“The day you got drunk? The day you blacked out and crashed into a building?” I’m screaming, yet I can’t catch my breath. “The day you barely remember?”
He doesn’t say anything. I feel like my chest is caving in. The room starts spinning.
A hand catches my arm. “Juliet. Juliet.” A familiar male voice is speaking to me, but my vision has tunneled to nothing.
May 25.
The day my mother was killed in a hit-and-run crash.
CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR
From: Cemetery Girl <[email protected]>
To: The Dark <[email protected]>
Date: Tuesday, October 8 03:21:53 PM
Subject: I need to know
Are you Declan Murphy?
If you are, I don’t know if I can ever talk to you again.
I’m going to lose my mind.
She must have sent me the email as soon as school let out, because the final bell rings at 3:20.
She must have driven straight to the cemetery, too. She’s sitting in front of her mother’s gravestone, writing something longhand.
I know this because I’m watching her do it.
She can’t see me. I’m not standing out in the open. I’m not that brave. No, I’m by the equipment shed, lurking in the shadows like a complete and total stalker. Melonhead is puttering around in there, and he hasn’t seen me yet, either.
I don’t know what she did for the rest of the school day, but I know what I did: I sat in the back of each class and replayed that night in my head. The wedding. The whiskey.
The impact. The cops.
I was only in the car for fifteen minutes. That’s documented. I left the wedding at 8:01 p.m., and I plowed into the pillars of the office building at 8:16 p.m.
Fifteen minutes.
That doesn’t seem like enough time to destroy someone else’s life along with my own.
The cops aren’t stupid, right? They would have put two and two together, right?
I knew the date. I knew it. That’s how this started! I read the letter sitting on the woman’s gravestone.
I keep thinking about those paths and wonder if ours—mine and her mother’s—were set to intersect that perfectly. To collide that perfectly.
This makes me no better than my father. This makes me worse than my father.
Why didn’t I succeed? My path was supposed to end. That was the whole reason I got in the truck after all. It’d worked for Kerry. It should have worked for me.
It would have been so much better for everyone.
I need to get out of here. I need to go home. I can’t go home.
I didn’t hit anyone that night. I didn’t hurt anyone.
I know I didn’t.
I’m pretty sure.
I’m not sure at all.
I feel sick. I’m going to be sick, right here in the grass.
Did I kill someone? Did I kill her mother?
I need Rev. I need to talk to Rev.
BUT HE WON’T ANSWER HIS PHONE.
I try again anyway. My fingers are sweaty, and I can’t get the screen to work. A noise escapes my throat, and I fling the phone in the grass.
I’m losing my mind. I press my fingers into my eyes. My hands are shaking.
“Murph?” Melonhead is in front of me, peering at me, his eyes concerned. “What’s going on with you, man?”
“I need to go.” My voice sounds like I’m choking. “I can’t do this.”
“What’s going on?”
I turn away and head toward the path that leads to the employee parking lot. Each step feels as though I’m moving through quicksand, but instead of pulling me into the earth, I’m being towed back to Juliet.
I need her. More than anything right now. I need her.
And because of everything between us, I can’t have her.
Melonhead is still beside me. “DECK-lin. Talk to me.”
I find my car and fumble with the keys. Twice. The steel prong refuses to slide into the slot.
I yell and punch the car with the handful of keys. Steel teeth bite into my palm and I hear metal screek.
“Hey. Hey.” Melonhead catches my arm, and he’s stronger than I expect. “Talk to me. Are you high, kid?”
“God. No.” I put my forehead against the roof of the car. I wish I were. “I need to get out of here, Frank. Please let me go.”
He inhales, and I’m ready for warnings about not fulfilling my community service, about calling the judge, about getting thrown back in jail.
“Okay,” he says. “You drive. I’ll listen.”
I drive, but I don’t talk. There’s something soothing about being behind the wheel of a car, and I’m able to settle into the rhythm of the clutch and the hum of the road. At first, I do a few loops through the neighborhood where the cemetery sits, because I’m certain Melonhead is going to tell me that’s enough, that I need to get myself together and go back.
He doesn’t.
So I head farther east, merging onto the highway, until we’re approaching the bridge over the Chesapeake Bay. I’m going to have to shell out six bucks for the toll, because I don’t want to stop.
“Take the Jennifer Road exit,” he says.
We’ve been driving for twenty minutes, and it’s the first word either of us has said. “Why?”
“I want to stop at the hospital.”
My hands grip the steering wheel more tightly. “I don’t need a hospital.”
“Who said anything about you? We’re down here, I’m going to say hello to my wife.”
That cuts through my self-obsession. My eyes flick over. “Your wife is sick?”
He shakes his head. “She works here. I want to surprise her.”
It’s not like I have a planned destination in mind. I hit the turn signal and take the exit.
When I’ve parked in the garage, I don’t kill the engine.
Melonhead unbuckles his seat belt and hits me in the arm. “Come on, Murph.”
“I can wait.”
“Too good to meet my wife? Get out of the car, kid.”
My nerves are shot, and I glare at him. “I’m not in the mood for this.”
“What are you in the mood for?”
I’m in the mood to crawl under this car and hide there forever.
Rev’s words keep echoing in my head. Stop acting like such a damn victim.
The words hit me like a bullet to the vest, and I’m still sore from the impact. I don’t think I’ve ever heard him swear.