The Secret Between Us. Barbara Delinsky
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inside, she lowered her hood and opened her jacket. Her face was wet; she wiped it with her hands. Her hair, damp and curling, still felt strange to her short after a lifetime wearing it waist long and knotted at the nape. She was wearing a tank top and shorts, both relatively dry under her jacket, and flip-flops. Her legs were slick and smudged with dirt.
She hated rain. It came at the worst times, defied prediction, and made life messy.
Brian folded himself next to her behind the wheel, and shook his hat outside before closing the door. He took a notebook and pen from a tray between the seats. “I have to ask you a few questions—just a formality, Dr. Monroe.” He checked his watch. “Ten forty-three. And it’s D-E-B-O-R-A-H?”
“Yes. M-O-N-R-O-E.” She was often mistakenly thought to be Dr. Barr, which was her maiden name and the name of her father, who was something of a legend in town. She had used her married name since her final year of college.
“Can you tell me what happened?” the officer asked.
“We were driving along—”
“We?” He looked alarmed. “I thought you were alone.”
“I am now—Grace is home—but I had picked her up at a friend’s house—that’s Megan Stearns’s house—and we were on our way home, going really slowly, not more than twenty-five miles an hour, because the rain was so bad. And suddenly he was there.”
“Running along the side of the road?”
“I didn’t see him running. He just appeared in front of the car. There was no warning, no time to turn away, just this awful thud.”
“Had you drifted toward the shoulder of the road?”
“No. We were close to the center. I was watching the line. It was one of the few guidelines we had with visibility so low.”
“Did you brake?”
Deborah hadn’t braked. Grace had done it. Now was the time to clarify that. But it seemed irrelevant, a technicality.
“Too late,” she replied. “We skidded and spun around. You can see where my car is. That’s where we ended after the spin.”
“But if you drove Grace home—”
“I didn’t drive her. I made her run. It isn’t more than half a mile. She’s on the track team.” Deborah wrangled her phone from a soggy pocket. “I needed her to babysit Dylan, but she’ll want to know what’s happening. Is this okay?” When he nodded, she pressed the speed-dial button.
The phone had barely rung when Grace picked up. “Mom?”
“Are you okay?”
“I’m okay. How’s Mr. McKenna?”
“He’s on his way to the hospital.”
“Is he conscious?”
“Not yet. Is Dylan okay?”
“If being dead asleep on the sofa when I got here means okay, yes. He hasn’t moved.”
So much for large eyes at the window, Deborah thought, and heard her ex-husband’s You worry too much, but how not to worry about a ten-year-old boy who had severe hyper-opia and corneal dystrophy, which meant that he viewed much of his life through a haze. Deborah hadn’t planned on that, either.
“Well, I’m still glad you’re with him,” she said. “Grace, I’m talking with the police officer now. I may run over to the hospital once we’re done. You’d probably better go to bed. You have that exam tomorrow.”
“I’m going to be sick tomorrow.”
“Grace.”
“I am. I can’t think about biology right now. I mean, like, what a nightmare. If this is what happens when you drive, I’m not doing it. I keep asking myself where he came from. Did you see him on the side of the road?”
“No. Honey, the officer’s waiting.”
“Call me back.”
“Yup.” Deborah closed the phone.
The cruiser’s rear door opened and John Colby got into the backseat. “You’d think the rain’d take a break,” he said, adding, “Hard to see much on the road. I took pictures of everything I could, but the evidence won’t last long if it stays like this. I just called the state team. They’re on their way.”
“State team?” Deborah asked, frightened.
“The state police have an Accident Reconstruction Team,” John explained. “It’s headed by a credited reconstructionist. He knows what to look for more than we do.”
“What does he look for?”
“Points of impact, marks on the car. Where on the road the car hit the victim, where the victim landed. Skid marks. Burned rubber. He rebuilds the picture of what happened and how.”
It was only an accident, she wanted to say. Bringing in a state team somehow made it more.
Dismay must have shown on her face, because Brian said, “It’s standard procedure when there’s personal injury. Had it been midday with the sun out, we might have been able to handle it ourselves, but in weather like this, it’s important to work quickly, and these guys can do that.” He glanced at his notes. “How fast did you say you were going?”
Again, Deborah might have easily said, Oh, I wasn’t the one at the wheel. It was Grace, and she wasn’t speeding at all. But that felt like she was trying to weasel out of some-thing—to shift the blame—and besides, Grace was her firstborn, her alter ego, and already suffering from the divorce. Did the girl need more to trouble her? Calvin McKenna was hit either way. No laws had been broken either way.
“The limit here is forty-five,” she said. “We couldn’t have been going more than thirty.”
“Have you had any recent problems with the car?”
“No.”
“Brakes working?”
“Perfectly.”
“Were the high beams on?”
She frowned, struggling with that one. She remembered reminding Grace, but high beams, low beams—neither cut far in rain like this.
“They’re still on,” John confirmed from behind, “both working.” He put his hat back on his head. “I’m going out to tape off the lane. Last thing we need is someone driving by and fouling the scene.”
Deborah knew he meant accident scene, but with a state team coming, she kept thinking crime scene. She was feeling upset about the driver issue, but the questions went on. What time had she left her house to get Grace? What time had Grace and she left Megan’s house? How much time had passed between the accident and Deborah’s calling it in? What had she done during that time? Had Calvin McKenna regained consciousness at any point?
Deborah understood that this was all part of the investigation, but she wanted to be at the hospital or, if not there, at home with Grace and Dylan.
She glanced at her watch. It was past eleven. If Dylan woke up, he would be frightened to find her still gone; he had been clingy since the divorce, and Grace wouldn’t be much help. She would be watching for Deborah in the dark—not from the pantry, which she saw as Dylan’s turf, but from the window seat in the living room that they rarely used now. There were ghosts in that room, family pictures from a happier time, in a crowd of frames, an arrogant display of perfection. Grace would be feeling desolate.
A new explosion of light announced the arrival of the state team. As soon as Brian left the cruiser, Deborah opened her phone and called the hospital—not the general number, but one that went straight to the emergency room. She had admitting privileges and had accompanied patients often enough to know the night nurse.