“You didn’t have to do that,” I say.
“Yes, I did.” His voice is low and he’s driving fast, won’t look at me.
“You should’ve stayed out of it.” He laughs harshly. “I’m serious, Beau. You really hurt him.”
He shakes his head. “You mean like he was gonna do to you?”
“He wouldn’t have hurt me,” I insist, though I’m still shaking, still seeing the unfocused, almost bloodthirsty look in Matt’s eye.
“Natalie, you really don’t get it, do you?”
“Get what?”
“Forget it,” he says. Neither of us speaks for the rest of the drive, and when we pull up in front of my house, he turns the car off, and we continue to sit in silence. Finally, Beau speaks, without looking up from the steering wheel. “I may drink too much and get into fights now and then, but I would never hurt you, or anyone else I care about. You don’t deserve that. No one does. You shouldn’t be scared of someone you love, Natalie.”
“I have to go.” I get out of the car and run inside before he can see the tears really start to fall.
I wake up in the middle of the night again, and this time I know right away: I’m not alone. My eyes focus on the rocking chair.
Grandmother is there, but for once she’s wearing different clothes: an open pink robe over a faded blue nightgown. Her skin is less wrinkled, her hair swept into a neat bun.
“Grandmother,” I say, sitting up.
She seems blind, the way her eyes move across the room. “Don’t be afraid, Natalie,” she says, and then she’s gone.
“Grandmother,” I say into the night. “Grandmother.”
No response. I try to think about the song Beau played in the band room that night, the feeling it gave me. I try to tune in to my own anxiety. That part’s easy—there’s a lump in my chest and a weight in my stomach, that indescribable feeling that something’s wrong.
I hear Gus whining at the door. I get out of bed to let him into the hall, and he trots right to the stairs, thumping clumsily down to the foyer. A light from down in the kitchen reaches the fringes of the stairs, and hushed voices drift along it.
I creep down the steps and follow the hallway to the kitchen. Mom and Dad are sitting at the table across from one another, and when Mom notices me standing in the doorway I see that her eyes are red and puffy. Dad turns around and looks at me, revealing his own sunken and dark gaze. “Hey, sugar cube,” he says softly.
“What’s wrong?”
They exchange a look and Mom starts to cry, covering her mouth with her thin hand. Dad tips his head toward the yellow wooden chair beside him, but I can’t move. My feet weigh a thousand pounds, and my heartrate’s like I’m in the middle of a sprint. “Dad?” I urge, my voice little more than a squeak.
He sighs and stands, setting a hand on Mom’s shoulder as her slim frame shakes with silent tears. “Honey, he’s alive,” Dad starts, “but Matt Kincaid’s been in a car accident.”
20
When we get to the hospital waiting room, everything happens at once. Joyce Kincaid grabs me in a hug and cries into my hair. Raymond shakes Dad’s hand but can’t say a word. But the worst thing, the hardest thing, is the drop in my stomach, the flicker in the blue chair in the corner, under the mounted TV.
The flicker during which, for a split second, I see Beau, sitting hunched over his knees, his hands pressed together and resting against his mouth, his eyes on the gray speckled floor. Sitting a few seats away from him are different versions of Joyce and Raymond, both silent. Joyce looks over at Beau, and I swear her lip curls hatefully in blame.
They don’t see me, but I see them over my Joyce’s shoulder as she death-grips me and sobs beside my ear.
I see them, and I know what it means. Both Matts are here.
Oh my God.
The doctor comes through the swinging gray doors. He’s a young, skinny blond guy with wire-frame glasses and a too-big white jacket.
“Mr. and Mrs. Kincaid, would you come with me?” he says. His expression is grave, devastating, and he barely looks away from the wall he’s chosen to focus on. Joyce breaks down further, and Mom gently rubs her back.
“Come on, Joyce,” Raymond whispers as he tries to free his wife from my arms. He leads her closer to those gray doors, toward bad news, and I take a few steps after them.
“I’m sorry, Miss,” the doctor says to me. “Family only.”
“She can come,” Joyce says. “She’s Matty’s girlfriend. She can come.”
I don’t correct her, but my whole body pinches at the mistake. The doctor nods and takes us inside. I don’t catch most of his words over the noise in my brain, the two sides of me screaming two different versions of the same story.
He was drunk. He wouldn’t listen. There was nothing you could do. He’ll be fine.