After the Rains

by Deborah Raney

  She heard her dad’s voice as though from a long distance. “Hey, sleepyhead. How are you?”

  She allowed the heavy feeling to take her under again. She drifted off feeling happy that her parents were there, too sleepy to wonder anymore about where she was or why she was in this strange place.

  There were voices calling her name. Over and over. Natalie, Natalie, Natalie …

  She willed her eyelids open and saw her parents standing over her bed. She remembered waking up before. Sunlight was still coming in the window, but she had no sense of how much time might have passed.

  “What—What happened?” she croaked.

  “You had an accident, Nattie,” her father said, so quietly she could barely hear him.

  Beside him Mom turned away, but Natalie could see her shoulders heave as though she were crying.

  “An accident? My car? What—?”

  “Shh.” Her dad patted her arm. “We’ll talk later … when you’re feeling better.”

  “Why is Mom crying?” Something was terribly wrong.

  She struggled to pull herself up in the bed, and instead of trying to stop her, her father helped her lean forward and plumped the stiff pillow at her back.

  A nurse appeared on the other side of the bed and helped with the pillow, then began working over her, unclamping, then replacing what looked like a plastic clothespin on Natalie’s index finger, and fussing with the tubes that led from various parts of her body.

  She felt dizzy for a moment, then everything righted itself and she became oriented to her surroundings. She looked down at her arms and saw that there were needles and tubes running from the veins on the back of her hand to a metal pole beside the bed. Above her, hanging from the pole, a bulging bag dripped a clear substance into the tube. Her upper arm sported a blood-pressure cuff.

  “What happened?” she asked again, seeking her father’s face.

  “Shh,” he warned, indicating with his eyes that she should wait for the nurse to finish.

  She submitted to the nurse’s careful examination. Then, when the woman left her bedside, Natalie asked the question a third time.

  “You were in a car accident, Nattie,” her father told her. “Do you remember?”

  She shook her head. “Where was it?” Even as she spoke the words, it struck her that if the wreck had happened after the party, Mom and Daddy probably knew that she had been there. They didn’t seem angry with her, though.

  “It was out on the highway, west of town … near Hansens’.”

  She bit her lip. “I’m sorry, Daddy. I … I went to a party out there. I shouldn’t have gone. Sara tried to tell me—” Suddenly she remembered Sara with her in the car. “Where is Sara? Is she here too? Is she okay?”

  Mom started crying again. Daddy sat down in a chair beside the bed so that his face was right next to hers. For the first time she saw that his eyes were red-rimmed and swollen. He reached out and put a hand on her arm. “We have something very hard to tell you, Natalie. Are you—do you feel well enough to hear it?”

  “What?” She could feel her heart thumping beneath the thin hospital gown. “What is it, Daddy?”

  He shook his head slowly. “Sara— Sara was in the accident too.”

  Like a bolt of lightning, a memory came to her. She and Sara were driving down the lane at Hansens’, leaving the party. What had happened after that? She couldn’t conjure any recollection beyond that moment.

  “Is she hurt bad?” she asked now, looking into her father’s eyes, knowing she would see the truth there.

  Cole Hunter looked at the floor before he lifted his eyes to meet hers again. “Sara didn’t make it, Nattie.”

  She heard her father’s words, could picture the very letters in each word of his sentence. Sara didn’t make it. But she could not get them to make sense. Sara didn’t make it? What is he talking about? What does he mean?

  Her mother knelt beside Daddy’s chair now, and he put his arm around Mom, still keeping his other hand on Natalie’s arm.

  “Sara died, honey,” her father said.

  Natalie felt a fog descend on her.

  Now her mother spoke. Her voice sounded tight and strained. “They said she was killed instantly, honey. She didn’t feel any pain. Sara’s in heaven now.” Mom started to smile, but then her lips contorted into a ghoulish grimace, and her face crumpled.

  Sara is gone? But how? None of this made one bit of sense.

  “Do you understand, Nattie?” her father asked gently.

  She felt tears run down her cheeks, and she wondered where they’d come from.

  “I’m so sorry, honey,” her father repeated.

  “She’s dead?” As if her own words had finally broken through to her consciousness, she started to weep. Sara is dead. Her vivacious, carefree, cheerful friend who had never done anything but good in her life, was gone.

  “I— I was driving! No! I was driving, Daddy!” A sob escaped her throat. “Oh, God, it was my fault. I killed her.”

  Immediately her mother chided her. “No, Natalie. It was an accident. It wasn’t your fault.”

  But Mom didn’t know. Mom and Daddy didn’t know the terrible truth. For though she still could not remember one thing about the accident, memories of the party were swirling in her brain, playing over and over in her mind. Vivid memories of bonfires and bottles and coolers and cans. And in one terrible moment, she knew the damning truth.

  She had killed Sara Dever as surely as if she had put a gun to her friend’s head and pulled the trigger.

  Though the page never changed on the Fogelman’s Pharmacy calendar that hung on the wall across from her bed, it seemed to Natalie that she woke up a hundred different mornings in the hospital. And each time she awakened, it was with a prayer on her lips—that this was all a bad dream, that she would open her eyes and Sara would be standing over her, strawberry hair glowing in the light from the window, mouth wide in that trademark angelic smile. And each time she had to stumble through the process all over again, taking the nightmare and making it become the reality that it was.

  She’d had visitors, though with her skewed sense of time she couldn’t have told anyone when or even, sometimes, who they had been. She vaguely remembered Grandpa and Grandma Camfield being there. And Pastor Vickers. But some of the faces that had huddled over her bed were a blur in her memory.

  At some point during her stay in the hospital, Daddy came and sat by her bed. He picked up her hand and gently ran his fingers over the bruises on her arm. “How are you feeling today, punkin?”

  “Fine.” She couldn’t tell anyone the truth. That she wanted to die. That she felt as though she were already dead. Except there couldn’t be this much pain in death. Even if she went to hell.

  “There’s been some news about the accident I want to tell you, okay?” He waited, and when there was no response, he asked, “Do you feel well enough to hear it, Nattie, or do you want to wait awhile?”

  “Tell me,” she said in a monotone. What could be any worse than what she already knew? Sara was dead. How could it get any worse than that?

  Daddy spoke as if he were reading the account from a newspaper, “Your car was hit broadside by Brian Wagner’s pickup. Evan Greenway was with him, and apparently they took that shortcut through McLaughlin’s pasture. They were both drunk. Brian ran the stop sign.” Now bitterness had crept into her father’s voice, and Natalie wondered what he would think if he knew the truth about her.

  “Do you remember any of that, Nattie?”

  She shook her head, and Cole tightened his grip on her hand.

  “Brian was killed in the accident too, honey. And Evan was critically injured. They took him to Wichita right away … by LifeWatch helicopter. I think he’s been upgraded to serious condition now, but he’s got a long haul ahead of him.”

  It was all too much to take in. Brian ran the stop sign. And yet if she hadn’t been drinking herself, perhaps they would’ve been able to stop in time. Perhaps Sara would be aliv
e today. It was a question she would never have answered.

  Sara’s funeral was on the Wednesday after the accident—the day Natalie was to be released from the hospital. Sara’s funeral. She couldn’t even make those two words fit together in the same sentence. Secretly she was glad that she had an excuse for not being there. And yet, she felt even more guilty that she had missed the last event to mark her best friend’s life. She wondered how her friends—Sara’s friends—must feel toward her now. Ever since Daddy had told her that the highway patrol had determined that Brian had run a stop sign and slammed broadside into her car, she had tried to believe that the accident wasn’t really her fault. And yet, in that deepest place inside herself, she knew that no matter what the details were, she was ultimately responsible for Sara Dever’s death. After all, Sara had tried to talk her out of going to the party. Natalie had all but kidnapped her and taken her out to the river.

  Afterward, Natalie was the one who’d insisted on driving. She still could not remember beyond pulling onto the highway as they left the party. But she did have a vivid memory—a memory that played itself over and over and over again—of Sara asking her, “Are you sure you’re okay to drive? Are you sure, Nattie? Maybe I should drive.” One split second could have made all the difference in the world. If only she had given the keys to Sara. Or if she had simply stayed away in the first place. She had known better. Oh, dear Jesus, I knew better.

  But she had let a stupid temptation draw her in. Her stubborn will had taken over, and now the consequences were more horrible than she had ever bargained for. More terrible than she could have ever imagined.

  Ten

  When Mom and Daddy came to take her home from the hospital that afternoon, they were still wearing their dress clothes from the funeral.

  “It was a beautiful service, Natalie,” her mother told her. She laid the program from the memorial service on the bed beside Natalie. Sara’s face smiled up at her in living color. Natalie felt a twist in her gut.

  “Don and Maribeth said to give you a hug,” her dad said.

  Natalie didn’t know how to respond, so she said nothing.

  “Well, I’m going to bring the car around,” Daddy said finally. Mom nodded and began to help Natalie get dressed. She still had a nasty bump on her forehead. The incision from her surgery was tender, and every muscle in her body felt stiff and sore.

  But the sharpest pain—the one that was constant and unabating—was in a place deep inside her. A place she didn’t think would ever heal.

  A few minutes later, a nurse was pushing her in a wheelchair out to the waiting car.

  When her father pulled into the garage fifteen minutes later, it felt as though she had been gone from home for months.

  Daddy came around and opened the car door and helped her into the house. Nikki and Noelle were waiting. Natalie felt as if she were on exhibition in a freak show with all of them standing around, watching her shuffle across the room.

  And then she saw Jon, standing behind Nikki, looking grief-stricken and ill at ease.

  “Hey,” he said, lifting a hand in a halfhearted wave.

  Mom had told her that Jon and Nicole had come to visit her that first day in the hospital, but she had no memory of it. Now, seeing the pain in his eyes, seeing how uncomfortable he was in her presence, she wanted to shrivel up and disappear. She couldn’t get one word to come from her mouth.

  Her mother seemed to sense the awkwardness of the moment, and she put an arm around Natalie. “We’d better get you up to bed, honey … Noelle, could you bring Nattie’s bags up, please?”

  Noelle followed them upstairs with her bags, and Mom helped Natalie into bed.

  “Do you need anything out of here?” Noelle asked, holding up a plastic bag of promotional items the hospital had sent home with her.

  It made her heart ache to see her sister’s attentiveness. She didn’t deserve all the comfort and attention she’d been offered. She wanted to tell them, “Just leave me alone. It should have been me who died.” But instead she whispered, “I just want to sleep, okay? Could you guys just close the door when you leave?”

  Mom tucked the covers around her while Noelle hung in the background, a worried look in her eyes.

  “I’m okay, Noelle. Really.” Natalie forced a smile. “Maybe you can bring me some hot chocolate later, okay? When I wake up.”

  That seemed to make her little sister feel better. Mom gave her one last pat on the shoulder, and they left her alone.

  She tried to sleep, but no matter how tightly she squeezed her eyelids shut, a parade of faces marched in front of her—people she could never face again—people who must hate her now for what she’d done to their daughter, their sister, their friend.

  Jon. Sara’s only sibling. Natalie felt sick to her stomach thinking what a big deal she’d made over her silly crush on Jon. Now it looked so trite in comparison. Maribeth and Don. They would never plan a daughter’s wedding, hold her beautiful red-haired babies. She thought of her own grandparents, Grammy and Grandpa Haydon, who were in poor health and certainly didn’t need something like this happening in their lives. And Grandma and Grandpa Camfield and Uncle Jim and Aunt Betsy who had always been so good to her. She had crushed every reason they might have to be proud of her.

  And her father. Nathan Camfield, whose name she bore. The father who had never had a chance to really know her, would now have this badge of shame to carry because of her. All her silly daydreams of making him proud, of being one of the joyful things in his life of sorrow, had been shattered in one moment of horror, one idiotic choice.

  If anyone found out the truth, they would never forgive her. Her agony, her overwhelming guilt almost paralyzed her. And as she fell asleep that night, she prayed in all sincerity that she would not wake up the following morning.

  But she did wake up. The next morning. And the next, and the next. And only the pills they’d prescribed for the pain offered any relief—because the pills brought once again the sweet release of sleep.

  On the third morning after Natalie came home from the hospital, Daria went into her room and sat on the side of the bed. She put a hand on Natalie’s forehead. “How are you feeling today, honey?”

  Natalie shrugged and closed her eyes.

  Daria knew her daughter was suffering more than she could even express. But she feared that if Nattie didn’t open up about how she was coping, depression would overcome her.

  “Don’t you think you should try to get up for a little while?” Daria asked now. “Come downstairs. Maybe you can sit out on the porch and get a little sunshine. It’s really warming up out there today.”

  “Maybe later, Mom. I really don’t feel up to it right now.”

  “Nattie, it’s not good for you just to lie here and … and think.”

  “Mom. Please.”

  She didn’t want to push too hard, but Daria knew her daughter well. She knew Natalie had a tendency to be too analytical, to exaggerate things to the point that she didn’t see the reality. Oh, why did you let this happen, Lord? Nattie struggles enough as it is.

  “Would you just tell me what you’re thinking about while you’re lying up here?”

  “What do you think I’m thinking, Mom? What else could I be thinking?” Suddenly her face crumpled, and she threw herself into Daria’s arms as though she were five years old again. “Oh, Mom. It’s my fault. Sara’s gone, and it’s all my fault.”

  Daria fought back her own tears and stroked her daughter’s back. “Shh, shh,” she whispered. “Natalie, it was not your fault. We’ve told you already, Brian ran the stop sign. The sheriff’s deputy said that the highway patrol did tests that tell them exactly what happened.”

  She didn’t want to upset Natalie, but she knew they needed to talk about what had happened that night. Gently, she pushed Natalie away from her and took both of her hands. “Honey, have you remembered anything else from that night?” In her heart, Daria knew the accident report told the truth: Natalie’s car had bee
n pulling out of the driveway that led to the river on Hansens’ property when it was struck. But she desperately wanted to believe that her daughter had had a good reason to be there on that night. “You … you and Sara were at the party before the accident happened?”

  Natalie’s eyes narrowed, her nostrils flared almost imperceptibly, and she nodded slowly. “Yeah, Mom. We were there.”

  Daria’s pulse quickened. “Why?”

  Natalie glared at her, then dropped her head. “We just drove out to see who was there.”

  Daria struggled to keep her voice steady. “How long were you there?”

  “I don’t know, Mom. Not very long.”

  “You two weren’t—”

  “Mom! Please,” Natalie’s head snapped up. “I really don’t want to talk about this. It doesn’t matter anyway. It doesn’t change … anything.” She started to cry again.

  “Natalie, nobody is blaming you. You were in the wrong place at the wrong time, and something terrible happened, but it doesn’t do anyone any good for you to sit here and beat yourself up over it.”

  Daria took her daughter into her arms again. She felt Natalie stiffen. She had stopped crying. After a few minutes, Daria gently pushed her away and smoothed a pale strand of hair off her forehead. “Honey, I know this is the hardest thing you’ve ever had to face. It’s been hard for all of us. We loved Sara too. But now it’s you we’re worried about. You have to go on. You have to go on and live your life. You know Sara would have wanted you to.”

  “Sara would have wanted to live.”

  The hard edge in Natalie’s tone frightened Daria. “Of course she would have. But God must have had something else in mind.”

  “Don’t blame it on God, Mom. It was my fault.”

  “Natalie, stop it.” She tried to make her voice firm. “I won’t hear any more of this kind of talk. I’m very sorry that Sara died. You lost a wonderful friend. We all did. It was a terrible, terrible tragedy. But you can’t go on blaming yourself for what happened.”