by Diane Capri
“Kevin Cook was here today,” Marie said as she pretended to chew on the Cuban sandwich Darla had delivered. She sipped a bit of hot coffee and tried to wash the lump of bread and meat past her gullet. Marie had lost at least ten pounds in the past week, weight she couldn’t spare.
Marie said, “It was so hard. Kevin asked me about Paul’s life and I didn’t know what to say.”
The bones in her face were as prominent as an emaciated corpse. Her shiny blonde hair now fell in dirty strands about her shoulders. Gone was the happy, celebratory young woman of a few nights ago.
Darla understood exactly what Marie meant. Paul was not an easy child. Sweet and loving one minute, angry and abusive the next; he still wet the bed at night. Many times, Marie had been reduced to tears of helplessness and frustration. Darla had tried to suggest alternatives for Paul, but Marie had ignored them.
Yet, Marie loved her son, as most mothers love their children, regardless of bad behavior. Darla had seen such misplaced love many, many times in parent conferences. Parental ambivalence was normal.
“Any progress on the investigation?” Darla asked, changing the focus, hoping the answer would be no.
Marie moved her head back and forth. “He says they’ve done all they can. They’re sending the file up to the Florida Department of Law Enforcement. But he says it doesn’t look good for finding out who did it.”
A few tears dripped from Marie’s eyes and she ignored them. Darla wondered where the water came from. Marie had cried so much in the past week that she should have been totally dehydrated by now.
“If Paul… doesn’t wake up…” Marie began and the tears intensified. She took a sip of the coffee as Darla put her arm around Marie’s shoulders for comfort. She felt the bony shoulders and skinny arms underneath Marie’s cotton shirt. “… then it will be a vehicular homicide. But that won’t make the case easier to solve.”
Darla gave her another squeeze. “Oh, honey. No matter who hit Paul, it’s done. We can’t rewind the clock and make this go away. We have to face reality.” Like I wish I’d done, Darla thought. She tried to soothe Marie’s hurt, but the words seemed to enrage her.
“The bastard owes us an apology, Darla! He needs to lie in a hospital bed with his body all banged up. He needs to suffer!” Marie broke down completely then, sobs overtaking her as they had so many times in the past week.
Darla removed the coffee cup from her hand and took the sandwich away. She buried Marie’s head in her own shoulder and patted her while her ragged sobs continued.
“I’m sorry, Marie, honey. I’m so, so sorry this has happened.”
But Darla’s apology didn’t soothe Marie at all. “Oh, Darla. We’d had a big fight, Paul and me. It’s my fault. He didn’t want to go. I shouldn’t have made him stay overnight away from home. I should have kept him with me. You know how upset he gets if he’s away from me too long. I shouldn’t have left him there.”
“Shush, honey. It’s not your fault. You thought he was safe.” Darla continued to hold her, trying to make her feel better in this impossible situation, wondering how much longer Darla would be around to take care of them both.
“But the very last thing I said to him was so mean! I told him I needed time to myself, without him!” Marie broke down then, sobbing and inconsolable. “What have I done?”
CHAPTER SEVEN
When Darla entered the waiting room three nights later, the atmosphere felt different. Yesterday, Marie had seemed to be recovering from the shock of Paul’s injuries and resigned to waiting for his recovery. Now, Marie’s face bore the evidence of fresh tears.
“What’s happened, honey?” Darla asked her, setting down the brown paper bag in which she’d packed their banana sandwiches and milk.
The question brought new pain. Marie turned her stricken face toward Darla and gasped for air. “Paul had a seizure last night,” she said, her voice a low whisper.
Darla looked over into the ICU bed. At first, Paul seemed the same. He lay motionless, casts on both legs, his right arm in traction, and countless tubes running into and from his small body. Yet, the freckles that splashed his entire face seemed darker, the visible skin between them more pale. His hair was pasted to his skull. And then she saw that he was now hooked up to life support. She could hear the rhythm of the ventilator. For some reason, Paul couldn’t breathe.
“What did Dr. Baker say?”
Marie hiccoughed and wiped her nose with the back of her hand. Her voice was so low that Darla had to lean in closer to hear.
“He said Paul will never wake up.” Marie’s eyes were full of remorse. “He wants to discontinue life support. So many times, I thought how much easier my life would be without Paul. And now,” Marie’s voice caught again, “now I can’t believe I’m going to lose him.”
Eventually, she sobbed herself into an exhausted sleep and Darla could only hold her.
Around midnight, Dr. Baker returned with his consent forms. Life support was discontinued a few hours later and Paul died peacefully, his mother by his side and Darla holding his hand.
Both women cried until they could cry no more, but Darla realized that at least some of their tears were caused by relief.
CHAPTER EIGHT
The day after Paul’s funeral, Darla sat across the desk from Jimmy Finch, another of her former students. She couldn’t bring herself to call Jennifer Lane after all. Jennifer was Marie’s lawyer. Wouldn’t Jennifer be ethically bound to tell Marie? Nor could she call Willa Carson, no matter what. Not now. Now, Darla was guilty of murder.
Finch listened without revealing his thoughts or feelings. Did he think her actions cruel or merely reckless? He was the only lawyer she knew well enough to approach who didn’t travel in her social circle. She’d never needed a lawyer for herself before. After her divorce, which had been deceptively simple, her ex-husband fled the state and she’d had no further contact with him. Her parents died without enough assets to create a problem bigger than her tax accountant could resolve. Her sons had never been in trouble. No, a lawyer had never been required. Until now.
“How long have you known you have RP?” Jimmy asked her, making notes on the yellow legal pad with a cheap ballpoint. The action reminded her of Kevin Cook. She shuddered.
“About twenty years, I guess. It was diagnosed in my early thirties.” Darla never talked about her RP; verbalizing refreshed the fright she’d felt when the doctors had first explained her condition.
He reviewed the notes he’d written and summarized. “You had your last eye exam more than a month before this incident. Your doctor told you to stop driving, especially at night. You disregarded that advice. And you drove at a time when your impaired night vision affected your ability to see clearly and you hit a child with your car.” He stopped and looked up at her a moment. “Have I got that right?”
Darla nodded miserably, shocked to hear how harsh the words sounded.
“Were you drinking at the party?”
“Coffee. I don’t drink and drive,” her tone a bit more judgmental than a woman in her situation should have been.
He wrote that down, too, then reviewed his notes.
“Why didn’t you stop the car that night?”
“If I’d thought for one second that I’d hit anyone, I would have stopped. I know it’s a crime to leave the scene of an accident. But, I thought I hit a trash bag. It was so dark out and raining and, well, I just…” her voice trailed off.
Jimmy Finch leaned forward and folded his hands over the top of the legal pad. He studied her for a bit. She wished she could read his mind, to know what he was thinking. He began a series of bewildering questions and statements that confused Darla further.
“How do you know a plastic trash bin didn’t hit your car and you didn’t run over a trash bag?”
Bewildered by his change of attitude, she could only stare. What was he saying?
“You left the party. It was dark, raining, windy. Garbage bags and cans lined the road. Somethi
ng hit your car. You thought it was a plastic trashcan, blown by the wind. Then, you rolled over what you thought was a plastic trash bag that had spilled from the can. You didn’t stop to check, right?” he sounded so reasonable now. “So, again, why do you think, now, that you might have hit a child?”
The question shocked her. Since she’d heard about Paul’s accident, she’d believed, absolutely, that she’d been the one to hit him. But Finch was right. She didn’t know. Not for sure. There were a number of other people at Marie’s that night. More traffic on the street than usual. And she didn’t know exactly when Paul had been hit.
Maybe it wasn’t her fault. Maybe she didn’t do it.
Her heart began to pound so rapidly she couldn’t breathe. She tried to rise from her chair and her legs wouldn’t hold her weight. But she’d never know for sure. The uncertainty couldn’t be resolved.
After a few seconds, Finch took a deep breath and let it out slowly. He set the legal pad down, folded his hands over his protruding stomach, and watched her.
“We need to think about the car.”
“I haven’t driven since that night,” she began.
He held up a hand, palm out, firm. “No. Don’t tell me anything yet. Hear me out.”
He didn’t say, “Too bad you didn’t stop driving when the doctor told you to.” But Darla heard those words just the same.
“Mrs. Nixon, I’m your lawyer. And what you’ve told me is confidential. But if you think you hit a child, if your car was involved in a vehicular homicide, there will be trace evidence. Every part of an automobile can be identified. The best thing to do is to turn the car over to the police. If you give them the car, they’ll be able to match whatever forensic trace evidence they have to your exact vehicle. And, as it’s your car, and you live alone with no other drivers in your household… Well, it’s very likely the police will conclude that you were the driver who hit Paul. I’m sorry.”
Jimmy Finch had always been sorry. He was a sorry student and a sorry human being. Darla remembered this, too late.
He seemed to read her thoughts, for he added, “Any other lawyer would give you the same advice.”
After a few moments, he continued. “But, if you don’t believe you hit a child with your car, then I have no ethical obligation to contact the police and I wouldn’t advise you to do so, either. It all depends on what you tell me.”
“What should I do, then?” she wondered aloud.
“If you did hit the child, even if the reason you hit him was that you couldn’t see due to your RP, the act was perhaps reckless driving, but nothing more. You might not have been charged with anything that night. The serious crime you may have committed was leaving the scene of the accident and failing to come forward once you knew that the child had been hit. There are no witnesses to the crime and if you don’t confess, it’s unlikely you’d be convicted.” He stopped for emphasis. “The evidence against you just doesn’t exist. In this case, silence is golden.”
Perhaps in response to the horrified look on her face, he softened his tone a bit.
He said, “No one knows that your doctor told you to stop driving. Marie Webster will testify that she saw you behind the wheel of the car that evening, but she didn’t see you hit Paul. Nor did anyone else. The time of the incident isn’t fixed very well because Marie didn’t find Paul until the next morning. He could have been hit at any time during the night.”
Jimmy Finch pushed back in his chair and folded one leg over the other. “It’s likely you’ll get away with this. Now that Paul’s dead, what good will it do for you to confess?” He threw her a lifeline then. “Or maybe it wasn’t your car at all. Maybe someone else hit Paul, not you. Have you ever considered that?”
Darla had replayed the incident a thousand times in her mind. She saw the darkness, felt the thud against the side of her car and the rough ride as she ran over Paul’s body after she hit him.
No, she’d done it. There was no doubt in her mind. She was guilty.
“Let me just say one more thing, Mrs. Nixon,” the pious Jimmy Finch intoned. “The time for you to have fixed this situation is long past. You shouldn’t have been driving that night at all. And you should have come forward the next morning when you first found out about Paul’s injury and realized you might have hit him. This deceitful behavior is not like you, Mrs. Nixon. Not at all.”
She hated him then, for a moment, all the more because what he said was true and no less than she’d told herself time and time again.
Finch leaned forward, earnestly. “But think very carefully about what you do now. Everyone makes mistakes. As adults, we must all live with our transgressions. That guilty knowledge feels like a curse and changes your life forever. If you tell someone, once you share the harm, there is the chance that you will feel better. But the person you tell will suffer, too. Perhaps more than you have. Even if that person forgives you.”
“I can’t just let this go,” Darla almost wailed in despair, realizing that was exactly what her lawyer was advising her to do.
“No? What will Marie do if you go to prison? Does she have anyone else to turn to? The fact is that confession doesn’t erase what’s already happened. You can’t bring Paul back to life no matter what you try. Never forget that.”
He needn’t worry. She wouldn’t confess. She’d apologized to Marie a thousand times, but no apology would soothe Marie’s soul. Marie’s own guilt at wishing herself childless and failing to check on her son that night consumed her as much as the hatred she bore for her son’s killer. For in Marie’s mind, Paul’s accident was nothing less than cold-blooded murder.
Never mind that Dr. Baker had assured Marie the delay in Paul’s treatment hadn’t affected the outcome. The seizure was unexpected, a bad break, and it probably would have occurred if Paul had been rushed to the hospital immediately. Indeed, as the seizure was unexplained, it could have happened in the absence of any trauma at all. Paul might have died at home, in his own bed, any time. Medical science simply couldn’t say.
Darla knew she was rationalizing her decision even as she did so.
But Jimmy Finch was right; knowing Darla’s fault would not console Marie. Nor would it help Marie to have her only friend jerked away now when she needed a friend more than anything.
No, Darla would not confess. Her punishment was to live with her guilt and regret. She already felt the heavy weight of a punishment worse than anything the justice system could do to her if she was ever caught.
But she would never drive again.
CHAPTER NINE
Three years later, Darla was legally blind. Severe tunnel vision prevented her from doing her job. In the gathering darkness of her RP, Darla could no longer read or watch television. She lived in a closed environment of her own making.
She often examined the secret she longed to share to absolve herself of crushing guilt. But the devastating impact her confession would have on Marie wasn’t worth relieving Darla’s burning desire to tell her secret. Nor would confession relieve her heartache.
How could she ever feel better knowing that she’d killed a child? No. Her punishment was keeping that guilt to herself. She felt the constant pain as no less than she deserved.
“All you can do is move on. Help Marie. And be a good person,” she told herself. She’d been a principal, one who’d always set a good example for her students. No more.
She would never forget, yet she craved forgiveness. That’s all she wanted. For Marie to forgive her. To forgive herself. But Darla expected to go to her own grave unforgiven, even as Marie returned to the vivacious teacher she’d been before.
Marie had hosted a retirement party last year at Darla’s home, an abode they once again shared. Jennifer Lane attended, but Darla did not confess to her, either.
The bittersweet absence of Paul was like constant sucking on a sore tooth. The mug Paul had given Darla that last Christmas had been pushed to the very back of an unused cupboard. Darla could still see it whenever she clo
sed her eyes and felt the gap in her heart where Paul used to be.
The mug, and Marie’s vivid presence, punished Darla daily for her one act of criminal behavior in a life filled with service to her community. Even if the law said otherwise, Darla felt like a killer.
Each year, Detective Kevin Cook had visited on the eve of the anniversary of Paul’s accident, to admit he’d made no progress in the investigation.
On the third visit, Detective Cook sat on the davenport as he had that first evening so long ago. He seemed reluctant to speak, uncomfortable in his skin. “I wanted to let you know that the statute of limitations on the vehicular homicide case, assuming we could ever have proved it, expires today. We might be able to charge the driver with concealment later, but that’s not likely.”
Darla knew what this meant. Paul’s killer would never be punished now, no matter what. The knowledge didn’t comfort her.
He sat in Darla’s living room, with his little notebook on his knee, another chewed pencil poised above the pages, pleading.
Cook asked, “Have you heard anything new that might help us? It’s our last chance.”
So he knew, Darla realized. Now that she couldn’t see him, she could feel his despair. He’d known all along. He knew it was her. She should just tell him and get it over with. What did she have to lose now, anyway? She lived in a dark world that imprisoned her more effectively than any cell to which she might once have been sentenced.
Darla had imagined this moment so many times. She’d rehearsed her confession, watched Detective Cook arrest her. She imagined he would enjoy that, after all the punishments she’d meted out to him when she was his principal. She opened her mouth to say the words, but she could not force herself to speak.