“I need some air, are you good with Rory and Kira?” He’s a shattered man and it’s killing me knowing I’ve done this to him. I’m responsible for all of the pain in his life. All of it.
“We’ll be fine. They’re sleeping. Go outside. Take your time. We’re not going anywhere.” I wish I could help him. All those years when he needed me and would’ve accepted and welcomed my help, I ran the other way. Now, when I want nothing more than to be the one he turns to, it’s his turn to run. My timing is absolute shit.
Watching him walk away makes me realize that when you love someone, you only want what’s best for them. And how much I wish what was best for him was me. It’s not. It never was, and it never will be. And then I sit down in a chair next to Rory and Kira, who are both sleeping, and I bawl. It’s crying that wets my cheeks and demolishes my soul. The tears are for Kai. And Seamus. And me. And my grandmother. All for different reasons. I can’t get the visual of Kai lying crumpled, bleeding, and unmoving on the street out of my head. It was an accident.
Accident.
An innocuous occurrence.
Until it involves my little boy on a bike being hit by my car.
Or my grandmother riding in the seat next to me.
There should be a different word for this type of accident. Accident seems too mild when tragedy is involved. Accident—Kai and my grandmother are meshing together in my mind until they’re one bloody heap that I feel wickedly responsible for. For years, I’ve tried to ignore the guilt that crushes me regarding my grandmother. It has a far weightier companion now.
When Seamus returns, I’m cried out. For now, anyway. I excuse myself to the restroom.
Bladder relieved, face splashed with cold water that does nothing to relieve mental or physical anguish, the waiting room receives me back in like an unwelcome guest. I wonder if Seamus can feel my guilt, it’s a larger presence in the room than I am. I need to tell him what happened and face his justified wrath.
Rory and Kira are huddled together, still sleeping in one big chair under Seamus’s jacket. Part of me wants to close my eyes too, but even if I did, I know I wouldn’t be able to sleep, my waking nightmares are worse than anything my imagination could dream up. I may never close my eyes again and just endure the torture.
I drop into the chair across from Seamus. He’s sitting up straight in his chair, but it’s contradictory to the exhaustion and sorrow in his eyes.
“You can talk to me, you know?” he says. It’s quiet, I’m sure because of the late hour and the kids sleeping next to him, but it’s also his concerned voice. A voice I haven’t heard in years. A voice that wraps me up like a warm blanket.
“My grandmother died.” This is me talking.
He looks at me thoughtfully, he’s never heard this story, and I’m sure he wasn’t expecting anything remotely close to this. “The one who raised you?”
I nod.
“When did it happen?” he questions. I know he thinks this is strange; I’ve always refused to talk about her to him.
“I was eighteen. She was sixty-two though I always thought of her as ageless. A woman with the wisdom time affords, but with the vitality and enthusiasm of someone much younger. An enigma. The type of person who should be able to dodge death, outsmart it, forever.”
“I’m sorry,” he says.
“I killed her. It was my fault.” I’ve thought those words thousands of times. They’re loud and condemning in my head, but quiet and wounded when they dribble between my lips. It should worry me that this type of shock-worthy declaration is registering shock-free on his face. But I’m not worried about me for once. I’m purging. Purging all the bad. “We were in a car crash. Hit a tree. I was driving.”
“Sounds like an accident. Accidents aren’t anyone’s fault.” It’s still his concerned voice. I know that will all soon change.
I take a deep breath and when I do the sob climbs from somewhere deep in the bowels of me where I bury the ugliest of the ugly and erupts in quiet expulsion. “It’s my fault. I was in such a fucking hurry. I needed the fucking ricotta cheese, and that’s all I was thinking about.”
When I look at Seamus, his eyes are wide and disbelief is mounting in them, contorting his face though he’s fighting it. I watch it slowly transform into the grimace of hate. He knows I’m not talking about my grandmother. “What exactly are you saying, Miranda?”