Great Big Beautiful Life(109)

Her heart broke, and at the same time, she was relieved. Because she had known it too, had been too afraid to say it, had been waiting for it to hit him.

And now it had.

What a child would deserve and what the world was were two very different things.

He began to cry first. He was an emotional man, but she’d never seen him sob like that, so unguarded. She drew him into her arms and held him as he cried, his forehead bowed and pressed into the side of her neck.

“We’ll get through this,” she promised him in whispers, running her hands through his pale hair. Our love can be enough, she thought but didn’t say, as if that might jinx it.

The accident happened on a Tuesday.

Margaret would never forget that.

The day had started normally, but around noon, a wave of nausea sent Margaret running to the bathroom. An hour later, she felt a sudden pain in her abdomen. Twenty minutes after that, she developed a fever, and the pain worsened to the point that she couldn’t stand. She crumpled to the floor, clutching her stomach, and screamed for Cosmo.

He came running and, at the sight of her curled up on the rug, dropped to his knees beside her, trying to find the source of her agony.

“Call a doctor,” she hissed, and he tried to, but their trusted physician, the one who’d once escorted Laura to Europe, wasn’t home. He was on a shift at the hospital. So Cosmo scooped Margaret up, already shouting orders toward their driver, and carried her downstairs. Out front, he loaded her into the back seat and slid in after her, holding her gingerly as they flew down the driveway.

The driver almost mowed down several of the journalists waiting at the bottom of the hill before they dove out of his way. They careened onto the road toward the hospital, but they weren’t alone.

Several cars shot out from the shoulder to chase them.

Margaret was crying. Cosmo was promising her everything would be okay, but he wasn’t fooling anyone. He was terrified; he was furious.

Cars pulled up on either side of them, cameras dangling out windows. They were approaching a yellow light.

The driver floored it, the other cars keeping pace.

At the very last second, the one on their left slammed its brakes and skidded to a stop as Cosmo’s car sailed straight through the intersection.

One-third of the way.

Half.

Two-thirds.

And then the truck barreled into them, and everything went dark.





32




“I woke up in an ambulance,” Margaret says. “But it was a short trip. We were only two blocks from the hospital when it happened.”

Her voice barely wavers. I wonder how many thousands of times she’s played out this monologue in her head, maybe even practiced saying it aloud. I’ve read hundreds of accounts myself, but hearing it from her lips is different. Excruciating. I’ve known where all of this was heading from the beginning, but the closer I’ve gotten to Margaret, the more I’ve dreaded today.

“I kept trying to ask for Cosmo,” she rasps. “No one would tell me where he was.

“They got me into the ER, but I was more or less fine. Scraped and bruised, but that’s it. I remember begging them to call Laura. For some reason, I was sure she could fix everything. I don’t know why.

“Dr. Willoughby met me there,” she says. “Cecil had become a close friend of ours since he testified at the People’s Moment trial. He was the only one Cosmo trusted to take me to when he found me that day, in pain.

“He told me Cosmo was in surgery. He had a collapsed lung and swelling on his brain. All I had was a case of appendicitis. That was what had caused the fever and the pain. They put me under for the operation, and when I woke up…” Finally, a crack in her voice. “My parents were in the hospital room, and Cecil was too, but…”

Her eyes glaze over. She looks distant. Less like she’s deep in the memory and more like she’s holding it back, behind a pane of glass, where it can’t hurt her.

“My husband was already gone.” Her watery eyes cut to me. “He was the love of my life and all we had was four years. My parents couldn’t bear to tell me. So Cecil did.”

“What about Laura?” I can barely get the words out.

“She wasn’t there.” Her voice wobbles, a mix of anger and heartbreak. “My sister didn’t come.”

The silence extends between us for several seconds, then she swallows hard and says, “She was too afraid. To be back in the thick of everything. And I couldn’t forgive her for it. So we stopped speaking.”

“For how long?”

She swallows but doesn’t answer.

Tears prick my eyes. In a whisper, I ask, “Do you regret it?”

She laughs harshly. “Of course I fucking regret it. I regret all of it. I regret almost every decision I ever made in my life and how they all got me here. And I’m still angry with her too. But even when I was a ball of rage, I never stopped hoping…I hoped…” She shuts her eyes, one tear loosing from her dark lashes to curve down her cheek. “I hoped she was happy.”

She takes a moment to pull herself together, like she has so many times before, squaring her shoulders and lifting her chin. “My father had paid for us to have complete privacy to mourn. For four days, people gathered outside the hospital to pray for my husband, not knowing he was already gone. When the time came, we called a press conference and Cecil broke the news while we left through a side door. My parents tried to convince me to come back to California, but all that was left of Cosmo—it was all in our home. I couldn’t leave it behind.