I sit up straight, realizing just how much elasticity my energy level has. No longer am I tired. I’m ready to fight—kill. I feel warm and cool at the same time as I open and close my truck door. I start the engine and turn on the air to full blast.
“Did you hear me?” Cage asks, waiting for my response. What if I don’t want to hear anything right now?
“I heard you, yes. Go on.”
“Can you come to the high bay?”
I glance to the right, to the high bay, where I just walked from.
“Just fucking tell me,” I bark. Adrenaline hits me like a hot shot of whiskey.
Cage sighs. “Norah has been in an accident.”
“Fuck! Is she at the hospital? Is the baby okay? Which hospital is she at? I’m in my truck now. I can be there in fifteen minutes. What happened?” I ask, my brain in a frenzy trying to process all of the information. He called ittragic news. “She’s okay, right?”
He clears his throat on the other side of the line. “Norah was hit by a drunk driver yesterday morning. She was killed on impact. As was the baby. I’m so sorry, Ben.”
“What?”
He repeats himself a few times. “Ben, do you have someone to drive you home? Please don’t drive right now.”
I don’t respond. Norah is gone. Robin is gone.
“Ben?”
They say when you die your whole life flashes before your eyes. Right now the whole life I was supposed to have blazes behind my closed eyelids. Every moment that was stolen from Norah. Holding Robin for the first time. Watching as she takes her first steps, kissing baby toes, watching a kindergarten play, first dates, learning to drive, and graduations. Robin. She never got to see the woman who loved her more than anything else in the entire world. It’s so painful to think about that I might be sick.
“Who hit her? Who was driving the other car?” I ask, needing to know every last detail before I fall apart completely.
“The driver of the other vehicle is in a life-threatening coma at the hospital. His blood alcohol level was three times the legal limit. I assure you justice will be served. There’s no way he’s getting off, Ben. He will pay for this.”
What if payment isn’t enough? What happens then?
“I’m sorry,” Cage whispers, his voice taking on the tone of a friend instead of a boss delivering the most horrible news of my lifetime. He rattles off several more details that I hear, but don’t quite process. Norah’s father identified the body by sight. The intersection by her practice. The time it happened. The logistics of the accident. The speed of the other car. Cage tells me the things he knows I’ll want to know, need to know, but he tries his best to detail them like a brief. Factual. Without emotion. Matter-of-fact. I appreciate his effort. Then he says Norah’s name and mentions the baby.
Numbness takes over. I don’t even feel the steering wheel in my palms. The edges of my vision goes black. “Thank you,” I say and hit the red button the end the call. I see Tahoe walking to his truck parked next to mine, so I get out and stop him. I’m on auto pilot, my wise intuition forcing my feet and words.
He takes one look at me and asks what’s wrong. “Someone killed Norah and the baby,” I say. Tears are falling off my cheeks, wet, warm, and heavy. Fucking traitorous salty drops that make what Cage said real even though it seems like a cruel lie told to destroy a human. A lie I’d eat and let wrap me for a lifetime if it meant it was false.
One eyebrow shoots up. “Who? What are you talking about?”
“I need you to drive me home,” I get out. “I can’t drive right now.” I don’t want to hit and kill someone in the name of grief. “I’ll tell you what Cage told me on the way home.”
Tilting his head to the side, he nods slowly. “Okay, bro. Let’s go.” No questions asked. A brotherhood. What would have been better is if he asked who we need to kill. “Anything in your truck you want right now?” he asks, voice wary.
I don’t respond. I climb into his truck and shut the door. When he gets in and starts the engine I tell him in a flood of words tinged with fury, word for word, what was just said to me. Tahoe doesn’t speak. He doesn’t feed me bullshit lines about how everything’s going to be okay. Because it’s not going to be okay. Nothing can possibly be the same after this.
The attacks stole the nation’s freedoms in almost every way. I made it my life’s work to restore what small pieces could be salvaged. A drunk driver stole my entire life. The whole thing. There’s no bright side or silver lining. There’s a hole where my family should be, a regret and guilt for the time I spent trying to embrace them, a pounding in my chest that makes me feel like an infidel. Everything around me is a fog. I never pause when a life is taken in the name of terror. Evil people deserve death. How can I possibly rationalize Norah’s and Robin’s deaths without feeling like a criminal?
Tahoe parks his truck in my drive and jumps up to hang on my roof with one hand while he searches for my hide-a-key with his free hand. He opens the door and looks back at me with a wary look. “We’ll make a list. You have a lot to do.” The funeral. “I’ll help you, bro. We’ll get it all handled. Why don’t you get some sleep?” He nods to the sofa. A smart man.
“I’ll clean up around here while you nap,” he says, clapping me on the shoulder. I pull him into a full hug. “It sucks. Let it suck, man,” Tahoe whispers. “Then when it sucks a little less, we move on. A little cracked, a little tormented, stronger than ever before.”
I want to tell him that’s what happens when brothers die. Somehow this feels differently. The same except the sting bites across my entire existence. My daughter. My future.
I fall back into the sofa. Tahoe tosses me a blanket from the chair on the other side of the living room. A throw blanket Norah purchased last week because it had stars on it. Heaving a breath, I lean back and close my eyes, knowing there’s no way I’ll be able to fall asleep.
Except I didn’t realize the pillow smelled like Harper. It might as well be an Ambien laced with sedatives. The blackness pulls me under quickly. I’m covered in Norah and surrounded by Harper. My entire existence is in shambles.
