When I came to, I was in the hospital. I didn’t know how much time had passed. But I think I already knew about Dad. I don’t know how—I didn’t see him again after the Suburban hit us—but maybe when you’re that close to someone, you can feel it when they’re not there anymore. That’s what I think, anyhow.
It took me a few moments to focus on Mom’s face as I gradually swam to the surface of consciousness. Her eyes were bloodshot and her face was blotchier than usual. I couldn’t help noticing that she was still wearing the tattered pink bathrobe over her pajamas, which seemed strange and out of place in public. Mom was a lawyer in Boston, and she never left the house looking anything less than completely put-together.
The hospital room was white and almost uncomfortably bright under big fluorescent lights. I licked my lips and realized I couldn’t feel my body.
Mom jumped up and leaned over me. She looked scared.
“You’re going to be okay,” she blurted out. “You broke your left femur—that’s the big bone in your thigh—in two places, and you have a few broken ribs and a broken left wrist, but they say all the bones should heal just fine.”
“Where’s Dad?” I asked slowly, in a voice that sounded too thick to be my own.
Mom’s lower lip quivered and she bit it, like it was the only way she could stop it from shaking. Her eyes filled with tears again.
“Lacey, baby,” she said softly, sitting on the edge of my bed and reaching for my hands. I couldn’t feel her. I couldn’t feel anything. “The accident was really bad.”
I stared at her for a minute. She hadn’t answered me. “Where’s Dad?” I repeated. “Where are Tanner and Logan?”
She blinked at me a few times. “The boys are in the waiting room,” she said. “Uncle Paul’s with them. They’re going to be okay. Tanner broke his arm, and Logan had to get stitches, but they’re fine.”
I remembered Tanner reaching for me just before everything went black. He must have been scared about me. “But Dad?” I asked again, my voice rising a little bit as panic began to set in.
“Dad …,” Mom began, and then stopped. She took a big breath, glanced away, and then looked back at me with eyes that seemed foggy and lost. “The car … hit right around the driver’s seat,” she said slowly. “The doctors did everything they could, but …” She stopped, unable to say it.
“Daddy died,” I completed her sentence, feeling tears well up in my eyes. “He died, didn’t he?”
Mom nodded. A pair of fresh tears rolled down her face, one for each cheek, like skiers racing to the bottom of the slopes. I remembered the last thing Dad had said, and tried to imagine her tears as graceful surfers instead, trying to ride a wave into shore. But then the tears dropped off her jawline and melted into her robe, and I had the sudden feeling that the imaginary surfers had fallen off the edge of the wave and disappeared forever. It was that image that finally made me burst into tears.
Mom wrapped her arms around me, and we sobbed together, with no more words to say.
Later, after Logan and Tanner had come in to see me and Uncle Paul had taken them home, Mom sat by my bedside and told me that Dad had lost consciousness right away. The doctors said he probably didn’t even see it coming and didn’t feel scared, and that he was never awake to hurt. It was, they told her, the most painless way to go. One second, he was driving along happily on a Saturday morning with his three kids, and the next, it was all over. He never knew. He never had a chance to say goodbye.
After a while, Mom asked if I had any questions. I said no, but of course, that was a lie.
I wanted to ask what would have happened if I hadn’t had to curl my hair or if I hadn’t insisted on putting on mascara or if I hadn’t purposely dragged my feet a little just to annoy Logan and Tanner. But I didn’t need to ask. I knew what would have happened. We’d be sitting at home right now, trying to figure out whether to play Monopoly or Life or whether to watch a movie. Dad would be trailing his hand lazily down Mom’s back in that affectionate way that sometimes made me and Logan smile and roll our eyes at each other. Mom would be getting up every few minutes to put dishes in the dishwasher or to start the washing machine. Logan and Tanner would be fighting over the remote control because Tanner wanted to watch a Pokémon DVD and Logan wanted to watch sports.
Dad wouldn’t be dead.
And it wouldn’t be my fault.
chapter 1
TEN MONTHS LATER