“She’ll be right here,” her mother says. “Tommy, I don’t understand why I need to go with you. Is there no end to this?”
Her father seems to weigh the question as he picks up the last of the boxes, staring at it as if waiting for a sign. And then, nodding, he places it alongside the others on the car’s backseat.
“I want you with me,” he tells her.
Lara notices Vanessa’s small red car breaking out of traffic, pulling to the curb, and parking on the opposite side of the street. And then for one long moment she thinks of the night before, the way her mother cried into her father’s shoulder. She understands that something her father said made her mother cry. Her mother crosses the front yard quickly, her father is already in the car, his hands holding the steering wheel. He throws Lara a kiss, she is expected to return it, just as she is expected to sit and wait on the stoop.
“C’mon, Lara,” her father shouts, “be nice and throw your daddy a kiss! Daddy loves you.”
She does.
Lara watches her mother now, the way the back of her hand moves across her lips, how fast she walks. And then, as her mother opens the car door and sits beside her father, Lara hears the ignition as her father turns the key, distinctly hears it.
And then Lara hears the explosion.
The morning erupts in thunder, shattering steel and glass. Lara hears her mother’s shriek, a sound like crazy laughter. After the blast, the erupting glass and flying steel, she sees an orange-red flash of fire and then there is silence.
Lara’s father, Tommy Boyle, somehow stumbles out of the silver car. His body is smoking and he is coughing blood, the glare of the sun all around him. He makes a noise Lara cannot understand, drops to his knees, his hand extended toward her as he falls to the grass.
Her mother is gone. There is nothing but a drowsy hissing sound coming through the smoke and fire. Lara puts her hands over her ears and shuts her eyes. In the middle of the street, Vanessa screams.
*
Sometime after noon, Lara is sitting shoulder to shoulder with Vanessa on her bed. The babysitter’s arm is around Lara’s back, her hand cupping the child’s shoulder. There are a number of strange men and women in the house now, moving around as though they belong. Her mother would not be happy.
From the street there have been the sounds of fire engines, police cars, and an ambulance. Lara keeps her eyes shut tight and her hands cover her ears; in the closing off of all light and sound, maybe she can change what happened. She allows herself to go with that feeling, that none of the horror happened.
Lara hears the door to her bedroom open. She uncovers her eyes and sees two men step in and stop. The men stand three feet from her. She moves her hands toward her face and worries that she might start to cry.
“Is the child being cared for?” the one with a mess of blond hair asks softly. “Does she need anything?”
“She’s in shock,” Vanessa explains.
The man nods. “Yeah, well, of course,” he says, then he points to the man standing beside him. “This is Brendan McKenna. He’s a state police investigator. My name is Mark Perino, I work for the FBI. Lara, your mom and dad were on their way to meet with us when the accident happened.”
Hearing this, Vanessa begins crying out loud.
Accident? Lara thinks. It was an accident?
Things come to Lara now without her knowing how or why. She remembers her father and mother arguing about gangsters, the looks they exchanged, and she understands now that in those looks there was dread. It was the way they touched each other, the way her father hugged her mother, the way her mother gave in. And, in the remembering, she wonders what the blond man, whose name is Mark, meant by accident. And considering that, Lara feels sorry for herself. She realizes that everything has changed, that there is no one left, that she is alone. She sits on the edge of the bed and stares at the blond man. His gaze goes through her like a breeze.
“Does the child want something to drink? Juice or soda? We’ll get her whatever she wants,” the blond man says.
“She won’t speak to me. She hasn’t said a word,” Vanessa says. Her voice is trembling and filled with panic.
Lara hears herself mutter, “Please,” and wonders where the word comes from. She wants to scream but she is too frozen with fear. A tiny “please” is all she can manage.
A woman in uniform has joined the men in the room. She is not as tall as Vanessa and she is serious and hard-faced. Her voice, her tone, gets Lara’s attention. “We need to place her,” the woman is saying. “Apparently, there is no family.”
Tears come again to Lara’s eyes, run down her cheeks onto her hands that are folded in her lap. She does not cry out loud, just sits, silently weeping.