“I’m so sorry! Do I need to take you to the hospital?”
Macdara hung her head out of the back window, eyes enormous. “Mommy, did you hurt them? Uncle Luke is going to kill you!”
I limped over to check on the bike. It was mangled. Great. “No, Macdara, we’re fine. We don’t need to go to the hospital. Annie, you can’t drive so close to bikers!” I was furious. “You demolished my bike!”
“I was trying to pull behind you to ask if you needed a ride. I’m so sorry! She’s right, Luke is going to kill me. He was getting on my case on Sunday about driving more carefully! I just misjudged the distance, a little.”
“Yeah, a little!” I pushed the broken bike with my foot and rubbed my elbow. I was going to have a major bruise. “Well, now my bike is destroyed, so you have to give us a ride. But I’ll drive!”
I put what was left of the bike in the back, then we used the stash of chlorine-free wet wipes with organic aloe vera in Annie’s car to clean ourselves up a little, and I checked Charlieover more carefully. We seemed to have escaped serious injury, and my new phone had also survived without a scratch.
“I’ll get you a new bike,” Annie offered.
“Thank you, but you can’t fix this just by buying something.” Well, not totally. “Annie, you have to be more careful,” I admonished her. “We could have been really hurt.”
“I know! It’s like things just come up out of nowhere!”
Things like bikers. That was great. Then I had a sudden inspiration. “Are you really not able to see? Do you need glasses?”
“I only need them for seeing far. And for seeing up close, sometimes.”
“She has her phone turned up to a special font for people with visual impairments,” Macdara commented from the back seat.
I looked at Annie. “Seriously? And you’re myopic, too? Are those sunglasses prescription?”
She fiddled nervously with them. “No.”
I pointed at a road sign that we were rapidly approaching. “What does that say?”
She squinted at it. “Hang on… ‘No Passing’!” she exclaimed triumphantly, just as we drove by it.
“Annie, you’re as blind as a bat! If you don’t start wearing your glasses to drive, I swear I’ll call the Secretary of State on you to get your license revoked,” I said.
“You wouldn’t!”
“I will, and I’ll tell Luke too.”
She was quiet. “Fine.”
“Fine.”
We got back to Nana’s with Annie seriously ticked off at me, and me afraid to let Macdara drive home with her. She swore she wouldn’t go over 25, then stuck out her tongue at me. “I’m not that bad!”
I pointed to the heap of bike in front of the garage. “This says different. 25 max, ok?” I looked at my bike and sighed. Well, we still had Charlie’s.
The Jeep was gone from the driveway. Charlie tore inside and headed right up to the shower. I went in more slowly, observing the kitchen, which was full of dirty dishes and crumbs, through the living room, which had beer bottles and clothes and our dishes used as ashtrays strewn around, and up the stairs to Cassie’s bedroom.
“Cass?”
She was lying on the bed in the same spot as always, her arm over her eyes.
“How did it go today?” I asked.
“Bad.”
I checked the basin, and it was full. She was feeling pretty sick, then. I took it and cleaned it out in her bathroom, then refilled her water glass. “You need to take your enzyme supplement. Are you in pain?”
“Yes.”
