CHAPTER ONE
LIZ
The house is quiet. I knew it would be, but knowing and understanding are two different things. A lesson I’m learning all over again in recent weeks. Ever since my phone rang at four twenty-three in the morning on April twenty-ninth.
I’d fallen asleep only an hour prior and with an early appointment coming up fast, I was annoyed to wake up to my phone ringing.
At four twenty-three in the morning.
On April twenty-ninth.
The day my sister died.
The day after Lena and her husband, Trent, were fatally wounded in a car crash caused by a nineteen-year-old idiot too drunk to see straight and tragically misguided enough to get behind the wheel of his Ford pickup. The day after her birthday.
That phone call should have been hard to understand too. Like this empty, quiet house is hard to grasp. But it wasn’t. I knew before the words were even spoken what they would be.
You don’t get calls from Camden County Hospital at four twenty-three in the morning when it’s good news. They let you sleep through that.
No. You get ripped from sleep and the blissful foolish notion that the world makes sense for bad news. Tragic news.Deadlynews.
Nearly two weeks later and the phone calls haven’t gotten any easier. Worse, now I'm the one making them.
Calling family members to notify them. Making funeral arrangements. Checking in with local authorities for updates in the case against the driver who killed them. Talking to the neighbors who have been kind enough to help with the horses. Last I heard, Trent had close to twenty of his own and seven more he was working with, all left in his care before he died.
On top of that, I’m dealing with Trent’s parents, Tammy and Abe, who have constant concerns about their children’s long-term care. Tammy, especially, is eager to have guardianship finalized. Yet another thing that's been delayed due to their deaths becoming a criminal case. Everything feels like it's taking second place to the investigation. Including the funeral and the reading of their will.
Which brings me to the worst calls of all.The kids.
Remmi is seven going on thirty and she’s been such a trooper, I struggle not to burst into tears at how tough she’s become in the span of two weeks.
The sweet girl who used to spend endless conversations explaining the different names and respective magical talents of every My Little Pony to me now has neither time nor interest for such trivial things.
Now we discuss whether her Nannie and Grandpop will be able to make mac and cheese without letting the noodles get mushy or how she struggles to keep Gavin from getting in trouble for leaving his juice cups in the most inopportune places.
Gavin’s only three and I can’t get through one conversation with him where he doesn’t ask where his Mommy and Daddy are andwhen they’re coming back any more than Remmi can convince him to stop storing his plastic tumblers upside down in Grandpop’s work boots.
Maybe I shouldn’t have fought their grandparents on bringing them to the funeral. Maybe it would have offered some closure, some sense of understanding Gavin seems otherwise incapable of gaining. But it didn't feel right to give in.
No matter how much I tried to reason Tammy and Abe had every right to make that call, I couldn’t let them go through with it. Couldn’t bear the thought of what traumatic memories might haunt both children if they’d been allowed to come. Not when I struggle to tolerate my own.
“Hey.”
A deep male voice startles me, and I turn in surprise. “What are you doing here?”
Jovi Daniels. My brother-in-law’s best friend since high school and my least favorite person in the entire world.
“Same thing you are, would be my guess.” He moves from the kitchen doorway into the hallway where I got held up three feet in from the front door, unable to move any further. “Trent’s lawyer emailed me. Asked me to meet him here.”
I nod, staring him down, undeterred by the challenge of his six-foot-three frame. Jovi looks the same as always. Dirty blond hair pulled away from his face in a messy cross between bun and ponytail. A day's worth of scruff along his jaw and dark brown eyes that never seem to miss a thing. Today, the ever-present glint of amusement he flashes as often as his smile, is absent.
So, maybe not exactly the same as always. But close enough.
Last time I saw him was almost six months ago at Trent and Lena’s big anniversary bash. Nine years they were married. Ran outand tied the knot the year Lena graduated from high school. No one thought they would make it, least of all me. Maybe I just didn’t want them to.
Back then, Trent was as cocky and obnoxious as his best friend. Of course, where he grew up and grew out of it, Jovi did not.
“I’ll let you meet with the lawyer first,” I tell him, slowly starting to move again. Not that I have a destination in mind. Anywhere that offers some smidgen of solitude, I suppose. The day has already pummeled me with heartache and fury. I don’t need Jovi to say something stupid and piss me off on top of everything else.
