A drunk driver who veered into their lane.
He died too, for what it’s worth.
Comeuppance matters, in the narrative sense. It’s certainly more satisfying as a reader when the scales balance out. Then again, if this were a book, Millie Mitchell would be crying.
The irony is that Millie’s always been an easy crier. A boyfriend once said he felt like her feelings were a jack-in-the-box, just waiting to pop up and scare the shit out of him.
They broke up a few weeks later.
The point is, Millie’s more than capable of crying.
She just... doesn’t feel like crying now.
Her younger sister, Freya, is being the good daughter, making the rounds, dark hair scraped back, eyes bloodshot, like she hasn’t slept since the accident. She’s wearing pencil-thin slacks and a black cashmere sweater, and Millie feels a tiny pinch of anger as she picks at her tights. She was never allowed to wear pants.
Her fingers start rapping on her dress, restless to go, to get to work, to write.
She needs to get her daily words down.
Three thousand. That’s how many she needs.
Rain or shine, she does them every day.
It started as a form of discipline. It helped her finish her first book, helped her make her deadlines, and somewhere along the way, it became a bit of a ritual, an obsession, and it’s not like she thinks something badwillhappen if she doesn’t do it, but she also can’t be sure that something won’t.
As far as what the bad thing is, who knows. After all, three days ago she wrote her words, and her parents’ car still crashed.
But maybe it could have been worse.
Freya could have been with them.
Her hands twitch at the thought, and instead she tries to think of where she left her characters, of the scene waiting to be finished. Lestrand, her latest hero, the dark and brooding heartthrob ordered to slay her heroine, Nadina—only to fall in love with her instead. Not that they’ve gotten there yet. Right now he’s warring with himself, his duty. There was a ball, and in order to get close enough, he asked her to dance, and—
A hand falls on her shoulder, and Millie jumps. A well-meaning neighbor, or maybe a friend. Theirs. Not hers. Obviously. They say how sorry they are, and she musters a sad, tight smile, a perfect mirror of their own.
“Do you need anything?” they ask, and she wants to say, Yes, I need to write.
When she published her first book—a book she wouldn’t have even been allowed toreadin the house where she grew up—the publisher asked if she wanted to do a signing in her hometown, and her heart tightened.
“Surely your family would love the chance to come out and support you,” they said.
And Millie did an awful thing.
She lied and said her parents were both dead.
And now they are.
And sure, that was four years ago, but it feels like she whispered it into the universe, and somehow, eventually, the universe heard.
And the universe answered.
Mercifully, the neighbor (friend? colleague?) drifts away. Millie goes back to tapping her thigh. How long is she supposed to sit here? Surely it’s been long enough. She’s going to leave at some point; it might as well be now. She gets up from the couch, and heads for the front door. She makes it halfway down the front steps when she hears the door slamming in her wake.
“Where are you going?”
She turns and finds her sister, Freya, cheeks flushed, hands fisted at her side.
“Back to the hotel,” she says. She booked a room in downtown Richmond, couldn’t bear the thought of staying in that house. Even for Freya.
