I won’t drink and drive, Madre … you know you can trust me? How many times had Jude heard him make that promise?
She closed her eyes, as if darkness offered any refuge from this.
The officer flipped a page. “Do you remember leaving the party?”
“Yeah. It was about two o’clock. Mia was having a cow about us being late.”
“So you all decided to get in the car and drive,” the officer said. The words were like a battering ram. Jude felt each one hit her spine and reverberate up.
“Lexi wanted to call home,” Zach said quietly. “I told her not to be stupid. We did that once and Mom flipped out. I didn’t want to miss another party.”
“Oh, Zach,” Miles said, shaking his head.
Jude thought she might be sick again.
She’d forgotten all about that other time, when they’d believed her words and called her for help. And what had she done—made them pay for it by forcing them to skip several events that weekend.
Oh, God.
“You were fine until you came to Night Road,” Officer Avery went on.
“There was no one on the road. Mia was … Mia was in the backseat, singing along to the radio. That Kelly Clarkson song. I told her to shut up, and she hit me in the back of the head and then…” Zach drew in a deep breath. “We weren’t even going that fast, but it was dark and the turn just came up, you know? That hairpin just past the Smithsons’ mailbox. Like out of nowhere. I heard Mia scream, and I yelled at Lexi to hit the brakes and tried to grab the wheel … and then…”
Jude’s head snapped up. “You told Lexi to hit the brakes?”
“She was driving,” Zach said. “She didn’t want to. I was supposed to. I was the designated driver. It’s my fault.”
“Ms. Baill’s blood alcohol level was point zero nine. The legal limit is point zero eight. Of course, she’s under twenty-one, so she can’t legally drink at all,” the officer said.
Lexi was driving, not Zach.
Zach hadn’t killed his sister.
Lexi had.
*
“I need to see Zach.”
“Oh, Lexi,” her aunt said, her face slackening with sorrow. “Surely—”
“I need to see him, Aunt Eva.”
Her aunt started to say no, but Lexi wouldn’t listen. Before she knew it, she was crying and pushing past her aunt, limping down the hall.
She saw him through the open door at the end of the hallway.
He was alone in his room.
“Zach,” she said at the doorway, moving toward him.
“She’s gone,” he said, barely moving his lips.
Lexi felt those two words crash into her again. She stumbled. “I know…”
“I used to feel her, you know. She was always humming inside my head. Now … now…” He looked up. When he saw her, his eyes filled with tears. “It’s quiet.”
She limped over to the bed and took him in her arms as best she could with one arm and a broken rib. Every breath hurt, but she deserved it. “I’m so sorry, Zach.”
He turned away from her, as if he couldn’t bear to look at her face anymore. “Go away, Lexi.”
“I’m sorry, Zach,” she said again, hearing the smallness of those words. She’d held them in her hands like a fragile flower, thinking they would bloom somehow when she offered them to him; how na?ve she’d been.
Jude came into the room, carrying Mia’s purse and a can of Coke.
“I’m sorry,” Lexi stammered, trying to stop her stupid, useless tears. Failing.
Then her aunt was beside her, taking hold of her hand. “Come away, Alexa. This is not the time.”
“Sorry?” Jude said dully, as if she’d just processed Lexi’s apology. “You killed my Mia.” Her voice broke on that. “What is sorry supposed to mean to me?”
Lexi felt her aunt stiffen, straighten. “This from the woman who knew her children were going to drink and gave them car keys. I’m sorry, but Lexi is not the only one responsible here.”
Jude drew back as if she’d been slapped.
“I’m sorry,” Lexi said again, letting her aunt pull her away. When she finally dared to turn back around, Jude was still there, standing beside Zach’s bed, clinging to her daughter’s purse.