My mind wouldn’t believe the evidence of my ears. “What happened? Where are you?”
“There was a crash,” she said, her throat thick with mucus. “The helicopter.”
“I know.” The words were coming out as gasps. “Your dad just called me.”
“He did? How did he—”
“It doesn’t matter. Where are you, Stacey?”
“Ashland. Graham wouldn’t let me go up with them. We argued about it. He wouldn’t back down. Told me to go back to bed. Everyone in the office thought I was on board the chopper. They didn’t know I’d gone back to my place.”
I covered my eyes with my cupped hand, as if in shame, and my palm came away wet. I had never felt so happy, so relieved, so overcome with disbelief. And then I realized how selfish these emotions were.
“They’re all dead, Mike,” she said, sobbing. “Graham, Marti, Steve. We just got word.”
“Oh God.”
“It could have been me, should have been me.”
“Don’t say that.”
“Graham was always so funny.” She sounded horrible. “I can’t believe he’s dead. And poor Marti—she just graduated. And Steve was such a big soul, so full of life. I’m having chills, Mike. I can’t stop shivering.”
Suddenly, I, too, was shaking. “I know, I know.”
“I need to sit down.”
“Do they know what happened?”
“The chopper just went down. Steve never even radioed that there was a problem. It’s a beautiful day up here, too. Light winds, clear skies. It doesn’t make any fucking sense.”
“Maybe there was a mechanical malfunction.”
“It’s a fucking brand-new Bell.” She coughed away from the phone. “Steve was always going on and on about what a dream it was to fly.”
“Could something have happened to him in the air?”
“Like a heart attack? Maybe. I can’t believe they’re dead. I keep expecting to hear them coming back from the helipad.”
“How come no one knew where you were?”
“I stormed out of the office when Graham said he didn’t want me coughing and sneezing on everyone again. I was so pissed.” She took a sharp breath. “Oh God! That was our last conversation. I can never take back the things I said.”
It was the same harrowing realization I’d had a few minutes earlier, when I’d thought about the last time she and I had spoken.
Stacey began to sob harder. “So I went back to my room. I tried to sleep, but the medicine made me jittery. When I walked through the door, people looked at me like I was a ghost. Everyone thought I had been on the chopper. I feel so horrible now. I should have been with them. It doesn’t feel right that I’m alive and they’re dead.”
I rubbed my forehead with my hand. “But you’re not! You’re alive, Stacey. I wish I could be there with you.”
“Why?” She sounded genuinely surprised.
“To comfort you.”
“I’m not the one who needs comforting. I shouldn’t be sitting here sobbing. My friends’ dead bodies are still out there in the wreckage, and their families are sick with grieving. I need to do something.”
“You should think about your own family. When your dad finds out you weren’t on the chopper—you need to call him. You need to call him right this second.”
“Right. Of course. Shit.”
“Call me later.”
“I’ll call you when I have some news. I can’t promise when that will be. Good-bye, Mike. I love you.”
“I love you, too.”
A big eighteen-wheeler went barreling past and caught me up in its wake. For an instant, my truck rocked from side to side in the slipstream. I finally remembered to hit my hazard lights, but it seemed a little late at that point.
27
When I returned home, the house seemed altogether different. No one else had been there while I had been away. The temperature was more or less the same as when I’d taken off down the road.
And yet I found myself overcome with that paranoid feeling you sometimes get when you step into a favorite room and you perceive that some small item has been moved. You can’t put your finger on what it is, but your subconscious can sense that something is different. The more you try to identify what has been changed, the more agitated you become. It is how some people end up pulling out their own hair.
I found myself wandering from room to room, unable to sit still. I removed my combat vest and gun belt again, changed out of my uniform and back into jeans and a T-shirt, then decided I should run a few miles on the treadmill in the basement to burn off some steam, which meant putting on my shorts and sneakers. But I had barely started running when my legs started cramping and I was overcome with exhaustion, and I found myself sitting down on the weight bench with a towel over my head.
It wasn’t until I lifted the towel that I felt the fabric was wet. My hands slid down my cheeks when I touched them. I had been crying without even realizing it.