“Youresolvedit.”
“Whatever, I’ll take it.” Jake managed a shaky smile, and Pam patted him on the back.
“You’re a good guy, Jake. That’s why I knew we’d be fine. Back when, you know.”
Jake’s throat caught. She meant when he’d lost his job and they had their rough patch. She’d dragged him into marriage counseling. It wasn’t his way, with his old-school, close-mouthed, working-class Scottish upbringing, from the other side of town. But like everything else he’d learned growing up, it had been 180 degrees wrong. Pam had taught him that, and now he was lying to her face.
“You’re reliable, and kind, and you try. You really do.” Pam smiled, sweetly. “You know what my mom always said about you.”
Jake couldn’t even fake a smile back. It was something they always said, a marital call-and-response, but the words soured on his tongue. “I’m Husband Material?”
“Ha! Don’t say it that way. Yes, you are.” Pam gave his back a final pat, like a period at the end of the sentence, then turned to go upstairs. “Okay, let’s go up. This week needs to end.”
“Right behind you.” Jake followed her from the kitchen, flicking off the lights. He should be relieved that he’d gotten away with lying to Pam, but it made him sick to his stomach.
He trudged upstairs behind Pam, leaning on the banister and hanging his head. He tried to unravel the night in his mind, to unspool the hours, to undo all the times it had gone wrong. He wished he had told Pam the truth. He wished he’d called the cops at the scene. He wished he hadn’t distracted Ryan while he was driving. He wished he hadn’t let Ryan drive in the first place. He wished he’d never even gone to pick Ryan up. Most of all, he wished that that poor woman was alive and well, back from her run, happy and at home, with her family.
But she wasn’t.
Jake had committed himself and his son to a course, and he had to see it through. Even though the notion filled him with dread.
And the deepest, deepest shame.
Chapter Four
Jake turned over, facing away from his sleeping wife, and opened his eyes. The bedroom was pitch dark because Pam liked to keep the blackout shades down, and it made the green digital numerals in his alarm clock glow even brighter. It was 2:45A.M., and he’d been tossing and turning since he’d showered and gone to bed. He knew he would never fall asleep, replaying the night in his head, starting with him being parked outside the movie theater and ending with his avoiding his rearview mirror, so he couldn’t see the broken corpse of the woman vanish into blackness.
Jake tugged the covers up over his shoulder. In his mind, he went over everything he did and everything he said, then everything Ryan did and said, again and again, trying to see how it could have come out differently, or how he could’ve reached a different decision. But he kept coming out in the same horrendous place, reaching the same unthinkable conclusion.
Anguished, Jake felt like it was a no-win situation from the moment they hit the runner, or maybe from the moment he found out about the marijuana, or maybe from the moment he let Ryan drive. His guilt and remorse drove him to keep trying to parse his decisions and sent him into another spiral of what-if reasoning,what if I hadn’t gone to pick him up, what if I hadn’t let him drive, what if I had paid attention to the road, what if, what if, what if.
Jake squeezed his eyes shut, keeping tears at bay. He slept on the side of the bed closer to the door, because he was supposed to protect everybody, the Daddy-dragon guarding the Dutch Colonial. The thought made him cringe, after what had happened. He’d protected his son into a nightmare. And if he was having a sleepless night, he could only imagine that Ryan had it worse.
He eased off the covers, got up quietly, and padded down the hallway to Ryan’s room. He turned the knob carefully, opened the door, slipped inside, and closed the door behind him. The bedroom was dark, and moonlight came through the striped curtains. Ryan made a large mound under his comforter, and Jake could see his head on the pillow, but couldn’t make out his face. Moose was curled up on the bed, his head resting on Ryan’s feet, and the golden retriever didn’t stir.
“Dad?” Ryan whispered, and Jake crossed to the bed and sat down on the edge.
“How are you doing?”
“Horrible. How are you?”
“Horrible, and worried about my boy.” Jake’s eyes were adjusting to the light level, and he could see the shadows of Ryan’s young features, the hollows of his eyes and cheeks, and the dark waves in his hair. “Are you getting any sleep?”
“No.”
Jake sighed heavily. “I know, I’m sorry. I’m so sorry that it happened.”
“Me, too, I’m sorry, so sorry. Everything is my fault, all of it.”
“That’s not true.”
“It is, you know it is. I was the driver. I’m the one responsible.”
“No, it was an accident. That’s why they call it an accident. Accidents happen.” Jake had been giving himself the same speech for the past hour. “We weren’t doing anything really wrong, it just happened.”
“Come on. Iwasdoing something wrong. I wasn’t watching the road.”
“You happened to look over for a minute, a second, even a split second. You were having a conversation with me, and that happens every day, in cars all across this country.”
