Wow that mom of hers wrote about her all the time when she was a little kid and she and her dad both were suicides I guess a blog where you dissect your family life is a bad idea LOL too bad for the idiot in the car with her
I blame the parents. Both sets. They shouldn’t have been out drinking and driving, kids do what they see at home if you ask me. Bad examples!! Bad parenting!! You don’t get in a car with a drunk kid you’ll DIE!!!!!
No evidence they were drinking, dumbass, but thanks for playing.
The news covers up for them, your the dumbas!s
Try reading the article. I know it has words of more than one syllable but try.
Perri Hall stopped. Closed her eyes. Her son’s beautiful life, his tragic death, dismantled and discussed—with no knowledge of him—by strangers, who felt they could yell and argue over her son’s dead body, figuratively. Who felt that just because they had a keyboard, they could and should say whatever they wanted.
She toggled back to the top of the page. She clicked on Liv Danger, who claimed to have a better memory than Jane’s. The account had only a few friends, a few of which looked like fake spam accounts, and only one she recognized: Jane Norton.
So it was a fake account? Someone just messing with Jane and with her and Cal as well. Desecrating his stone was much worse than posting on Jane’s social-media page. What if this Liv Danger was telling the truth and knew something about the crash that wasn’t known?
All will pay.
I could try and find out who this is, she thought.
The doorbell rang.
You have to be better than this. You can be better than this. She went downstairs.
*
She cooked a favorite of David’s: baked chicken breasts stuffed with feta cheese, wrapped in bacon, with quinoa and salad with homemade lemon-and-shallot dressing. Cal brought a cold bottle of Grüner Veltliner wine from Austria and, without being asked, poured a hefty glass for her and then one for himself. He hadn’t realized she’d already opened a bottle of wine, which was now tucked in the fridge door, and she thought, Well, this will numb us. She took a long, gulping drink and then set the wineglass down and stepped into his arms. He was surprised. He didn’t hesitate to fold her in his embrace, kissing the top of her head.
“The cemetery management is going to increase security. There shouldn’t be further issues with David’s grave.”
The oven chimed. She turned away and busied herself, feeling the wine kicking in hard, and he finished making the salad. Just like he still lived here.
“I spent the day outlining that mentorship program for David.”
“Alone?”
He nodded, surprised.
“You said you didn’t want to be alone today and I thought,” she said, thinking of the perfume in his car, “that maybe you were seeing someone.”
“I’m not,” he said after a few moments of silence. “I would tell you if I was.”
She started to clean up and he said, “No, I’ll do it, you cooked,” and so she sat back down with her wine while he cleaned and then he came and sat by her and refilled her glass and his own with the cold Austrian white wine. Two glasses were her limit, and he’d chosen what he nicknamed her big “book-club glasses,” which she could normally only drink one of. She didn’t trust open bottles of wine tonight. It would be too easy to dull the pain, get too lost, and she’d feel sick and tired tomorrow.
He took her hand. She let him.
“What do you know about Jane Norton these days?” she said.
She felt his hand stiffen and then squeeze her fingers with just a bit more pressure. “Nothing. Unlike you, I prefer not to think about her.”
“It was why you dropped the lawsuit, you felt sorry for her.” And that was the first crack in our marriage.
His glass paused on the way to his mouth. “Do you think bankrupting my best friend’s widow with a brain-damaged daughter would have brought back our son? No.”
“But it could have gotten us to the truth. Forced an investigation into whether or not they were lying about her amnesia, or maybe encouraged a witness to come forward.”
“Perri.” He sounded exhausted.
Fine, she thought. I won’t tell you about my scene with Jane, or this Liv Danger person. You wouldn’t do anything about it anyway. I know you. You give up too easy, Cal. You accept.
“I love you,” he said. “I always will.”
“I know.” But she couldn’t say it back.
A resigned pain crossed his face. He told her he was tired and he left. She closed the door. Picked up her glass of wine. She went back upstairs. The Faceplace screen was still up. She clicked on Liv Danger’s link.
I’m going to find out who you are. Perri sent a friend request.
10
BRENDA HOBSON COULDN’T sleep. Numbers danced in her head: the amount she still owed off her husband’s credit card debt, the college payment that would be due soon for her son. Sometimes when she closed her eyes she could see the numbers sliding around on the ceiling. She’d worked hard after Rick died to pay off the debts he’d left; the insurance had covered some but not all. He liked her to have nice things, he just didn’t like paying for them.
She’d erased forty thousand in debt—ten thousand still left. But Hunter was starting at the University of Texas at San Antonio, studying accounting, and he wasn’t on full scholarship, and Lindsay was coming up two years behind him, and she wanted to go to art school. Considering how little artists were paid, you’d think art school would be cheap, but it was the opposite. She hoped it was a phase and Lindsay would want to make a more practical choice. But she hated to tell either of her kids no—they were not spoiled, but they’d lost so much when they lost their dad. Her life had turned into one giant making of amends for her husband’s death. The debts. Not all of it had been credit card debt; she didn’t want the kids to know that some had been to people he made bets with. Those she had paid off first, trembling when she met one bookie’s representative in a department store parking lot to hand him five thousand in cash. Rick had gambled because he firmly believed life was short, and then his heart conked out, far too early at age forty-four, and proved him right.
The dark days were behind her. She’d gotten slowly back on her feet. Last year she’d bought the small house here in the new development on the outskirts of San Antonio suburbia, a new start for her and the kids, and more importantly, one that she could afford. Austin had been too expensive for her, after she lost Rick’s income and with his debts, and too full of bad memories. Soon enough the houses on each side of her would be sold—it seemed like everyone was moving to San Antonio—and the new, better memories would start here. She had bought the first house built on this street.
It’s small, Lindsay had said, frowning.