by Keary Taylor
“We spoke to her parents about an hour ago,” Robert says as he wraps an arm around Robin’s shoulders. “The doctors confirmed there’s no chance of her pulling out of this. They’re going to gather the rest of the family in the morning to say goodbye before they shut the machines down.”
I squeeze my eyes closed and shake my head.
I always resented the idea of Diana. The thought of this other woman that was a part of Drake’s life when I no longer could be. It’s easy to hate an idea.
But Diana is a person. Someone with family and friends. She’s someone who had plans.
Not much in life is fair.
“So, what happened, exactly?” I ask, opening my eyes again. “The roads were slick. Diana was leaving Drake’s apartment.”
Robert nods. “She was only about a block from his apartment. Headed in the direction of yours, on her way home. The police said it looked like both cars tried to break, but there was some serious black ice since the trucks hadn’t been out yet. They both slid right into the intersection.” His voice falters and he clears his throat to dislodge the emotion. “There was a semi-truck behind the other driver. He couldn’t stop either. There wasn’t much left of the other driver’s car.”
“Lake said they couldn’t even identify them,” I say, shaking my head.
Robert nods. “Cops said it was one of the worst accidents they’ve ever seen.”
“Drake heard the accident,” Sage says. My eyes slide over to her. “He saw all of the aftermath. Watched them pull Diana from her car.”
My stomach feels sick. “No wonder he reacted the way he did. Anyone in that situation would have. And then to learn the baby…”
Robin’s lower lip quivers and she threads her fingers through her husbands. “Someone should be with him. Will you stay with him tonight?”
“Of course,” I say with a nod. My body feels stiff and heavy as I climb to my feet. “I’ll stay with him. You all should get some sleep.”
Robert climbs to his feet, pulling Robin up with him. “We’ll crash in the waiting room. Come get us if you or Drake needs anything.”
“Okay,” I say. I place my hand on the doorknob and give it a turn. I glance once more over my shoulder before I go in.
The McCain family really is a beautiful family. They’re supportive, and loving. Everything I ever wanted.
I step inside Drake’s room and close the door behind me.
CHAPTER TWENTY
What do I do?
I stand at the door for a long time. Every cell in my body tells me to climb into that little hospital bed with Drake, wrap my arms around him, and hold him tight until the sun comes up and the sedation wears off. But every emotion in my heart says to protect itself. Every second of physical contact with Drake is another needle in my core.
Eventually, what I settle for is dragging one of the chairs right next to the bed. I sit, fold my arms on the edge of the bed, and rest my head in my arms.
And finally, somewhere around two-fifteen, I fall asleep.
When I wake, I’m lying in the hospital bed. I have no idea how I got here. But Drake is nowhere to be seen.
I scramble out of the bed, check the bathroom to find it empty. I dart out into the hall, which is empty. I jog down toward the waiting room, and there, I find the McCain’s.
“Where is he?” I say. I feel panicked and ashamed for a while. I was supposed to be watching him and I just lost him.
I catch sight of the clock on the wall. It reads eight-fifteen.
Lake is stretched across a few chairs asleep. Robin is in a chair, propped up against a wall, asleep as well. Robert sits with his fingers clamped together, bouncing one knee. Kale eats from a bag of chips. Sage is the one who stands and walks over to me.
“He’s saying his goodbye’s to Diana,” she says. She looks exhausted, but somehow still put together and ready to walk into a boardroom. It boggles my mind she’s only twenty-one. And only two years younger than me.
“Did he seem okay?” I ask.
Sage shrugs her shoulders and gives a little shake of her head. “As good as he could seem, given the circumstances.”
I nod. I rub at my eyes, not worrying about ruining my mascara since I cried it away hours ago last night. There’s a tight knot in my chest that hasn’t left in what feels like so long.
I pull my phone out of my pocket as Sage walks back to her family. I didn’t have a charger so the battery is at only fifteen percent.
By now I would have expected Mom to call and explain where she was last night. In all likelihood her flight was probably delayed or bumped back a day because the runway was sure to be as icy as the roads. But she should have given me an update at some point.
I nearly drop my phone to the tile floor, I jump so hard, when it rings. Dick’s name appears on the caller ID.
“Hi,” I answer.
“Hey,” he replies. His voice already sounds concerned. “Have you heard from your mom?”
“I haven’t. I was just thinking about that, actually. It’s weird she hasn’t called.”
“Yeah,” he says. “She promised to spend the entire day with Skyler but she never showed last night and I haven’t heard a peep from her all day.”
“Maybe her flight got cancelled or delayed last night,” I suggest, hoping it’s true.
“I checked with the airline,” he says. “They said it landed on time last night. She was on the plane.”
My fingers go chill and my lips must be blue. My blood has run cold.
“Where is she then?” I ask myself out loud. “She’s not always great at keeping her time commitments, but she wouldn’t just space everything like this.”
“You know how your mother is,” Dick says, weight in his voice. “But I’m worried about her. The roads were really bad last night and she doesn’t like driving in weather.”
My stomach turns and the world tilts a little sideways.
“I need to check on something,” I say. “I’ll call you back in a bit, okay?”
“Alright.”
I hang the phone up. My vision has gone blurry and my legs feel like numb led. The world threatens to tip.
“Kaylee?”
I turn to meet Drake’s eyes. He’s got the Drake look on.
“What color was the other car?” I ask, my voice out of breath.
“Other car?”
Tears bite at the back of my eyes and my throat feels tight. “The accident last night. A block from your apartment, three blocks from mine. What color was the other car?”
Drake presses his lips tight together and his eyes drop for a moment as he tries to recall. “It was a lime green Beetle.”
My expression collapses and tears start rolling down my face.
“Kaylee,” Drake says, rushing forward and grabbing me by the shoulders. “What’s wrong?”
“Where would they have taken the body of that driver?” I ask, taking two steps away from him, wrapping my arms around my shoulders.
“I…I don’t know. I assume somewhere here at the hospital,” he says. He sounds totally confused. I turn away from him, my eyes wildly searching for I don’t know what. Robert has stood and is just a few paces away, concern on his face. Sage gives me a questioning look. But my head is spinning and the floor is rocking.
“Kaylee, what’s going on?” I hear Drake’s voice ask somewhere through the haze.
“I need to speak to the police who went to the accident last night,” I breathe.
“Why?”
“Because my mom was the other driver.”
Someone called the police for me. They talked to me, confirming the other car in the accident was a lime green VW Beetle. One of the officers gave me a ride to the coroner’s office. I talked with someone there, and what little they had to go by with what was left from the accident, we confirmed it was my mother.
I called Dick. He came down. They recommended we cremate my mother, given what the accident did to her. I was cationic. Dick gave them the okay.
Condolences were given.
It’s amazing how you can go through an entire day, do things, talk to people, and not even remember it by the time night falls.
Dick takes me home with him. He breaks the news to Skyler. I try to get it together enough to provide him some small level of comfort. But I don’t think I do a very good job. He doesn’t quite get it at first. And then he cries.
I crawl into his bed with him that night and hold him. I don’t have any words of comfort. I don’t know how to tell him it will be okay. But I can be there. Physically, if not emotionally.
The night rolls by in a blurry, dull roll of sleep and numbness. I’m awake, I’m asleep. I simply exist.
Learning the father I never met was dead is one thing. Learning the woman who kept me, even though she was too young, was another.
She wasn’t perfect. She had so many faults. She couldn’t ever quite figure things out.
But she was trying. She was going to get it together.
And then it was all ripped away.
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
When faced with death, everything in your life suddenly seems so trivial.
You take stock of the things in your life that actually matter. You pull on your big girl panties and realize that life is short and that if you want something you’ve got to take it.
But first you have to start living again.
How much loss can you handle before you completely fall apart?
Life grinds to a halt. My apartment is the only space I occupy. Work? That doesn’t seem to matter. The school calls quite a few times. They leave messages. I don’t pick up. They can fire me. It doesn’t much feel like it matters.
People come and knock at my door. But I don’t answer. After a while someone says they’re the police and need to know I’m okay. I open the door, let them walk around for a minute or two, and when they see I haven’t harmed myself, they leave.
I go back to being nothing.
I’m given my mother’s ashes in an urn. Dick tries to talk to me about having a memorial. All I can think is who will come? People from Mom’s work?
Maybe someday. But not now.
Somewhere around four days after the accident, my phone rings. It’s a number I don’t recognize. And like every other call, I let it go to voicemail. But for some reason, I actually listen to this one.
It’s the private school. They’re impressed with me and my interview. They’d like to discuss the possibility of offering me the position.
Well how about that?
The water’s freezing. I’m not sure if it started out that way or if I’ve just been in here so long the hot water has run out.
I sit on the floor of the shower, my arms wrapped around my knees. The water splashes off them into my face, leaving tiny droplets clinging to my forehead, my hair, my eyelashes. I blink slow. Feel water drip off my chin and nose. They open again, staring at the water that streams down onto me.
Can a person drown themselves in the slower? If you just put your face in the stream and breathe in. Could it fill your lungs, stop your breath, and release you from this painful world?
I have no plans to do this. But I wonder.
I don’t have the strength to get up out of the stream.
The temperature of the bathroom suddenly changes. The shower curtain ruffles and the hooks it hangs from clink as they’re pushed back. The water is shut off
Someone crouches down and it takes my eyes a long while to focus on the face before me.
Drake stares at me. Is he scared? Mad? Concerned? Indifferent? My brain is too frozen to analyze him.
My fingers are too numb to feel the warmth of his when they wrap around my hands and pull me to my feet. My limbs are stiff and cold and complain at being used after being frozen into place for so long. My vision fades in and out of focus.
Something warm is wrapped around my naked, dripping body. Drake runs his hands up and down me, drying me off. He takes another towel and pats at my hair.
I finally stare at him as he dries me off. I’m pretty unconcerned about the fact that he’s found me naked on the floor of my shower. I’m just trying to process the fact that he’s here. It feels like an eternity since I saw him Saturday.
“Come on,” he says quietly as he leads me out of the bathroom. He guides me to my bed, sitting me on the edge. He digs through my drawers for a minute before coming up with an oversized shirt. He slides it over my head and I find the strength to put my arms through the holes. Drake takes the wet towel from my bed and hangs it up in the bathroom.
“I’m going to make you something to eat, okay?” he says, crouching down in front of me. My eyes see him, but he doesn’t seem real. Maybe I’m dreaming. Or more likely, hallucinating, since all my visions while I sleep lately are nightmares.
“I’m not hungry.” My voice is a wreck.
“I’m making you something anyway.”
And then he’s gone.
I lie down on my bed, pulling the covers over me. Something smells good. My stomach gives the smallest of growls.
Sometime later, Drake appears next to me again, a plate in his hand. “Here,” he says, offering a hand to me and pulling me back into a sitting position. He sits next to me on the bed and holds out the plate.
There’s a pile of steaming scrambled eggs, a slice of toast. In his other hand he holds a glass of orange juice.
“Eat,” Drake says. It’s not a question and I don’t think I have a choice.
My throat feels dry and unused as I start choking the eggs down. But as more food goes into my system, the hungrier I get.
“I missed school Monday,” Drake says. His voice is flat. It’s been missing any signs of life for so long now. “But I went in on Tuesday, just for first period. I talked to Principal Riker. Told him what happened. Why neither of us would be in. He understands, but he’s not happy about the lack of communication. I told him to fuck off.”
The word is so unexpected from Drake, I actually laugh, sending a small spray of orange juice on my wall. I look over at Drake and find a small smile on his face too.
“I thought he was going to fire me right then,” he says, his expression growing serious again. “Thankfully I did it in front of a few other teachers. Mr. Scott stuck up for us pretty hard.”
My eyes go back to the plate in my lap. A small twinge of gratitude forms in my heart toward Duncan. Not for my own sake. But for Drake’s.
“How did everything fall apart so fast?” I breathe.
Drake’s fingers brush across my cheek and I press it into his palm. For the first time in days, a spark of life ignites in my chest.
“I guess we just had no idea of what reality was before,” he says. “Guess we needed a harsh education.”
I squeeze my eyes closed and feel everything in me sag in on myself. The plate in my lap slips to the floor with a loud clatter.
Tears start falling from my eyes despite the fact that I didn’t think I had any more left in me. Drake wraps his arms around me and holds me tight to his side.
“I spent so much time resenting her,” I confess. “But it wasn’t her fault. She didn’t know how to do it any better. And she…she was going to try harder. She was going to be there for him!”
“Shh,” Drake coos, running a hand over my damp hair. “Just take a deep breath.”
“They’re both dead,” I say, pressing my face into Drake’s chest. “Both my parents are dead now and I never knew the one, and the other was becoming a stranger. And I’ll never get that back. I can never fix that.”
“I’m so sorry,” Drake says and I can hear the emotion in his voice. He holds me tight, swaying us side to side ever so slowly.
I lay on the bed and Drake pulls me up into his arms. He rests his cheek on my head, his hands firmly on my back. I don’t remember doing it, but I wrap a leg around his, holding him tight to me.
“Are we broken?” I whisper as it grows dark and the hour stretches late.
“I think everyone gets b
roken at some point.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
“Kaylee.”
The voice whispers through black sleep that is heavy and warm.
“Kaylee, it’s time to get up.”
My eyes slowly blink open. And there is Drake’s face.
We’re both lying in my bed, side by side, facing each other. He brings his fingers up, once again brushing them over my cheek. A small, sleepy smile forms on my face.
“We need to get ready to go to work,” he says, placing his entire palm on my cheek. It’s warm, and completely comforting. “School starts in forty minutes.”
“I’m ready to go back.” I say the words, not entirely sure they’re true.
“You’re ready,” he says.
I sit up in bed, grateful my lower half is covered by the sheet since all I am wearing is the oversized shirt. The apartment is grey, but the kind of grey that is fighting to turn to light. Dawn taking over the night.
Drake stands, his clothes wrinkled from sleeping in them all night. “What can I help you with this morning?”
“Um,” I start. My brain hasn’t been functional the past five days; it’s struggling to be so again. “I’m going to get dressed. Maybe grab us something to eat?”
“Mmk,” he says with a nod. “Then we can swing by my place and I can grab something fresh to wear?”
“Yeah,” I say with a nod. I watch him head to the kitchen. Still a bit surprised to be coming back into the real world, I pull myself out of bed and dig around for something to wear. Then I change in the bathroom.
There isn’t much to eat, so when I walk out of the bathroom dressed, Drake hands me a travel mug with coffee and a protein bar. “We’ll go grocery shopping after school?”
I nod and grab my briefcase with my lesson plans and everything. Drake holds the door open for me and then we walk downstairs.
We ride in his car, despite how terrible it is. We stop at Drake’s apartment and I wait in the car for five minutes while he runs up to get changed. He comes back down, dressed in dark jeans, a green and white plaid shirt, and a dark blue sweater.