Sry wr late. On our way. Luv U. The text had come in at 2:11.
Oh, they would be sorry. They’d come home late, not checked in with Jude, and forgotten to turn off the exterior lights. This would be their last party for a while. She got up, turned off the TV and the outside lights, and locked the front door. As she climbed the stairs, she tried to decide whether to wake them up or yell at them tomorrow.
She opened Mia’s door and turned on the light. The bed was empty.
She felt a ping of fear, like a drop of acid on bare skin, and went to Zach’s room.
It was empty, too.
Take a breath, Jude. They missed their curfew; that was all. They’d started to leave the party and then been caught up somehow.
She called Mia’s cell. It rang and rang, then went to voice mail.
It was the same with Zach’s phone.
She ran downstairs to her room. Miles lay sleeping in bed, a book open on his chest, the television on.
“It’s late, Miles, and they’re not home.”
“Call them,” he mumbled.
“I did. No one answered.”
Miles sat up, frowning, and glanced at the clock. “It’s almost four o’clock.”
“They’re never this late,” she said.
Miles ran a hand through his hair. “We don’t want to panic. They probably lost track of time.”
“We could drive over there,” Jude said.
Miles nodded. “I think—”
The doorbell rang.
“Thank God.” Jude felt a rush of relief, then a burst of anger. “They are so grounded,” she muttered, leaving the room.
She stepped out into the long, dark hallway. It was black … and then red … yellow. Lights cut through the darkness, blinking, blaring.
Police lights.
She stumbled, almost fell. Then Miles was beside her, steadying her.
She felt herself moving forward but she wasn’t really walking. She was a piece of flotsam caught up in her husband’s motion.
Two policemen stood outside their door. It was raining, hard; why did she notice that? She knew these men, knew them and their wives and their children, but they shouldn’t be here now, at her house, in the middle of the night, their images flashing red and yellow.
Officer Avery stepped forward, his hat in his hand.
She saw everything in pieces, out of focus, as if she were looking through binoculars set for someone else’s eyes; staccato bursts of color, a macabre night, rain that looked like bits of ash falling from the sky.
I’m sorry. There’s been an accident.
Words. Sounds. Lips that moved and the sound of heavy breathing. Falling rain.
Mia … Zach … Alexa Baill …
She couldn’t process it, couldn’t make sense of it. My babies … you’re talking about my children.
“They’ve been airlifted to Harborview, all three of them.”
“They’re okay?” she heard her husband ask, and it shocked her so badly she almost pulled away from him. How could he find a voice now? Ask anything?
Did the policeman answer? What had he said? Jude couldn’t hear anything over the rain, or the beating of her heart. Was she crying? Is that why she couldn’t see?
Miles looked at her, and in his eyes she saw how breakable they both were, how fragile. It had happened in an instant, this new frailty; in the time it took them to walk from their bedroom to the front door, they had been pared down, their bones weakened. She thought his touch would bruise her now, leave a mark.
“Let’s get dressed,” he said, taking her by the arm. “We need to go.”
*
The drive to the hospital seemed to take forever. There were no ferries running at this hour, so they had to take the bridge to Kitsap County and drive around to Seattle.
In the car, they didn’t speak. Silence felt manageable; words did not. It took concentration just to draw in each breath and exhale without crying.
She wished she were a religious woman. All that spirituality she’d cultivated didn’t help her now; she needed faith, an antidote to this escalating fear. When they parked, Jude turned to her husband. He looked drawn and gaunt and the look in his eyes was harrowing.
She wanted to comfort him, as she did so often when he came home from work still mired in loss. She wanted to tell him not to think of the worst, but she was too brittle to even offer an arm.
Inside the bright white hospital, Jude straightened her shoulders and forged ahead, trying to manage her fear by controlling everything around her. But her questions went unanswered, her calls for help unheeded.
“Stop,” Miles finally said, taking her aside in the crowded hallway. “Just let them do their jobs. All we can do is wait.”