Chapter 21
Two weeks after Missy Ryan’s funeral, I was lying in bed one morning when I heard a bird begin to chirp outside the window. I’d left it open the night before, hoping for a break in the heat and humidity. My sleep had been fitful since the accident; more than once, I awoke to find my body covered in sweat, the sheets damp and oily, the pillow soaked through. That morning was no different, and as I listened to the bird, the odor of perspiration, sweet ammonia, surrounded me.
I tried to ignore the bird, the fact that it was in the tree, the fact that I was still alive and Missy Ryan wasn’t. But I wasn’t able to. It was right outside my window, on a branch that overlooked my room, its call shrill and piercing. I know who you are, it seemed to say, and I know what you did.
I wondered when the police would come for me.
It didn’t matter if it was an accident or not; the bird knew they would come, and it was telling me that they would be here soon. They would find out what kind of car had been driven that night; they would find out who owned it. There would be a knock at the door and they would come in; they would hear the bird and know I was guilty. It was ludicrous, I know, but in my half-crazed state, I believed it.
I knew they would come.
In my room, wedged between the pages of a book I kept in the drawer, I kept the obituary from the paper. I’d also saved the clippings about the accident, and they were folded neatly beside it. It was dangerous to have kept them. Anyone who happened to open the book would find them and would know what I had done, but I kept them because I needed to. I was drawn to the words, not for comfort, but to better understand what I had taken away. There was life in the words that were written, there was life in the photographs. In this room, on that morning with the bird outside my window, there was only death.
I’d had nightmares since the funeral. Once I dreamed that I’d been singled out by the preacher, who knew what I had done. In the middle of the service, I’d dreamed that he suddenly stopped talking and looked over the pews, then slowly raised his finger in my direction. “There,” he said, “is the man who did this.” I saw faces turn toward me, one after the other, like a wave in a crowded stadium, each focusing on me with looks of astonishment and anger. But neither Miles nor Jonah turned to look at me. The church was silent and eyes were wide; I sat without moving, waiting to see if Miles and Jonah would finally turn to see who had killed her. But they did not.
In the other nightmare, I dreamed that Missy was still alive in the ditch when I’d found her, that she was breathing raggedly and moaning, but that I turned and walked away, leaving her to die. I awoke nearly hyperventilating. I bounded from the bed and paced around the room as I talked to myself, until I was finally convinced it had been only a dream.
Missy had died of head trauma. I learned that in the article as well. A cerebral hemorrhage. As I said, I hadn’t been driving fast, but the reports said she had somehow landed in a way that slammed her head against a protruding rock in the ditch. They called it a fluke, a one in a million occurrence.
I wasn’t sure I believed it.
I wondered if Miles would suspect me on sight, whether, in some flash of divine inspiration, he would guess it was me. I wondered what I would say to him, if he confronted me. Would he care that I like to watch baseball games, or that my favorite color is blue, or that when I was seven, I used to sneak outside and study the stars, even though nobody would have guessed that about me? Would he like to know that until the moment I hit Missy with my car, I felt sure that I would eventually make something of myself?
No, he wouldn’t care about those things. What he’d want to know was the obvious: He would want to know that the killer’s hair is brown, that his eyes are green, that he’s six feet tall. He would want to know where he could find me. And he would want to know how it happened.
Would he, though, like to hear that it was an accident? That if anything, it was more her fault than my own? That had she not been running at night on a dangerous road, more than likely she would have made it home? That she jumped right in front of my car?
Outside, I noticed that the bird stopped chirping. The trees were still, and I could hear the faint hum of a passing car. Already, it was getting hot again. Somewhere, I knew that Miles Ryan was awake, and I imagined him sitting in his kitchen. I imagined Jonah beside him, eating a bowl of cereal. I tried to imagine what they were saying to each other. But the only thing I could imagine was steady breathing, punctuated by the sounds of spoons clanking against the bowl.
I brought my hands to my temples, trying to rub the pain away. It seemed to throb from somewhere deep inside, stabbing me with fury, matching every heartbeat. In my mind’s eye, I saw Missy in the road, her eyes open, staring up at me.
Staring at nothing at all.