My door slammed so hard that a piece of plaster fell from the ceiling.
The front door slammed too, almost as hard, but the sound was farther away from me, so it was a little less jarring.
I heard the familiar crash of a skateboard dropping onto the driveway.
The scrape of small wheels gathering speed.
The predictable, hollow clunk as they rolled over joins in the sidewalk.
A sickening screech of tires.
“There was a girl…a car,” I say, nausea spinning regret into something swollen and sick. “A girl driving a car. She was seventeen, and she was an inexperienced driver, and Havi, Havi was blind from what I said. He must have been because…he didn’t slow down or check for traffic at the intersection.”
Alarm widens Connor’s eyes. “Oh my God! Did she hit him? Was he okay?”
I thumb the fold at the top of the photograph, nausea and regret cooling and crystallizing into a terrible, endless ache. Havi’s image glints under the streetlight from the motion, and for a second, it looks like his hair is moving. Like it’s blowing in the wind.
Dread reaches into me and shakes me violently. My hands. My lungs. My voice.
“S-she broke his leg in two places and cracked his pelvis.”
I stop talking, and the pain I’ve been holding at bay for months gathers and meets in the middle of me, exploding in my chest. I inhale with difficulty. An unsteady breath. A wheeze on the way in. A long, mournful wail on the way out.
I almost drop the photograph from how badly I’m shaking.
I reach for the fold at the top of the photograph in my hand, starting, stopping, and then starting again. My fingers aren’t my own. They’re thick and cumbersome, made of jelly and guilt.
At last I do it.
I unfold the photograph, the program, and show it to Connor.
There’s a soft, punched sound as he reads it.
In loving memory of Havi Robert Aldman
Beloved son, brother, and friend
“He would have been okay.” Infinite, infinite guilt rings me out, twisting my organs and leaving me gasping in pain. “Heshould’vebeen okay. He should have needed a couple of pins in his leg, and m-maybe he wouldn’t have been able to ride a skateboard like he used to, but heshouldhave been fi…but…but…” I splutter and words spill out on top of each other. “She was driving really fast, the girl, she was speeding, and he flew…” My chest spasms again and again, strangling me as tears run down my face. “H-he landed here.” I put my hand out and hold it, shaking, above the curb to my left. A sense of revulsion, of horror, works its way through me and makes it almost impossible for me to put my hand down. It takes several seconds, and two more attempts, but at last, I lay my hand on the edge of the curb right beside me, curling my hand on the edge, and squeezing it as hard as I can. “He hit his head here.”
There was a mark here, a stain, for a while. I look for it now, even though the light isn’t good, and I know Caroline brought a bucket of water and ammonia out here, and scrubbed it clean a few days after his funeral.
A catastrophic, irreversible brain injury, they called it. The man who said it had good posture, very upright and formal, and I remember noticing that. He was in his forties or fifties, and he said it like it was a normal occurrence. Like it was something that happened and made sense.
“Oh my God,” says Connor, closing the space between us and putting an arm around me. My soul wants to sag against him. Into him. I want to let go and lean in. I want to let Connor hold me and love me. I want that more than anything, but I know that’s not how this is going to play out.
I pull away gently, every inch of space I buy amplifying the searing pain ripping through my rib cage. “I don’t think you want to do that, Connor.”
A line forms between his brows, and he freezes, waiting a beat and then removing his hand from my shoulder. “Why don’t I want to do it?”
I can’t look at him, but I also can’tnotlook at him. I love him. I love him more than I’ve ever loved anyone. I love him in ways I didn’t expect. Ways I didn’t see coming. Ways I’m not sure are wrong or right. “Because that’s not all that’s in the tin.”
I unfold the bottom of the program, fingers numb, face numb too.
My heart breaks all over again.
October 23, 2002 – January 8, 2025
It takes Connor the longest time to make sense of what I’m showing him. To understand what happened. What those dates mean.
