She wasn’t the durable woman she’d always imagined herself to be. She wasn’t courageous. If she’d been a soldier in wartime, there would be no hill charge led by her. She wouldn’t throw her body on a grenade.
Rather, she froze.
There was no better word for it. All the strength she had—and it was a slippery thing, her strength, as small as a guppy and as hard to hold—she used to control her emotions. She didn’t see how she could accept sympathy or make other people feel included. It took everything she had inside to pretend to be “handling” this.
“They’re here for you, Jude,” Molly said. “We all are. What can we do to help?”
Help. It was what women did for one another, even when there was no way to accomplish it.
She took a deep breath and tried to straighten her shoulders. The attempt was a dismal failure, and she ended up rounded again, a woman curling up inside like a thin strip of wood. Still, she clutched Molly’s hand and moved forward, one step at a time.
The women in the waiting room rose as one, an audience getting to its feet.
Jude moved into their midst, let them surround her, hold her. She wished they wouldn’t cry, but they did, and their tears kept hers at bay.
Jude stayed as long as she could, engulfed by the women who’d defined her for years, feeling desperately alone. As soon as possible, she got back to her feet, shaky now, more vulnerable than before, and ran back to the quiet in Zach’s room.
For the next twenty hours, she rarely ventured into the hallway again. She knew people were out there, hovering and drifting and whispering—Molly and her husband, Tim, and several of their island neighbors, and her mother, but Jude didn’t care.
She and Zach sat together, both staring dully at the TV hanging from the ceiling, saying little. Mia’s absence filled the antiseptic-scented air, and her loss was all either wanted to talk about, but neither had the strength to form such painful words, so they sat in silence. The only time they turned the channel was when the news came on. The media had picked up the story of the accident, and neither Jude nor Zach could stand to watch the coverage. Miles, thankfully, handled the influx of calls with a calm “no comment.”
Finally, on Tuesday morning, the hospital discharged Zach.
On the drive home, Miles kept up a steady stream of conversation. He was trying to “go on,” to merge into the lane of their new existence, but neither Jude nor Zach could go there with him. Each of Miles’s attempts landed in the big empty backseat of the Escalade, and he eventually gave up, turning on the radio instead.
“… Pine Island teen killed—”
Jude snapped it off and the silence returned. She slumped in her leather seat, with the heat cranked high enough to warm her frozen core, staring dully out the window as the ferry pulled into port. She was so mired in grief that she hardly saw the familiar island landscape until all at once she recognized her surroundings.
Miles had turned onto Night Road.
She gave a gasp of recognition. “Miles.”
“Shit,” he said. “Habit.”
The trees on either side of them were giants that blocked out the struggling mid-June sun. Deep shadows lay banked on either side. High in one of the branches, a lone eagle perched proudly, watching something far below.
They turned a hairpin corner, and there it was: the scene of the accident. Twin skid marks scarred the gray asphalt. A tree was cracked, half of it fallen aside. At its base, a memorial had sprung up.
“Oh, man,” Zach said from the backseat.
Jude wanted to look away but she couldn’t. The ravine between the road and the broken tree was strewn with bouquets of flowers, stuffed animals, high school pennants, and photos of Mia. Parked along the side of the road was a van with a satellite disk perched on top: a local news vans. Jude knew what she’d see on the evening news tonight: images of teenagers, kids she’d known since they had gaps in their teeth, looking haggard and drawn now, older, crying about Mia’s death, laying mementos of her short life on the ground, holding lit votives in small glass jars.
And what would happen to all those stuffed animals that had been put here? Fall would come and rain would pound the color out of everything, and this place would become another ragged reminder of their loss.
Less than a mile, she thought as Miles turned onto their gravel driveway.
Mia had died less than a mile from home. They could have walked …
At the front door was another shrine. Friends and neighbors had layered the entrance with flowers. When Jude got out of the car, she smelled the sweet, heady fragrance, but already some were fading, their petals beginning to curl and turn brown.