Where the hell is my phone?
I scrambled to my feet and looked around for my cell phone. It was white—something I hadn’t picked, but settled for because it was on sale—and it was likely blending in with the snow.
It must’ve fallen out of my hand when I slipped down the stairs.
The stairs. The ice.
I did this.
Laura.
The baby.
What if the baby is alive?
“Help!” I screamed, oblivious to the pain in my throat as I hurried back to her. Tothem. “Somebody, help me! Help!Please!”
I looked off toward the direction of the closest neighbor’s house. We lived on a little less than half an acre of land, and everything surrounding our property was dark now. I didn’t know if anyone was home or awake, but I had to try. I had to trysomething. I thought about running, thought about pounding on their door, but I couldn’t leave her.
So, I pulled my wife’s lifeless body into my arms and screamed and screamed and screamed, praying that someone would hear, that someone wouldhelp, that someone could bring her back to me.
Please, God, bring her back.
But there was no answer. Not from a neighbor, not from God, and all I could hear was an animalistic cry of agonizing pain and a deep, unimaginable sorrow slicing through the silent night.
I thought it was me.
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
The neighbors never came, but Brett did.
After I’d hung up on him, he had sped his way over with the girls asleep in the back seat.
Once he arrived, I ran to his car to stop him from getting Lizzie and Jane out of the car. I told him to call the police, told him there’d been an accident, told him we needed help, told him to leave … and with one look at my face, he did.
He turned around and left, and I had no idea then, as I watched him pull away with the girls I had called my daughters for the last five years, still sleeping in the back seat, that I wouldn’t ever see them again.
The police arrived ten minutes later, just seconds before the ambulance. I told them everything they needed to know as they took Laura away. They asked me to come down to the station for further questioning, and despite the raging grief tearing my heart to tattered shreds, I went with them. I cooperated, and after a few long, torturous hours, they came to the conclusion that I hadn’t, in fact, murderedmy wife and unborn son, that it was all just a horrible, tragic accident.
“But Ididkill her,” I whispered to the cop who led me through the station to the pay phone. “I killed them. I-I-I killed my wife. My baby. God, my baby …”
I was crying again. I had never wept so unabashedly in the presence of other people—strangers—in my life, but I couldn’t stop it. I had lost all control, and I could only imagine what my father would’ve said about that.
But the cop didn’t care as he laid a hand on my shoulder.
“I wish I knew what to tell you to make this better,” he said, “but there isn’t a damn thing I can say that’ll make this go away. What I can tell you is that you didn’t do anything to intentionally hurt anyone.”
“But she told me to salt the steps. God, shetoldme.” I laid a hand over my eyes, the sobs tearing through my chest and clenching my gut.
“How many times do we all just forget to do something we’re asked to do? You didn’t do it on purpose. You didn’t know this would happen. You could call it irresponsible, you could call it negligence, but you arenota killer.”
Oh, but he was wrong, wasn’t he? I had killed before. Men. Women. Fuck, I had put a bullet right between the eyes of that woman who’d killed my old friend, Lizzie, and I feltnothing. I hadn’t given a single fuck if she was leaving behind a husband or children or if she was with child at the time of her death. And if I could do that, what was to say I didn’t have it in me to—
I dug my fingertips into my scalp. No.No!I wasn’t going to do this. I wasn’t going to lose my shit … but how could I not when, oh my fuckingGod, it hurt somuch? It hurt so horribly much, and it dug deep, deep, deep down to tear at my bones until it reached my naked soul. Until that point, I hadn’t known a soul could feel pain, but itdid. God, it did, and what the hell were you supposed to do when the agony surpassed the physical confines of your body? Fuck, not even death itself could free me from this torture.
With ragged breaths, I picked up the phone in the hallway of the police station, right beside the room where they’d just questioned me for hours, and called Sid.
He answered on the first ring. “Hello?”
