“Of course you’re not at fault. Why would you be at fault?”
Her mom explained. “Adults can be held responsible for underage drinking in their home.”
Oh my god. “But we sneaked the booze in. You didn’t know.”
“Hopefully, the police will agree with you.” Her mom sounded smug, like she was enjoying sharing this news. You won’t be so snotty when your parents are in jail and you and your brother are in some dirty foster home.
Hannah took a deep breath and stood up. “I understand that I’m going to be grounded. For a long time. Forever. But you have to let me go to the hospital.”
“It’s not a good idea,” her dad said. “Lisa’s on the warpath.”
“I can handle Lisa,” Hannah assured him, concealing her doubts. Ronni’s mom was always nice, in her own flaky, hippy-dippy sort of way. But Hannah knew Lisa had a dark past. She remembered snippets of overheard conversations when she and Ronni were little: drugs, an accident, abusive boyfriends. . . . And Lisa really loved Ronni. Kim really loved Hannah, too, she didn’t doubt that, but there was something fierce about Lisa’s love for her daughter. Maybe because Ronni was all she had.
“She doesn’t want us there,” her mom said.
“She doesn’t want you guys there,” Hannah retorted. “Besides, this is about Ronni, not Lisa. Ronni will want me there. I know it.”
Another shared look between her parents, then her dad caved. “I’ll drive her.”
“Fine,” her mom said. “Aidan will be home soon. I’ll stay and explain what happened.”
Jeff grabbed his keys off the counter. “We should be back before the police arrive.”
THE WARD WAS quiet. Hannah could hear the hum of fluorescent lights and her Adidas shoes squeaking on the waxed floor like nervous chipmunks. The nurse at the counter directed Hannah to Ronni’s room: 506, right across the hall. She hesitated for just a moment before pushing the door open.
She hovered in the entryway and took in the view. Ronni lay in the hospital bed, her normally lustrous dark hair flat and matted, her skin pale and waxy. Her right eye was covered by a thick piece of white gauze, its edges yellowed with some sort of antiseptic. The other eye stared blankly ahead, awake but unseeing. God. She looked so broken. Hannah was about to step into the room when Lisa appeared, obscuring her view. “Uh-uh,” she said, hustling Hannah back into the hall before Ronni even knew she was there.
“Go home, Hannah.” Lisa’s voice was commanding over the buzzing lights.
“I just want to see her,” Hannah said, perilously close to tears. “To let her know that I’m here for her.”
“You should have been there for her last night.”
“I tried!”
“Obviously not hard enough.”
Lisa’s words were a slap in the face, a punch in the gut. Hannah’s chin quivered and tears pooled in her eyes. “I didn’t want them to— I couldn’t. . . .” But she didn’t know what to say, didn’t know how to say it. She was going to fall apart in front of Lisa. Shit . . .
Ronni’s mom looked at her and the hard set of her jaw softened slightly. For the first time, Hannah noticed how rough Lisa looked. She was the young mom, the pretty mom. Ronni’s accident had taken a toll. When she spoke, Lisa’s voice was gentler. “This is a time for family,” she said. “Ronni will call you when she gets home.”
But she doesn’t have a family! Hannah wanted to say. She only has you and your boyfriend! She needs her friends! But Hannah couldn’t speak. She turned on her squeaky heel and fled.
She held her tears in check through the hall and down the elevator until she stumbled into the coffee shop located in the lobby. As soon as she saw her dad sitting at a back table with a paper cup of coffee and one of those free newspapers, she lost the battle. Tears cascaded down her cheeks, her chest heaved with sobs.
Her dad stood. “What happened?”
“Lisa wouldn’t let m-me see her,” she stammered. “She’s really mad.” She launched herself into his arms, just like when she was little and she’d fallen off the swing or crashed her bike.
Her dad let her cry on his jacket, stroking her hair and softly shushing her. “Don’t worry, sweetie. This will all blow over.” Hannah felt a little better. She pulled away and nodded: it would blow over; it would all be fine. But just as she allowed herself to feel comforted, her dad checked his watch. “We’d better get home. The police will be coming by soon.”
jeff
THE NEXT DAY
“You don’t have to be nervous,” Jeff said, his eyes on the road. “The cops just want to know what happened. They’re not trying to get you into any trouble.”
“They’re trying to get you and mom into trouble,” Hannah muttered from the passenger seat.
Jeff let his breath out through his lips. “They just want to know if we were responsible for what happened. And we obviously weren’t.” He glanced over at his daughter. She stared straight ahead, not meeting his gaze. He suddenly felt awkward, compelled to fill the silence. “Just tell them that you each sneaked in a small amount of alcohol, and cumulatively, it had a bad effect on Ronni.”
“What about the champagne you gave us?”
“I wouldn’t mention it.”
“What about the other girls? What if one of them mentions it?”
“They won’t.” He sounded more confident than he felt. He sounded so confident that Hannah swiveled in her seat to face him.
“What did you say to my friends?” Her voice was angry, her pretty face dark and accusing when he looked over at her.
“Nothing . . . I just said that it wasn’t worth talking about. It’s not like one bottle of sparkling wine between five of you caused Ronni’s accident.”
Hannah turned away and stared out the side window. “So you want me to lie to the police. . . .”
She was upset and scared and she was taking it out on him. It was perfectly normal for a girl her age. He kept his voice calm. “It’s safest just to say that you can’t remember who brought what.”
“Except you. We remember that you gave us nothing.”
She was crossing the line into bitchy. “Tell them what you want then. Lay this all on me,” he growled. “Your mom will have a fit. I’ll get charged and fined and maybe even go to jail. All because I wanted to do something nice for my daughter.”
Hannah didn’t respond, but he heard her sniffling. Finally, she mumbled through her tears, “I won’t say anything.”