Something isn’t right,” Jack continues bullishly. “You need to withdraw Finn from the race.”
Fuck that.
“All clear from me,” I say casually.
It goes quiet as Erik thinks it over.
“Stop the fucking race!” Jack bursts out. “I’m telling you-” His radio gets switched off. We’re not really allowed to swear. All our comms are available for the stewards, and it’s considered poor taste. Jack swears a lot. The techs know that when he swears, they need to pull him from comms.
I’m so furious with him, it makes me happy. I grin inside my helmet.
The revving of engines around me is the sweet cacophony of my life, and I join in superciliously. When the countdown starts, I’m roaring to go.
It’s not the poetic end I had planned for myself in Austin, but I’m happy to be in the car, my hands shaking on the wheel.
And for seven laps I think of nothing but the moments of joy I had with Camille, moments that Grace was denied, and on the eighth lap, I live the dream. I open the throttle to the max and watch as the numbers spill up as the speed increases. The engine roars under the strain as I push on.
It’s seconds.
When the turn comes, I breathe out and close my eyes.
The car smashes into the wall at full speed .
I don’t see it, but the metal crumples like paper, sparks scattering through the air. The car ricochets off the barrier, flipping twice, scattering debris like confetti through the air. The smell of fuel is everywhere, and when it ignites, it gives off instant, unbearable heat.
Luckily, I miss the whole thing.
* * *
FINN
I claw my way to consciousness, slow and angry, unapologetic. I’m in a hospital bed, the room dark, the machines hooked up to me making a soft electronic buzz.
Like a ton of bricks, things fall into the void left by unconsciousness.
The smell of the fire, chemicals. That broken feeling where you know that the pain of it will come crashing into you soon as soon as you run out of adrenaline. And then being dragged from the car, the helmet bumping across the tarred road, the suit snagging at the debris strewn everywhere.
It was a spectator.
A ruddy, middle-aged man, and his shirt read “Hold my beer.”
I had trouble reading it upside down, because he was bent over me, hands hooked under my arms, dragging me away. A second later he collapsed, arms over his head, as the car exploded. When he looked back, I could see the inferno of it mirrored in his eyes. Twin points of flames.
If I hadn’t unclipped my harness, he wouldn’t have gotten me out in time.
As my heart rate climbs, so do the protestations of a machine hooked up to me.
I rip off the sensors that had been stuck on my chest. The machine flat lines, and I hear an alarm go off at a nurses’ station down the hall.
“What the fuck are you doing?” Jack grunts from the dark beside me. He stumbles upright, swatting around for a light switch.
When I take up the control hooked up to the bed, he snatches it from me angrily and does it himself.
The yellow light that spills over us a moment later casts him in a sickly glow. He has dark circles under his eyes, and I watch as his face grows red.
He’s angry.
Good. So am I.
“ What the fuck ?” we both say at the same time.
“Don’t you fuckin’ start with me, Brennan.” He swivels a finger right up under my nose. He’s trembling all over. “Don’t you fucking dare .”
And then he softens. He wipes at his eyes, grabs me in a bear hug, and leaves the room.
And then the pain sets in.
Three days’ worth of it.
It’s always been absurd to me how fast the body heals. On the first day, my ribs are unbearable. On the second, I marvel at how my collarbone has stolen the show. On the third, it’s my muscles that protest at every movement.
On the fourth day, I sign myself out.
The doctor isn’t happy, but he’s willing to accommodate me. Anything to get me out. The nurses all hate me, and the army of paparazzi and journalists at the hospital entrance is driving everyone insane .
Jack comes to fetch me. On the entire drive to the airport, he doesn’t speak a word to me.
When he drives out on the tarmac and stops the car next to a small private plane, he grabs my arm before I can get out.
“I quit.” His voice is full of pain and regret.
I don’t answer him. I get out of the car and when I board the plane, all my luggage from the hotel is there.
A hostess brings me a whiskey at my request and I sit back in the seat, pain lancing through my collarbone. My arm in the sling feels useless and limp, and I clutch it to my chest, trying not to jostle my shoulder.
At my request she hands me my travel bag, and I ruffle around inside for my cellphone. It’s dead.
I toss it aside.
And then my eyes catch sight of the letter. The one I’ve been lugging around for months.
I break the seal before I can stop myself.
Three sheafs of paper, handwritten in a curly, feminine script. The pages tremble in my hands.
I’m so empty inside that I relish it, this opportunity to fill up on hate and rage and despair. The accusations are already forming in my mind.
It’s from Grace’s daughter, and her name is Hope.
She’s pouring out years’ worth of hate and despair, and I revel in it.
Sentences jump out at me.
I hated you more than I can ever say…wish she had died…wish you had died instead…
And then the tone changes.
Finished college…I am now a trauma therapist…changed my life.
And then .
Thank you. The financial support has given us opportunities we might not have had otherwise. And while it can’t change the past, it is hard to deny that it has changed our future.
I forgive you now, because I must. My resentment will chain me to a past I cannot change and withhold me from a future that I can.
I hope you can forgive yourself.
Tears blur out the rest of the letter. I haven’t cried since my mother left.
This girl, she had written me to forgive me.
She has absolved me of fifteen years’ worth of robbed memories, and of a lifetime’s worth of memories ahead.
It shatters me.
My aching ribs heave under the strain of her words, the regret a bitter film on my tongue.
I have sacrificed every joy, ensured that I punished myself every day, to mete out my own sense of justice, and, finding the sentence too heavy a burden, had opted to cheat myself instead, to take my life and free me from my self-imposed prison.
It never occurred to me I could be forgiven, in earnest.
It’s not absolution, but it is forgiveness.
It is a sentence served, and, reeling, I realised I was free to go.
* * *
CAMILLE
GRANDE PRIMA DRIVER SURVIVES HARROWING CRASH
I lower my phone, where I was reading the news .
I breathe in slowly through my nose, my sunglasses covering my closed eyes.
“Cam?” Amy places a large cup of coffee down on the wonky street cafe table, placing a hand tentatively on my shoulder.
I cover her hand with my own and give her a nod.
I have to shake it off, that moment my eyes scanned the article, holding my breath, searching for the confirmation, and the relief that floods me.
He’s okay.
There is nothing I could do about it. I have never felt more hopeless. I have spent the last few weeks caught in a constant loop. First the buildup of absolute terror as race day approached. And then race day, the terror through the race, my fear a weight on me, suffocating me. And then, the relief. When he was called to pit. His suspension.
That weight tumbling off to be replaced by featherlight hope.
And then this last race.
When he pulled away, I knew. Amy had heard my keening wail and, confused, held me as I cried. She had known everything but this. This was the secret core of him, and I couldn’t bring myself to tell her how broken he was, how poisoned by his own guilt.
When I had just returned, I told her I couldn’t bear the fear of watching someone I love risk their life. And she could understand it, mourned with me.
I had always been logical when it came to romantic relationships in the past, so she could understand it, understand how I would come to that conclusion.
She had stood by helplessly as I cycled through my emotions every week, bracing for the race ahead, my fear, my relief. She knew I was holding out on something, and as she watched me over the last few weeks, she had grown more and more frustrated at my silence. She tried to distract me, take me out. Drew me warm baths and forced me to eat. But she could not hide her confusion when I insisted on watching every race.
“Don’t do it, Cam.”
“I have to know…”
“You need to move on.”
“I know!” I could not.
“Cam, please. What is going on?”
Every time she asked, I was torn. I wanted to tell her, but somehow, it felt like I would betray him. Like maybe I would betray myself.
“Cam, help me understand.”
I shook my head.
She had shaken her own and watched me reach for the only thing that could anchor me, my work.
London in November is dreary. After chasing the summer season over the globe, the cold was taking some getting used to. Pretty soon after finishing our coffees over mild conversations, the rain started pouring down and we grabbed a cab home. In the small sitting room, we step over my equipment, all packed in crates and bags. I want to fly out to Sar-i-Pul, the small village in northeastern Iran, where I want to reconnect with the weaver and his grandson. I haven’t been able to get a hold of them yet. The number I have is out of service and the importer of the scarves confirmed that the last shipment they received was two months ago.
They’d let me know if they heard from him.
Frustrated, I spend the next week arguing with the embassy to get my visa application started. I need an invitation from an Iranian national before they’ll even begin the process. Frustratingly, I need to wait.
Dixon calls as I sit on the couch, feet tucked under me, unwashed hair standing out around my head like a halo.
He phones regularly for insight or guidance on the project as he acclimatises to the role. I expect another question about the crew, or insight into someones character as he navigates the scores of people who keep the Prima Grande wheel turning.
“Cam?” he asks tentatively.
We missed each other physically. He flew out as I flew back, and I’ve been evasive when he enquires about my sudden departure. He’s been respectful of my privacy, but I suspect it’s wearing thin. Amy had a few quiet conversations on her phone, and I think she’s been keeping him in the loop. He’s always cared about us as people. So if he isn’t pressing me for answers, he’s sure as hell getting them from somewhere else.
I make a mental note to strangle Amy.
“Dixon! How’s it going?”
“Good. Crazy actually.” I can hear the tiredness in his voice. I had forgotten the fast pace of it, how exhausting it had been in the beginning.
I smile. “You’ll get used to it.”
“Cam, we have a problem.”
I sit up straighter.
“What’s up?”
“Brennan’s out for the rest of the season. Collar bone and ribs.”
I nod, realise he can’t see me, and clear my throat. “Yeah?”
“He’s being replaced by a Delta Victor reserve, but his agent reached out. It’s a sensitive subject.”
I frown. “What’s going on?”
“Cam, I wouldn’t be asking if I had any other choice. ”
My stomach twists in knots.
“Spit it out.”
“He was in an accident years ago, sort of the beginning of the end for Finnegan Brennan.”
“I know the history.” I recall Finn’s hollow eyes. How they have haunted me these past few weeks.
“Well, his agent made contact. He wants to film in Austin. Brennan wants to recount the accident. The survivor’s family gave the go ahead.”
“What?”
What the fuck?
“I know. It’s documentary gold. He’s literally never spoken out about it before. Thing is, he’s willing to go on camera, but only if you’re there to film it.”
I scoff. It’s silent on the line. For the life of me, I don’t know what to say.
“Cam,” Dixon begins tentatively, “I know things went down and, to a certain extent, I think I know why you walked away.”
I’m still quiet. But it’s because my throat is closing up. Tears are burning behind my closed eyes.
“But this is different.”
“No,” I say, my voice thick. I cannot let him reel me back in. Into a world he has no intention of being part of.
“Did I ever tell you how I met my wife?” Dixon’s voice is normal, even though I’m sure it pains him to talk about her. He continues without waiting for my answer.
“Lost my wallet on the metro. She found it, returned it. I took her out for lunch as a thank you. The rest is history.”
“I’m so sorry for the last couple of years.”
“I’m not.” His voice is firm, but laden with emotion. “I would never take back a moment that I spent with her.”
I’m crying now, tears spilling down my cheeks.
“Can I ask you something?” I wipe at my face.
“Sure.”
“How did you live with the fear of losing her?”
“I didn’t. If I spent every moment afraid, I wouldn’t have been present, really present , to enjoy the time I had with her. So I had to let it go.”
I’m quiet, thinking it over.
“Cam?”
“I’m still here.”
“What are you thinking?”
“I’m thinking that Lotte de Vries tried to tell me the same thing months ago.”