This Is Not Over

by Holly Brown

  She wants him to wake up and be okay, and she wants this to be the end of the whole ordeal of having been his mother.

  “If he wakes up,” I say, “I’ll tell them to check his blood alcohol level. They should screen for other drugs, too. He’s an unreliable witness under the best circumstances.” I catch her eye meaningfully. “Not like you and me.”

  I’m going to lie for Miranda, because it’s the right thing to do. I owe her that much.

  Miranda’s been set up her whole marriage by her husband, Mr. Hyde. Her relationship with her son was doomed to fail. Perhaps Dr. Jekyll doesn’t know about Mr. Hyde, and all the sabotage occurred during blackouts. He might not have any memory, but Thad sure does.

  Poor Thad. Poor Miranda.

  I know that no matter how I explained it to Rob, he would never understand my decision to lie to the police. He’ll never understand me, and if we stay together, I’ll keep trying to be someone else for him. We have different moralities, Rob and me, but I do have morality. I do.

  58

  Miranda

  I’m in the surgical waiting room, all alone. There are a few blue pleather recliners, though I opt to sit in one of the matching straight-backed blue chairs that skirt the perimeter. The TV is tuned to a cartoon network, and there’s a beautiful, sparkly princess of indeterminate race having adventures. I can’t bring myself to look for the remote control; my legs wouldn’t support me if I tried to stand up. Besides, what do you watch while the son you ran over with your car is in surgery? It’s too late for Dr. Phil.

  Thad has a closed head injury. That means I didn’t crack his skull, which is good, but they need to put a bolt inside to monitor pressure in his brain cavity. They’ll also drain some of the intracranial bleeding. “We’ll do our best,” the surgeon assured me. I can only hope he hasn’t been drinking, and the anesthesiologist is well rested.

  Thad can’t die. He just can’t. There’s simply no way. I will not even entertain the thought.

  But as soon as you try not to think something, you can think nothing else.

  “I thought you might need this.” I look up to see Dawn proffering my purse. “You left it behind in your car.”

  I leaped into the ambulance, and since then, I’ve been so beside myself, I didn’t even realize . . .

  I left my car in the middle of the street, keys still inside. Purse, too, apparently. Right next to the police, who were at the scene of what was presumed to be an accident.

  If the police run any tests on the Audi, they’ll see how fast I was moving at the time of the collision. There may be marks on the street to show that I backed up before I went forward, producing additional velocity. There must be forensic evidence, if they look for it.

  They’ve had more than enough time to examine the Audi’s exterior closely. Are they legally allowed to look inside? What would happen if they found an ax, stun gun, and pepper spray?

  It’s all for self-defense. That’s what the man said at Walmart. It was in the Personal Safety department, a subsection of Home Improvement. A very small department, but they call it that for a reason. All it suggests is that I feared for my own safety, going into a neighborhood like Dawn’s to retrieve my wayward son. That explains everything, except the ax.

  Do not let Dawn see you panic.

  “Thank you,” I say, accepting the purse. I don’t meet her eyes. I want to riffle through the contents, making sure everything’s as it should be—nothing taken, nothing planted. This is, after all, the infamous Dawn Thiebold.

  She must realize what I’m thinking. I’ve always been transparent. “Everything’s in there. I’m not the type to take anything, contrary to what you might think.” Her tone has no sharp edges. She seems at peace. Maybe she and Thad were doing drugs together.

  This is neither here nor there, but Dawn’s not as beautiful as I’d made her out to be. She’s attractive, yes, but she has a lot of acne, and wears heavy makeup in order to (unsuccessfully) conceal it. She’s trashy, in that tank top and skintight jeans. Well-proportioned, but short.

  She takes the seat next to me, and I tense up. “I owe you an apology,” she says. I keep my eyes on the floor and my shock to myself. “I should never have taken it to that level. I’ll delete everything online.”

  I want to ask why the change of heart, what’s in it for her, but I remain silent. It’s probably good practice for me.

  “You might not believe me, but I’m going to prove it to you. I told the police that I saw the accident. I said that Thad was behaving erratically, that he was drunk and probably high, and he ran out of my apartment when Rob came home.” Now I have to glance at her, and what I see is a lot of pimples and an equivalent amount of sincerity. “I said you were here to help him, but he wasn’t ready to accept help.”

  “Why would you do that?”

  “Because it’s true. Right? You’ve always meant to help him.” Her blue eyes are peculiarly kind. This is not the woman I’ve come to know. This is not a woman I’m prepared to trust.

  She’s willing to lie for me, but it can’t be out of the goodness of her heart. Not Dawn Thiebold.

  There will be strings, probably expensive ones, and now that I’ve seen her husband’s store and her neighborhood, I understand a little better. She didn’t have an extra two hundred lying around to replace those sheets. She never had any business renting the Santa Monica house.

  If I pay her off, I’m as bad as her, and as bad as Larry. No, I’m nothing like either one of them.

  Whatever I’ve done, it was because I felt too much. I loved too much. That is surely not Dawn’s problem, or Larry’s.

  I’m getting ahead of myself here. There’s no reason to believe I’m even a suspect. A documented drug addict ran in front of my car while inebriated. It’s a much more plausible story than “Pillar of the Community Mows Down Addict Son.” The former wouldn’t even be a headline, only the latter.

  I can hold my own with the police, if it comes to that. I’m a respectable citizen, a concerned mother. I would never try to kill my son. That isn’t me. It’s someone else. “Temporary insanity” is entirely apt.

  This could be it, my fork in the road. Sell the Santa Monica house, start over somewhere new. I’m leaving Larry behind, that feels like a given.

  He is still Thad’s father, which means I should call and say that Thad’s in surgery.

  “Where’s your husband?” I ask Dawn.

  “I don’t know. He’s pretty upset with me right now.”

  Well, no wonder. But I’m not about to jab at her, not when she’s managed to get the ultimate upper hand.

  “There’s something you should know,” she says. “This wasn’t your fault.”

  “That’s what you told the police.”

  “No, I mean from way back. Thad held you responsible but he was wrong. He was responsible for his own actions, with an assist from your husband.”

  “Larry?” I can’t even muster surprise, and that seems to surprise her.

  “Ever since Thad was a little kid, Larry would go into his room late at night for drunken confessions.”

  “Which one was drunk?”

  “Larry. But his confessions were more like complaints about you. About how you were impossible to please, and the only love you showed was fake, and how”—she lowers her voice—“you wouldn’t let him admit that he killed that guy on the operating table. You wouldn’t let him own up to it.”

  “What!” I exclaim.

  She nods. “See, I knew that was crap. But Thad totally believed it. I guess the conversations went on for years, and Thad came to really trust this dad who came to see him at night.”

  “But then ignored him pretty much the rest of the time.” My head is spinning. I never saw this coming.

  “Larry undermined your whole relationship with Thad. Any nice thing you did was chalked up to being fake, and any time you showed something negative, Thad thought that was the real you. You pretty much couldn’t win. Mr. Hyde saw to that. You know,
like Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde?”

  I’m speechless.

  “And just so you know, Thad’s been squatting in the Santa Monica house. He was behind the stained sheets.”

  “I figured,” I say faintly.

  “I think either you and Thad were both pawns in some master chess game that Larry was playing, or he was just a really, really mean drunk who couldn’t remember anything in the morning.”

  I’m angry for what Larry’s done to me, yes, but more than that, I’m sad. For the relationship Thad and I might have had without interference, and what Thad could have been without the burden of being turned against his own mother.

  “I’m sure you made mistakes, but a lot of it’s not your fault,” Dawn says. “That deck was stacked. I wanted to tell you that.”

  “Thank you,” I say. “It’s good to hear.” Larry has never told me that, I realize. Thad would never.

  How did Larry get his drinking past me all these years? Because during the residency, I knew. My instincts told me, unequivocally, even as I tried to tamp them down. Maybe after the residency I learned to turn them off completely. It was in my genes, after all, a family trait I’d inherited from my mother.

  I remember being a little girl and trying to shake my father awake. I remember my fright, and the smell of him high in my nostrils. Running downstairs, I told my mother we needed to call 911, and she said, without turning away from the counter she was scrubbing, “He needs sleep. And he needs you to forget, and to never mention this again. Love gives a wide berth.”

  Translation: You don’t shake people awake; you learn to sleepwalk.

  I’m awake now.

  The doctor comes out and he looks from Dawn to me and back again, questioningly. “She can stay,” I say. “She can hear.”

  We’re in this together, after all.

  “Thad’s alive,” the doctor tells us. Now, for the bad news (or what he clearly thinks is the bad news): there’s brain damage; Thad is like a five-year-old who’ll need to relearn everything.

  He might not remember that he loved meth. He might think he loves me. The two of us could start over together, far away from Larry’s influence.

  I’m going to have another chance, a clean slate, a fresh start. I’ll be free of all the old expectations, all the lies, all the encumbrances of convention. No more social graces. No more husband. It’ll be the real me, and the real Thad, in a grand do-over.

  This time, I’ll do it better. This time, I’ll get it right.

  Perhaps all of this was the universe’s way of telling me I was meant to be a single mother.

  “Where there’s life,” I tell Dawn, “there’s hope.” She nods, like she gets me completely.

  Thad needs this second chance more than anyone, and however it’s come about, it’s here now.

  This is not over, not at all.

  P.S. Insights, Interviews & More . . .*

  About the author

  * * *

  Meet Holly Brown

  About the book

  * * *

  Reading Group Discussion Questions

  The Story Behind the Book

  Q&A with Holly Brown

  About the author

  Meet Holly Brown

  HOLLY BROWN lives with her husband and toddler daughter in the San Francisco Bay Area, where she’s a practicing marriage and family therapist. Her blog, Bonding Time, is featured on PsychCentral.com.

  Discover great authors, exclusive offers, and more at hc.com.

  About the book

  Reading Group Discussion Questions

  1.Dawn and Miranda initially come into contact through an Airbnb/VRBO-type rental. Do you think they would have had the same fiery outcome if they’d connected by other means, or is there something about the intimacy of a home rental that predisposed them to what followed?

  2.The women escalate in their outrage with each other. Did you find one of them to be more reasonable—and more sympathetic—in her outrage, given either the provocation or the circumstances of their lives?

  3.Miranda is struggling with a drug-addicted son. Is this a situation that you related to? Is it generalizable to other types of issues with children, in that a child’s issues can become consuming for a parent and the parent can lose perspective along the way?

  4.Both women want desperately to be validated, for the other woman to just say, “You’re right and I’m wrong.” Why do you think that is so important to each of them? Have you ever experienced a similar need for validation, with either a stranger, a friend, or a loved one?

  5.Miranda and Dawn have misperceptions about each other. Specifically, each imagines the other’s life to have what hers lacks: Miranda envies Dawn’s youth and beauty and that Dawn is just starting out with her handsome, adoring husband; Dawn envies Miranda’s money, stability, and certainty, assuming these bring peace of mind. How do these misperceptions fuel their interactions?

  6.How does social media play into people’s misperceptions of one another?

  7.What did you think of their marriages and their husbands? Were you surprised by what’s revealed about each as the novel progresses?

  8.Is Thad a pawn, a victim, or a villain? Or is he something else entirely?

  9.The book begins with the image of stained sheets—which is particularly enraging for Dawn, as it reflects her fear that the damage that’s been done to her is irreparable and she can never be clean again, no matter what she does. For Miranda, given her son’s addiction, the idea of “coming clean” has a different meaning. What does it mean to you? What do you believe about human potential?

  10.The women come together in the end, under unusual circumstances. Does that feel satisfying for you as a reader? If not, what had you hoped would happen? Share your alternate ending.

  The Story Behind the Book

  THE IDEA for my third novel found me close to home. Well, close to someone else’s home.

  While it’s not unusual for strangers to offend one another, sometimes the irritation lingers just a little longer than you’d expect. That’s how I felt after I stayed in a rental in a coastal California town and, a week later, received an e-mail from the owner accusing me of leaving soiled sheets. To be more specific, I was told that I’d left a “child-sized gray stain.” My toddler daughter wasn’t filthy, and I wasn’t blind, so I became convinced the owner was scamming my security deposit.

  We went back and forth a number of times, a thrust-and-parry between two people who were each convinced of their own correctness. I found myself almost looking forward to the owner’s next e-mail so that I’d have another opportunity to refute her, and I had the distinct impression she was doing the same with me. She wanted me to know she was a pillar of her community, and I wanted her to know that my child wasn’t made of ash. She told me never to stay at one of her rentals again, and I responded, “Gladly.” Ultimately, I left a review on the rental website that was as much about her as it was about her property; she left a rebuttal; and we went on with our lives.

  But if I’m honest with myself, there was something in me that welcomed our exchanges, that liked feeling self-righteous toward a stranger. It allowed me to vent and to purge, to displace other daily frustrations onto a target. She served a psychological purpose for me, as I must have for her. Otherwise, we wouldn’t have been vying for the last word.

  The novelist in me thought, What if we’d kept going? What if we had painful histories and present truths that we wanted to avoid at all costs, even if it led to a slow-motion, head-on collision? So my “host” and I became Miranda and Dawn.

  The Airbnb/HomeAway/VRBO world intrigues me, because there’s a certain psychology embedded within it. When we choose to stay in someone else’s home rather than a hotel, we’re making an emotional as well as a financial decision. Being surrounded by someone else’s taste (and in some cases, their actual possessions) impacts the kind of trip we intend to have. It might mean we want to feel like locals rather than tourists. Or it might mean we want to play an a
dult version of pretend. We want to feel how the other half lives, just for a little while.

  In Dawn’s case, she scrolled through many properties looking for just the right one, seeking a certain luxury that was very distinct from her real life. She wants to escape and to inhabit someone else’s life, kind of like playing dress-up. On the other hand, Miranda’s motivation is purely mercenary. She likes that people appreciate the house, but really, she needs the income for a reason that becomes clear as the novel unfolds. So there’s a certain conflict set up right from the start that fuels the rest of the book. Dawn wants what (she thinks) Miranda has; Miranda just wants Dawn’s money.

  But that begins to change. While Dawn dreams of the happiness that she imagines is derived from financial security, Miranda becomes envious of Dawn’s youth and beauty. Miranda yearns for a do-over, while Dawn desires to arrive at a higher station than the one she was born into. Then they Google each other, and that adds more fuel to the fire. Online footprints can easily feed misperceptions. On social media, people curate themselves for the world, creating a persona to show to others. It can be something of a double life. Unfortunately for Miranda and Dawn, they’re a little too convincing.

  As a writer, I tend to be inspired by contemporary events and phenomena. With my first novel, Don’t Try to Find Me, I was intrigued

  by a real-life story about how a parent’s use of social media helped find a runaway daughter. In A Necessary End, I was compelled by all the maddening hoops that people have to jump through in order to adopt a newborn. I like to take an emotionally charged situation and then imagine the people within it. I build the kindling, psychologically and dynamically speaking, and then I light the match. For This Is Not Over, I loved combining the aspirational psychology of Getaway.com with the personal psychologies of these two women who seem very different at the outset but grow more alike as the book progresses. Or perhaps they were alike all along; they just had to strip away the trappings.