Her mom was looking at her with that expression again. That dreadful mix of fear and feigned hope. She dug around in the bag from home and produced a tube of Aquaphor. “Here. For your poor lips.” Before Emma could object, her mother was smearing some on her finger and dabbing it on. Her mouth hurt, but her mom’s fingers were tender and light, and Emma felt just the slightest bit of relief. Besides, her mother seemed possessed by some visceral maternal urge to fix everything. If a tube of Aquaphor did it for her, who was Emma to deny her mother that?
Her father, however, was not calm. At the foot of her bed, he maintained his slow, methodical pacing. Per usual, he was in what the family jokingly dubbed his “home uniform” of pressed khakis and French-blue button-down shirt. “My dad is so chill, he takes his tie off at home,” Emma used to tease him. Now his hands were jammed in the pockets of his khakis as he made slow, steady rotations around the foot of her bed, his eyes trained on the floor. A few more days of this and he would wear a track through the linoleum.
“Honey, please.” Her mother motioned for her father to sit down. Apparently, it was starting to get to her, too.
But Emma could tell it took a lot out of him to still his arms and legs. To just sit. He leaned forward and rubbed his eyes. “Emma, we got some blood tests back that we need to talk about.”
Immediately her mother shot him a look, but her father seemed to ignore it.
Emma swallowed hard, sinking into the blankets. She did not want to talk about any of it. Already there had been so much talk. There were the nurses, who’d taken her vitals and asked her if she remembered what had happened. Followed by the doctor, who examined her and asked more questions. She’d been wheeled in and out of radiology, where she’d lain on cold steel surfaces as the technician asked her to move this way, then that way, then not at all. At least the cute young orderly had given her a warm blanket. “Franco,” his nametag said. He was nice. A couple of times he tried to make her laugh, but each time it made her lip split, and then she cried, and poor Franco had looked like he might, too.
Since the tests were complete and rest had been ordered, the doctors and nurses had come in less and less frequently. Her father, however, remained. As did his overwhelming worry. She could almost see it rippling beneath the surface of his skin as he sat there, chin in his hands in the hard plastic chair. “Do you know what blood tests I’m talking about?” he pressed.
“No.” Sweat broke out in her armpits. Her mind flew to her uncle. Uncle Jake, her favorite relative in the whole family. The cool, funny one who didn’t ask too many questions and always knew how to make her laugh. Who was just having a few beers and a good time at his own engagement party. Who wouldn’t hurt a fly. Whom she’d begged to take her out on the boat. It was her fault they’d been out there to begin with. Jake hadn’t meant to put them at risk.
Every time she closed her eyes, she replayed the crash again. The dock swerving into abrupt view. The surge of speed, and Uncle Jake’s urgent voice. And Luci. In one moment Luci was there. And then she was gone.
Emma shielded her eyes. “Please. Not now. I feel sick.” The lights were too sharp, her father’s questions too knotty.
“Okay, that’s enough.” Her mother rushed for the light panel, then the curtains. Instantly, her father stopped talking. “Let’s go. She needs to rest.”
Emma curled into the blankets, hand over her face as their footsteps moved to the door. “We’ll be down in the cafeteria, honey. Try to get some sleep.” Then there was the click as the door closed behind them.
Emma lay in the relative darkness for what seemed like a long time. Eventually her eyes got heavy, and she felt herself drifting off. She was almost asleep when a jarringdingstartled her. On the bedside table her phone screen was illuminated. Her mother must have accidentally left the phone behind. She reached for it.
There was one more message. From UJ.Uncle Jake.Eagerly she swiped it open.
Emmy, are you okay? I want to check on you, but I’m kind of tied up in Room 103. LOL. Luci is all right, and I’m relieved to hear that you are, too.
I’m sorry—you must have been really scared. Love you, kid.
Emma read it through twice, a sense of relief flooding through her. She’d felt so isolated not being able to see Jake or Luci. Her parents had assured her they were okay, but hearing from her uncle was different. Now she could rest.
She was just about to turn her phone off and return it to the bedside table when another message came through.
One more thing… don’t say anything. Please.
Perry
It was the green light he’d been waiting for: Emma could come home. Despite her fat lip and the blue-green bloom of bruising that spread across her right cheek, he and Amelia could collect their baby girl and ferry her home. Where things could once again go back to normal. Perry craved normal. He hadn’t slept in the last two days. He could not remember having eaten a damn thing besides the acrid coffee in the waiting room and a stale bagel that Amelia had forced into his hand and he’d attempted to gum down. Everything about his constitution was off, and the moment they wheeled Emma out into the sunlight and up to the curb where his car idled, Perry thanked God. He did not consider himself a religious man, but knowing what he knew about accidents and probabilities, about risk and result, he knew this: the fact that two young girls were walking away from that boating accident was nothing short of a miracle.
The night before had not been easy. Perry had stayed at the hospital after finally convincing Amelia to go home. Amelia was strong; it was something he admired most about her. She could walk into a sterile conference room and stand at the head of an all-male table and deliver a presentation without faltering. She was also direct. Whenever things concerned them during Emma’schildhood, either at school or in her social interactions with peers, Amelia had never hesitated to pick up the phone. Perry had once watched his wife in the principal’s office take down the hulking female phys ed teacher, as big in bullying as she was in physicality, for singling out and humiliating in front of the whole kindergarten class a child who couldn’t tie her shoe. But sitting beside their daughter’s hospital bed, Perry saw a fresh vulnerability in his wife that filled his chest with both sadness and deep affection. Amelia had been scared to her core. They both had. And he was relieved when she finally relented and went home to take a shower and crawl into bed.
The nurses had been kind enough to order Perry a cot, but he was a tall man, and he tossed and turned in its narrow confines. By five a.m., when he could lie there no more, he got up and sat beside Emma while she slept. It reminded him of the hours he’d spent doing so fifteen years earlier when she’d first come home from the hospital as a newborn and he was beside himself with worry. Amelia had plucked her from her crib, put her to her breast, burped her, and changed her with such confidence. But not Perry. He was terrified of this tiny person, this person who had turned his entire world upside down and whom he loved with a biological pull so encompassing that he was almost afraid to touch her. But he could watch her, that is what he did.
To his dismay, Emma had not rested easily last night either. At first she groaned and tossed, until he couldn’t stand to watch. Thankfully, the nurses gave her something to help her sleep. Perry wondered if she were experiencing the beginnings of PTSD.
To be honest, he wondered if he were, too. Because earlier that evening Perry had done something he’d not yet told his wife about. He’d snuck off to the scene of the accident.
As soon as Emma was admitted and settled safely under hermother’s watch, Perry had excused himself to get a coffee. Instead, Perry took the elevator down to the parking garage and drove back to Lenox. Perry needed to see it for himself. It was something he had to do alone.
He’d gotten the exact location from the police officers who’d stopped by earlier to file their report. Perry had known the general area of the scene from the calls his father had made to the lake authority and a report from a neighbor who’d called to check on the family. But when the officers appeared at the hospital later that afternoon, Perry had been able to nail it down. To Amelia he’d said, “I’m going to go out for a coffee. I can’t stand the cafeteria stuff they’re passing off. Can I get you one?”
She had barely looked up. “No, thanks.”
Alone in the car, Perry had turned the radio off and input the address to his GPS. It was a private property just north of their Candlewood Cove Clubhouse on the New Fairfield town side. Since he wasn’t accessing it by lake, he’d have to go to the property owner’s house and ask permission. That could be dicey. But Perry hoped they’d understand, and he was right. The owner, Mr. George Dunlap, met him in the driveway, and told him how sorry he was. He didn’t say a word about damages or insurance. He would later, Perry knew. They always did.
Mr. Dunlap walked him down the rear hillside to the water’s edge. When they got to the dock, he kindly left Perry alone. Perry took it all in. The splintered pilings jutting out of the inky water. The stray boards, torn from their footings where the bow of the boat had struck. Pieces of wood floated like shrapnel in the shallow water. A single white slice of fiberglass from the boat floated in a tangle of cattails like a lone snowflake against pavement. Perry stood at the shore and cursed. What would have brought them in so close to shore at such a speed? And caused the dockto be ripped apart like this? And thrown Jake from the boat altogether? They could’ve all been killed.
