Our issues started long before the day my mother brought me to the police station. I remember questioning her rules as early as nine, when my best friend at the time, Mary Jane, invited me to a sleepover and my parents wouldn’t let me go “because they said so,” even though all of my friends were going and there was nothing about Mary Jane or her family that would warrant concern. My father left the parenting—and most decisions—up to my mother. He worked steady afternoons on the line at the paint factory, leaving before I came home from school and asleep for breakfast.
My mother didn’t see value in things like playdates and sleepovers, cuddling and bedtime stories. That was American culture fluff that she didn’t have when she was young, and she “turned out well.” She valued good grades in school, which I could never quite achieve, and a strict regimen of household chores, which I never could do to her satisfaction. She believed that it was her job to deliver constructive criticism with a heavy hand, and that coddling her children with praise would spoil them for adulthood.
In many ways, my mother was thirty-five going on seventy for as long as I can remember: strong-willed and unable or unwilling to adapt to change. Couple that with her old-world European values, taught to her by parents who had her in their late thirties, and we were destined for failure.
It wasn’t until I was fourteen that I truly rebelled. I could never measure up to her expectations, and I guess I decided to make a point of intentionally not trying. By the time I hit sixteen, they were at their wit’s end with me. I was skipping school and failing classes, missing curfew because I was out somewhere getting high and meeting boys. More, they were terrified of how I might influence Emma and Jack, my younger siblings. Emma, three years younger than me, was about to enter high school and had been groomed for the role of honor roll student and future class valedictorian.
And then I met Scott in my junior year and I started settling down—on account of his good influence, ironically.
None of that mattered, though, when Mom found out about us.
Now . . . we’ve come to an understanding. She was right in one sense—Scott never really loved me.
I’m sitting at the corner of Rupert and Old Cannery Road—the quiet route that will get me back to Balsam—and pondering my tumultuous relationship with my parents when a red sports car zips past in a noisy blur.
“Idiot,” I mutter. That driver is easily doing double the speed limit, and on a foggy night like tonight, where the thick white plumes hang over the cracked pavement, and on a road like this, with its sudden, sharp curves and uneven dips, it’s especially dangerous. Probably another city guy heading to his chalet for the weekend, reveling in the mild spring weather. We have plenty of them around, with the Poconos so close.
I glance at the clock on the dashboard again as I try not to speed along the dark, winding road, hoping I can make it home by ten so I don’t have to stop at the bank for more cash to pay Victoria. Tonight has already cost me too much, given that Lou forced me to take the night off work, promising me that I’d be thanking her when I stroll in tomorrow morning for my shift.
I’m not sure how I’m going to maneuver around that awkward conversation. Lou has been trying to set me up with Gord for years. And for years I have declined the offer, afraid of this exact situation. Lou’s the type of person who might consider my rejection of her nephew a personal affront upon her.
I guess my loneliness had finally weakened my resolve when I agreed.
I’ve practically been revirginized, having not slept with a man since the night Brenna was conceived. The last man I kissed was Lance, the truck driver who broke the final straw of my faith in men. Lance was a handsome regular who came through Diamonds twice a week—on Mondays, on his way to the West Coast, and on Thursday mornings, on his way home. He flirted with me for almost a year before I finally agreed to sit with him over my break. It quickly escalated to a break in his truck’s cab, where we snuck off for a hot and heavy make-out session.
That’s where I discovered the picture of his wife and son tucked into the driver’s seat sun visor. It took months to shake my guilt, afraid that I’d now be labeled a “home wrecker” on top of everything else. After that, I put a hundred percent of my focus back on Brenna and ignored my own needs.
Which is what I’ll be doing from now on, instead of accepting blind dates with car salesmen.
With a groan, I slow around a bend in the road, thankful that after so many years taking this quiet route to Diamonds for work, I’ve memorized each bumpy dip and dangerous turn like the back of my hand.
That’s why, when I spot the dim, flickering red lights ahead, my brow furrows with worry.
Because I know that the road curves to the left at an almost ninety--degree angle right there.
I hit my brakes and throw my high beams on as I ease my car closer. The fog eats up most of the light cast, forcing me to pull up close, until the other car’s license plate disappears from sight beneath my hood. Turning on my hazards, I check my rearview mirror for headlights—so few people take this road that it’s unlikely someone will come upon me—and then I grab my safety flashlight and step out onto the road.
And my stomach tightens.
I don’t need to see the front of the red sports car to know what happened. The thick old oak that meets its hood already tells a bleak story.
And that car was going too fast for the story to end well.
“Hello?” The word breaks in my throat as I rush toward the front of the car—a Corvette, I think—on shaky legs, dialing 911 on my phone. The engine’s hiss is the only response I get.
“I’m on Old Cannery Road,” I tell the dispatcher who answers the call, my voice quivering. My toe hits a piece of metal debris from the car, sending it skittering away along the narrow gravel shoulder.
The dispatcher asks how many people are involved. My gasp answers him as I round the driver’s side and the beam of light lands on a body, partially ejected through the windshield. By the haircut and size, it’s a man. And he’s not moving.
Is there a passenger? The dispatcher asks. I don’t know, I tell him, because I can’t see the other side. Because this side doesn’t really exist anymore. It’s just a heap of rumpled, smoking metal wrapped around a body now.
I’m operating on pure adrenaline, circling the back of my car to get to the other side, my two-inch heels sinking into the mud, remnants of last year’s bulrushes brushing against my sleeve.
Yes. I think I see a shadow behind the spiderweb of cracked glass.
“Emergency services will be there in approximately four minutes. Get back in your car, ma’am, where it’s safe,” the dispatcher directs me.
“Four minutes,” I repeat to myself, disconnecting the call. My gut tells me that it won’t mean anything to the driver. But what about the passenger? It looks like the driver’s side took the brunt of the impact with the tree after it left the road. Still, this side isn’t without damage—the door no longer fits its frame.